Hi,

Just to let all visitors and subscribers know that I’ve moved my blog over here….. to this new address.

www.jennifer-forest.com

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you at my new online home,

Jennifer

Fabric in the draper's store at Sovereign Hill

I don’t have a huge collection of 19th or 20th century sewing tools, just a select number of things I have inherited or found at vintage fairs. But I have meet people who have a passionate love of collecting sewing tools, and they have some truly amazing items.

But aside from that what would Jane Austen have had in her sewing box?

Here’s a list of what a typical Regency gentlewoman would have as her sewing tools:

1. The most useful of other sewing tools were work bags and huswifes. A gentlewoman may own several work bags of different sizes and materials, used to house different projects.  Bags for plain sewing were made from off-cuts of dress fabric and were mostly plain or worked with sample stitches. Work bags for traveling were decorative pieces with embroidery designs stitched and then sewn into a bag.  Silk and crewel work embroidery techniques are commonly found on Regency work bags often with elaborate floral designs. It held all the materials and tools needed for the embroidery that a visiting gentlewoman could complete in company.

2. Tucked into the workbag was a huswife, a small case to hold needles, scissors and threads.  Examples of these from the Regency era also show a range of styles, fabrics and sizes. Most huswifes were quite small and made from off-cuts of women’s dress material and men’s linen shirts material. A common small style is a rectangular three-fold huswife with pockets for threads and needles and a tie for scissors. The huswife was rolled or folded up into a small bundle and secured with a ribbon wrapped around the middle.

3. Also tucked into the work bag was often a thread case (there’s a pattern for these in my first book). A highly decorative embroidery piece required many yards and many colours of thread, which were kept together in a thread case.  A thread case was designed solely to hold the thread winders and included a series of small pockets on the inside. It too was rolled or folded in upon itself and secured with a button or ribbon.  Embroidery threads did not come pre-packaged as is common today. Rather a gentlewoman would work out what colours and how many yards she needed to work her piece before visiting a haberdashery store, linen drapers or all purpose store like Ford’s in Emma to purchase the yards off the roll. She then took her yards of thread home to wind around a thread winder. Thread winders were an art in themselves with many decorative ivory thread winders worked in France. Other common materials used to make thread winders were bone, mother-of-pearl and wood. Thread winders were common presents carved by the men of the family for sisters, mothers and wives.

4. During the Regency, needles were still hand worked steel and therefore fairly expensive purchases.  Needles were kept in needlecases so they didn’t get easily lost. A needlecase was a very simple folded piece of card or fabric with woollen or linen pages inserted into the middle on which to secure the needles.  The outside was often decorated – painted with watercolours like the one Jane Austen made or embroidered if fabric.  Needlecases made from silver could also be purchased.

Source: Flickr -Lin pernille

Jane Austen’s mother sent each of her babies at the age of three month old out to a local family to nurse and raise the child. The baby was raised in another family’s home but was visited each day by their parents: seen every day but perhaps not heard everyday?  At the point when the child could walk and talk, they returned to the family home. From the first time I read this, I always thought this sounded a bit  harsh.

Mrs Austen though was following a rather old and mostly aristocratic tradition of sending babies away to another family until they grew into capable children. By the time Jane Austen was born though it was far more common to bring a nanny and nurse maid into the house to provide care at home for babies, even in aristocratic families.

Despite Mrs Austen’s old-fashioned habits, parents were expected to take a proactive and hands-on role in their children’s care and education, whatever the form that education took.

It was not uncommon for children to be educated at home, as the five Bennet sisters are in Pride and Prejudice: but that did mean serious study under a tutor, governess or freelance teachers.  There were schools, like we know today. However many schools were like Harriet’s school in Emma, relying on the qualities of the head teacher rather than any external curriculum or management.   Such a school was suitable for the ‘Harriets’ of the world but not the ‘Emmas’.

And that’s because someone like Emma had to learn how to run a large household, and where did you do that? At Home! The best way to make sure a son or daughter knew how to run an estate or the household was for them to learn directly from Mum and Dad. A child older than 10 or 11 was expected to accompany their parents on their daily routines, whether that was supervising servants or meeting the bailiff.  With so much formal education outside the home these days, did they know something we have forgotten?

Colour is so much a part of the world for me. I think that’s one of the main reasons I enjoy craft and design. The colour of new wool, the patterns on fabric or a 6 inch scrapbooking pad……

I used to really suffer sitting at a desk in a grey painted cubicle factory.  A couple of times I even moved into brand new offices …… just to find they had been so original and yes, you guessed it painted the brand new walls…..grey! My desk used to be festooned with postcards and paintings, bringing a bit of colour to my corner.

My desk now is still full of colour – I have a pink pencil jar (much to my husband’s surprise!), lots of pictures of roses and sewing threads and some red and green and purple too.  Here are a few pictures of what’s on my desk now. This first picture is from a scrap booking 6 inch paper pad I have sitting on my desk. I’m about to start making a Victorian inspired scrap album, and thought the Sweet Nothings paper from Kaiser Craft was perfect.

But the Victorians weren’t all into pastels and cupids.  When I was researching Victorian samplers, I was delighted to find they had a passion for the bright colours! New chemicals meant they were in love with the bright greens and oranges we so often thing of as a 1970s thing. There’s a picture of carpet work sampler here in Victorian colours.

And on my desk, I also have these little pieces from a long forgotten scrapbook page.

And this plate from morning tea – without the crumbs!

When my daughter was just learning her colours, she discovered the song “I can sing a rainbow” and she loved it!  She is still disappointed if it rains and there’s no rainbow. There is something about colour which must appeal to the human soul right from the beginning.  So no rainbows to catch today but some flowers maybe.

I went down the traditional find- a-publisher route for my bestseller Jane Austen’s Sewing Box: that is, make a sample project, write a chapter, search for publishers who might be interested, contact, cross fingers and hope….. and I was very lucky to find the amazing Kay Scarlett who completely understood the vision, and took it to new heights. But I suspect for many crafty writers, finding that one person in the publisher’s den, who really “gets” what you are on about is really very rare, and sometimes impossible.

Self-publishing a crafty ebooks potentially opens up new avenues for would be writers, the tools are out there now, like Amazon Kindle’s publishing platform and other online distributors like Smashwords.  Createspace and Lulu also let those same ebooks become print editions.

But before you go to all that effort of doing a craft book you need to think about this. And let me tell while it sounds glamorous to write craft books, its actually a lot of sweat and tears. You have to make original designs, do various prototypes to make sure it will work, make a final project version, write up your instructions so others can understand them, plus write a chapter, you need the ability to design, create and write…. and that’s just the first step!  Don’t get me wrong here: I would do it all again! But its not for the faint-hearted.

I’ve followed Sister Diane of Craftypod fame for some years now, I always enjoyed her podcasts and great blog posts. So I must say I was delighted when she asked me to review her latest ebook Write, Publish and Sell Your Crafty Ebook.  I’ve done a couple of her courses and bought a couple of her ebooks, which are always great. And her book on writing a crafty ebook actually explores a lot of these issues behind writing a crafty book: will people want it? what’s involved in writing? what’s involved in creating?

If you want to write a crafty ebook (or even a crafty print book) you need to think about this carefully.

Here’s my full review I wrote on the new Craftypod book:

“Write, Publish and Sell Your Crafty EBook by Diane Gilleland of www.craftypod.com fame is a must buy for all Indie writers and publishers!  The up-to-date information is a necessity and the comprehensive range of worksheets will get you taking action.

Drawing on her own solid experience of writing and publishing eBooks, Diane Gilleland takes you step by step from:

• Idea conception and the writing process,
• To the technicalities of getting an eBook out there, and
• Then right through to what it takes to sell an eBook in the frantic Internet world.

The section on marketing and selling your eBook alone is worth purchasing this book for: it provides an excellent process you can repeat over and over again to promote your eBook sales, and any other crafty products you may sell.

The easy to read and beautifully designed Write, Publish and Sell Your Crafty EBook is invaluable for anyone serious about becoming a craft writer and publisher.”

Source: Flickr the green gal

I tend to do a lot of research when I’m preparing for a book (or report for work or anything like that).  I like to make sure I have the big picture fully under control! Which means that I then often have a lot of left over research, which I thought you might find interesting. So over the next few months I’m taking that research and  I’ll post interesting features up here…… The first one is on sugar, I love sugar even though its not good for you!

Sugar was without a doubt the taste of the Regency – sweet and in large quantities.  This was the first time that sugar became cheaper, before then people relied on honey for a bit of sweetness.

Sugar was now used in almost everything: drinks to pastries, confectionary, jams, sweet breads and cakes. The popularity of tea, coffee and chocolate, with a sugar lump or two, also drove demand for sugar.

Many old British recipes relied on sugar, flour, eggs and cream or butter as the base ingredients, with fresh and dried fruit, walnuts, almonds, wine and spices added to make the sweet buns so typical of the era. The ‘Bath Bun’, a yeast bun sometimes with dried fruit or caraway seeds, was baked in sugar and then sprinkled with sugar.

Moving into the dining room, a Regency guest would not be surprised to find sugar in a chicken dish, vegetables or a pudding (which was usually fat and flower, not necessarily a dessert). Sugar was of course also found in large quantities in the sweet diary desserts, like custards using cream and milk, and jellies also served at the dining table.

But sugar came at a huge cost: sugar was only so widely available due to the Caribbean sugar plantations, like Sir Thomas Bertram’s Antigua properties in Mansfield Park, and their slaves. Sugar needs warmth, lots of land and lots of cheap labour: the West Indies had the warmth and land and cheap labour, well, came from slaves captured by British ships.

During the late Georgian era, the abolition of slavery was a key political debate in certain circles. The anti-slavery campaign achieved some legislative steps to outlaw slavery, from the first step to outlaw slavery in Britain in 1772 then to the prohibition on the import of slaves to its colonies in 1808.

It is questionable though how much this debate was played out in the confectionary and tea shops in town, or at the dining and drawing rooms of a Regency gentleman’s home. Fanny Price in Mansfield Park is willing to learn about Sir Bertram’s West Indies properties.

“But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave trade last night?” [Fanny]

“I did – and was in hopes the questions would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of further.” [Edmund]

“And I longed to do it – but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like – I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel’. Mansfield Park

Thankful for: The gorgeous pink roses in my garden. They love the weather and keep blooming all summer: just have to love them. Plus its not just my garden, they are in my neighbours’ gardens as well!

Buying: I bought a Kindle from Amazon which arrived last week and I love it! I read lots of books and have a great fear of being away from home without a book: doom and disaster, what will I do!  Now I have a Kindle that will never be a problem! I love paper books and I was a bit worried about what it would be like to read on, but it  is actually a really easy and pleasant experience.

Planning: I’ve been busying getting ready for the release of my next Jane Austen book Behind Jane Austen’s Door.  This will be my second book on Jane Austen. I have at least another two books coming out in 2012 and one kind of Austen inspired and the other completely new and different!

Loving: This game my daughter is playing: Manga Play Secret Garden. We borrowed it from our local toy library, which is just absolutely fantastic. If you have kids, you should definitely check a toy library out, the fees are low and they have an enormous range of toys. Perfect for when my daughter says “Can I have?” “I want” and I say “Let’s look in the toy library”. Plus the best thing is when she gets bored, we take it back and get something else. Just fantastic! This is one of her latest borrows: its so gorgeous.  Magnetic shapes that come in a little metal tin with a book of designs to copy.

Reading: Two books, one print and one ebook.  I’m reading Kate Grenville’s Searching for the Secret River for fun and Kim Kiyosaki’s It’s Rising Time for fun and education. Both great books!

Surviving: The noise in the library! My wi fi is down due to over enthusiastic diggers and workman outside our house, so I’m in the library! Which is full of children doing scientific experiments and periodically squealing!

Photo Blog: Different Colours and Designs

I’ve been working with a historic collection that dates from the 1890s to 1940s, which means that it has quite a few different elements to it. Contrast the green rayon bedspread above with the magazine cover below. I’ve seen the doiley holders before but here’s a photo of one in the collection below.

The Home 1934

I had a delightful chat with Jennifer Ackerman-Hayward of Craft Sanity over Easter. It was quite a free ranging conversation about all sorts of things – including craft, Jane Austen, children and the towns we live in, just to name a few.  I’ve enjoyed her podcasts immensely over the years and was most interested in her latest magazine endeavour.

She has very kindly featured my book Jane Austen’s Sewing Box in this forthcoming issue of her Craft Sanity magazine. Jennifer and her team always do such lovely covers, with interesting & different craft articles and patterns on the inside!  I truly don’t think I will ever forget the random beanie knitter/ gifter from Issue 1.