Why blog ? ? ?

So I finally decided to start writing a blog - welcome!  Many people have said to me about starting to write down and share some of the things I make, patterns and ideas but I guess I just never got round to it even though my love of journaling should have made blogging an obvious choice!

Even though I journal regularly I haven’t sat down to write and share my thoughts with others since doing newsletters when I was in South Africa.  Every week (or thereabouts) I used to take some time to sit down, reflect on how things were going and write it – sharing highs, lows and general thoughts I was having.  Even though the newsletters were meant to be for other people to keep them updated it became a time I valued for myself.  Doing those letters gave me the opportunity to take some me time and really process my experiences.

So as I’m sitting down thinking about what this blog will look like I think that is my conclusion.  I want to share my love of sewing and crafting with other people, hopefully giving them inspiration to go and do their own thing but at the same time I want to use this to prompt me to reflect on what I’m doing and brainstorm ideas for future projects/direction.

I recently read a blog talking about the expense of sewing and making your own clothes.  The costs of fabric alone (especially if you try to source fair-trade) can make you question whether it is really worth sitting down to make your own clothes.  With high street giants offering ever discounted clothing and turnover in stores speeding up so that choice seems unending how can home sewing compete? 

Personally I think the pleasure of making your own clothes outweighs whether or not it costs more but having lived on a tight budget for quite a while reality dictated that it wasn't possible to disregard cost and this is the case for most people.  And so began my charity shop delving!

I love nothing more than creating things from curtains, fabric and clothing found from happy hours wandering round charity shops.  Combine that with buying people’s left over fabrics on ebay that would otherwise be thrown away or left in cupboards for years and I find that I actually have quite a stash of unusual and interesting material. Doing things this way requires an extra dash of creativity to look beyond the dress with ripped seams or curtains and see something more but it adds an extra sense of achievement.  I love getting compliments on a skirt or dress and saying ‘oh thanks – it used to be a . . . ‘ Of course to make a skirt when the materials come to a total cost of 50p also competes quite nicely with any high street giants pricing!

So that is pretty much what this blog will be – a random mix of sewing, up-cycling, thoughts and ideas.  Hope you like it – I’ll post my first pattern in the week which should involve much less words and more pictures that this one - I promise! J