Wow! I can’t believe that my strawberry front cover of Mollie Makes made it into this sweet little film! Clock must definitely be ticking on my 15 minutes of fame…
And the film does Bath proud too, presenting all sorts of beautiful — if completely unconnected — vistas; as a Bathonian friend said, she’s obviously been using that special sat-nav available only to film-makers.
But seriously, it’s a gorgeous filmlet, and there have been lots of admiring comments on the Mollie Makes blog about the lovely crafting establishment featured: the Makery. Happily, I can reveal that yesterday I had the good fortune to sit on one of those very chairs featured in the film. I didn’t make any knicker-flashers, but I did talk strawberries, and I am delighted to announce that there will be a special Scrapiana Vintage Strawberry Workshop at the Makery on the morning of Sunday 24th July. It includes a luscious cream tea — well, strictly speaking elevenses — with lashings of strawberry jam, of course. Do wander (in semi-leisurely fashion, because it may not be posted there yet) over to the Makery’s site for more information. If you’re within striking distance of Bath, please book your place and come along! It’ll be truly wonderful. I can’t guarantee any self-dressing apples, but there’ll be all the sedentary strawberry fun you could wish for.
PS Please double-check the location when you book as I think it may be in the The Makery’s Emporium, down in Northumberland Buildings, not on Walcot. You may recognise the location!
After the longest quest to find a copy ofmy holy grail – aka Mollie Makes - I finally tracked her down. Good to discover that the magazine is produced to a convenient bag-friendly size (like) with stroke-hungry matt paper (like) and with a really wonderful informing eye (like, like). But my eyes popped out on stalks when I spotted this near the back of the mag.
Mollie Makes... vintage strawberries
Good golly! Those are my vintage strawberries! OK, this wasn’t altogether a surprise as I had been commissioned in the conventional way. But seeing the final product – well, almost the final product – is a new and intoxicating experience for me. I’m awash with conflicting emotions; like a parent watching their child hash dialogue in their first school production, I simultaneously glow with pride and squirm at the less-than-perfect qualities of the execution. That embroidery…! I know, I know. I only threw it in as an afterthought. Still, they are my babies alright, and I’m happy to see them out in the big wide world.
So, Mollie Makes issue 2 carries a how-to (also by yours truly) on making your own vintage strawberry emeries. Historically, when needles were expensive, emeries were necessary to condition, sharpen and de-rust them. Now emeries are mainly for fun, though you can use them for their originally intended purpose if you like. They are quite straightforward to make, once you know how. Create them fatter, thinner, bigger, smaller, quirkily topped or not. I guarantee that they are addictive, though: make one and you’ll soon be tinkering with another.
True to my philosophy, most of those fabrics are genuinely vintage and/or scrap. For example, the red one with ditsy white flowers over there on the right was a leftover from a dress I made when I was 16 (that’s almost 30 years ago, folks – and no, I don’t ever throw anything away, obviously).
To celebrate this happy event, I’m arranging a series of Vintage Strawberry Workshops to coincide with the publication of issue 2 (from 9th June onwards). If you happen to run a craft boutique or making establishment, do get in touch for booking details. Have Stitchmobile, will travel!
I had a very busy time on Saturday afternoon showing the Eastern fringe of Bath how to make little lavender hearts from what began as an old blanket. This was one of the larks of theLarkhall Festival.
Larkhall Festival larks - scrap blanket workshop
Preparing on the Friday was fun; I was able to watch the royal wedding from behind a pair of scissors, cutting out 150 little individual hearts. Can you see how it influenced me as I compiled my groups of ten? No, neither can I.
Cutting out materials for the scrap blanket hearts
And I didn’t shed any tears. That was just blanket fluff in my eye, honest.
Then I grabbed a load of lavender.
Big jar of lavender
And a few embroidery threads and balls of mohair (which I like to use for the blanket-stitching, though the latter’s not so very good for beginners as it tends not to behave). I took my trusty bunting (made twenty whole years ago for my very own wedding and loaned out since to a gazillion garden parties & fetes), and Mimi’s fish, just for the company and inspiration (“One day, small child, you could upcycle something like THIS!”)
Thanks to the very capable Polly for helping me out. And to everyone for being so patient while I made my way round to you to help thread needles, tie knots and finish off loose ends. Teaching sewing is fun. It’s such an eye-opener, for one thing. Polly asked one very small boy if he knew how to thread a needle. Yes, he replied. A couple of minutes later she looked back at his needle to find he’d meticulously wrapped his thread ever so neatly around the full length of it. Hmmm. I guess that would be one way to legitimately ‘thread a needle’, just not the one we were looking for. She could hardly bear to disappoint him by unfurling it again. That brought me up short as I realised that sewing terms, like any other technical jargon, are fraught with confusion for the complete novice. We quickly forget the strangeness of language, once we’ve digested and understood it.
I was aiming for this type of thing, but the results were more vibrant and various. Blanket stitch wasn’t always the stitch of choice for participants (even if they started out doing it, they frequently ended up producing something else, even if not intentionally) but there was plenty of personality, and I was delighted to see lots of personalising and initialising going on. The lavender seemed to be loved by all, and children were witnessed ‘losing their needles’ in the lavender box just so they could scrunch their fingers through it again and again. And why not? We were chilling. The needles were reassuringly blunt, by the way.
Though tolerant of irregularities and differences of approach (there’s usually more than one legitimate way of doing something) I find myself driven to correct one thing: tying a knot in the thread behind the needle. This one makes me twitch. I don’t know but assume (can anyone confirm?) that this is how sewing is taught in primary schools when kids work with Binca and yarn. I feel that this makes the yarn and needle behave a little oddly and try to encourage simply leaving a longer thread-tail. Am I alone in having this aversion?
I’ve decided I should get off my derriere and offer sewing upcycling classes. Venue tba, but somewhere in Bath. Do leave a comment or get in touch with me via my email (eirlysATscrapianaDOTcom) if you’d like information about these. Be sure to mention if you’d be interested in children’s or adults’ classes, and if daytimes, evenings or weekends suit you best. And don’t forget to leave a means of contacting you.
We did it! Our first Slow Art Day here in Bath has happened! Strictly speaking, we probably have to rename ours Slow Dress Day, because our canvases were the applied art of clothing – mostly dresses – in the collection of the Fashion Museum.
Slow Art Day at the Bath Fashion Museum
A very small (let’s say ‘select’) crowd met outside the Fashion Museum on Saturday at 11am. OK, there were just three of us, but that’s officially a crowd in my book. Given that we were so few, we decided to go around together and discuss as we went – not quite as suggested by the organisers, but it worked for us. Just to remind you, Slow Art Day is a grassroots concept born in the US. More flash-mob than guided tour, it requires only an interested ‘host’ to pick out a few items to view, and doesn’t demand the art gallery or museum to be involved at all, though I felt it polite to brief the Fashion Museum on what might be hitting it.
The shortlist of items to view was helpful. One of our group had an unusual perspective; she’d suffered a brain haemorrhage a few years ago and now experiences information-overload very quickly, so she really appreciated paring down the options and going slower. And cutting down the items vying for our attention released us all from the anxiety of choice. We found that concentrating on less gave us the space to ask ourselves (and each other) lots of questions. How would that dress have felt to wear? Would the pointy part of that bodice have dug in when you sat down? What would have been worn underneath? Is that manikin the right shape for the period? How did they weave silver into that fabric? How expensive would a metre of that fabric have been? Would the dress have looked as muted as this when new? What exactly is the parchment in parchment lace? – would it have been possible to hide a secret message in it?! Why were the fingers on the seventeenth century gloves so extremely long? How would you have visited ‘the smallest room’ in a mantua? If you sat down in a crinoline, what happened to your skirt ? Happily, the museum has modern crinolines for visitors to try on, so we could test out this last question for ourselves. Answer: it probably depended on your crinoline: some flew up exposing your underwear, some were more demure.
Sometimes we started looking at one thing but were drawn to compare it with similar items located close by. This happened a lot in the What Will She Wear?exhibition, featuring the museum’s collection of wedding dresses (a nod to a certain royal wedding later this month). We had two of the dresses on our list but it seemed natural to contrast them with the rest of the exhibits which spanned almost 200 years. We started with the oldest wedding dress, dated 1829. It wasn’t the most beautiful, but told us something about that period. Not white but a dark champagne colour (the white-for-a wedding convention hadn’t bedded in yet), it had wide-set leg o’ mutton sleeves, lots of flouncy lace, and a curious closure down the centre front.
We experienced a few glitches: a change to one of the displays post-selection, and the closure of our lunch venue (the museum’s cafe) in order to accommodate a wedding reception. This was a teeny bit annoying as I’d thought to check ahead that the cafe would be open to the public that day. But there was something appropriate (given what we’d just been looking at) in being shooed away by the wedding photographer wanting a clean shot of the bride as she entered the beautiful Assembly Rooms. We got a great view of the dress as she swept by on her dad’s arm, and it was easy to find an alternative vendor of soup-and-a-roll for three nearby.
There were a lot of interested would-be Slow-Arters who couldn’t make it this time, and a lot of people responded really favourably to the general Slow Art Day concept, so I hope there will be more. If you’d like to be part of an unofficial follow-up Slow Art event at the Fashion Museum (possibly in May), please leave a comment and I’ll be delighted to organise it. The same principles will apply: no charge, just pay cost of your admission. Do mention if during the school day or on a Saturday works best for you. And if you fancy hosting a Slow Art Day event next year (Saturday 28th April 2012), no experience or expertise is necessary, just lots of enthusiasm. Find out more over at the Slow Art Day site .
I’ll sign off with another 1950s’s TV gem from the creator of the Fashion Museum, the incomparable Doris Langley Moore. I particularly love the way she says ‘head’, and the bobbling period credits. Enjoy!
I found this 1957 film while searching for fashion and textiles on YouTube.
It’s reputedly one of the first experimental BBC programmes shot in colour, part of a series named Men, Women and Clothes. The new medium of colour TV wouldn’t become available in Britain for another decade, and the Queen Mother, who was treated to a preview of the series, is said to have enjoyed it but regretted that the general public wouldn’t get a chance to see it. Happily, we can now.
The clipped narrator is the wonderful Doris Langley Moore founder of the Museum of Costume (now the Fashion Museum) which hadn’t yet taken root in Bath and was at this point lodged at Eridge Castle, Sussex. There isn’t the slightest chance of the Fashion Museum’s clothes being modeled by real people nowadays, so enjoy this glimpse into curatorial history just as much as the film’s insights into fashion history.
And if your appetite for historic fashion is whetted, consider yourself invited to the Slow Art Day event on Saturday 16th April which Yrs Truly is hosting. It’ll involve perusing a handful of exhibits dotted around the museum, and then meeting for lunch and a (very informal!) discussion afterward. Just a reminder that if you live in Bath, entry to the museum is free with your Discovery card. A grateful thank-you to Erin for tipping me off about SAD (which wins my vote for Unfortunate Event Acronym of the Year – I’ve already inadvertently caused offence by asking about ‘your SAD event…’!); if you happen to be in San Francisco, join Erin for SAD at the Cartoon Art Museum. Or host your own event! It’s easy and there’s still time.
Anyone fancy soaking up some costume artistry? Gazing long and lovingly at some historic fashion, in particular? I’ve volunteered to co-ordinate a small group of enthusiasts to visit the Fashion Museum here in Bath for a great little initiative calledSlow Art Day on the morning of Saturday 16th April.
1760s court dress in the Bath Fashion Museum
Founder of the event, Phil Terry, set out to break the common cycle of exhibition overload, whereby an average visitor (spending an average 8 seconds looking at an average exhibit) emerges from a museum tired not inspired. By slowing things down, he reasoned, one can learn the secret understood by experts, curators, artists and educators everywhere: that looking slowly can transform your experience.
Well, I’ve spoken to the publicist at the Fashion Museum, and she’s keen on the concept. All I need to find is a few costume/needlework/dressmaking/sewing/clothes-wearing enthusiasts to pad out a little group. All welcome! You don’t need any expertise at all, just an interest. We’ll be looking at a handful of items (5-10) over a couple of hours, allocating 5-10 minutes per item, hence the ‘slow’ tag. We don’t need to go around in a group; in fact, it makes sense not to as we’d clog the museum. But we’ll gather somewhere close by afterward (probably the nice cafe within the museum) for a light lunch and to compare notes on what we’ve seen. Hopefully, we’ll all emerge with new insights.
The downside, if there is one, is that we all pay for our own entry tickets and lunch (now you see why the publicist was keen!). But the big upside is a gathering of like minds and the glorious sense of confounding our hurly-burly culture for a couple of hours.
Looking at the Slow Art Day site, I note that this may be the only Slow Art event happening in the UK. What began in New York in April 2009 with just 4 people staring hard at items in the MoMA appears to be growing intoa global phenomenon. It seems perfectly fitting – given the laid-back, leisurely reputation of Bath – that we should spearhead this initiative here and show the UK how to decelerate effectively to a dawdle. If you’re reading this from somewhere else in the UK (or indeed the world) and can’t or won’t get to Bath, please consider hosting your own Slow Art Day event. It’s really very simple to do.
If you feel inclined to drag your feet with me at the Fashion Museum, do get in touch by leaving a comment below, emailing me (eirlysATscrapianaDOTcom) or just sign up direct here. You’d be very welcome to suggest items for the group’s scrutiny, otherwise I’ll scour the museum’s collection and send out a little list the week before. Hope to see you on 16th!
Photo by kind permission of Your Wardrobe Unlock’d and the Fashion Museum, Bath & NE Somerset Council
If you still haven’t found any goodies for Mother’s Day on 3rd April, I can help.
Little ribbon reels in china cup on vintage scarf
Besides these little reels of ribbon oddments, I have others with vintage ric-rac and baker’s twine (that lovely and oh-so-useful striped string from the US). There are vintage brooches, hankies, buttons, sewing books, Sylko (and other) cotton reels, handmade stitcher’s beeswax, gorgeous textiles and scarves – just to name a few – and pretty Mother’s Day labels to sew into anything you buy. Or not. You could just leave one in the bag with her pretty gift(s) and she’ll get the message. All will be available from my vintage haberdashery stall this Saturday 26th March at the It’s Darling! Spring Fair, Friends’ Meeting House, Bath, 9.30am-5.30pm. Hope to see you there!
Just to remind you to get the It’s Darling! Spring Fairearly this Saturday if you want to get the best things. Doors open at the Friends’ Meeting House, York Street, Bath at 9.30am. Hope to see you there!
According to those in the know, we’re hurtling at full tilt towards Bath’s big spring event: the It’s Darling! Spring Fair on Saturday 26th March.
Excitingly, this will be It’s Darling!‘s first spring fair, and it takes place in the midst of theBath in Fashion festival, though happily no ticket is required to get into ID! If you’ve been to the other It’s Darling! Vintage & Handmade Artisan Fairs (note the re-brand), the venue will be roomier this time: the Friends’ Meeting House, just across from the Abbey, past the benches and buskers - if you can make it past the SF Fudge Factory.
Yes, I’ll be there all day, toting vintage fabrics, old cotton reels, ric-rac, and Mother’s Day treats galore!
Get your spring greens
I’ll have some particular gems for fashionistas too: vintage silk scarves, brooches, buckles, buttons, as well as the odd eiderdown and… well, you’ll have to come along and see for yourself. If you’re planning a full girl’s day out, don’t forget the Marilyn: Hollywood Icon exhibition, just opened at the American Museum. And you could take a peek at the Behind the Scenesexpo at the Fashion Museum. Hope to see you then!
One of our local thoroughfares has just closed to vehicular traffic. This isn’t because of resurfacing work – unless you count a greeny brown mass of springing bodies as a new surface (which arguably it is), and ‘work’ as the job of migrating from the a place of hibernation uphill to a place of copulation cohabitation downhill.
As if this weren’t enough of a spectacle, the local community can be seen of an evening forming what they call the ‘Toad Patrol’, ferrying love-hungry and risk-blind amphibia [I'm being very careful to use the correct plural] across the road to safety in buckets, dustpans etc – whatever garden vessel comes to hand – by torchlight. It’s all rather romantic, and gives me a great excuse to show you this fantastic 1949 King Penguin book entitled British Reptiles and Amphibia (thrifted, of course) and an aptly named vintage Sylko cotton reel.
This book is a classic. It has beautifully clear colour plates and not too much information to swamp the would-be naturalist. Here’s some of what it has to say about the common toad, Bufo bufo:
Pairing in England takes place at the end of March or beginning of April. Males predominate and when large colonies are gathered together, fierce struggles take place among them for the possession of the females.
