I love it when things unexpectedly come together.

A few weeks ago I came across Peggy Poppleton’s lovely brooches and treated myself.

Having ummed and ahhed over the merits of birds versus flowers, I then wasn’t sure which colour to go for. But I stuck my neck out and instead of playing safe and getting the white one, I went for orange.

I’m not really sure why, as I didn’t possess anything orange at the time.

Then, I bought my favourite skirt at the Selvedge Spring Fair.

And the brooch goes with it! In fact, I wore it when I met Rachel the other weekend.

Which she noticed, and we had a laugh about “putting a bird on it”. (I was going to include a link to the wonderful Portlandia sketch, but apparently you can’t watch it in the UK due to copyright restrictions. Boo.)

And then I got a birthday present from my friend Maria, who collects and sells beautiful vintage things.

She was all excited to give it to me because she thought it was so me…

And by jove, wasn’t it just!

I need to do a bit of stitching before I can wear it. A replacement hook and eye, secure the dangly buttons, plus a tweak to the darts here and there to adjust the fit slightly. But it is a summery creation, so there’s plenty of time to see to that.

My orange bird will come in very handy to perch in splendour upon my new finery.

As Hannibal of The A Team used to say, I love it when a plan comes together.

Especially when it wasn’t even planned as a plan. 🙂