The Great Pattern Caper

I have some beautiful Liberty silk (made all the more beautiful by the fact that I bought it at a Liberty warehouse sale for a bargainous £5 per metre), which has lain untouched for about a year now, so I decided to use it to make a dress to wear to a friend's 40th birthday party later this month.  I was searching the various boxes in my spare room for a suitable pattern, when it occurred to me that there had to be an easier way and that perhaps my husband's suggestion of photographing all my dress patterns was not such a barmy one after all.  My reasoning was that I could tag the pictures with keywords such as 'princess seams', 'colourblock' or 'bow' (more on bows later) as well as the sizes and brand of the patterns and thus make finding the perfect pattern a much quicker job than getting out all the patterns in the boxes to sort through them on the living room floor (the spare room doesn't have any floor to speak of, just piles of junk with narrow avenues between them).  The Great Pattern Cataloguing Caper begun!

I photographed 200 patterns, which seems like such a ridiculously round number that it was Sod's law that I would find two more lurking at the back of the cupboard as soon as I was done!  This was one of the most constructive weekends I've had in years.