I profess to loving the ideas behind visible mending much more than the actual look. Whilst I have been known to sew a colourful patch on a child’s worn out trouser knees, I certainly don’t want my own clothes to look patched, even creatively, even to draw attention to the political act of mending. Particularly […]
Category: sew
Woosh…and school holidays ate two weeks in a flash. I did get a small thing finished in the holidays. A small thing made of smaller things. This is a toilet bag for Our Dear Girl made from paper-pieced hexies cut from vintage sheets. I bought a packet of these from a tiny wee shop in […]
Dearest readers, I never mean to be away so long…life just happens and the days get away from me. Firstly we had the whirl of school holidays and then there were birthdays. Lots of things were made but escaped being photographed. Those of you who follow me on Instagram will recognise the following pics from […]
Just in the nick of time, I made these. My old yoga pants, two of them, were 2 years old and worn to the point of being unrepairable. They weren’t yoga pants specifically, just black cotton/Lycra leggings from a big box store. I’d resewn the inner seam a number of times but the fabric itself had […]
This is Slow Fashion October, a time that we pause and reflect on where our clothes come from, how they got here and how we might be more involved in their making, wearing and enduring over time. Just recently, I read Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes (2017) by Amy Twigger Holroyd which explored the idea and practice of remaking. […]
Part of the reason I have not been back to this space for such a long time is that I kept wanting to post like I used to, big juicy posts with lots of research and progress and completion. Since, I am not actually doing those kinds of things at the moment, I thought I might […]
Last night, the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria hosted a sell out presentation on Making Clothes From Your Own Backyard. Nicki Taylor of This is Moonlight blog and Rachel Bucknall of Reduce Reuse Recycle blog asked themselves the question, what would you wear if you limited yourself to clothing whose fibres, dye and labour […]
As I have mentioned at various times on this blog, Our Dear Girl loves the Little House on the Prairie books. These are the recollections of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pioneering childhood in the Midwest US in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As we were reading These Happy Golden Years (1943) for bedtime reading recently, we came […]
Happy New Year Readers and welcome back to Needle and Spindle! I hope you had some enjoyable holidays and if you did not, then let us be done with them and embrace the year ahead. With my resolution to find balance in all aspects of life still freshly sown, it seems apt to begin another blogging […]
Despite the searing heat withering the leaves outside, my thoughts are turning to Christmas. There has been some baking, sewing and making of small things. As my children insist upon growing, they have new aprons this year. These are drawn entirely from stash I am pleased to recount. Our Dear Boy has a brown corduroy […]
