I forgot to post this at the time; brief reviews of the fabric stores we visited (London and Bradford)

A couple of  weekends ago, (comment -- a lot longer than that now!! 19/20 February) I visited Bombay Stores in Bradford on the way to Cambridge, a bit of a detour, longer because of an accident and significant problems on the A1. I'd  heard good things about this Asian superstore and had been recommended to visit to look at their silks.

So many colourful Asian wedding outfits! Gorgeous but not what I was looking for.

You've heard of ‘unplugged’ music - well they had an unsewn section - designer (Asian) outfits for which the fabric was packaged. Various prices. I picked up a bargain of 3 coordinating iris coloured fabrics.

Their fabric section was good but again didn't have what I was looking for. Their silk organza was available in a variety of colours but not white or ivory. I did buy some interlining fabric for the bridesmaid dresses.

They have a lot of bargain bins of fabric at £1.10 per metre.

While I was browsing, David visited the nearby National Media Centre for the first time in a few years

Their café, Asian of course,  was excellent and very inexpensive.

We drove to Cambridge and had dinner with oldest daughter, sil and grandsons in the pub our middle daughter manages. We spent the night and drove to London the next morning to meet our youngest daughter. She and I were fabric shopping while David was fixing their oven door.

First,  though, I had to fit a wedding dress toile on Helen. I discovered I had made a bit of an error and took notes to rectify that.

Helen and her fiancé had visited Joel & Sons fabrics and bought the fabric for the bridesmaid dresses and his waistcoat. They were very impressed - Helen of course didn't get a chance to look at bridal fabrics. I had heard good things from others, too. So this was our first stop. I won't say too much but in summary it was very disappointing because of extremely poor customer service. Perhaps a Saturday isn't the best day but it was the only day we had and Helen had good service on her previous Saturday visit. An Aladdin's cave of gorgeous fabrics, phenomenally expensive.

So we moved back to Soho.

First stop was MacCulloch and Wallis. Very helpful staff. We found a fabric that we rather liked but not the trims we were after.

We then planned to go to Soho itself but were running short of time.

First stop was the Silk Society. David, (that may not have been his name, sorry) who served us was supremely helpful, even to the extent of looking at our inspiration entries online and suggesting how they would be made. Unfortunately, we ended up a bit more confused because I hadn't been keen on the toile I made and the plans for it and as far as I was concerned,  David's opinion concurred. So we didn't buy the fabric we admired as we had more talking to do.

We missed Borovic somehow, though we'd been before. However, it was too late to backtrack.

We returned to Broadwick Silks and again found the staff very helpful. I hadn't realised it was a sister shop of the Silk Society. I highly recommend them both.

We then retired to a wine bar for a  glass of wine and discussion about the way forward. We had 3 basic options and I wasn't keen on the route we had previously pursued. We came to an agreement on the way forward and I agreed to try to make a toile for the following weekend when H would be visiting.

I ran out of suitable toile fabric but Rory offered to get some more for me to pick up in class that evening. I had less time than usual as my annual big fund raising bridge event for our Vets’ county golf was the next day  and I had stacks to do for that. So I only had the  Friday evening. Helen and I had a session with Rory on the Saturday afternoon.

Hopefully after that our path will be clearer - I'm afraid it's not at the moment and I'm getting a bit panicky as time is marching on so quickly.

I wrote this some time ago. Recent posts clarify where I’ve got to. The above session with Rory turned my previous ideas on their head but the current design is better.