Here is where the staff shares updates for the platform or where new ideas and subjects are posted, for us to develop on, on our own blogs.
I personally like seeing what others share. However, it is difficult for me to find someone who i enjoy following. Especially in reading.
You see, i'm a slow reader. I only read only when i have to - for work, tutorials, recipes, or other instructions. Of course, i read some books as well.
I just recently discovered a French creator. She runs the blog Les Creations de Cathy M. but she writes in French. She presents sewing-related creations. However, there are pictures for some of the things she makes. Some of the entries have step-by-step pictures, so it's easy to understand if you don't speak the language.
I recommend using Google Chrome for the option to translate a page on the spot.
If you prefer sewing blogs in English, try the Camden Stitch blog. Jay, its author, also has a Youtube channel, by the same name. She didn't post recently due to some personal problems, but i'm sure she'll be happy to receive some attention.
See you in the next entry, because I don't know what else to say. <3 :3
I think it's time for me to talk to you a bit about the books I own that help me with sewing or crafting stuff in general.
DISCLAIMER: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. I used these affiliate links to give you the option to check the book out, for yourself, if you so wish, through a well-trusted seller. While I will be very glad if you buy any of the linked items, the decision to do so or not, belongs to you. Thank you for reading!
I own books, magazines, and some leaflets. I will talk about a few of them in more detail than about others. I'll also mention which are the ones with more interesting projects and stuff.
Gotta mention that I didn't read them all. I didn't have enough time to do so. At least not yet. Plus, some of them are not really for reading as they have just projects and how to do them.
Most of these books are in Romanian, and I'll put them last. or after the ones in English.
I have also 3 books that are more useful for those interested in fashion per se. I managed to read 1 of them, and about half of each of the other 2.
My Fashion Related Books
These are my fashion related books. More fit for a coffee table, i suppose? But I don't have a coffee table, so they'll live with my craft books.
One is about vintage fashion through the 20th century, one is about fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and the other one talks about the process used by fashion designers to create their clothes.
The book on vintage fashion is interesting for those who like or want to dress in the style of a decade of the past century. You get to discover designers, the silhouette promoted at the time, along with some historical context.
It is through this book that I got an interest in Elsa Schiaparelli, and I was pretty excited to buy her Private Album book. I will talk a it about this book on my Obscure Reviews site, and I'll add a link here when that happens.
To learn more about the creative process in the Fashion Designer's Workbook, there is a little interview with the featured designers as well as a little presentation of their sketches and a few of the finished look. I have to mention this is the 2nd volume.
What can I say about these books is that they give a bit of introduction to present the book. They also give plenty of rather easy projects you can do, with step by step instructions.
On top of this, you also get to see the final result. The made at home, Contemporary Quilts, and biblioCraft are books mostly for making home decor items. Or items you can use around the house, such as tea towels, pillow covers, quilts, and more.
The Easy Embelishments book shows projects that you can do for your clothes. If you need some ideas or a bit of guidance for upcycling this book can be useful. This is all I can remember from it from just browsing and looking at the pictures, as I didn't read it.
The book on 18th Century embroidery techniques is quite interesting. It talks about methods, shows pictures of embroidery done at the time, where can it be seen, and more.
Expect a review of this book on my site, at some point, and this post updated when that happens, because I am reading it, as I already mentioned.
Romanian Crafting Books
There are quite a bit of crafting books in Romanian, that I own. About 4 of them are specifically with traditional embroidery or cross-stitching designs. One is about crocheting and making these interesting lace doilies. Though you can use them for whatever other purpose. You can see an example in this Instagram post i made last year.
Two or 3 of the books explain how to make your own patterns for various types of clothing. They rather lack explaining how to place the pattern on the fabric, which is the preferred sewing order, and so on. I think they were aimed at more experienced dressmakers and not beginners.
I used one of these books to make a/the pattern for an ankle-long cape. If you're interested in a post related to how that went, I'll be happy to talk about it.
These books are from the 1970s and 1980s. The one on top, called Almanah Femeia is a booklet or a tiny magazine. It features knitting, crocheting, and embroidery work.
The tiny book in the right upper corner is where I found the design I used on my jeans jacket. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, last year i embroidered my jeans jacket. And I talked about it in this entry.
The same book also had the design you can see on the big doily in this IG post from last year. And here you can see it being worked on.
There's not much to see here. I bought the most recent issues starting with August 2019. The older issues I found next to the trash. The oldest issue is from 1996. One issue is in Hungarian, and that's the only one I can't read. But if I get more experience in dress-making, I won't need instructions. The others are in German with Romanian translations (in an insert). The translations are only for the sewing instructions, not for the few of the extra articles.
I also don't have much to say about these magazines, except that the issues became slimmer and slimmer. In the 1990s, they featured recipes as well, and some crosswords which allowed you to enter contests and win things. Then, they also featured pictures from the readers, with the clothes they made with the help of Burda.
I didn't include the leaflets in here. I may make a separate post for them as they're printed on newspaper paper, and they got old and fragile. I'm keeping them safe. For now.
Today I want to share with you my newest interest - cross-stitching. WooHoo! /throws confetti/ oh, i'll clean that ... later...
freestyle vs pattern
Cross stitching is something I didn't think i'd get into. But somehow it happened. The story is a bit longer than this. Back in 2015 I received this gigantic sheet for the inter blanket -duvet? I thought I can't possibly use it as it is, and i thought I could turn it into pillow cases. And therefore I started measuring, cutting and sewing -everything by hand.
If you don't have a lot of resources, and you need to hem your cloth, you can use some hair pins to keep the fabric in place. I found this method easy to use and not to ruin the material. On top of this, you can simply slide the pin as you need to advance.
As a curiosity, i used a running stitch on the fabric i folded twice, and the stitch didn't get ruined in the laundry machine.
my pictures, from my instagram @secret.agent0101
I wanted to use traditional motifs, so i asked people i knew if they had something to help out. I needed both patterns and thread. Of course they did and they gave me a book with traditional patterns and a lot of thread as well.
I flipped through the book to find a design that wasn't too complicated to replicate since I'm a beginner. And i found some that did looked easy, in a single color.
The one i decided on was all black and seemed easy enough. I copied it on paper using colored pencils, because i wanted some more colors on my pillow.
The next step was to make sure the colors looked ok together. They weren't bad and they look better in real life.
i changed the design a bit more [3rd picture above]
The design i chose is the one in the lower right corner, in the book. I also show you how you're supposed to embroider it, if you like it. It makes a really nice edge on stuff, if positioned right.
I thought that an all black design would look too rough, though it would have been easier to stitch.
Did you know that Romanians traditionally sew with red and black thread, on white cloth? White means purity, red means joy and black means life.
I wanted to have at least 1 traditional color in my traditional motif. And this is why i choose red.
Since the cloth i decided to sew on in not easy to count the threads, i needed more visual help. I used a fountain pen. If you want to use the same method, make sure it's blue ink: red and black are staining the fabric and are more difficult to remove.
Of course, i sometimes messed up the guide. But it's ok as some of the errors got covered by some of the later stitches.
None of these patterns have instructions on how or where to start from, so I had to figure these aspects myself. I figured that stitching the wave first would be easier later when i decide to add the other elements in other colors.
However, drawing the guide [here the dots], then crossing the location of each stitch made my work even more easy. This allowed me to embroider whatever element I wanted first.
Refer to the 1st picture in the beginning and the 3rd picture above, if you want to see what happens when you don't count the thread of your fabric, when you're supposed to do so.
And above you can see the end result. I decided to embroider a hen eating grass as well. For that design i decided to use a piece of etamin fabric to trace a counted guide. it made my life quite easy, but for the size, i needed thinner thread.
I like what everything looks like. I will continue practicing my embroidering skills though.
Despite coloring being generally considered a children’s activity, more and more coloring books are printed these days and they target adults.
These books are usually called “Art for Mindfulness” or “Mandalas for Mindfulness” and they’re a perfect way to relax at the end of a stressful day, especially for those who dislike watching TV and prefer a more rewarding activity instead.
Opinions on the book
I got one of these books too, as a Christmas present - I really wanted one. My motive was to have another way to explore my creativity and to express myself, other than writing or cooking.
Life is a journey. Or so I have been told. ObscureJourney is a blog about My life, the things I experience and learn. I hope I can learn from my mistakes. The blog used to known as "TheOwnerTravelsTo" and i had a separate blog called "CookingMyExperience".
The purpose of obscurejourney blog is to share positive ideas and experiences -hopefully- while showing you that you don't need a lot to be happy.
Not all failures mean the end of the world. They mean that whatever you were trying out wasn't meant to happen:
it wasn't your life's journey. We all have a particular life journey, even if we don't discover it from the start. But remember:
You will discover your path! Do you think I discovered mine? Perhaps I did, but I have yet to fully walk it. I know writing is part of it.
Credits?
All content is created by me, with my silly mobile phone and its camera. Unless otherwise stated, the following applies:
All blog entries are written by me, Charly Cross -this is a pen name, unless mentioned otherwise.
Pictures are mine - especially if I signed them with a (c) and my blog's name (or former name of the blog).
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