Barkerville: Part I (Updated)

When I was visiting my parents during the summer, we made a day trip to Barkerville. It was my first visit, although they've been a few times. I remember looking at photos from Mom's trip there from when she was in highschool :) Barkerville is a town that was built during the gold rush. It's now a historic site. There are more than 100 buildings there, mostly original from the late 1800s, some are rebuilt, such as the chinese schoolhouse I believe. (There's a whole Chinatown there, complete with places to eat and shop). They were in the process of re-building the terraced gardens there. Across the street at the Lee Chong Co. Store Chinese Museum there are some china and opium pipes, etc. displayed that they found while excavating the gardens.

Chinese toys, teas, herbs, clothing, parasols and such

The entrance to China Town

The Lee Chong Co. Museum

The town is named after Billy Barker, the first man to strike gold there. He was very rich, as he found the biggest claim, but died with nothing. Near the entrace to the town is a giftshop and you can pan for gold there. I forget how much it costs, but you're guarenteed to find at least two or three flakes of gold in your pan. Plus the old guy helping the kids pan was really nice and super funny :) There's also a "Cornish Waterwheel and Flume" by the river where some of the street actors put on a show a few times a day, and you actually learn alot about gold mining and how the wheel works. The actors were terrific and really included the audience, whom they referred to as "investors."

Pointing out different parts of the Wheel and Flume

I honestly forget what we were all swearing to here..
but the shifty eyes are great!

Gold found after panning the debris that came up from
 underground when the wheel was running. 

You can easily spend a whole day there and not get bored, there's so much going on, and so many buildings to peek into or wander through.

I'm going to leave it at that for now though, more on Barkerville and some new sewing projects soon :)

Lady Grey & New Old Projects

So it took me long enough, but I finally made up my mind to join Gertie's Sew-a-long. I've ordered the Lady Grey Pattern, and have added one of the cute badges to the corner of my blog, now it's time to pick fabric... I like the idea of making it into a trench. The thing is, when I get around to fabric shopping something else might jump into my hands instead :) There's time to decide while the pattern makes it's way to my doorstep.

On to finished projects! Well, old finished projects. I made this dress in July.

I won this pattern (and another) in a giveaway at A Rambling Fancy's blog.

The cotton tiki-print fabric is from fabric.com. How could anyone pass up an awesome tiki-print? It was reasonably simple to sew. I think with serging it would be a very quick sew too, but mine had recently kicked the bucket, so the inside is all hong-kong bound seams. Not difficult, but more time consuming for sure. It looks way nice inside though! If I make this dress again I'm going to redraft a proper kick-pleat for it, as this one is just a fold...kind of weird.
I was going to wear this to the soft opening for Mcleans (a restaurant in Gastown), but was just short of time to finish it before we had to leave. Only the hem and zip to go! Anyhow, it did get finished, although I haven't actually worn it out anywhere yet. Might have to save it for Viva.

I also made this dress in leftover seersucker from another project:

It's Burda 8174 (I'm not going to post it, since it's pretty easy to find, and probably almost everyone has a copy anyhow). It's the bodice from the pattern anyhow. I didn't have enough fabric for the skirt portion, so I made a dirndl style skirt with patch pockets. The patch pockets honestly took the longest. They were pinned and re-pinned so many times because I decided I'd wear the dress (I don't have a dressform) and place the pockets on. I then went into the livingroom and interrupted my guy's video game to ask him if the pockets looked even. This resulted in him taking them off the dress and pinning, and re-pinning, and grumbling at me for wanting pockets. Maybe you had to be there for this to be amusing? I'm really happy with how it turned out though.  He's a good (if grumbly) help, and I got to wear my dress to Barkerville!