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LoveLoveLove

- Amy & Susie xo -

Image: HERE

My mother taught me how to sew when I was still young enough to get Brownie badges in it, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I can sew. I sometimes regret that she never properly taught me to cast on and off with knitting, but knitting is a far less useful DIY skill than good old stitching!

If you don’t know how to sew, you don’t know what you’re missing out on.

Have you ever been sales shopping and seen a beautiful dress for a tiny, tiny percentage of the original price, because the zip is a little bit dodgy? Or, if you’re a munchkin (like me), have you ever fallen in love with a dress/top/skirt, only to realise that it’s miiiiiiiiles too long for you?

I have – and my two Brownie sewing badges (and one Textiles GCSE A grade...) mean that I can still buy them... I just fix them up myself. While my friends spent veritable fortunes on their Freshers’ Ball dresses, I got mine for £5 in a New Look sale, took the hem up and fixed the zip. I don’t think anyone noticed.

Wait, no, that bit’s a lie – they noticed, but only because I told them. Proudly. And loudly.

But why else should you learn to sew? Coat buttons, for one thing. They always come loose, and you always end up (after a while) looking like your coat is the wrong size, don’t you? Even if you can only do a few simple stitches, you can solve that problem quickly and easily... which reminds me – I should probably fix mine. Again.

And don’t even get me started on fancy dress! It’s one thing to go all out and buy a costume which costs a fortune and doesn’t really fit, but it’s another thing entirely to know that you made it yourself. This, my dears, is what Primark was truly invented for – creating clothes cheaply enough that you don’t mind hacking them to pieces in the name of partying. Just... make sure you know what you’re going to do with them once they’re hacked up!

So, if you can’t sew, what can you do about it? Learn, of course! Ask your Mum, ask your Gran, ask your elderly Aunty. There’ll be someone out there with the patience to teach you running stitch. Even if you only make it to the button fixing stage, well, you’ve made it to the button fixing stage, haven’t you?

Congratulations - a Brownie badge is winging its way to you.

If you’re going to do it yourself, then I think a good mission is to end up with something that costs you significantly less than if you buy it ready-made. If you decide to DIY, you can create something that is not only individual, bespoke, and meets your own standard of quality, but something that has saved you money. A happy little package of satisfaction.

Knitting has to be a great example of that little 'rule-ette'. Jumpers and cardigans and scarves and gloves and socks and hats can all reach a pretty penny in the shops. (Although high street sales and vintage shopping can produce some excellent knitwear bargains). Buying the wool and needles yourself and crafting something snuggly in exactly the colours, textures and shapes you want must be one of the most satisfying DIY projects available.

I wouldn’t know myself. Having developed an obsession with the idea of knitting about four years ago, I rushed out to raid the haberdashery department in Oxford Street’s John Lewis; I bought books from Amazon and signed up to newsletters of London-based knitting groups; I downloaded patterns from the internet and printed them off and filed them in a beautiful folder. I made a valiant effort and began with gusto, creating a soft purple rectangle about 4x8in².

Of course. you know where this is going. You’ve heard this story. And the excuses and regrets. Years on and that little soft purple creation remains my one and only knitting endeavour; another page in my autobiography of unfinished projects, titled ‘The Girl with the Short Attention Span.’

But! Freshly inspired by Mr Huge Furry Whippingtool making it look so easy on his recent episode of River Cottage Every Day, and with five days of idyllic rural life in a Cornwall cottage with a huge kitchen, a bit of baking seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

Kneading

Manly hands (not mine!)

Surely making something so staple and so delightful as a loaf of wholesome bread, rather than shelling out for something bleached and elastic from the corner shop, is the best way make DIY work for you. What a pay-off for the (relatively little) work you put in!

Armed with wholegrain seeded bread flour, some Hovis yeast, and the other necessary basics, my fiancé and I knocked up a couple of pretty impressive batches - if I do say so myself.

Our first attempt was a big round loaf, and as a starting point I think it was a rousing success. It may have been a touch ‘well done’ on top, and the middle may have been a little on the stodgy side, but boy did it taste yummy warm from the oven and covered with local Cornish butter.

A touch 'well done'

Rural treats

A couple of days later, we decided that rolls were the way forward. Learning from our last experience, we made an educated guess on correcting the timings and after 25 minutes we were presented with perfectly risen, golden domes of yumminess. We smeared them with butter and jam for supper, and ate them with coffee and hazelnut Baileys.

The rolls, pre-oven

Like Gregg's, but better

The finished articles

Jam jam jam

For a train picnic on our journey home, we filled the rolls we had leftover with sliced cheese and tomato. A little taste of comfort and a reminder of our holiday DIY adventures.

We already have future DIY baking ventures in mind, like cranberry and pistachio bread for Christmas.

I can hardly believe it's November already. After a good couple of months complaining how ridiculous it is that supermarkets are selling all things festive, it's suddenly perfectly acceptable, expected even to be finishing off the Christmas shopping. Panic! I for one am an awful present buyer. Making decisions for myself is a difficult enough task; trying to predict the perfect gift for a friend is subsequently impossible. What I have learnt over the years though, is that there are two gifts that will always be welcomed (not chucked to the back of the wardrobe like that inevitable pair of socks. Again), namely food and photos. Food because, well, we just don't get enough of the stuff at Christmas evidently, and photos because they can be universally appropriate; boy/girl/young/old/human/alien...you get the jist.

But even with these specifics in mind, I can often get into a frenzied panic where shopping malls are concerned, and will no doubt end up leaving with a headache, less money than I started, yet none of the presents I set out for.

If this sounds all too familiar then it may be time to get those creative juices going, break out the recipe books and Blu-Tac and follow the simple guides below for two cheap and cheerful Christmas pressies.

Cookie Jar.

Cookie? Great. Cookie Jar? Ten times greater. What better present to give than the promise of freshly home baked cookies? This fab idea from Bakerella is so easy, looks great, and doesn't even require any baking. The idea is, you buy a bell jar (really cheap from Wilkinsons!) layer it up with some pretty ingredients and give it as a gift- all they have to do is pour into a bowl, add butter and egg and bake. Perfect!

1 1/3 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup oats
3/4 cup m&ms
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 – 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Layer them up, starting with the flour, then sugar, m+m's (or other sweets!), chocolate chips, oats and nuts. Then simply jot the following steps on a cute christmas tag, tie it to the jar and voila... the perfect present for foodies!

Just stir in an egg, 1/2 cup of butter and a drop or two of vanilla essence. Bake at 180 degrees C (Gas mark 4) for 10 minutes for the perfectly chewy cookie!

Memory Board

This photo collage is the perfect gift for friends and gives you the chance to remind them of all the great (and undoubtedly embarrassing) times you've had together. The best thing is you can easily make this for about a fiver - ideal for those of us on a strict budget this winter!

First thing's first....the photos. I don't know about anyone else, but I can spend literally hours pouring over old photos; from the nostalgic to the down right shameful, there's no better way to remind yourself of some great memories. The difficult part here is choosing which one's to print off, but once you've whittled it down, there's no need to fret about expensive printing prices - this link will take you directly to Snapfish's 99p page. It's pretty self explanatory - your first forty prints are free and you just have to pay a measly 99p delivery charge. Win!

Link of Joy

Next step is buying a frame big enough to fit all those hugely embarrassing moments in. I found the best range is Wilkinson's and this one is only £4.05! All that's left to do is stick the photos to the backing paper (you'll need to play around with the layout a little) and Bob's your uncle. Present number two done, and for just over £5.

Here's one I made earlier.... (yep. it really had to be done!)

So there's a couple of DIY ideas to get you into the festive spirit of giving without breaking the bank. And, if all else fails, there's always socks!

I have never been much of a DIY-er. For years I have envied my little sis who can quickly and easily knock out another cute design on her sewing machine, or simply turn up a pair of trousers (something she and I need ALL the time due to our short statures!). But alas, while others learned to use a sewing machine in school, I decided to chat at the back of the classroom or bunk off class (let’s hope the parentals don’t read this!).

Last Christmas I gave said little sis a pair of knitting needles and a few balls of wool. She apparently wanted to turn her hand to knitting. Now, I’m not sure if the knitting needles were ever actually used. The wool, I believe, is now being used for pom poms for the top of tea cosies! The boyf has helpfully pointed out on occasion that I probably have more in common with an octogenarian than a twenty-something, so knitting seems to be the perfect place to start for my DIY initiation. So earlier this week, I took myself off to John Lewis and purchased a pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool. I had read that the thicker the wool and the needles the easier to make a project – scarf – that would not take forever to take shape. So I took this advice and am now 4 lines of stiches into my winter scarf. At this rate I might just be finished by next Christmas!!! (If you want to keep up with progress I am planning a post over on my blog later this week!)

In the meantime, I also decided to make use of the many many glossy magazines I have lying around the flat – which the boyf complains about ALL of the time – and try to make some DIY Christmas Tree Decorations. Taking inspiration from these posts; (photos below, clockwise from top left) here, here, here and here:

So I decided to make some really REALLY simple decorations: using an old cardboard box, I cut out tree and star shapes (using cookie cutters). I then traced around these on the magazine pages and cutting them a little bigger, glued them on to the cardboard. My “theme” for my tree this year is pink and silver (you’ll see!!) so I am hoping to get my hands on some glitter pens and add a little touch of sparkle to the decorations before the time for putting my tree up comes around.

Finally, I also did what I have been meaning to do every Christmas for the last few years: I turned pages from old magazines into paper chains. I wasn’t sure that the paper would be thick enough for them, so I stuck two pages together and then cut them into strips (Xcm x Xcm). I have only made a very short one, as an example, for now and have kept the strips to make much longer chains come December.

A further idea, that I haven’t tried out but that a friend did for me a few years ago: make Christmas shaped cookies and before you put them in the oven, skew the top of each to make a hole. Once they are baked and cooled, you can decorate them and add a piece of ribbon and hang them on your tree. My friend even found edible glitter – now that is really festive.

Will you be trying out any of these “green” DIY Christmas decoration ideas? If you want to see what my apartment looks like once it has been decorated, be sure to check out my blog at the beginning of December when I’ll post photos of the tree and paper chains and more.

It's very almost winter!

And that means, It's cold. You're cold. Are you cold? I'm quite warm actually.

No wait, questions first.

1) Are you indoors or outdoors?

2) Are you outdoors and cold?

3) Are you indoors and cold?

Let's imagine that you are outdoors.. and you are cold. What do you do? Well, there are several options; you could stay cold. You could jiggle about on the spot hoping it will pass. You can go for a jog, to keep your blood flowing. You could snug up to someone else's warm body and share a lethally heated fast food "apple pie". Or you can go back indoors and fetch a coat. It's pretty easy to pick the last one before you even leave the house, and most people do - coats, tights, hats, layers of all types. We pile them on and go out to bonfires and walks and shopping and about our daily autumn-winter business. And then we're not so cold, and that makes perfect sense, right? Right.

But if you are indoors, consider if you feel yourself more likely to say "I am cold, I shall turn up the heating" or "I am cold, I shall put on more layers until I am temperate". Maybe a mixture of both? Do you consider, every time, which might be.. better?

I talked about responsibility within fashion last month and I guess I've not run out of things to say along those lines just yet, because here we are again. The thing is, carbon footprint blahblahblah. Am I a drag, ducklings?

On my internet travels, I've more than once come across someone explaining the concept of "sunk costs". It's an economist's term which can basically be summed up by saying "money you spent in the past isn't money you have access to now, so it doesn't really count as 'a loss' if you decide that that investment wasn't in something you find worthwhile now". If something is a sunk cost, you can move on from it without feeling that you are wasting today's money (or time, etc) - because you aren't.

The difference between going to your shelves and taking out a jumper you already own and going to the radiator and turning it up a notch or two is that the energy expenditure that went into creating that jumper is a sunk cost. It happened in the past; you can't take it back. The extra radiator work is the opposite - it's using energy right now, every second; to keep to the money/power analogy, this is live-action loss. And of course, actually, the money you spent on the jumper is old news too while the cost of your electricity bill is (depending on your contract) going up as the cozy minutes jog by.

I have explained all this in a handy comic-strip format, but technology is - once again! - my enemy. Look for it in the e-book, kids!

Though there may be more energy involved in making, shipping, selling and claiming one item of warm winter clothing than there is in warming a room all winter (and there may well not be, but let's suppose for the sake of dotting all lower case 'J's), any damage done by the creation of something you own is irreversible, sans time machine (and one point twenty-one jiggawatts of electricity does not make for an insubstantial carbon footprint, let me tell you). All you can do about it is make sure that your already-bought clothes are worn enough that the energy they represent becomes far overshadowed by the energy they've saved by keeping your body warm.

Don't think you have to just plonk a jumper on over eveything else, either. Wear them under gilets, pinafores, waistcoats, harnesses, you name it.

Perhaps you are wondering how this is DIY. Well, so far it isn't, you can see that. I could make an argument that swapping electricity for eclectic layering is DIY eco-activism, but.. I'd be being a bit of a wanker. So I won't.

But I don't underestimate the thought that you may not have a jumper you really like, or that you don't have any old ones you're not bored with. Or maybe you do have a jumper you really liked last year or the year before, or that you inherited from a friend or relative or found in a jumble sale but which turned out to have holes in it when you got it out this November?

Buying a new one, or just doing without and turing up the thermostat are the easy answers, but not the only ones.

As you probably remember, Editor Supreme Amy and a number of our other staff and columnists (as well as many of you, probably, come to think..) attended Britain's Next Top Model last month. I didn't go, and I wasn't planning to go until I got an invite to an event hosted by Global Cool. They were presenting some workshops to big up their eco-fashion project "Turn Up The Style, Turn Down The Heat"; how to monogram your jumper, how and why and inspiration to embellish old woolens that attendees just weren't keen on any more. Make the old newly personal, and it's like a whole new garment.

I was in communication with one of Global Cool's reps these past weeks and there was talk of a BSB-exclusive interview with presenter and presumably keen eco-example-maker Gemma Cairney.. That seems to have fallen through since I haven't heard from that rep in a good while. but I like their message and I like their project, so I'm going to big them up anyway.

Global Cool are running the above initiative to try to get people to appreciate the difference making do and mending (only without the dreariness that "making do" implies) can make to your own life and to the world. I think that's pretty neat. They're even going so far as to offer competition for vouchers in their "I love my jumper" mini-campaign: send them a picture of you in your winter warmest, and see if they think you and your knitwear make a winning combination. If you do that this week you can win £100 worth of American Apparel gear (which is why I'm not entering this week, to be honest), which.. spend it on Christmas presents? Get warm layers for all your friends, so they can (in future) follow your warm ways.

If your jumper problem is holes, then I hear ya. I also have good news - click here for a post on my other other blog about learning to darn. Think that sounds hard, or pointless, or like it's bound to go wrong? It's not, did you read this post, and it won't (see below). Even if it does you can always put a badge over it!

Peace out.

Image Source:http://sewliberated.typepad.com/sew_liberated/

During my undergraduate degree, I completed an ethnographic study of punk rock for my senior dissertation in Anthropology.  For fieldwork, I spent a summer touring around the United States with three punk bands that were passionate about music and making their dreams come true, independently  and on their own terms.  My experiences that summer and the lasting friendships that I formed with many of these artists, opened up an entire new world for me.

Before this, my knowledge of DIY was rather limited. I simply wasn't aware of the extent to which individual could accomplish something with a little hard work and lot of conviction. In part, I will confess that I was a bit lazy about things—always baking from a mix rather than from scratch, getting my clothing professionally altered rather than hemming things myself, and so on. It was not that I could not do these things myself, I simply never tried.   I lacked the confidence, and I often convinced myself that I lacked the time.  Yet, after spending a summer with a group of men and women for whom a DIY ethic was a major part of their lifestyles, I returned home a changed gal, determined to be more independent, less lazy, and to try lots of new things.

It is in this spirit that I introduce “DIY month” here at British Style Bloggers. As bloggers, we are already pretty DIY. We self-publish, take our own photographs, seek out original material, showcase our artwork, and build the design and layout of our blogs piece by piece.   I hope that this month will serve as a celebration of just that, as well as a challenge for everyone to step out of their comfort zones and try new things, whether it is a new recipe, a fashion design project, a home design project, or anything in between.  For me?  I think I'll attempt to make puff pastry...wish me luck!

Over the course of the month, we will be providing you with our thoughts on DIY, interviews from independent artists and designers that we love ,as well as some of our own experiences undertaking DIY projects.  As the days move forward, I  really hope that you will share your experiences with us, whether it is project you have done a million times before or one that you are just trying for the first time.

Oh, and Happy November!

xo,

Susie

PS--For anyone interested in becoming involved with our eBook this month, please contact me (susie@britishstylebloggers.org.uk)  or Rachel (rachel@britishstylebloggers.org).