February 2025

Plans afoot for 2025, I'm on a podcast!, and some links you'll enjoy

Jan 30, 2025

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to the February newsletter, and a special hello to new subscribers.

Well, here we are nearly February and the Haywoods still have their Christmas tree up. There’s nothing like extending the festive season :)

It’s been a very laid back start to the year, as unbelievably I came down with covid on Christmas night, along with two other family members. We were pretty sick, but fortunately the fridge was full of great leftovers, and the house was clean and tidy. I’m 2.5 years in with long covid, and it’s my little fantasy that it will somehow kick the immune system into gear and I’ll recover from both at the same time (it could go either way: some people report improvements and others are set back, however I’m almost back to my pre-Christmas baseline).

Lots resting means lots of time thinking, and I’ve been considering some plans for patterns to make in 2025*.

*totally subject to change, like life.

I’ve even made a start. The party skirt is underway, the toy pattern was started last year but forgotten about until now, and the crownless sunhat update is scheduled for very soon.

I’m on a podcast!

Late last year I had the pleasure of talking to Zoe on the Check Your Thread podcast, and “my” episode has just come out.

We discussed grass-roots publishing and how to go about it, and my book A Year of Zero Waste Sewing which was originally published as a series of zines. We also talked about zero waste patterns, magazines, making other people’s zero waste patterns and why my wardrobe smells like a deceased estate.

Did we actually answer the question of IS diy publishing the future of sewing? I’m not sure, but I hope you enjoy the conversation and feel a nudge to publish something if you’ve been thinking about it.

Way back, I was also on episode #31 of the podcast, talking about zero waste design.

If you can, I highly recommend supporting this podcast via Patreon.

Holiday reading

A carefully researched Christmas list has borne fruit, and I received some cool books for Christmas.

Top row:

Tailored Fashion Design by Pamela Powell. A book I wish I’d had when I was a fashion student. It considers tailoring as a design element, rather than a way of making clothes (although there’s lots of step-by-steps on construction). It has an enjoyable mixture of design/inspiration/how-to.

Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive by Andrew Groves and Danielle Sprecher. The Westminster Archive is housed at the University of Westminster in London, and is a teaching collection of menswear. Unlike other collections, the garments can be touched and borrowed by students and fashion brands. The garments in the collection are a mix of designer clothes, sport uniforms, military, workwear, and ordinary mass-produced men’s clothes - garments are chosen for their details, construction and materials. This is a book to accompany an exhibition, and has photographs of 120 garments.

Bottom row:

Hand Sewing Clothes - a guide by Louisa Owen Sonstroem. An independently published book with charming hand drawn illustrations and loads of practical how-to. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This came from Etsy as a pdf (physical copies don’t ship to Australia) and my teen had it printed out. I thought I could hand bind it into an actual book, but there isn’t enough margin on the spine side, so it’s got a bulldog clip on it for now. Listen to the author interviewed on the Check Your Thread podcast.

Why We Make Things and Why it Matters - the education of a craftsman by Peter Korn. (Not a Christmas book but I re-read it on my sick bed.) The book is part memoir, part reflection on what it means to make things. Peter Korn is a furniture maker, who aspired to make furniture which had integrity, simplicity and grace, and came to realize that those things were who he really wanted to be as a person and craftsman. A 17min documentary can be viewed here.

In zero waste news…

Do you have a share-worthy good practice of zero waste in fashion and textiles? UN-Habitat invites you to submit your approach, innovative business model, method, process or technique for Zero Waste Day on 30th March, which this year has a fashion and textiles theme. More information and criteria is here. The deadline is 12th February.

Some things you might enjoy

Glen Affric, the oldest known tartan, has been replicated so you can see what it originally looked like. I really like it!

Everyone has one: that chair in the bedroom for clothes which aren’t clean enough to put away, yet not dirty enough to wash. Presenting an elegant solution: a chair built especially for your half-dirty clothes, by Simone Giertz (YouTube, 14mins).

Groundbreaking and long-overdue protections for fashion models in New York will be introduced in 2025, thanks to New York’s Fashion Workers Act. Notably, models will also have first-ever protections against the misuse of artificial intelligence.

The Pantone Colour of the Year for 2025 is Mocha Mousse. Brown was indeed the heavily favoured prediction for Pantone’s choice back in late 2024.

Patternmaking in Public Places (PIPP), started by Louisa Owen Sonstroem (of hand sewing book - see above), is a project seeking to transform access to patternmaking by removing barriers of geography, economics, age, language and intimidation. As a patternmaker, I totally approve! In 2019 they held free public patternmaking demonstrations at parks in New York city, and in 2020 hosted guest patternmakers for virtual (recorded) presentations.

Obituary: Polly Mellen, one of fashion’s most influential and prolific editors, died at the age of 100.

These are adorable! Last December, a knitting group in the UK decorated bollards with knitted characters from Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I love that the characters are mice!

A montage of ingenious dress-ups costumes designed and worn by a one-legged man.

Balenciaga's dresses, up close. On the subject of Balenciaga, Ewst fashion lab has created a pattern for a Baleciaga cocoon dress, and has a course for learning to drape your own.

Remember in 2022 when Patagonia announced that Earth will be their only shareholder? A 3-part podcast documentary on their announcement.

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.

(There’s not much to report, sorry. The blog is still on annual leave but will be back next week.)

The final post for 2024, with a photo of the Craft of Clothes Christmas staff party, and some highlights of the past year.

From the blog archives

The jeans waist expansion project, where I extended the waistband to fit my bigger tummy, and it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. After this post, I went on and did all my jeans and trousers and I wear them a lot more now.

Here’s to 2025!

Cheers,

Liz x