Wisteria and Lavender

I love wisteria. The house about four down from ours has a white frame car port with a white wisteria growing up each of the four corners and cascading over the top of it. A  couple of months ago I bought a white wisteria but then couldn't quite decide where to plant it. The suburb we live in has a lot of big trees which means that the ground is just one mass of roots which suck all moisture and nutrients out as soon as you put them in. Added to that the soil is just sand. Since the wisteria was quite expensive I wanted to put it somewhere where it would definitely grow.

There is a path down the side of the house with a gate across a bit over half way down. The bottom half of the path runs along the side of my bedroom and next to the Big Wall mentioned in previous posts. There is just a narrow strip (10" to a foot) wide on each side of the path. The section next to the wall was occupied by weeds and stacks of my bricks

and the section on the other side had a succulent (you can just see it on the side of the picture above). I moved the bricks to another stack further up the path and dug up the succulent and potted it. My cousin is building a new house and is happy to give it a home in her garden. Which is good because I don't actually like succulents.

 The soil is really poor so I added about half a bucket of bentonite clay, some sheep manure (collected by my wonderful daddy and sent up to me in bags) and a couple of handfuls each of blue metal dust, crushed lime stone and blood and bone and worked it all in with water. It actually started looking like soil.

I planted my white wisteria on the fence,

and a punnet of pale pink portulaca around it and along the rest of the space. I love portulaca. They grow so well in hot, sunny spots and produce a gorgeous array of flowers and they just grow so eagerly.

A couple of months ago I had also bought a pale pink lavender called Strawberry Ruffles which has pale pink 'wings' out the end of each flower head. I also bought two white winged lavenders which were marked down and looked unloved. They now all have a home along the house side of the patch where I hope they will grow up and make a hedge to hide the underneath of the house.

So I now have pink and white down each side of the path. Not planned but I think that it will look very nice. The next thing I have to do is get Dad to build me a frame for the wisteria to grow up. I am rather proud of my self since I only bought the portulaca yesterday and they are already planted out. As you can tell I often buy things before I have a space in the garden and then the poor things have to live in their pots for months before I decide what to do with them.
Speaking of which - I bought a double pink fuchsia called Cotton Candy when I got the portulaca. It is a lovely bushy plant but had been marked down as no-one had wanted it and the weather was warming up. Now to find somewhere for it. I haven't had much success with fuchsias in the past so I hope this one will grow.

Cotten Sateen

To be exact, stretch cotton sateen - 96% cotton and 4 % spandex - though I find that there are a number of interlopers in this category which have a high percentage of polyester but still look very similar.

I love this fabric. It is available in a number of fabric stores but I usually buy it in Spotlight. It comes in a range of patterns and plains which change from season to season but there is rarely any matching plains to go with the patterns - very annoying. It is wide - 2 passes across the fabric will get you a full pleated skirt.

The reason I love this fabric is that it is just so lovely to sew. It is heavy enough that it holds it's shape and the seams don't pull but soft enough that it is easy to manoeuvre through the machine. It takes creases well which makes pleating and turning up hems easy but doesn't crush too much. The fabric is dense enough that provided you wear flesh coloured underwear you don't need to line the garments (though a good lining always feels lovely in a dress or skirt).

Cotton sateen is a good weight for either dresses or structured skirts (pleats, pencil, a-line or a few gathers - no good for flowing designs). Being a mainly natural fibre it is breathable in summer and not too cold in winter. It hangs nicely. It can be machine washed, though I always hand wash things I have put the effort into making. It is easy to iron and not too expensive to buy. Great all-round fabric.

One day I may get around to posting pictures of this fabric made up. I have a lovely navy blue, pleated skirt which I wear all the time made out of it.

Things I Like... and rants about things I don't

I have no financial interest in the companies, products and patterns that I am reviewing. I am not getting paid to do this. There is very little chance that they know my blog even exists. This is just to share from one home sewer, gardener, cook, crafter to another the places and products that I have found that fit my needs. There is no guarantee that you will agree with me but read on anyway and you may find some use tips.

I was talking with a friend at church about sewing when another girl came up with a friend in tow to say that her friend wanted some advice on where to find fabric for some summer dresses. My friend passed the question over to me and after a good 5 minute run-down on my favourite stores, the pros and cons of different fabrics and linings and exactly where in the store the fabric I was recommending was, the first girl said that I should blog about it. So here I am.