Six weeks and what have I learned?

Did you think when I began this clothes fast you might sponsor me?  If you have, thank you so very much, the total has reached £393.99 a fab amount. But it would be so wonderful to reach my target of £500. So if you thought you might sponsor but have just not got around to it yet IT"S NOT TOO LATE, just click on this link and it will take you to my donations page. I have promised to add another £10 for each £100 raised so only £4.01 to go and I will donate again.

Well, it's been a while. A while since I blogged and a while since I was somewhere on our travels around France (plus a little jaunt into Spain) with enough oomph in the so called free wifi to blog. 

I hope I'm forgiven and that if you were watching my progress on the Six Items Challenge you have been checking over on Instagram from time to time.  If you have been looking you will know that I have linked my photos to our travels. Today we woke up in Vézelay, a tiny hill town an hour or so's drive south of Paris where pilgrims in the 13th century gathered before setting off for Santiago de Compostello.

Day #44 I imagine the pilgrims began their journey in the stupendous basilica at the centre of the village on top of the hill

There were so many wonderful buildings but I could not resist (because this IS a knitting blog)  including this shop window full of hand-knitted mohair sweaters

So... It's day #45 and the last day of the challenge, I'm up and dressed in my black jeans and grey tee and I made it!!! But to be honest even if I had not many sponsors who had donated nearly £500 towards Labour Behind the Label I would have completed the whole six weeks. I've enjoyed it, in a reflective, Lentish sort of way. Not of giving up the thing you like entirely but living with less. 

On Thursday JTH took my photograph for the challenge outside a medieval building in the butchers' quarter of old Limoges (now a second hand book shop). 

Day #43

But later we visited the hauntingly sad village of Oradour where 642 men women and children were murdered on 10 June 1944 in one of the worst war crimes the people of France experienced during WW2. The village has remained untouched since the day after the murders when the SS troops set fire to all the houses. In the ruins of many houses there were twisted remains of metal items that survived the fires.  Bed frames, pram chassis, weighing scales and Singer sewing machines, a poignant reminder of all the women who sewed their own clothes. I lost count of the sewing machines, there were so many

Buy less, use less and waste less.  It's practically the mantra of the 21st century as we all consider ways in which the earth's resources can still be there for our descendants.  And then there's fairness, which of us, if we stopped to think would want other people, anywhere in the world to be exploited just so that we in the west can choose to consume so much? 

I have learned that I can more than survive with far fewer clothes, although I would need more than six items to cope with the seasons.  One concern I did have travelling was the changes in the weather.  Most of the time the weather has been cool and my winter clothes, including the thick cardigan were fine.  And then on the beach in Barcelona the silk shirt came into its own

Day #41 It was still quite windy

But the skies over the Sagrada Famiglia in Barcelona really were that blue on Tuesday

I'm not going to repeat the things I said about Labour Behind the Label in a much earlier post and in any case they explain their campaign much better themselves. So if you would like to know more you just have to visit their website by clicking one of the many links here and read about how they campaign for better worker safety and for a living wage for garment workers.  But I thought I would just highlight a couple of campaigns here to illustrate their work and the work of their associates around the world

Do you remember my reference to the Bangladeshi garment workers killed or injured when the factory where they were working in collapsed in April 2013?  Labour behind the Label is part of a coordinated campaign to raise $30m USD from the companies who had clothing made at Rana Plaza to compensate the victims, to date the fund is $9m short. The shortfall is mainly due to one or two companies who despite making all the right noises have not paid any money into the fund. Labour Behind the Label is planning a special day of action on 24 April.

Other campaigning organisations around the world are joining the fight. A brilliant campaign originated in Canada with the Fair-trade Network producing posters of clothing with labels that tell the true story behind a cheap sweater (or indeed pair of jeans)

I have also heard that people have actually sewn similar labels onto clothes on the rails in shops, although I can't find a link to this activity, it sounds like a great idea.

So what am I going to do in future?  Well I'm not going to stop buying clothes all together but I am going to make my clothes last longer. I will not salve my conscience by lobbing large bags of unwanted clothes in the direction of charity shops. Charities often have to sell on the clothes donated  they are bought by dealers who sell them back to third world countries which in turn depresses the internal clothing business and puts local workers out of a job.  I am going to wear out the clothes in my wardrobe and, perhaps more importantly for me, make clothes with the burgeoning stash I already have of both knitting yarn and dress fabric.  SO please keep on checking my blog to keep me in line - see if the things I am making (or making over) really live up to these principles I have learned over the last six weeks

xx

C

PS - here are the rest of my daily photos

Day #42

Day  #40

Day #39 

Day #38

Day #37

Day #36

Day #35

Day #34

Day #33

Day #32

Busy busy day #22

Last day before our holiday (watch this space for pictures from foreign parts). Practical clothes are called for

Grey tee and black jeans.  I'm keeping my neck warm with citron, a scarf knitted in a silk and mohair mix.  I'm not packed yet but I have sorted out my holiday knitting

Three skeins of Sweet Georgia Yarns Tough Love Sock in the fuchsia colour way and a vintage pattern for a summer cardigan.

Tomorrow's post will be from 'somewhere in France'

xx

c

Halfway through and it's Day #21

Isn't it always the way when trying to choose the perfect capsule wardrobe?  Nothing quite matches up. In my case the capsule was of six items and each time I decided on a theme, around a pair of blue jeans, tailored grey trousers or a favourite cardigan, there was always something missing.  Even when I eventually decided on the set of six items the sixth item was a piece of fabric that had been waiting in my stash for nearly two years.  But put together with other stash items it became a skirt in  a day

Approximately 1.5m of boiled wool fabric and  an old waist slip. Zip and sewing thread left overs from a previous project

(Although the zip was the wrong colour it is the invisible type and the tape not destined to show in the finished article, the thread did match, the brighter colour is just a trick of the light)

First I washed the fabric.  It is unlikely that boiled wool would shrink but I wanted to make sure, I used a product called Soak Wash a fabulous no rince hand washing liquid that I not only use for all my hand knits but other hand wash items too.  Soak has been invaluable during the Six Items Challenge for quickly washing out clothes I need for the next day without putting on a full load in the washing machine.

Next I cut out two rectangles measuring my hip measurement plus 5 cm by my required skirt length plus 6 cm and laying it on my cutting table I cut both pieces into 5 using big curving lines

the waistband is at the bottom, the hem at the top of the picture

I then stitched the pieces back together using a twin needle,

I did consider using a contrast colour thread

but decided on keeping to one colour (I found matching silk thread in my leftovers collection)

I joined the pieces by overlapping and stitching with the twin needle, creating waist darts by increasing the overlap at the top of the skirt to 4 cm and tapering to 1 cm over 10 cm at the back and 6 cm at the front.  The measurements are approximate as I made the adjustment on my manequin. 

Once I had completed the overlapped sections I checked the measurements again, trimming the sides to  fit my measurements  and allow for a 1 cm seam.  There is no need to allow for neatening seams as boiled wool is felted sufficiently that it will not fray.  At this stage I cut a shaped waist facing (no waist band) about 15 cm deep freehand to match the shape of the top of the skirt,  before inserting the zip.  I finished by attaching the lining to the waist facing, the facing to the top of the skirt and hand sewing the hem and around the zip.

Ready to wear in a day!  And wearing it today with my grey tee

xx

C

18, 19... Twenty!

The grey dress is getting another outing (both tops and jeans are in the wash today)

Worn with green necklace and green tights (not seen)

xx

c

SunDAY #19

Grey dress

Bright legs

Friends to supper

xx

c

#17 Lots To Do

Lots to do today so keeping it simple in black jeans and grey tee, embellished a bit with my gob-stopper jewellery. Red at the neck and multi coloured for the wrist.

Then joy, look what arrived in the post, from a dear friend?          

So I'm having what my grandmother (the one who taught me to knit) would call 'A bit sit' with a cup of coffee and some poems. This is my favourite

Homemade sweaters contain a code
To be read by initiates, This bobbling here's
A marriage proposal, the Fair-Isle cuff
Says: 'The dog is a spy. Meet me in town
On Tuesday'. Even more arcane
Are garments made by knitting machine.
I once had a sweater that must have declared:
'I only like men with facial hair.' They came
The way you knit is how you make love,
How you are with your God.
It's a question of soul, of daily repair.
If space is made of superstrings,
Then God's a knitter, everything
Is craft, and perhaps we could darn
Tears in the space-time continuum.

Gwyneth Lewis 

xx

c

Muddy Boots on day fifteen

This is Georgie Newbery, she is The Flower Farmer

 button hole made by Georgie only seconds before

Georgie is a florist who grows most of the flowers she uses on her farm near Wincanton, writes books about her work and shares her skills and love of all things floral at workshops.  And this is where I was today, sitting around a  large scrubbed pine table in a barn behind the farm house with eight other people learning from Georgie how to 'grow your daughters wedding flowers' (and make all the bouquets and arrangements).  Some of us had family weddings very soon, some promised a celebration sometime in the future and some just hoped!

Before I share more photographs of our lovely day I should just mention, for the record of my clothes fast, what I was wearing.  Black jeans, grey tee-shirt and hand knit socks at the ready for tucking the jeans out of the way of the mud.  Actually it was a wonderful  sunny day, the workshop was in a wood-burner warmed barn and the yard not at all muddy so I'm wearing the socks here with my jeans tucked in and muddy boots just for show!

Hand knit socks in Icelandic Lopi yarn, more photographs here

Lovely welcome with home-made biscuits and coffee

course notes, seeds and pots to plant them in provided

The Flower farmers lovely collection of containers, many sourced from charity shops

Widow Iris amazing british grown flowers blooming right now

Ivy leaves are very handy, we learned, for winter foliage and covering up the underpinnings of an arrangement

Such a lovely day

xx

c

Extra clothing allowance

In addition to the six clothing items, as you have already seen I am allowed lots of accessories, essentials like knickers and shoes and one coat.  I am wearing my grey knit dress again today (and my leadlight cardigan as I'm postponing turning on the central heating) but as I have photographed it several times already I thought I would show off my coat instead.

The coat pleases me is several different ways.  Firstly is is made almost entirely from stash materials

From the top, scraps of hand painted silk velvet (from my cousin the fabric artist, Sharon Verry's oddments bag), dark blue lining material from stash, orange silk lining from Cloth House in Berwick Street, (bought specially but with an aged credit note) and wool tweed given to me by a friend who found it in her loft when having a clear out recently.

I thought a about the style for a long time before putting scissors to the fabric.  I especially wanted a stand-up collar with inward facing revers. Eventually I chose the collar and sleeves from this pattern and cut the straight body shape free hand.

This is possibly my most used pattern, I have slashed and stuck the jacket and dress patterns in so many directions I am wondering how much longer it will last.

My coat's first outing was to be to my cousin's youngest son's wedding in December last year, hence my wish to use some of her velvet

The huge ceramic buttons are from a craft shop in Porthleven Cornwall.  I lined the sleeves with the dark blue lining and the body in orange silk

Button holes as well as the moon gazing hare are in velvet.  I sourced the hare outline from Pinterest and freehand cut it into slices to be able to use as many different colours of the velvet as possible.  I ironed on fusible interfacing before cutting the pieces and machine appliquéing  them to the cut out back section of the coat

xx

c

On the thirteenth day

This afternoon I shall be mainly sitting on the sofa

... and after I have posted this photograph of me wearing my grey knit dress and hand knit Leadlight cardigan for day 13 of the Lent clothes fast* I shall be knitting.

Twenty two squares finished for the baby blanket, eight to go.

xx

c

* In case you have just come upon my blog I have promised to wear just six items of clothes for six weeks and am seeking sponsorship, raising money for a charity called Labour behind the label.  This is a charity that supports, and campaigns for better conditions for, garment workers in parts of the world where there are not the employment protection laws that we have in the European Union and N America.  If you would like to donate please hit the button at the top of the right hand column (immediately below details of the current total) and you will be taken to a page where you can sign up.  Thank you.