My Scruffy Hearts

Ok, ten points for everyone who can spot the name change. Bonney at the Mill was a mangling up of words, by throwing them into a pot and stirring ‘em up a bit; once we decided we were going to start up a business we realised we would need something that was URL-able, easy-to-type-able and easy-to-rememberable. Or memorable, as pedantic types like to say.

Wait, start a business did I say? Yes, I have long been thinking in this makey year of mine, that I love the things I make. And the people I give them to seem to quite like them too.

The real hook for me has been falling in love with recycled fabrics. I do mourn the fact that I cannot have some of the gorgeous new designers’ fabrics, but charity shops yield up some amazing finds, and of course second-hand clothes are often packed to the collars and cuffs with fabulous prints.

Okay, recycled is not the only way to be environmentally friendly - there is a pioneering movement towards eco-friendly fabrics, so hoorah and big rounds of applause to the likes of Ian Mankin, Cloud 9 Fabrics, Daisy Janie, Mod Green Pod, amongst I’m sure, many others. Their fabrics and designs are very on-trend, but eco-friendly cotton production isn’t just about keeping up with the green Joneses – it’s because the production of 100% cotton garments and fabrics is way up there with the worst environmental assaults taking place on this planet. You see a label boasting 100% cotton and you think quality, but you should actually be baulking at quantity - it takes 256.6 gallons of water to product one t-shirt. 2.5% of farmland worldwide is used to grow cotton, but you know how much of the world’s pesticides are used? 10%. And 22% of the insecticides. Eeeww. That’s not pretty maths. And pesticides ain’t good – read more here at my favourite eco clothes store, Peopletree.

The only problem with organic cotton fabric, is that it can be a little pricey. Now don’t be mistaken – organic fabrics are no more expensive than many of the furnishing fabrics from famous named fabric suppliers, so next time you want curtains made, have a think about getting eco-friendly fabrics.
But as far as OriginalStitch is concerned, parting with £45 for a pegbag may smart a little. Don’t misunderstand me, it would really be a very nice pegbag, with great finishing, quirky patchworkyness and you’d be the sole owner of a unique piece of British craft, but yes, that might be a rather high price tag. (Oh, you would pay £45? Darn it you say, you’ll pay £55? Oh well I take it back! For you, special price £50.)

So for now it's sticking with charity shops, and prowling around looking out for half used furnishing and dressmaking fabrics - it's astonishing what crops up. I have found vast quantities of top quality fabrics for literally a few pounds. Three metres of some delicious floral will make it's way in some form or another into loads of products, maybe as many as 25 - you can see when you flick through the things I've made - some fabrics crop up time and again.
So listen, next time you're in a charity shop, do me a favour could you? Have a little look to see if they've got any gorgeous fabric pieces hiding away in a box, and send to me, would you?! I'll reimburse you and give you money off coupons towards a nice doorstop or pegbag or some shoepockets or a bag or a handle heart or tissue holder or some oven gloves or a nice apron or.....

...And talking of hotwater bottle covers and breezebusters, I've only gone and signed myself up for a couple of Christmas Fayres haven't I? This way I can work on my prototypes, finalise the recipes, hone the house style, and get a feel for pricing and which products will sell well. And then, you know, like, have some to sell.
At the beginning of December.
Um. Only trouble is, do I have any stock to sell?
Er.
Not as such, exactly...
Like, not a sausage. Not even a knitted sausage. I've just been making one gift per birthday. And that, if you have been following my rants, has not always been at all easy to achieve.
When I asked the husb, who is a good businessman, how much he reckoned I needed, he said, take 12 big things like bags or shoe pockets, and 60 small and medium sized things, like pencil rolls, doorstops, pegbags, pencil cases, hearts and stuff. Something for Mum, somethings for the kids and something for Gran, he said.
So that, by my maths is 72 things.

In 2 months.

In 4 mornings a week free time. At a rate of, at best, 1 thing a morning.

Sensible aren't I?! My heart might be in it, but I'm wondering if my head is. Still, where my scruffy hearts lead, my head will just have to follow.

Squashed tomatoes and stew...

Well. Her birthday was mid-August. It's now mid-September. And voila! Here’s my mother's pressie! My time keeping is phenomenal, no? To be fair though, she was on holiday for it, which gave me a fair crack at the whip for getting it done in time for her return two weeks later. She was going to come to Hetty's birthday party, but my father's acquisition of a revolting gastric bug put paid to that; and with my father's continuing delicacy of the tum, we did not see her as planned the following week either. So this is a circumstantially but I think fashionably late pressie.
Now, my folks recently moved out of the family home (where I and my three siblings were thrown up), into a lovely house down on the South Coast. The house is a 1920’s period property and they are faithfully restoring and decorating and renovating and rebuilding and renewing and disconbluberating and de-wallpaperifying it in the Arts and Crafts style, which inspired its architectural design. So, anything I make for my mother’s birthday has to be in keeping with the colours and patterns of the period.
Gulp. No pressure there then.
Add to this the fact that my folks are obviously quite ancient by now, like at least, ooh, sixty something-or-other, and have everything they need, and I’m beginning to get a bit hot under the collar trying to think of what I can make. A tea-cosy? Nah – she’s just got that Battle of Hastings Bayeux Tapestry one which has taken ownership of the tea-pot. A peg-bag? Nope – spotted one she’d already made last time we were there. A knitting bag? No no, I tried to steal the one she has, it’s so cool.

You can add to this that my mother either is or has been a (deep breath) spinner weaver dyer lace-maker quilter dressmaker stitcher costumier knitter crocheter and curtain-maker extraordinaire, as well as an expert definer and knower of all things haberdashery, fabric, notion and thread. She has made umpteen thousand quilts, millions of garments, including both my and my sister’s wedding dresses, which were full-on rouleau loop, froo-froo, button, lace and boning overdoses. And I bet you 87 pence I’ve forgotten some craft thing she's turned her hand to. She is not, let’s say, exactly a beginner stitcher....she knows quality, and she can spot lack of quality at twenty paces. Many a time has my mother tutted whilst embarrassingly examining a garment in a small clothes shop and loudly proclaimed that the stitching is ‘absolutely bloody awful’. My sister walks off and disowns her; I can by seen trying to drag her away by the coat sleeve.
So, do you see?
I was beginning to get tiny pangs of performance anxiety. I am thinking to myself, blimey, I’m going to have nervous palpitations as I insert my fabric into the sewing machine, and shaky-fingered, begin to sew a line of shoddy zig-zag...

Now look, I realise she’s my mother and she must have uttered the words “Oh Catherine, that’s lovely! Well done!” many a time, when presented proudly with some bit of craft for my Brownie badge or some bizarre attempt at a little bit of dolly clothe; but she’s my mother, which means that she also says things like “What the devil cack-handed way of going about a thing is that?” or “I have no idea what on earth you have done there I’m afraid. We’re just going to have to unpick it. Don’t argue. You can’t leave it like that” or such gems as “Yes, rotary cutters do go blunt, but don’t worry, it can still cut your fingers off perfectly fine” or “Don’t you dare get blood on that dress” when she’s pricked me with pins during a fitting. [I can hear my mother shouting her defence here, which is, “If you didn’t bloody fidget so much you wouldn’t get pricked with pins”. True, all true.]
When anxiously enquiring of my father what he considered their colour scheme in the dining room would be, he said “Erm, well, I don’t think it will be blue. Or green. Or it might be green. But I don’t know. It definitely won’t be yellow. There might be some red. Or maybe orange of some kind. Maybe. I don’t know really, your mother hasn’t decided.” So you see, I’m a little bit all of a dither when choosing what to make. But I do land eventually upon placemats, napkins and napkin rings, because you don’t only need one set do you – have a few; they will dress up a newly stripped, painted, papered and be-fireplaced dining room beautifully.

Amongst my stash of goodies I found some lovely classic bits of furnishing fabric, and these placemats were born. Look at that little lovely in the middle – isn’t it luscious fabric? It is courtesy of a bag of leftover fabric goodies from ‘Er Nextdoor, whose mum made her some delicious enormous cushions resplendent in the stuff, topped and interspliced with reds and turquoises. Yum. The placemats are very stiff and starchy, because they have heavyweight interfacing in them, so once the guests have eaten their meal they could use them as wobble-boards for a bit of post-prandial musical entertainment; someone on spoons, someone on placemats, voices oiled by booze.

Anyway, so my mother has now received her goodies, and luckily thinks they're lovely. Of course that could just be a big fat lie, and she's actually grimaced and shoved them down the back of the dresser with the enamelled butterfly brooch made at a Brownie Jamboree, the clay egg-cup, and the varnished clothes peg mini rocking chair. But she said they were lovely, so I'm going with that. Happy Birthday, Mum!

Yo Cushy

Well, in a bizarre twist of fate I now have a back-log of three, yes I say three, THREE presents to tell you about. I have on several occasions allowed the daughters into the Room of Sharpity, otherwise known as my sewing room, to create unknown havoc in a corner so I can get on with some sewing.
You see, I'm no night-owl. Come eight-thirty at night I'm yawning. Come nine I'm wondering how to climb the stairs. So evenings being the only time I could sew unmolested was beginning to take its toll on the holdalls under my eyes, (as if 5 years of sleep deprivation hasn't done enough). Towards the end of the holidays (now that's a massive contradiction in terms isn't it? Ain't no holiday in my opinion) I had thrown all ambition to tidiness or order to the winds in an attempt to hold on to my disappearing sanity, and was living in a toy splattered hell-hole of mess and dirt.
I gave up.
I let the daughters do whatever the heck they wanted while I tried to get on with some stitchery. Hetty was playing with the pin-cushion and it's jolly bead-headed occupants. Isla was snipping old bits of fabric with the pinking shears. They are, I should remind you, 3 (just gone) and 4 an'arf respectively. The husb would have freaked if he'd seen them with these weapons, and even I wondered at my blase attitude to the sharpness of their implements.
But what's a stitcher to do? Birthdays don't just stop happening because we have children. Indeed they merely add to the list, the pesky creatures.So, this means I at least got a couple of little fixes over the hols, and by stepping over the mounting debris of strewn toys squintingly, and walking around with my eyes half-shut I just pretended the house was tidy, rather than freaking out at the horror show of chaos left after abandoning two children to their own devices for an hour.

Now then. Yo-yos. Ooh these are niiiiiice! They're a bit twee, yes, but in the right fabrics, they make a nice bit of decor for a cushion. I bought a dinky little gadget which is very simple and quick to use, and sat and made the 13 you see there on the cushion in one evening. I was watching some cookery programme on the gogglebox about making your money go further - starting off with a baseline dish on Day 1 which seemed to take ages but formed the basis of the rest of the meals for that week; you know, cook a massive salmon one day, then fishcakes the next day, then gravadlax the next, then thai prawn mawhatsit the next, then with sushi and tiny vegetable wraps the next and so on. Jolly good idea that. But cooking is my nemesis, and Nigella's no-respeck quick cuisine my saviour. If something takes me more than 3.5 minutes to prepare I'm almost grizzling. My cooking has to be thus: lob it in a dish, slosh some ridiculous and expensive foreign-sounding sauce like nam pla or sherry vinegar or lime juice or sweet chilli or some other drizzly thing on it, cover in herbs and of course Maldon salt (what else, one simply mustn't use yer ordinary salt) and throw in an oven. Then eat with lentils or cannellini beans from a tin cooked in 30 seconds flat with cheat chilli from a jar and cheat garlic from a jar.
Shoddy, eh?

A...n...y...w...a...y....yes, so, yo-yos. So they're nice and fun, and they look lovely with a button in the middle, which I used to attach them to the cushion panel. A very simple cushion cover recipe this, from Sewing in No Time, by Emma Hardy. I have to say, if you buy one fabric recipe book - it's got to be that one. The fabric, with the stripe and bobble on it, was from a bag of remnants, bought from a rather pricey interior design shop in Teddington for, I believe, tuppence ha'penny. Here the cushion is modelled by my rather serious looking assistant daughters. Assistant daughter? Is that like if a daughter is off work one day there is an assistant to take over the messing?And hey, I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but Yo Cushy?! The title of this post? I'm sorry, but isn't that genius?
Maybe not so professional drawing your attention to it, but I am, I tell you, a-smirking.