• I finished my first Carkai bag. It isn’t perfect, the interfacing caused some bubbling and the straps could have been about 15cm longer. Naughty me; I tell my students not to point out their mistakes to everyone else. Do as a say, not as I do.
• Making the leather closure was very easy. I bought an A4 sized piece of leather and it was easy to cut into strips, sew and punch a hole through.

• For my next bag I have bought strips of saddlery leather for the straps. This is much harder to punch holes in, for the straps and I think a need a larger rivet.

• This exaggerated sleeve trend is definitely coming. I quite like the cartoonish-ness of the silhouette but what does it look like on a non-model? Maybe it doesn’t matter. It looks crazy on everyone!

• But I like it much better than the cropped flare, which I detest! It’s stupid of me to hate this style so much, and yet, like the weird sleeve thing. They both distort the body. I guess the sleeve seems new to me, whereas the flare is familiar but made even more difficult to wear because of leg-shortening crop. Although I do think Lauren looks great in her cropped Birkin Flares. She has long legs though, and high heels – I think that’s the secret.

• Apparently, It’s not just me feeling the yellow love! Yellow is everywhere. Yay! It makes me feel like sunshine has arrived.

• I’m still refining my list of spring coat ideas. (I know Spring will be over before I solve this problem, but it will happen again next year).
  I think this Fillmore pattern from Sewing Workshop looks interesting, especially they way they have illustrated it, with stripes.

I wish they hadn’t made the model version in such dark colours. It’s difficult to see what’s going on, from the photograph. It seems like there’s a lot more texture than in the illustration. Has anyone else considered making this?

• I found another Spring coat for inspiration at Tales of Ted and Agnes.