Tired and Inspired.

Insomnia is not my friend. Half past six on a Sunday morning is a terrible thing to see, especially if you've already been up for two hours. I plan to snooze in the bath later this morning.

Thankfully the internet is a twenty-four hour operation, and instead of wasting half the night on Cute Overload or I Can Has Cheezburger, addictive as they both are, I've been reading lots of inspirational blogs.

This list is mostly for my benefit, so I'll remember where I've been, but I thought it might be useful to other people as well.


Lauren and Emira have a book and a blog called "The Boss of You". It's about being a designer and an entrepreneur, and gives excellent advice on setting up and running your own business.

Jenny Hart talks about Crafting a Business - this article specifically talks about some of the copyright and licensing ideas I that I was discussing the other day.

At decor8, Marcia Zia-Priven talks about finding your niche as a designer.

Design For Mankind has several interesting posts about "Roadmaps", and how they can help you as a creative businessperson. Follow the links to other blogs and websites, for even more inspirational designers and crafters!

I became quite a fan of Seth Godin after I bought one of his books, Small is the New Big. I read his blog regularly, and he always seems to have something relevant to say.



I also bought three interesting books this week:

DIY: Design It Yourself is full of inspirational design ideas, coupled with extremely useful practical advice - something which is missing in a great many craft books!

Fabric Jewellery contains twenty-five projects which I will almost certainly never make. But it's already inspired me to think in different ways about the materials that I already have at home, which is exactly what I'd hoped it would do.

Sustainable Fashion & Textiles: Design Journeys is a series of essays by Kate Fletcher, about various aspects of the fashion industry and how they can be approached in a more ethical manner. I haven't read this yet (6:30 on a Sunday morning is probably not the best time to start!), but I'm looking forward to learning some interesting things, and seeing what differences I can make myself.


As it happens, I didn't exactly buy that last book - I bartered it for one of my duvet cover skirts. I'm more than happy to be paid in goods rather than money (sometimes - books don't pay the bills!), so if I've made something that you like, please feel free to barter for it, if you've got something that I might like in exhange.

50 Years of Everyday Fashion

This weekend we were idly looking at the magazines in the local shop, when Paul said, "I can't believe you haven't picked up this!"

"This" turned out to be a magazine by Yours (the best-selling lifestyle magazine for the fifty-plus woman, apparently), called, "50 Years of Everyday Fashion: How the Women of Britain Created Glamour and Style on a Shoestring".

It has a glorious picture of Audrey Hepburn on the cover, it costs £4.99, and I heartily recommend it! It covers the period 1948 to 1997, and also has sections on men's clothes, Royalty, and weddings.

The thing which particularly interests me about this magazine is its "everyday fashion" approach. So many fashion magazines and books, whatever period they're discussing, tend to only talk about the prominent designers of that time. Of course this is important, but it often bears very little relation to what was being sold on the high street, what women were making for themselves, and what kinds of clothes people were wearing to go about their everyday lives.

There's a whole chapter on making your own clothes, and it's full of photographs of people wearing the most beautiful outfits. Some of the clothing made during wartime and post-war rationing is particularly noteworthy, because people had to be imaginative in the ways that they used fabrics and re-used old clothes. The magazine suggests that the rise of designer labels during the 1980s was one cause of home dressmaking going into decline, but cites the recent resurgence in the popularity of knitting as a hopeful sign that people might also regain enthusiasm in making their own clothes.

I think that enthusiasm is already here - although I'm naturally somewhat biased on the subject!

The TV show Project Runway, for example, has inspired a range of Simplicity sewing patterns. Books such as Rip It and Generation T are a drop in the ocean of books telling you how to make new clothes out of old ones, and there are dozens of online communities devoted to showing off clothes that you've made yourself.

If I was going to recommend one book to anybody who wanted to learn how to make their own clothes, it would be the Reader's Digest New Complete Guide to Sewing. I have the original 1978 edition, and it's an absolute goldmine. Anything you could possibly want to know about making your own clothes, you'll find it in there.

If you're more interested in reading about clothes than in making them yourself, then you might enjoy The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping. It's little snippets from literature which give an insight into the ways that people used to shop, and it's absolutely wonderful.