Poppy Dress

 

In the middle of the winter I take time to sew my summer clothes. Inspired? Tempting the spring this way? No, just of practical reasons. This is the time of the year when I can arrange to have time to sew. In the spring and summer I either have to take care of my allotment and yard or even when I don't have to, I want to be outside if the weather is good.

 I was wearing two of my tunic dresses with slightly shame faced manner last summer. Both of them are now deemed to become my gardening clothes -in the garden the visible patching of rips, faded fabric and stains don't matter. When they start to fall off my body or having holes too big to mend, I'll make them to rags for my kitchen.

This is my first dress for addressing the lack of garments for the summer. It is the trusted pattern I have used many times and it still works beautifully. I have made the dress with short sleeves before, but prefer it now in its smock incarnation. It means that I can change the undergarment of the dress changing also how it looks and can go a bit longer without washing it.

The fabric is  Marimekko "Poppy" and was given to me. I actually had it already for the last summer, but didn't get around to sew it.

Are you planning your summer  wardrobe as yet? (I am not, I just replace the things I know I have worn out).

Winter Allotment

Warning: this post contains ugly pictures...allotment under construction. 

The weather is still decidedly wintry here in Northern England. We had a couple of amazingly mild weeks in the beginning of February, but since then it's been the icy winds from the North pole. During those nice weather weeks I burnt weeds on my patch.

It took me ages to get the fire going at the rate that was enough to destroy semi moist weeds, the dry ones went into flames faster than I could feed the fire. See, there is a rule that the fire should be small, but if the fire is small, then it is difficult to burn the weeds. I managed it, but did come home stinking of smoke and hair full of soot. I think I have sussed it out now...

This time of the year the allotment wields just a bit of winter veg. I have already lifted most of the root vegetables, but still have some kales like Nero di Toscana and the curly one:

Although I have lived here a good while now, I am still full of wonder that is winter growing. I can harvest in the middle of the winter?!?!? For someone who grew up with winters in frost and snow this is absolutely amazing. This is my harvest of purple sprouting broccoli and carrots from yesterday:

I don't grow carrots during the summer for autumn harvest as the allotments are riddled with carrot flies. You have to be covering them up and weeding under a fleece etc to have a success. I sow my carrots in the late summer to have some carrots for Christmas and beyond. I might have a go doing them in the polytunnel next winter.

The tunnel has winter greens, salad leaves, pak-choi, parsley and coriander. We haven't needed to buy any green salads this winter, nor have we bought green herbs. In addition of what is growing here, we froze some of our herb harvest from the summer. Financially that is probably where the savings are biggest; herbs and winter salads.

Outside I have continued building the beds, I might have shown you pictures of this before, but here goes; garlic bed (the garlic is showing now!) and the bean fence.

The preparation for the runner beans. They can take the rotting compost dug deep under where they grow. It gives them extra moisture and heat. Same goes for the cucurbit family.
I will prep positions where they are to grow shortly.

In the picture above you see a fence behind my compost bins. Behind the fence there is five more metres of allotment. Unfortunately some of the previous occupiers have piled a lot stuff there. There is organic matter, which doesn't bother me, I can sieve it, burn it, re-distribute it in my allotment. It is the rubbish, that is buried there as well, that annoys me. And the tree/bush. It grows on the high ground and makes this end of the allotment shady. I have asked the society and it is Ok to take it down. I will sort out that pile of rubbish, but not just yet. Why? There was a similar problem in the other end, although no organic matter...just plastic, rusty metal, broken glass, broken glass, broken glass. I have been tidying that up last year and during this winter and this is what has come out. (Only a fraction of the whole, lots of it has been carted to the dump already):

I really don't understand how anyone would do this. The plant bed on the right is one of the areas and I cleared that length last summer. The bed behind has just been cleared and we planted a damson tree in the corner.

The amount of broken glass is totally surreal. I think that the occupiers have collected glass panes to make a green house and then not got around to do it and the glass has got broken. There are still whole panes here as well.  I will need to think how to get rid of the big ones.

I can make a mess too. I have been piling wood and other useful stuff into my coldframe while I am working around it to stop all the weeds growing. Just to remind myself about this stage of the construction:

I hope to take some more pictures now that I have even more bits sorted. The coming weekend should be mild here, so I hope to get working again. Are you still under snow or is your garden maybe in full production on the other side of the equator?

Gardening Diary

I try to keep gardening diary, but fail often miserably. I do manage to write down the first spring sowings and have made a plan last autumn how I want to plant this year's garden. I do practice crop rotation, so it is important to make a note of the planting, because it is oh so easy to forget where the different plants were. Above is my diary in its new jacket. I ended with IKEA waterproof cloth, as I know that I will handle this book with dirty hands, which is in clear evidence in the picture below.

It looked like this to start with

One of those white jobs bought as a lot of five. I chose not to glue the cover this time, but made pocket ends.

I thought that the pocket outside could hold a pencil and a seed packet or such. Ehm...that seam looks awful! I just could not be bothered to do it again as it is purely decoration, the binding. Sometimes I just let be as is and that's ok as well.

I am not a real green thumbed gardener as I have not perused all the seed catalogues as yet...I will soon though and I will consult both my box of seeds and the notes of what I have planned to plant. I try to get something new to try for each year, although the newness might be just another variety of a vegetable or flower I am already familiar with. A certain new thing I want to grow this year is a cucamelon.

Do you have gardening plans as yet? Will you try something new?

Green things

 I had the luck to get some pretty fabrics from my very local quilting studio. The talented owner Josie runs classes and sells also fabrics. She is online as well here and is situated so close to my front door that I don't even need a jacket to go and visit. Luckily the studio is not open daily, it is tempting enough as it is. Josie had two day January sales and I went to see if there was anything I could see immediate use for. Actually I was after a dress fabric, but alas, did not find one. The fabric above came home and I am now thinking what I am going to make out of it.

Similar colours in this fabric, which I decided to use as a table cloth. I had a trial run, the cloth unhemmed, just to see how I liked it. I did like it and as it was a tad short, I made a border out of some hand dyed batik from Africa.  I even did the border in double , so no raw seams are visible and the cloth stays put a bit better with more weight around the edges.

Another green craft; a bookmark. Very simple, a leather thong with some big wooden beads. I have used it a lot and might just make another, as I always have more than one book on the go.

 Apart from sewing in green, I have been busy supporting the local Green Party. I might not agree on every policy the Greens have, but their ethics and most of the policies coincide with my personal ethics and wishes. I cannot see how the mankind will survive if we don't make quite many drastic changes on how we live on this planet. (And that is just looking at some pretty recent reports on fauna/flora/climate changes we have caused). The changes need to be both individual, local, national and international. I also like the fact that they don't campaign by rubbishing others, but by telling how they would like to do things.

You could see what policies/parties align with your thinking here. "Vote for policies, not for personalities" online questionnaire is a great tool to narrow down the party/parties you might want to have a closer look at preparing yourself for the voting in parliamentary elections in May. 

On the creative front my mind is awash with all sorts of projects and I might even make a note of them as I don't think that I manage to get them all done before the mad gardening season begins. At the moment it is very cold though and the wind has blown a hoolie both yesterday and today. In my sleepy state yesterday morning I thought that a jet was flying past us, until I realised that the noise continued be there and that I was listening to the waves crashing on the seafront, not far from our house!

Diary, allotment and blocked noses

One of Elf Son's Christmas wishes was to have a diary. I had some lined notebooks with white/ugly covers, so I went to work and covered his with some oil cloth.

The oil cloth adds to it a bit of old fashioned charm and a masculine touch. I bought these notebooks cheaply as a lot of 5 and have since covered them for different uses. I have one for my allotment diary as well, but it is missing a cover. I was fancying a garden themed cotton, but might end with waterproof cover...I'll show you when I have got my act together. I must ask Elf Son, what type of diary he keeps. I know he writes regularly, but knowing him, it could be as easily about his real life as a fantasy diary.

The allotment is in its winter hibernation and only things to harvest are the kales, purple broccoli, lettuces of different types, parsley and coriander. The leafier things live in our polytunnel. Today is a cold day and we even have a smattering of snow on the ground, unusual for our coastal location.

The picture is from autumn, since there are still some flowers there. This bed is now  sowed with garlic.

As an experiment I sowed two beds with winter clover

During the autumn I have been busy building raised beds with paths in between covered with weed suppressing membrane and wood chips. I hope to finish building the rest of them in February.

In other news Elf Son has generously shared his winter bug with Elf Husband, who is now on sofa duty looking miserable. I have felt the virus rummaging, but keep my fingers crossed for my immune system defeating this one. I just cannot be bothered with two colds in one winter.

Birthday project aka painted toilet door

I went slightly mad with my birthday project, but let me start from the beginning.

This is where it all begun...

Our back entrance&toilet is our personal Siberia and this door doesn't help. It needed an insulating strip around and curtain to hang for some extra cosiness. The mark on the wall is from a rack of clothes hooks I had already removed before I took the picture. I bought the fabric over the Christmas holidays, but was not prepared to hang it before this little entrance had been prettified a bit. For the first a curtain and a rack of hooks behind the opening door would have meant that squeezing out would have become difficult. I also hated the said hooks; they were there when we moved in, attached to an untreated piece of wood, aluminium school hooks, yuk.

So as I had my birthday a while ago I decided to use it to start my project. I painted the walls and the toilet door. Initially, I had no notion of painting the outer door's inside, but seeing it there amongst all the freshly painted surfaces, I had to. It was simply too ugly to be left alone.

(The pictures are not great, but I have been hanging on for yonks now, because the light here haven't really cooperated for picture taking, so now you have to do with what I have been able to snap)

So here it is before from all the angles, from outside:

The toilet door:

It is a really small space and it felt very forlorn and dirty and uncared for before.

Now that the outer door is painted and curtain hung it looks like this:

As I mentioned on my Facebook status under the decoration work; a coat of white paint can improve almost anything!
On my trip to IKEA to buy the curtain material I also spotted a perfect rack for all my bags I want to hang here...

I shifted the rack away from the door and it is perfect where it is!

I then proceeded to decorate the toilet door. This is the upper portion:

and this is the lower:



Here is the view from our kitchen:

Makes me smile every time I see it! Have you done anything mad like this at your home?

PS. This post is linked to Homemade Mondays "Linky Party " on Frugal by Choice Cheap by Necessity. Have a look at a lot of frugal/creative people's posts there.

Bags for rags and laundry

I have a slightly bigger project going on...it's a smallish house project and this is going to be part of it. I made some gifts for house before we moved. This is sort of continuation of that. I have a bag for our "kitchen laundry"; dishcloths and napkins. I have used a tote bag for the purpose, but now I wanted to have one, which would go with the others.

I use rags in the kitchen and I wanted to have a bag for them too. I found a really cool tea towel on a boot sale and didn't want to use it as such, as it is one of those lovely vintage linen ones, which are not made any more. It was made to commemorate the coronation of the Queen.

I wanted to embroider "rags" on it, as I know that otherwise the rags and the contents of the laundry bag will get mixed up. When I had done that, I could not stop, but had to add "to riches". The text on the tea towel makes it to "RAGS TO CORONATION RICHES". Not that I think that ER II was exactly poor before her coronation!

The back of the bag mentions the year.

Have you re-purposed vintage textiles you love to something else?

Mushrooming and the satisfaction of hanging pictures

I changed the picture in the heading, just for the fun of it. There is much less chance to go mushrooming here than in Finland, I decided to make some of my own. The mushrooms were modelled in Dass modelling clay and I stuck them in a scouring pad (happened to be out of florist's oasis) inside a little wooden box. I covered the pads with lichen, which I had gathered in Finland. 

I have been thinking about how to hang our pictures downstairs. The process took over a year. Admittedly some of the walls were not painted before the autumn gone and it made it more difficult to visualise. We have been debating what to hang above the sofa; I have wanted the Tingatinga paintings up again, but Elf husband had other ideas, which did not really come to fruitition. I had an idea of maybe hanging a group of smaller pictures there and was going to buy picture ledges from IKEA, when I suddenly had the INSPIRATION I had been waiting for so long. I needed to hang that group of pictures, but not in the living room. We have the perfect spot just in the foot of the stairs. There is a big white space, which I now call my gallery.

The livingroom got two of the Tingatingas and a pot plant called Triffy Trafalgar (she is greeted every morning and we stroke her gently from time to time).

We also had an extra little reading light installed for the little sofa.

I also wanted to show our new stone sculpture; we found it on the beach with the ancient forest. and it is decorated with fossilised marine creatures. It sits like a huge dragon egg on the window sill. 

 Have you found any decorative pieces from the nature lately?

The young one is me!

We went for a walk on a nearby beach and see what we found. The storm had revealed an ancient forest beneath the sand. It was "growing" from a layer of soft coal and it was obvious that the trees had fallen in a storm very, very long time ago. There were both stumps, trunks and roots on show.
 

We know that a tsunami hit this part of the shore line in the iron age and destroyed the human habitat on the shore, so we wondered whether these trees fell then.  It is clear that they weren't cut.

We even found a place, which looked like an end of a wooden log shed/storage building, but it is hard to tell. Maybe it was  trunks fallen just so.

So in the picture on the top I am the YOUNG one by a good margin. This one is though younger.
 

The pictures are courtesy of the Elf Husband. He writes more about our walk on his photo blog here

Victorian Sunday School Teacher Attire

 

Firstly, Happy New Year 2015! I hope it brings you joy and peace.

This is yet another dress made with the shirt dress pattern I wrote about here and here. This time I made it in a fabric not recommended at all in the pattern script. I also altered the pattern further, making it narrower over the shoulders and a bit roomier under the arms. The fabric is a wool mix with a pattern couched on it. It is very warm and nice to have on.

When I was about to wear this for the first time I realised that I didn't really find anything to wear under it in my wardrobe. The reason? I made a BIG MISTAKE buying this fabric. I think I need to give you a bit of background to this. I have been very good indeed making my wardrobe smaller and smaller, yet more functional and pleasing. I generally like everything in my wardrobe. I have a very manageable amount of clothes, which I can put together with each other, so that the sum of combinations is actually quite large. I think that most of the time my wardrobe would pass the project 333 rules. (Read more, if you are interested in getting a small, but functional wardrobe). Mostly I buy/sew new things, when the old ones die. And I really mean die. I love my rags so much that I use them until they have holes and start to be oddly discoloured, because the fabric has lost the dye.

Back to my mistake...I was taken in by the loveliness of this fabric and let the fact that it has a clear brown tint pass. I have nothing of brown in my wardrobe. It is based on hues of grey, white and occasional black. I have t-shirts, tights and even cardigans in splashes of colour to enliven the works, but nothing to go with brown. So I sewed a white peasant type of shirt to go under it.

I wanted the front very flat, so it is simple with no smocking, just a pleat to room the buttoning strip. It is a very lovely shirt to wear and I plan to make a smocked version of it as well.

I am rather proud of it as I managed to draft this pattern AND make the shirt in 7 hours!

 I have resolved to take this as a lesson. Luckily I don't hate or even dislike the dress. It simply doesn't have quite as many "wardrobe friends" as it should. When I was moaning about my daftness to elf Husband, he said that I could buy/sew things to go with it.  That is exactly what I don't want to do. Every piece of my wardrobe needs to work hard without increasing the need of buying new. Full stop.  Bas. Piste.

I do look a bit like a Victorian Sunday school teacher in this ensemble, but I don't mind, it is comfortable and I seem to get a lot of compliments for some odd reason. Maybe Victoriana is getting fashionable again?