Wednesday 15 August 2012

Sewing outside and a Book Review

Last week we had a little trip to the garden of my husbands family and I took one of my best friends -  my sewing machine with me to work on my sorbetto top.
This was the view from my improvised "working" space



On the right corner you can see a bit of the baby blue crepe (no silk crepe of course) I used. The fabric has a golden scalloped hem and I am not quite sure if I should also use golden bias tape for the neckline and the armholes. I can't remember ever wearing golden clothes, but it would match well with the hem. The fabric was on sale for only 1,50€ per metre and immediately I saw the sorbetto top made of it in my imagination. I think it is a really good buy - if you immediately know what to do with the fabric, otherwise your fabric stash will just grow bigger and bigger - with a lot of beautiful fabric waiting to become a real project one day.  So my new mantra is to only buy fabric when I really have a clue what to do with it.
As beautiful as outside sewing is the wind made it a wee bit harder to cut the fabric properly. But I made it at the end. To someone like me, nature is a very distracting thing so I havent finished the sorbetto yet. But crafting on the outside was a totally relaxing and joyful adventure.
And we could have our dinner at the treehouse!
Beautiful view from the treehouse while having dinner
Another little gem that I layed my eyes on is the Queen of Crafts book by Jazz Domino Holly the daughter of Joe Strummer ( I know it is usually stupid to mention the daughter/son of... thing but as her dad beeing Joe Strummer I set aside that intent). In her book she nicely describes what impact crafting has on her life and how her father, great-grandmother and her grandmother inspired her and helped her making her first crafting steps. The story of her great-grandmother reminded me of mine, who taught me the first stitches.

 Jazz Domino Holly (yes a long name!) is also founder of the Shoreditch Sisters a feminist crafting group which meets monthly in East-London. That of course makes her even more sympathetic to me. The book is loaded with nice projects like planting a tea garden, knitting a scarf (which is good for me as a knitting newbie), making jam and chutneys, baking and even a DIY beauty section. Though the baking section is mostly not vegan the recipes could be veganized easily. And she included a recipe for edible glitter that I totally want to test. Who doesn't want edible glitter on a cake?



1 comment:

  1. Wow! What a stunning location to get some sewing done xx

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