A Little Shopping: Chadwick's Heirlooms

On a recent trip to Richmond, I had the opportunity to visit a couple of fabric stores.  Unfortunately, one of them seemed to keep casual hours so I didn't get to shop.  Oh well.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed my excursion to Chadwick's Heirlooms!  They are on the west side of Richmond in a large building that's sharing space with an antique store.  They carry a huge supply of fabrics, patterns, laces, and everything heirloom sewing--plus a great selection of quilting cotton.  However, they also had some other things like twills and beautiful floral cotton lawns like Liberty prints and others.  Those florals were a huge temptation, but since I didn't have anything in particular in mind for them I didn't buy any.

I did buy a navy twill (shorts/pants), a bunch of Imperial batiste in white (just to have on hand), 2 patterns (Trisha by Maja's Heirlooms and the Pinwheel Tunic & Slip Dress by Oliver + S), and a pincushion.  Not much to say about anything but the pincushion.  It's not like I needed another one, but this one is a wrist one and it fits!  Its armband is leather and very soft.  My wrists are pretty small so finding something comfortable and that fits can be challenging.  It's my first one ever for my wrist, and I think I will really like it!

Pincushion by Considine Creations

I think Chadwick's has such an extensive selection of fabrics, that even if you are not an heirloom sewer you will find something to love!

Biscornu

Biscornu means irregular shape.  In this case, it is a pincushion with 8 sides made to demonstrate all the fun stitches you can make on your machine using its decorative features along with a variety of needles like a wing needle.  My youngest dd made this one during a sewing guild sew in earlier this year and I finally got it sewn together for her.  It is rather awkward to do that which is why I did it for her.  She had the best time sewing the decorative stitches and it was an excellent way for her to become very comfortable with threading and unthreading her machine.  She knew how, of course, but when you have to thread and rethread many, many times in a couple of hours it becomes almost automatic!

She loved stuffing her pincushion!  I got a perfectly sized stuffing freebie during our guild's shop hop this year. 

Finished!  She chose the strawberry button for the center.