 So you’ve learned how to knit and want to combine your rediscovered vintage skill with some vintage patterns! In case you missed it, I recently wrote an article for KnitToday magazine in the UK all about vintage knitting (July 2010 issue, if you want to check it out!)
I’m slightly obsessed with sweater girls and pinups from the 1940s and 1950s … as well as the gorgeous delicate knits of the 1930s. And creating your own vintage knitwear means you get the classic style, with the benefit of new materials! (And you can make it exactly the color, style and SIZE that you want, which so often isn’t the case with vintage clothes!).
If you’re feeling knitty and want to make your own vintage knitwear, get some inspiration here:
I recently posted some vintage patterns I bought at a charity shop Just stumbled across this link … Read the rest of this post >>
 Have I ever told you how much I love charity shops??
When vintage hunting, I tend to get my best finds in shops outside of London. My theory on this is that London has too many hipsters scouring the shops for valuable vintage goods. So if you head out of town, you can often find some treasures.
This week, I found a whole bin of vintage knitting patterns, for 10p each! I’ve had vintage knitting on the brain recently, since I’ve been writing an article about it for Knit Today magazine (stay tuned for more info on this!) I love the idea of making new, vintage-style knitwear by knitting from old patterns. If you haven’t tried knitting yet, get yourself to a local knitting meetup via Ravelry and give it a try!
In this week’s vintage pattern discovery, I found a couple items I might knit, but mainly bought them for amusement and blogging value. This one is my favorite … what exactly is going on with this girl’s head (wait, is it a girl on the right? I think so…)
Continue reading Charity Shop Find: Vintage Knitting Patterns
  The lovely people at The World of Cross Stitch magazine sent me a cross stitch kit to try. I’m now a regular knitter, and have tried my hand at embroidery (thanks to a kit I bought from Sublime Stitching), so cross stitch was a natural next step.
Actually, cross stitching is even easier than embroidery and knitting! You just stitch little x’s on grid-like fabric, et voila! A design. You can either do “counted” cross stitch, which means that you count the number of stitches from your pattern and recreate it on plain fabric, or you can buy pre-printed kits. I did a few practice stitches on some plain aida fabric and felt ready to tackle a new design after just a few minutes.
To be honest, I struggled a bit with the existing patterns I found online. They just didn’t fit with my decor (which leans more modern than country/whimsical). And since Vintage Savoir Faire is about rediscovering vintage crafts and adapting them for our modern lives … I decided to design my own!
Continue reading Crafty Cross Stitching
  Last week I wrote about coloring easter eggs using vegetable dyes.
In my opinion, if you want to try coloring easter eggs without chemicals, onion skins are the way to go! It’s easy to do, and makes really interesting abstract patterns on the egg shells. Plus, you end up with a bunch pretty hard boiled eggs in your fridge for eating!
I first heard about coloring eggs with onion skins from Zak’s mom, who did this as a child in Scotland. In Scottish tradition, you bring decorated hard boiled eggs outside on easter, then roll them down a hill until they crack, and then eat them. This is similar to our easter egg rolls in America, except we do those on flat ground, and roll them with a spoon! Either way, eggs are a symbol of spring and rebirth, and people have been decorating eggs for easter for centuries.
If you want an inexpensive easter project, I highly recommend trying this!
Continue reading Coloring Easter Eggs, Part II: Onion Skins
  Although people have been coloring easter eggs for centuries, I have a feeling they didn’t always use pre-packaged dye tablets complete with stickers in whimsical easter designs.
I’m always up for a crafty project, especially one that has a potential to get really messy! So this year, I decided to investigate how to color easter eggs the natural way, like great-grandma would have done it. I also like the idea of using fewer chemicals, especially if it’s a project to do with your kids.
I tried to set my expectations that natural dyes wouldn’t be nearly as vibrant as the candy-colored ones the ‘egg coloring kits’ can produce. I bought a dozen eggs. Immediately I had a problem: eggs in the UK are all BROWN! In the US we could purchase brown or white eggs, so when coloring easter eggs, we always bought white. Hmmm. I could have splurged on expensive white duck eggs, but that seemed a bit excessive for this potential failure of a project. Plus, that’s against the British philosophy of “Make Due and Mend!”. So home I went with my brown eggs.
Continue reading Coloring Easter Eggs, Naturally!
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Friendly Reminder Please remember that I'm not a doctor or expert practitioner of anything we discuss here on Vintage Savoir Faire. I'm still learning and trying these traditional skills and remedies like you are. So please, speak with your doctor or a qualified herbalist before trying any traditional remedies. All the information on this site is provided on an as-is basis. Thanks!
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