In another radical transformation of vintage woolen blanket, I (more or less) followed the instructions for the Flowers at My Fingertips hussif/sewing kit from Christine Vejar’s The Modern Natural Dyer. You can have a sense of what she did (and some pictures of her hussif) by following this link. Above are prints from maroon coreopsis flowers I had in the garden at the time I was dyeing. I bought the plant at the Seed Freedom Festival and have just loved it. It is not enjoying winter though.
These are prunus leaves from a neighbourhood tree. I cut binding from some linen pants that entered their second life some time ago.
Some parts of the binding went more smoothly than others, but in the end the edge was reasonably neat.
So now I have a sewing toolkit that rolls up. I really just wanted to make this pattern and try the dyeing strategy out, at a time of year when I had African marigolds, Mexican marigolds, Alyogyne Huegelii flowers, salvias and more to try out, and then realised that I also had something close enough to woolen flannel to try them on. I’ll figure out where it will go to live later!
Local & Bespoke 
So nice. I never seem to get around to making actual useful objects like this from my experiments.
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I love a useful object… and something simple to construct will often get my attention! Thanks Pia!
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one of my very kind students gave me one of these (having followed the same set of instructions) a couple of years ago. such a treasure. and don’t you just love the name ‘hussif’?
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I LOVE the name ‘hussif’! I followed some kind of interweb link last week and the images were just fabulous.
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PS For years I would listen to the old song “The Barring of the Door” which is really about a marriage that has come to a standstill through mutual obstinacy so far as I can tell. Thne pair are waiting each other out on who should close the door. One of the wife’s lines is “my hand is in my hussif skip” or “my hand is in my hussyfskap” which I eventually took to mean “I am sewing, YOU shut the door!” But there were a lot of years when I didn’t know what a hussyfskap was, and translations vary now. There is a lovely recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1ZG9j3LF8A
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The coreopsis prints are pretty amazing – such colo[u]r intensity. I had never heard of a hussif before, but now I am inspired. If I get started now I may get one done for a holiday gift (ha!)
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You can see why I am keen to grow this plant again! Glad to hear you are feeling inspired… and isn’t ‘hussif’ more fun than ‘sewing kit’ or ‘needle roll’?
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Absotively!
: )
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