Fabric tour of Nam

One of the first places Jemma took me to was one of her favourite places. As Jemma is a style diva, it shouldn't have surprised me that that was the fabric market. What a horrible friend, dragging me there! 

Tailoring in Vietnam is good and cheap. There wasn't so much by way of patchwork cotton, but as my fabric room is exploding, that was fortunate and I was very restrained. I just walked away with this lovely home decor weight fabric ... for about $3/yard.

Won't that make a lovely bag?! I also took a favourite dress and two tops with me. My trip to the fabric market followed by the tailor yielded two tops and two dresses.

The red and gold is a little shiny and dressy, and the other is a very light weight cotton. They both fit beautifully. Not brilliantly finished off but you can't see those bits and I can fix them easily enough. 4 stars for tailoring. 

Right on a prime corner in downtown Ho Chi Minh city, I spotted this shop.

Mekong Quilts is a not-for-profit organisation which trains and employs women throughout the Mekong Delta in impoverished conditions who would otherwise have no income.  Here are a selection of photos. I love the appliquéd Vietnamese girls!

 And this cute little laundry bag.

Here's Jemma being quilt model.  

These geckos are known as tokek or cicak (chi-chak) in Indonesia depending on their size and the noise they make. I was delighted to see them in Vietnam too. I do like the brick quilting on that one. I do have to say that the puffy polyester 1990s style thick batting made me cringe. I suppose it is the cheapest they can get, but I wish a company that produces some natural cotton batting would take on the charity and supply some decent batting.

On my own sewing, Jess reinspired me to paper-piece again. I had to do a quick lot of cutting without a picture before I went and I decided on a set of low-volume texty prints. The overcast skies and the beige and grey of downtown Ho Chi Minh could have been made to match.

This is one of my favourite designs - I'm going to do a set of these. Still waiting for Jess's book to arrive - post is SLOOWWW! But here's my first block.