Party like it's 1978

Danish disco dancing

Hope you're having as much fun as these guys are having!

And... when the party's over, how about making the chairs they're dancing around? DIY Danish design!

Click here for Side One chairs pattern and instructions, courtesy of Bright Ideas for The Home by Per Dalsgaard & Elisabeth Erichsen (MacMillan, 1978).

Wishing you a happy, creative, peaceful and prosperous new year! x

What I call a stall

When I spied the Judith Mansfield Books stand at the Knitting & Stitching Show in the pretty northern spa town of Harrogate this weekend, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven...

Just a teeny part of the stall

Packed with secondhand books and magazines about sewing, knitting, crochet, weaving, embroidery, cross stitch and printing, not to mention the boxes of old sewing patterns, this was a vintage craft book collector's dream come true.

Wonderwall

Or it would have been if I'd not been working. I was hoping for an hour off from teaching workshops to have a proper rummage, but my classes were all booked up and all I could manage was a dash to Judith's stand just as the show was closing. Judith herself wasn't there but I had a chat to her husband, who told me they don't have a website or sell online, but they do have a seven-day-a-week stall at the Hebden Bridge Antiques Market I feel a special trip back to Yorkshire coming on!

School library scoop

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I happened upon a massive collection of 60s, 70s, 80s (and one 30s) craft books in my local bric-a-brac market yesterday. All from a school library in East Dulwich in south east London – and at £1 a pop, I bought as many as I could carry.

Sadly, for reasons of shelf space, I had to leave behind titles on macramé, plaiting, braiding, soft toy making and other skillz just a little out of the scope of my interests, but this little lot will keep me going for a while. Watch this space for some of the highlights.

Going undercover

It's a sad fact of life that some craft books lure you in with a dazzling exterior, then dash your hopes and dreams by containing nothing but reams of text and a few forlorn grey diagrams.

But that doesn't mean such books are without their charms, so here's a little round-up of books of disappointing content that I have bought for their covers alone...

Published by Hamlyn (1972)

I lugged this 500-pager back from Totnes in Devon years and years ago, already having come to terms with the fact that its content in no way lived up to the cartoon Clarice Cliff landscape with yellow brick road leading to a giant sewing machine that graced its cover. How could it really? Still glad I got it though.

John Gifford (1969)

This was an ex-library book I bought when they had a sale in Hornsey Library in Crouch End c2002. The foxy 60s chick on the cover belies the grainy black and white photos of granny squares within.

Chartwell Books Inc (1973)

Liberated from a south London charity shop, this is an American craft book FOR MEN. It has chapters on woodwork, leathercraft and metalwork as well as printing, weaving and mosaics. Sadly it's all written and illustrated in the most boring way imaginable. Lovely cover though.

Doubleday & Co Inc. (1974)

I picked this up at the secondhand bookshop at the National Trust property Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk. With chapters called 'Something up your sleeve' and 'Pressing your iron into service' the writer had a sense of humour but unfortunately the designer was in no mood for fun.

The Knitting Council for Schools (1973)

To be fair I bought this *for the cover*, off eBay, and it's only a leaflet so what did I expect. Nice though innit?

Van Nostrand Reinhold Co (1973)

And last but least, one of my all-time favourite craft book covers and titles ever. I got this at a car-boot sale on a boiling hot morning in Kent a few years ago and although the few colour plates it does have make it absolutely worth its shelfspace, 70% of the photos inside are in black and white. Nooo... the whole point of patchwork is colour!

Patchwork in the park

Born into a light

People, pack your wicker baskets with cucumber sarnies, cheese and pineapple on sticks, fizzy wine and the mini salt and pepper pots – we're having a picnic. Don't forget the corkscrew! How sweet would it be to head up to Hampstead Heath on a hot afternoon and lounge about on this work of art? Being extremely careful not to drop any crumbs, naturellement.

A patchwork quilt this size can take years to stitch by hand. Of course, you can cheat and use a machine to sew the pieces together, but it's a labour of love working out the design, deciding on fabrics and cutting out the shapes nevertheless.

Choosing from endless juxtapositions of colours is so satisfying and can get very addictive. Here's a section of one of mine in progress from a while ago (I'm resting my head on the cushion I made it into as we speak. Lovely):

I took the haphazard approach to design

But my mind literally boggles (if that is possible) at how much planning and work and care and time must have gone into the out-and-out feast for the eyes below, with its ding-dings of pinks and yellows among the various shades of green. And to photograph it lurking in the undergrowth, well that is, as they say, what I'm talking about.

Village green preservation society

Both of these outdoor delights I dug out of Patchwork & Appliqué (Marshall Cavendish, 1979), a veritable goldmine of, well – patchwork and appliqué projects:

Got some scraps of fabric to use up? Click here (and here and here) for the beginners' guide to patchwork. Make do and mend is the latest thing y'know.

Room for one more?

I'm definitely joining a quilting bee when I grow up.

The owl & the pussycat

Ah, the owl. One of the most overused images of recent years - and this week I plan to overuse it myself – here goes. Check out these adorable patchwork toys:



Sadly, there are no pictures of the finished articles in the book, which is this 1974 volume from the geniuses at Golden Hands:



I'll share some of the other beautiful brightly coloured 70s designs with you another time. Its title page looks like this:



As you can see, it cost me the grand sum of £2 (in a charity shop on a day trip to Market Harborough actually).

Anyway, if you fancy trying your hand at making the owl and the pussycat, you'll find the templates here and here. It just gives you the shapes – presumably you have to ad lib the patchwork side of things and the appliquéd/embroidered eyes, but that's half the fun!