Dearest Needleworkers!

This has been another special week for me in my Needlework Mastery: I wore two recently-completed items - my Giant Knickers, and the black and white dress with the 'huge mistake' waist on it... And I bought some new materials! The biggest Sunday market of the year - la fiera - was on, which happens at the end of the vendemmia/ grape harvest. There were few stalls of great interest, bar the natural baskets, country tools, and...... the haberdashery stall: woopwoop!! I almost walked past it, but my excited friend Lisa, grabbed me by the arm and led me over, as I had asked her half an hour before, if she'd seen any sewing stalls!

WHAT a major stall this was: I spent 14 Euros! This is a lot, for me! I got threads, a big curved needle (I used to have one, and don't have a particular use for it, but it feels like something really potent for a future craft project), some silk cord, a ball of white acrylic 'wool', a variety of beautiful new colours of cotton thread... AAANNNDDDD a load of natural shell buttons!! I am joyful!

Especially for the buttons: if you've been following me you'll know that I often buy a 50c shirt, just for 5 or 8 or so mother-of-pearl buttons, but I got these FIVE packs with a really good quantity in each, of some classic and some gloriously unusual wee buttons.

There are two types I've not seen the like of before: the kind of amber, lozenge-shaped ones, and the round ones with a pink tinge and a nub/ leg for where the thread goes through, rather than holes in the main body. Having such a lot of new materials is a big incentive for me! I feel very rich!

In fact, I was chatting with a male friend in the bar, and we were all kidding around and playing with different languages and translating jokes, and he was asking what me and my friend had bought at the mercato: we were excited to show him the buttons we'd purchased, and he was laughing at us and saying how silly we were (!)

I corrected him, and explained that these shell buttons are like Bitcoin: they're going to be worth the price of gold one day, once folks realise their true value, and when no-one is making them any more: there'll be a finite number of them, and folks will be too removed from nature to get their heads around creating new ones :-P So I will be extremely wealthy, with the mother-of-pearl bank I have, full of them!

Beautiful coloured threads and natural fabrics often make me feel like this: they are an investment which will continue to gain value through my creative mastery; the more I learn, the more value I can leverage from these materials, because alone they are very simple things, but made into the most beautiful dress... they can be priceless, even!

Not that I think like this so focussed on money: I simply am aware in the back of my mind, that fiat currencies are super-unstable, and will continue to degrade in value over the years - and the less stable our economies are, the more we will return to natural ways and immediate resources: thus, 'the meek shall inherit the earth' - i.e. those of us who are the most resource-full and able to repair, restore, transform, communicate, heal and grow - we will most certainly be needed!

This week I also made the ties and pompoms that I had mentioned in my last post, for my new beautiful black and white dress: I was looking or a particular cream-coloured cord, which I found, but then decided that the white pompom would clash a tad with it... The sleeve border needlework is in a bright white thread, but the dress embroidery is a tad off-white: I decided in the end to make cord and pompom all from the white 'wool'.

I made the smallest pompom that I could - heck of a fiddley! - but very satisfying! - even if one is a weeee bit smaller than the other! I pleated the 'wool' into 30 cm or so ropes, and then sewed the pompoms onto them: I'm just finishing the dress off by sewing the pompom rope to the neck edge at the top of the front-centre of the dress. I like it! I have a lot of plans for making pompoms and adding them to clothing! Maybe I'll create or even buy a plastic pompom structure - I had a thing for making pompoms when I was wee: it was good to unsnap it and then re-use it: that might make my pompoms more uniform too. For now, I just cut two 'donuts' out of cardboard, like from a cereal packet, and then wrap the yarn around them. I am sure that there is a lot more to learn about the perfect art of the pompom. I would love to see how much smaller I could make them...

PLUS! I had a really wonderful experience wearing my giant knickers out for the first time: they were really comfortable and light and natural, and felt very different from conventional, mass-produced underwear. I almost forgot I was wearing them, and felt the subtle, natural presence of them and the embroidery of the flowers, so beautifully. It felt like a significant deep-self-care moment, which sat with me and within me, all day. Usually, wearing bought underwear, I am so glad to take them off and the end of the day - like wearing a bra (which I would rarely do for more than a few hours), I tend to notice the restricting quality of elasticated waists and the scratchy factor of cheap lacey edges - this time I was reluctant to fling them off as soon as I got home! They were lovely for bumbling around at home in, and just enjoying having the right garment! And I wore the black and white dress before I added the pompom cords to the market and for aperitivo, on Sunday! I got such nice comments from a couple of folks: Gigia said I look like I have 'come straight out of a fairytale' ... which isn't a bad way to be seen, for me! :-D

I am also in the middle of transforming a beautiful old nightdress, proper vintage thick cotton, into a nice summer/ autumn dress, by adding these stripey sleeves and waistband to it...

Quite an exciting project this one, as I have to take a relatively shapeless bag of a nightie, and shape it to the body more flatteringly.

I am at the pinning stage, after having done two belts, on which I cut wrong - waaah! - but the second version which I did all the edgings on in blue, from an old blue sheet...

It is coming together very slowly, but that is normale for me!

So all in all a pleasantly natural week of bliss in needlework. I so look forward to seeing what you all have done this Needlework Monday - and maybe hearing what you think of my efforts? 😍

MANY blessings and much success to you all, dear friends,

LOve!

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