Fabric! And more Fabric!!

So the small town where my daughter had her wedding was Den Bosch, Netherlands. The actual spelling of the name is  ‘S- Hertogenbosch. It is a town about an hour south of Amsterdam. There is an adorable little town square and the actual church the wedding was held in is about 4 blocks away. It is a 14^th century cathedral and it absolutely stunning inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'s-Hertogenbosch

You just don't have churches like this in the states!

Amazing!

The town square holds weekly open-air markets for all to enjoy. There was the normal stuff like cheese, bread, bags/purses and goodies. There are also several stands of fabric! Yay! In heaven! In addition to the fabric, there are stalls of lace, trims and zippers/bindings. I did not purchase anything there but you can bet I bought some fabric!

Now in Europe fabric is sold by the meter and not by the yard. (I checked with my son-in-law beforehand!) The fabric stalls had multiple bolts of fabric all out for everyone to see (and touch), and there were also some fabric hanging from the ceiling of the tents for display purposes.

The day after the wedding (Saturday) the fabric market was in full swing. So, unfortunately, was the rain. It came down for about 20 minutes like someone had turned on the faucet. I didn’t complain as I would rather had it rain the day after the wedding and not the day of! The vendors had rain-ready tarps and gear to protect their wares so this must be a regular occurrence!

I ended up purchasing 3 kinds of fabric. One was a kid print for a friend who has small children and also sews. I purchased just a meter of it, you don’t really need that much for small children. I thought it was so cute and almost wished I had little ones again so that I could make up a cute dress in the fabric. Almost.

Then other two prints I purchased 2 meters each of. They are dress/shirt weights and appear to be either 100% cotton or a blend of poly/cotton. Very pretty and perhaps might make tops out of it. Not sure yet what I am going to do with it, it would also be pretty in a skirt.

Very pretty!

Perhaps a skirt?

The total cost of all three fabrics (if memory serves correctly) was about 25 Euro. That is about $32, give or take the current conversion rate. The gentleman who waited on me was very nice but his English was limited. No matter: Fabric is a universal language! (Or it should be!) I was able to communicate with him just fine and was very happy with my purchases! I found that most Dutch people understand English at least on a basic level. If they don’t speak English very well, they tend to at least understand what you are saying. Which is good, because I have zero understanding of the Dutch language!!!

Another fun thing to mention is that my daughter's mother-in-law found out that I liked to sew and she presented me with a small amount of fabric for me to use! It is what she called "traditional Dutch scenes" and it is so adorable! I have no idea what I am going to use it for but I want to use it for something special! It is lovely!

How cute is this Dutch fabric!!

Fabric shopping in Europe! Yep, I did that!

The Wedding!!

So it is finally here! My daughter’s wedding in the Netherlands. What a wonderful day, the weather was perfect and it was everything that the bride wanted for her special day.

Although this is not a perfect picture of the Mother of the Bride dress, it is one of the only shots I have of the full view of the dress. I was really happy with the way it came out and it was really comfortable for the day. Good thing too, as I was in the dress for about 14 hours total. The party lasted until midnight and although I ditched the hat and gloves after the church, I kept the shoes on until probably 11pm.

I actually received many compliments on the hat! As stated in prior posts, I found it at a hat shop in Berkeley, CA. I felt very “put together” with the hat and gloves! We don’t really get much of an excuse to wear such things in the U.S. so I took full advantage of it!