If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it.
About a week ago I had an upsetting nightmare.
I woke up with my heart aching, feeling as though this dream had been a direct download from Upstairs, if you know what I mean.
I believe that dreams can contain important messages from our subconscious coded as symbols, and this one was very clear indeed. Something had to change.
If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it.
These things just take time
Some projects spring forth fully formed in the mind. The fabrics are there in your stash, and you drop everything and go to work immediately because you’re SO inspired. Two days later, behold the fruits of creativity unleashed! Most projects, however, don’t go like this. Most are slower. Some stall and get re-started, and some projects take a decade or more to come together. Sometimes your ideas are way ahead of your resources… but patience might bring the resources you need.
Permission to take a break!
When was the last time you took a moment to rest? This week’s video is just for you if you need permission to stop the world for a little while. Transcript Christian is a sad panda. Sorry, Christian! I got an email from Christian this week, saying that he or ze...
The difference between “my anxiety” and “the anxiety”
I’ve been thinking about how we use language to shape our experience. This can be as simple as how you talk about ten minutes of unpicking – is that a disaster that spirals into a terrible day, or is that re-done seam a temporary inconvenience that makes the dress better anyway?
But I’m going to take it a little further. When Jessie commented on one of my videos recently she used the phrase “…with my anxiety…”, and I suggested that one very small change to that phrase could change her relationship with her mental and emotional health.
I tackle this subject with some trepidation – I’m not a mental health professional, and I’m perhaps veering out of my lane here – but I know this one little shift has been helpful for me, and so I share it in the hope that it can help make your days easier too. Is it “my anxiety” or “the anxiety”?
But what if I do want to “monetise my joy”?
An article entitled “The Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies into Hustles” has soothed many creative people this week. Writer Molly Conway gives you permission NOT to make your creative passion into your career, and I support that sentiment wholeheartedly. Yes, you may create stuff solely for the sake of creating. Of course you do not have to “monetise your joy”. If you’re among the relieved majority, and the article gave you peace, then I support that. Go forth and enjoy your hobby with my enthusiastic blessings.
But if she sounded like a concerned parent advising you to manage your expectations and get a real job, then come with me, down the rabbit hole… because this post is for you.
How to raise the value of sewing: what you can do
Sewing is undervalued. Sewing has been undervalued for centuries. We often talk amongst ourselves about why that is, and how frustrating it is, and then we start trading juicy horror stories about what the most unappreciative members of the public have said to us. But...
How to be brave
58 brave souls. 58 extraordinary corsets and costumes. I’m blown away all over again.
This year’s Foundations Revealed Competition is going to be our biggest ever. Makers at all skill levels, from beginners right up to highly advanced craftspeople, have submitted their work. From March 1st they will be JUDGED ON THE INTERNET FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE by both our voting members and the general public (who will be able to comment.)
What does it take to find that kind of bravery?
How to master insertion lace… in pictures
1. Select inspiration image. Spend 8 years looking for just the right lace.
2. Meanwhile, peer at low resolution image for 8 years, plotting.
3. Make tracing paper template for lace pattern. Cut lace pieces to fit.
4. Spray starch lace pieces so that they resemble cardboard (insert criminal mastermind laugh of doom… now this diaphanous lace will be much easier to manipulate, inviting the envy of Instagram)….
What happened to all those once-worn Worth gowns?
It’s hard for us nowadays to imagine just how grand the House of Worth really was.
So extravagantly rich were some of its patrons that they only wore their impossibly lavish Worth gowns once or twice…
So what happened to these clothes after they were cast off by the hoi polloi? Sure, a few ended up in museums, but you gotta wonder – what happened to the rest?
By chance, I tracked some of the Vanderbilts’ clothes down this week… and in the most appropriate, yet unlikely place. It seems that some of Worth’s work made it all the way back to the county of his birth – Lincolnshire, in the UK – under the most delightfully ridiculous circumstances!
A 1977 book on a dusty shelf in a Cotswolds hotel gives us the full story….