Waste knot

There is so much emphasis on being green and saving the environment these days, and eliminating waste goes hand in hand with the whole saving the planet theme. This is an admirable endeavour, don’t get me wrong. Along with the global recession, it’s turned thrifty into a compliment. But whatever happened to not wasting for the sake of not wasting?

People have become so used to consuming at a lightning pace and discarding with reckless abandon that we have cultivated a society of wasters. We buy too much food and toss half of it, get rid of clothing and household items after just a few months and have spawned a throwaway generation who for the most part have no idea of the value of what they have, including time.

It is for this reason that I think the global economic nosedive is a good thing. It is forcing people to reassess the value of their belongings, appreciate their worth a little more and think twice about what goes in the bin. A recent article draws attention to the fact that Lambeth, a borough of London, is throwing away 80 tonnes less rubbish than usual every week compared with a year ago. That’s massive.

And so necessity, the mother of all inventions, will undoubtedly make her comeback. A decrease in disposable income coupled with green pressure is bound to spawn some creative ideas.

Author and designer Betz White has brought out Sewing Green, a 25-project book using “repurposed and organic materials”. I haven’t actually read it yet, but it is on request at my local library. (If I took up felting as well, I’d really never get anything done and would end up longing for way too many craft books.) I’m interested to see what her take is on green.

I’m not sure if Jodi is thrifty, just madly in love with selvedge or both, but she’s come up with some brilliant ways to use selvedge and it’s easy to see why she’s addicted to it:



Selvedge bag and cushions by Jodi from Ric Rac

Have you noticed how one day of quilting can result in a substantial amount of fabric off-cuts and machine threads? I’ve starting saving mine and have almost enough for the core of a Japanese temari:


Free pattern: Mitsubishi Stars by Barb Suess

The latest copy of Inspirations embroidery magazine features a project designed by Barb Suess of Kiku Designs, which got me on to saving my off-cuts. They’re stunning alternatives to store-bought Christmas baubles – even if I only get around to making one a year. Go here for inspiration.

Tamara from ¼ of an inch recently blogged about her latest book purchase, Thrifty Chic: Interior Style on a Shoestring by Liz Bauwens, Alexandra Campbell and Simon Brown. It’s the perfect complement to my well-thumbed copy of Flea Market Style by Emily Chalmers.



I guess what I’m getting at is that if we just thought a little more about the materials, off-cuts and abandoned projects that we usually throw away, we could probably come up with some unique and novel ways of incorporating them into new projects – and eliminate waste simply because we can.

Jacobean leaves embroidery pattern: 5 of 8

Even though the yellow didn't show up as much as the other colours against the background fabric, I love this leaf - its simplicity, its clean lines, its colours...


Download the pattern here.

NOTE: Please remember that I hold the copyright and that these patterns can’t be used for financial gain.

The little things…

I’m trying to live more in the moment. I’m one of those people who are always eager to get on to the next thing, plan ahead, dream big about the future and how I see us living in our ideal world. There’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t think. You can always scale down your dreams.

But suddenly you hit your thirties and start to realise that hold on, “this is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time” – to quote one of my husband’s favourite films, Fight Club. Now I realise that my elders will probably scoff at this and think that I still have so much to learn. But this is where I am in life, what I’m learning now. So bear with me.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have an extremely active mind. I drift to sleep at night with a head full of ideas, words and images, and thoughts assault me within minutes of waking up. Needless to say, my mind is full all day and, yes, I often find it difficult to focus. This is where the little things come in.

Food tastes better when you slow down and focus on the taste of what it is you’re eating. Learning a new embroidery stitch – whipped blanket, in this case – is so much more enjoyable when you make a concerted effort to focus on nothing but the flow of your needle and perfecting each stitch. Taking the time to sit outside and identify the trees you’ve been gazing at through your windows for a year – using the book you got as a gift almost a year ago – is a simple but engrossing task. It took me almost an hour to identify a Common Whitebeam, a Red Horse Chestnut (Plantierensis variety) and a rather rare Sichuan Birch. But what a pleasant way to spend an hour, particularly as I thought of nothing else but these three trees the entire time.

The thought “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves” comes to mind. Life is the same, I guess. If you focus on doing the little things well and enjoying the time you spend doing them, it makes sense that the bigger picture of your life will be a mass of happy achievements.

As proof I offer a little slice of my stitching life. I’m an ardent admirer of Inspirations embroidery magazine, as those who read my blog will know. The projects are not always to my taste – that’s par for the course. But the attention to detail, beautiful styling and photography, and positive attitude of the editorial team put the magazine in a class of its own. So it’s only natural that I would consider being a part of it a rather significant achievement. And based on the way I write this blog, because I’ve taken the time to write post after post, I got to write for issue #62. I was expecting a small column of text down the side of a page, but recently got my complimentary copy (complete with hand-written note – attention to detail) and saw that I’d been given a whole page, with three of my embroideries featured as well. Needless to say, I was rather chuffed.


More than anything though, I’ve proved to myself that it’s important to take the time to focus on whatever it is that I’m doing, do it properly and to the best of my ability, and squeeze every ounce of enjoyment that I can out of it. It won’t be an easy creed to live by. But hopefully one day I’ll be able to look back and say honestly that even if my life didn’t turn out quite the way I dreamed it would, it was happy and calm and fulfilling and who the hell am I going to leave all these embroideries, quilts, cushions, blankets… to in my will?

Jacobean leaves embroidery pattern: 4 of 8

Download the pattern here.

NOTE: Please remember that I hold the copyright and that these patterns can’t be used for financial gain.