Last week I (nearly) finished sewing a coat dress with a Peter Pan collar. And as it seems to be my burden it turned out lovely…. And the burden being in this case that I made it from very cheap strangely coloured fabric. I somehow see a pattern here. When I use fabric, I love the garment does not fit and when I use fabric which looks like dried vomit or makes you dizzy because of its screaming colors or pattern, then… then the garment will fit. Not sure if this happens because I am stressed and fearful when working with nicer fabric and because of this make unnecessary mistakes? Did you have similar patterns when dressmaking? But who knows, perhaps it is simply by chance that this coat dress made from brownish-beige dirt colored fabric worked out nicely fit wise.



Last week I asked you if you would dye the coat, which would be a risk as some parts of the fabric are quite dark and fabric dye cannot lighten up the pre-existing colors, only make them darker. I pondered dyeing it completely brown or being adventurous and try out a lilac or red hue. But in the end boredom common sense won, and I dyed it black. And this was a perfect choice: happppppyyyyyy!



One feature of the fabric (before dyeing it) was that the right side looked completely different than the wrong side. So, the coat was grey/white inside and for me it looked unfinished. But after dyeing it black I am now blessed with both sides in the same color: a dark anthracite which in my eyes has a kind of vintage appearance. The huge blotches of different hues of brown are gone, but the anthracite is not completely uniform, which really like.



I already wore the coat although I still have not made the buttonholes :-DDDD But I already found a simply round black button which I like… and here comes the one problem that remains: I cannot find the rest of the fabric to try out the buttonholes. I have no clue where it is. There are more then 2 m of this fabric left, but somehow, they disappeared during our studio renovation. And I am not willing to destroy the lovely coat while making buttonholes before I tested how they hold in this strange stretchy denim like fabric… I hope I find the leftover fabric soon.

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Excursion in jam making (quince and raspbery)

And now something completely different just to add a splash of color to this black in black post: I made a lot of jam in the last days. Our fruit harvest was abysmal this year. All apples had a kind of fungus because of the constant rain, no pears at all and one (yes, you read it right) one tiny plum. The only tree which had some fruits was the quince (but also less than a quarter of fruits than last year). This is only the second time I cooked with quince and for all who never held such fruit in their hands: they are like rocks. Harder than rocks. Quince are like diamonds :-DDDD We have the apple-quince variety which produces fruits which weigh sometimes up to 800 grams. Huge monsters of super tough fruits which smell intensely like a kind of orange blossom.
To dominate these fruits you need an axe or even better a chainsaw or you peel and cut for hours at night like me :-DDDD.



I used a new recipe from Jessica Koslow’s cookbook sqirl which was kind of time consuming because you at first cook the peeled and cored quince and then cook the peel and cores in the same water to get all the pectin and flavour. After this the quince (not the peel and cores :-D) are blended with sugar, lemon juice, raspberries, and the cooking water (which is the jelling agent).



The color of this mix looks and smells super yummy but bubbles so crazy that I had to clean the kitchen several times during the process (and had to be careful not to get burned by the thick surgery mixture).




Today I tried the jam on a bread with cream cheese and yes, it’s so tasty. But next time I would use store bought pectin, because the jam is not getting as firm as I am used to.
Hope you excused my jam excursion, but I so loved the pink hue of it, I had to show you the photos ☺️

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Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday and the community builder team @lauramica, @romeskie and @kattycrochet I am so glad to be part of.

If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on hive blog. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. You can read more comments on this post on my hive blog. 

Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva or buy some of my digital artworks on NFT showroom.