An experiment on myself, or how I went to work in a clothing factory.
Three days back at the sewing factory where I worked decades ago. The alarm clock, the traffic jam, the industrial machine, and how it compares with life as a small maker.
Blog
Stories & guides
My company's birthday
The second birthday of my dear little company, at the busiest and most pleasant time of the year, with a sales record to go with it.
Christmas spirit in the patchwork room
A Christmas baby's quilt, Christmas stockings, miniature elf bags, wash bags for women and men and aprons for grown ups, with prices.
Reuse in my design
I work on reuse and zero waste principles: most of my patchwork comes from production offcuts and reclaimed fabrics. What that really costs in time, and why it is a way of life rather than a saving.
A design update for the kannel bags
A kannel teacher pointed out that the shoulder strap loops sit in the wrong place. So the new bag has them at the top, on both sides of the handle.
A sofa cover for a nursery quiet corner
Nurseries and schools have quietly become one of my main groups of clients. This time a sofa cover with the moon and the stars, to go with the sun on the wall hanging.
A crafter's Christmas wish
A crafter's Christmas wish, in one picture.
A photo session with children
A photography course, a new camera and a shoot with the children in aprons, pots and pans: give children the props and let them get on with it.
A patchwork skirt
If patchwork is a way of life, you MUST find time to sew something for yourself too. A long, warm woollen skirt of eight panels with crocheted flowers.
A quilt in autumn colours
Autumn burst in through the door and landed straight on a child's quilt, brush in one hand and paint pots in the other. Cotton on top, wool wadding inside, flannel backing.
New covers for a garden swing and a sun canopy
Twenty metres of supposedly weatherproof fabric for a 4x4 m sun canopy, sewn in a room smaller than any single piece of it. A month later it had torn to ribbons.
Over half a kilometre of fabric strips
The sewing machine pedal gave up, so if you cannot sew there is nothing for it but to cut fabric. In the picture: 560 m of strips.
A patchwork skirt for a doll
A quick technique skirt from leftover strips: five strips sewn together, cut into trapeziums, and the skirt starts to take shape by itself.
A little blonde refugee (2)
A week on, Emma has her first dress, her hair is washed and plaited, and her eyes are a much lighter blue than they seemed on the first days.
A little blonde refugee
A very old doll from a charity shop, bought for 1.50 euros, who gave me the strong feeling that she is not a WHAT but a WHO. And what people made of that.
A quilt with a kaleidoscope pattern
A quilt of coloured diamonds in black, white and dark pink, waiting since spring for the right inspiration to arrive.
Birthday reflections
Is 50+ a little or a lot? A flat tyre in a car park, nobody stopping to help, and how relative the words "young" and "old" turn out to be.
The patchwork squares want to go home.
The squares left over from the dress shirt quilts became drawstring backpacks, a leather trimmed rucksack and pencil cases for the children.
A quilt from reclaimed material
Knitted jumpers, flannel, cotton, fine bemberg and bright artificial silk in one quilt. Every square backed onto white cotton so nothing stretches or frays.
A new collection of pencil cases, or handmade little bags
A new collection of little bags, from heavy linen with archaic embroidery to denim and flannel for boys. Come to the Laulasmaa fair on 4 July.
A wall hanging with pockets for the teddy bears
A wall hanging for a nursery group's 20+1 teddy bears, part of a bullying free upbringing programme. And one work that nearly destroyed my machine.
A quilt in black and white and a little yellow too
A new quilt on the way, and dense quilting called the winding road. By midday my body has seized into the "smartphone" position.
Picnic blankets and dance day at Pangapealse nursery
Dance groups from nine nurseries, 300 children in one hall, and my new picnic blankets waiting for someone to settle down on them.
Audentes 20
An invitation to Audentes's 20th anniversary, and memories of the years when I set up and ran the Audentes Children's School.
Spring: chicks, the garden, the first herbs drying and urgent sewing
The days race by. A garden turning from ornamental to productive, herbs for tea drying, month old chicks and picnic blankets under the machine.
Thoughts on chemistry and GMO
A documentary about industrial materials, from asbestos to radon paint and plastic, and where GMO fits into the same pattern. Plus where to get GMO free feed.
Speckled chicks and coloured hatching eggs
Have you ever seen speckled chicks? Yellow with tiny black or grey markings. And best of all, in the autumn they will start laying pale blue eggs.
The results of KangaDzungel's "Make something new from old" prize game
A hundred entries in KangaDzungel's April prize game on Facebook. My four quilts gathered almost 300 likes and won a consolation prize.
On chicks, warmth and feeding
People often ring to ask about raising chicks, so here is what I do with mine: how I move them from the incubator, what temperature they need and what they eat.
Coloured egg chicks
Chicks for dark brown, green and pale blue eggs, all fertile at 100%. And why, after years of trying, I buy purebred chicks and only incubate crosses myself.
The first signs of spring
The first hatchery chicks have arrived, my own Araucanas have not laid since Christmas, and here are this year's hatching egg plans by colour.
A black and white quilt
The largest quilt I have made, 240x240 cm, quilted all over by free motion. My shoulders survived; my neck felt as if someone had put a stick in it.
A picnic blanket for a nursery
Wool rather than nylon, so it can be used indoors for music lessons and story time as well. Two hundred safety pins in and waiting to be quilted.
A small thought
A snowflake comes quietly onto the window and then starts to lie there softly. M.E.Kess, aged 3.
So much joy from two beanbags.
The shape and mood beanbags are finished: eight chairs, 50 m of fabric, 4000 m of thread and 1600 litres of granules. And a photo session with my best advertising boys.
And the sewing room is too small after all
Sixty metres of wadding by the roll, and 500 litre sacks of beanbag granules that will not even fit through the door. The garden house has become a multi purpose building.