How to store your fabric yardage on comic book cardboard

  What do you do when your machine is not available? Easy: START ORGANISING YOUR FABRIC!

Splitting hairs | How sustainable are cashmere, angora or mohair?

Have you wondered where that fluffy, lovely, warm cashmere scarf or mohair jumper really come from? Or just how ethically was it produced? Well, let’s explore together the ins and outs of hair-based fibres and their sustainable story.
We talked about types of wool a while ago and the sustainability and ethic aspects related to it. But not all that is warm, woolly and cosy is actually wool. There are a few other animal fibres that can be knitted or woven into lovely cloth that are not technically categorised as wool, but they are actually the hair various animals, from rabbits to goats, lamas and alpacas.

A sustainable wedding dress odyssey – Part 2

Friends, I’ve almost beaten the procrastination and made a bit of progress with the wedding dress project… At least, on the prep side. As I was telling you in the previous post on this topic, I decided I not only wanted to make my own wedding dress, but I wanted a sustainable one at that. And my way to go about it was to buy an old dress off eBay and take it to pieces to recover the fabric and make a new dress I designed, from scratch. Soooo, a few weeks later, I did just that. It took me three…

Stripped Summer Dress | Burda Magazine 03/2009 #113A

I once read on a blog about the monsters, i.e projects we made which turned out all wrong for various reasons, but we can’t help but love and keep on wearing in spite of their defects. This is the only monster that still survives in my wardrobe. This little summer dress that I made last year is so utterly flawed that for a long time I was pondering if I really should show it to you. But then, we learn from our mistakes as much (or maybe more) than from our successes. Besides, I wore this dress so many times last summer…

DIY SATIN JUMPSUIT | SIMPLICITY 2401

Thank you all so much for your comments on my previous post. I took all your advice and chilled out from my online sewcial life for a while and also spent my time sewing rather than reading about sewing. Or blogging for that matter. But there was only so much hiatus I could take without feeling guilty, so here I am back in the blogging saddle… I have a new summer project to show you, although I absolutely froze my behind on my balcony while taking the pictures… What the what, Great British Summer??!!!! I actually finished this on Saturday,…

DIY NAUTICAL MAXI TANK DRESS | BURDA 06-2009 #115

Ahoy, sewing girls and boys! Today’s post is one helluva maxi irony! I’ve made a summer maxi dress just in time for the weather to turn rainy again here in London! And I’m taking pictures in the one half an hour when the rain stopped, goody! On the plus side, my holiday/honeymoon wardrobe is shaping up nicely, I’m really counting down the months now! Of course, this is a maxi procrastination effort as well, as I really should be getting on with the wedding dress, but hey ho, you know what’s it like when you get a sewing bee (no…

A sustainable wedding dress odyssey (Part 1)

Heya boys and girls, just a quick, cheeky mid-week post to tell you about something that’s making me really excited at the moment! You might have heard about me getting married in October in the Caribbean and that I’m mad enough to make my own wedding dress. Daunting, I know, but I did choose something really sensible and hopefully easy to put together, so I will keep my sanity (and by extension, my finance’s). I really have no more excuses to procrastinate – I did get my amazing sewing room a little while ago, so even the feng shui is working in…

DIY BLACK AND WHITE A-LINE DRESS | MCCALLS 6465

What’s new and exciting, boys and girls? I do wonder how many of us got near a sewing machine this week (warmest day in the UK in a very long time). I am one to ditch a summer day no matter how nice the weather if I have a project in mind. I have a few things on the got at the moment, but for tonight, let’s chat about this little dress that it’s actually quite old (2013), but I decided to revamp for a very practical reason: the facings kept coming out when I wore it and it really…

DIY SUMMER JERSEY PLAYSUIT | MCCALLS 6083

Whew, boys and girls, looks like I survived my busiest period of the year at work! That explains the absence, as I was hardly at home in the last weeks, let alone able to do any sewing! It all went very well, in case you were worried, and now were back to regularly scheduled programmes. Soooo, looks like we might actually get some summer this year and, as the incurable optimist that I find myself, I proceeded to end my sewing hiatus with a quick and easy-breezy playsuit. I wanted to submit another mini-entry to the Jumping into June competition,…

DIY WHITE JERSEY JUMPSUIT | VOGUE 9075

Hello sewing boys and girls! Here we are with a potentially incoherent post tonight, as I am suffering from intense self-inflicted sleep deprivation… I had a very interesting weekend, to say the least, and really pushing myself to finish this post and officially join the Jump into June ladies.