Blooming after a fallow state - the Victoria Flax to Linen Group

“The theory was that while in a Fallow state you were gathering and conserving strength, nourishing yourself through meditation, sending invisible rootlets out into the universe.”

― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam

Got to hang out with the Victoria Flax to Linen group last weekend.  It was really special to connect after so many years in hibernation.  

Button, button, who's got the button? Also WOW! that's a lot of paper!

 The duffle coat project advances.  A decision has been made and after much humming and hawing, I decided to go with the Albion Coat sewing pattern.  I chose this pattern because they gave away some great resources for free and it gave me confidence that I would be able to make a beautiful coat with their instructions.  

Because I can never be easy on myself, I am going to sew a version of the longer coat, but unlined in keeping with the duffle coat of my past.  

I've got a few other changes up my sleeve, but that's going to have to wait because this: 

Combining calm

They say lavender is a calming herb, and I will concede it smells nice.  

What I find even more healing is hanging out in the garden doing small, repetitive tasks.  

Let's combine the two.

The lore around these magic wands is that the smell of the lavender hides the smell of wool clothing when we put them in storage for the summer.  I think that's a lovely idea.  Even if it doesn't work, stashing a few of these with my handknits and handwovens until next winter makes me happy.  

And if I'm going to start having more clothes, I will either need to get more room to stash them, or put the off-season clothes into storage.  The latter seems like less bother.  

My PO box project

 This arrived in my PO box this week.  

This cloth is a gift from an online friend and I'm so honoured they thought of me.  

Winter coat - fabric choice for a duffle coat

It's complicated, but basically last year, I didn't have a winter coat.  Given that we had some record-breaking rainfall and cold, looking back... it might have been a mistake to try to deal with winter without a coat.  I figure the rest of my clothing can last me well enough but for my health and wellbeing, I need a coat before winter gets here which means, I had best start sewing now.

Thinking back on all the coats I've owned in my life, one coat stands out in my memory more than all the others.  I remember it with great fondness.  It was a real duffle coat.  Fawn coloured, I bought it used for a steal because of the cigarette burns (which I patched with strawberry patches so it looked cute and I could always tell my coat from the others).  What I thought was really neat was the way the fabric was double-sided, but all one fabric.  There was plaid on the inside but fulled fawn twill on the outside.  Very thick cloth - almost too thick.  No lining (so sometimes arms would be difficult to get in and out).  Just a single layer of double-sided cloth.  

It could almost be worn inside out coat if the buttons and pockets were in the right place.  But alas, no. 

I finally wore it out after over a decade of constant use.

Looking at my wardrobe goals, a Duffle Coat would fit with the Farmwear (good elemental protection, vintage look) and with the Scholarly Functional look.  I love that it can do double duty. 

I couldn't find the fawn fabric that I wanted, but I did find some pretty amazing fabric on sale at the local fabric shop.  It's a wool nylon blend.  Knowing this shop, it's probably vintage as they bought a huge amount of overstock of wool and wool blends over the decades and this has that vintage mothball smell.  It would be fun to find out more about the history of this cloth.

momentum - where did it go?

 

The most frustrating thing about recovering is trying to find momentum.  But I'm working on it, building a bit more each day.  Finally got into a routine with making coffee and having an hour of craft time while listening to an audiobook or lo-fi girl each morning. 

Mostly I'm working on my sewing, trying to make a block pattern.  This is a map of my body that I can use to make my own sewing patterns.  I need this because my body is now a massively different shape and it could open a huge world of possibilities to me - and save loads of money in that I don't need to buy new patterns each time I want to make something new.