February 2024
Crafting a book, The Year of the Hermit, and some links you'll enjoy
Hi Everyone!
Welcome to the February newsletter, and a special hello to new subscribers. If you came here via The Craft Industry Alliance’s article about Substack, many thanks for subscribing.
It’s been summer holidays here at Haywood Homestead, but now everyone is back to school and lots of behind-the-scenes work has been going on to turn A Year of Zero Waste Sewing into a real book.
This week has been very exciting, as the cover got photographed. One of the enjoyable parts of independent publishing is planning the cover and other parts of a book’s design. As this book’s interior is in black and white, the cover is an opportunity to use COLOUR!
The cover artist and his wife came to visit and we went through a bunch of ideas I’ve been collecting over the past 2 years (photos, art, graphics and other people’s book covers I liked). I had done a couple of mock ups using Canva, and this one had the most potential:
Discussion was had, thoughts were aired, changes made, then I cut a new circular template and the three of us filled it with an arrangement of sewing tools. Had a lot of laughs at the same time :)
I turned out the sewing cupboard looking for stuff we could use, and I tell you, afterwards our kitchen looked like a sewing bomb had exploded!
The cover art got photographed, and in the coming weeks Stu will transform it into the book’s cover. He’s done the covers for my previous two books (read how he created The Dressmaker’s Companion - this cover won an award) and I know it’s all in very capable hands.
And also…
You will laugh at this advice from our librarian. He said to boost sales I should try and get the book on the banned list. He reckons that as soon as a book gets banned, everyone starts asking for it. (Not sure I can follow through with this advice - I don’t think I can even claim it’s “The book they tried to ban”!)
2024: The Year of the Hermit
Thank you for your kind thoughts regarding Long Covid. I hesitate to write about it in a sewing newsletter, but if people don’t talk about these things, no-one knows about them.
I’m now 20 months in (with some sort of reinfection 4 months ago, putting things back to square one, sob!) and starting to see signs of recovery - since the New Year I’ve been able to do exercise, usually 10 minutes daily of walking. I’ve done two 1/2km bike rides but they were a bit tiring.
I’ve declared 2024 The Year of the Hermit, and decided to spend the whole year at home. I know that sounds drastic, but I can’t afford another reinfection. There’s no way I want to live through past 4 months for a third time. I’ve already been housebound since September so I’m a bit used to it, and luckily I’m not an extrovert. I want to get well!
Which brings me to…do you know anyone with Long Covid? Try and make an effort to stay in touch with them regularly. Many people feel very isolated and lonely. Long Covid is so debilitating with so many unknowns, difficult-to-get medical support, and mentally it’s very tough going living with a body that’s perpetually fatigued/in pain and a brain that doesn’t work properly. One of the biggest fears of the Long Covid Community is that they’ll be forgotten about as everyone moves on, both by friends & family and government policy-makers.
The unfortunate reality of rising costs
This weekend, The Dressmaker’s Companion will be going up to AU$80 and Zero Waste Sewing AU$55. Every year the printer has been increasing their printing costs by 2%-3% (the books have been in print 7 and 3 years respectively), with an additional jump by a third in 2019 followed by increases during the pandemic. Alas, I can no longer absorb the costs.
I’ll also be increasing the prices of pdf patterns in my shop to AU$25. The Year of Zero Waste Sewing zines will stay the same. So if you’re considering ordering anything, jump in now before the increase.
Some things you might enjoy
The EU has officially approved a ban on the destruction of unsold clothing, accessories and footwear. This comes as part of a broader push to tighten sustainable fashion legislation, with new policies around ecodesign, greenwashing and textile waste phasing in over the next few years. In related news, will 2024 be the year that legislation significantly forces supply chains to be more transparent and traceable?
Put a smile on your face with Helga Stentzel's clothes line animal art.
Read about the Gregson austerity doll, a cloth doll made in Australia during WW2.
4 dressmakers share their all-time favourite projects.
A quick little sewing tip for marking double pointed darts. (Instagram, 20 seconds)
The graveyard quilt, a mourning quilt made by a grieving mother in Kentucky in 1843.
Are neckties enjoying a comeback? (Not here - useless flappy things, according to Mr H.) Also, I had no idea that neckties were effectively banned in Iran in 1979 until about 1997-ish - they were considered by Iran's Shiite clerics to be a Western affectation.
The ultimate temperature blanket? A temperature blanket consists of one row, or square, of crochet or knitting each day, coloured according to the daily temperature. Ellie Highwood’s is a global warming blanket, in years not days, spanning 100 years.
Two magazines to look at:
Unwoven, a magazine about the materials in our clothes and textiles - view the digital version of the first edition for free.
The Lissome is an annual magazine based in Germany, discussing fashion, sustainability, arts and crafts, textiles and more. Read some of their articles here.
On the blog lately
A roundup of the past month’s blog posts from my website, lizhaywood.com.au.
Feel free to subscribe to my blog for weekly posts direct to your inbox, however, if you don’t need more emails in your life, I always do a roundup here.
Nothing to report here, sorry! The blog has been on summer holidays and will return next week.
From the blog archives
Using an old necktie to make bias binding (or piping, rouleaux, ties or loops). Surely the necktie in this post is the ugliest ever!
“Let the fabric inform the design direction” - what does that really mean, practically?
Cheers!
Liz x
Love the book cover with the ruler spine.
The book cover is fabulous!