Fashion Talks

{Apologies, rather long post and almost no photos}

Yesterday I met a friend and visited the “Fashion Talks” exhibition at the Communications Museum in Frankfurt, conveniently snuggled on the south bank of the river Main, just next to the Film Museum and the Architectural Museum. 

 

The exhibition, albeit small, was filled with interesting facts about fashion and raised important issues like globalisation, cheap labour, the boom of the DIY culture and the desire for individualism.

It was interesting to see a video about clothes created by a British designer that changed shape achieved by using a collection of cables, rods, motors, microcontrollers and batteries to transform the shape of a dress. I thought it was quite innovative – although the collection is from 2007.

We stared at tartans for long time and found out that there are as many as 10 000 different tartans available, both belonging to Scottish clans and also international or others created for various occasions. There is an Amnesty International Tartan, with the colours describing the multi-racial and international compass of Amnesty International's work. There is an Afghanistan tartan designed  to mark, but in no way celebrate the worldwide struggle against the opium industry.  There is even a German tartan for Americans with German Ancestors – yeah I know, unbelievable. One of the exhibits was tartan created after the death of Princess Diana. The tartan was beautiful and it was quite amazing how it really reminded of the late Princess.

 

The biggest part of the exhibition was dedicated to denim and jeans and as a big jeans fan, it was quite interesting to find out how Jeans were created and that LEE was the first brand to introduce jeans with zips. Levi’s produced a special pair for Coca Cola – which was pretty horrible I must admit.

However I was stunned to discover that before a pair of jeans reaches the shops it has travelled an estimated 50 000km backwards and forward between, Asia and Eastern Europe where various process have taken place, 8 000litres of water per pair have been used, and the average worker has received as little as 50c for their labour.

How sad that jeans, the very symbol of Western youth culture is now associated with sweat shops around the world and are produced by people who would have aspired to own a pair of jeans and who are themselves in their twenties, yet spending their youth working long hours, often in bad conditions for the pleasure of the Western society, respectively us. I feel so helpless!

There was a little bit on the subject of DIY, and it showed how clever companies have ventured into the whole DIY movement by producing items that can be customised like the Adicolour trainers below.

 

All in all it was a nice exhibition which provided a lot of information, raised a lot of questions in my mind and reinforced my belief in DIY.

After a nice bowl of soup it was time to go home and I had the opportunity to snap a few images of Frankfurt with its skyscrapers on the background of a glorious blue sky.

 Hope you are having a nice week!

Love,

Irina xx

Frozen Yogurt Lollies

{switching to a healthy option}

 

I made similar lollies last year and my little girl hasn’t stopped asking for them. That time I used mashed watermelon, organic vanilla yoghurt and pureed cherries. This time I decided to go for an easier option and just bought three small packages of yoghurt – vanilla, strawberry and peach.

I used a plastic ice lolly mould and carefully poured a little of each yoghurt starting with the vanilla than strawberry and last the peach. The verdict was that they are “ So yummy!”

And here is the Summer Fruit Lollies post from last year…

Have a lovely week!

Love

Irina xx

  

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page for all the parties I link up to.

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Fabric Flower Headband

{little gift for a girl in less than 30 min}

When I saw a beautiful head band at a lovely blog called Duni’s Studio I immediately knew what to make for a cute girl who just turned six, and who definitely doesn’t like princesses…I made a different version but the other headband is definitely worth a look..

I love this fabric flower, it is so easy to make and it involves only a bit of hand sewing and than sewing or gluing a button on top to finish it off. Here is how I made it.

 

You’ll need:

Cotton fabric

Thread and needle

Buttons

Plastic headband

Glue gun

Measure 2,5cm from the end of the fabric, make a little snip with the scissors and just tear a long trip from the fabric. Don’t worry about the fraying fabric, it looks actually quite nice.

Now you’ll need to measure and cut 5 little squares for the petals. My ones are 7cm x 7cm, but you can also make them bigger (or smaller for a hair clip).

 To make the flower, start with one of the squares, fold it in half and loosely baste the two short sides, as shown on the photo. When the first petal is ready continue with the remaining petals. Once you have all five petals sewn together just pull the thread to make the flower shape and make a few stitches to secure the flower.

 

Now its time to use the glue gun. Glue a nice button to the front of the flower. You can also sew the button, but I find it better to glue it.

Apply a little bit of hot glue to one end of the headband and wrap the long fabric strip diagonally. Tuck the ends in as nicely as possible.

 Now glue the flower to one side of the headband and you are done.

 

Hope you are all having a nice week!

Love,
Irina

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties that I link to.

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Spring Wreath

{upcycling the Easter decoration}

Now that Easter is over I had to take away the Easter wreath from the front door. I quite liked coming home to a bright and cheerful Easter wreath and now the door just looks plain and not exciting at all. So rather than stash the Easter decoration away till next year, I decided to re-use it and crate a new wreath.

Ta-da!

 

It only took a few minutes to make and you can find a tutorial for the Fabric Pin Wheels here. I also used my beloved stamps – they don’t get used often enough – but in the past I made some cute wall frames. Have a look at this post if you have a min. 

Our front door looks much happier now!

Wishing you a lovely week!

Love,

Irina xx

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties that I link to.

Happy Easter!

{ time for the family}

It is usually Thursday before Easter that we colour eggs in our house, and this year was no exception. Luckily kindergarten closed at 1pm so Lovely Little Big Daughter and I come straight home excited about the egg colouring ritual.

We are really lucky that we like eggs in our house – eggs for breakfast, eggs in salad, eggs on toast with cream cheese, etc…yes we like eggs. So I boiled 25 eggs and we got to work. It was so much fun! Little Big Daughter wanted to put them in the colour herself and was very proud.

I decided to show her an old method which my grandmother taught me when I was I little girl. It involves a little bit of cotton or in our case a couple of eye cotton pads – you know the ones to remove make up with. The eggs turned out so nice, covered in lovely mixture of pastel colours. 

Here is how it is done...

 Use a tea spoon to drop a bit of egg colour onto the cotton pad. You could choose a single colour, a couple of colours or a mix of all the colours.

 Yes…we ( Lovely Little Big Daughter) chose to use all of the colours…

And now the just wrap your boiled egg with the coloured cotton pad. We had to use two pads per egg. The pads can be used to colour more than one egg.

Wait 5 min...

...and unwrap the egg...

If you don’t want to have the little lines you could use plain cotton or a plain pad, but I think they actually add  a bit of extra charm…

Simple...isn't it?

  

 

And the rest of our Easter eggs…

But the fun was not over yet…an enormous Easter package arrived from my parents-in-law containing the loveliest goodies ever…see for yourself.

And to top things up Mollie Makes – you know, the lovely British craft magazine, are offering half price on all of their issues through out the Easter Holiday weekend….so I stocked up on the few missing issues.

Have a Lovely Easter!

Love,

Irina

P.S. Please see my Linky Party Fun page to see the parties that I link to.