Patterns and Pattern-Making

We have spent the day here at the exciting task of downloading a design programme, which allows us to share our new designs with you, showing various fabrics available, as well as making patterns for various sizes, cutting down on pattern drafting.

This is a very new thing for us, being used to the old method of sizing up patterns by the pivot and slide method, which is used in the pattern industry, and in which we were trained.

It may seem odd to be embracing new technology for such work, but even our dear Topsy had a jaquard loom for his designs, which enabled one man to do work which would have taken weeks in days; the loom was manually operated, thus did not violate the ethic of individual work.

Aside from enabling us to get to the fun work of making garments sooner, it also means that we can offer our lovely items as a line of sewing patterns for those interested in creating their own versions, with their own handmade embellishments.

Look in future for our patterns here and on Etsy!

Harvest Fairs

 

We at Brother Rabbit are going the the San Mateo Harvest Arts & Crafts Fair  in November, selling such small items as pincushions and handkerchieves, watch fobs, ribbon garters and hair jewellery, such as would have been purveyed at a traditional Hiring Fair in old days, when it was expected that one would bring a small oddment home for the children or one's sweetheart.

Hiring fairs were held twice a year,  as the term of contracts ran six months; in the spring and in the autumn. Any sort of labour could be hired for: house servants, farm labourers, ostlers, drivers, even ladies' maids, if one was in need of such.

As today with Harvest festivals - in lieu of Samhain (Hallowe'en) - in addition to games and sweeties for the children, there was often a raucous party atmosphere at these gatherings, with free flowing drink, flirting and dancing, wrestling and contests of strength. Sometimes the outcomes were happy and sometimes a mixed blessing, as  in the songs below:

I went down to the hiring fair for to sell my labour,

And I noticed a maid in the very next row and I hoped

She'd be my neighbour.

Imagine then my delight when the farmer picked us both.

I spoke not a word in the cart to the farm, but my

Heart beat in my throat.

- The Hiring Fair, Trad.

As I went out by Huntley town one evening for to fee
With Bogie O' Cairnie and with him I did agree
To mind his two best horses or cart or harrow or plow
Or anything about farmwork that I very well should know

Old Bogie had a daughter, her name was Isabelle
She's the lily of the valley and the primrose of the dell
And when she went out walking she took me for her guide
Down by the burn of Cairnie for to watch the small fish glide

- Bogie's Bonny Belle, Trad.

We shall merely be  sitting a pretty booth with our gentle wares, and not engaging in any wresting or caber-tossing; 'twould spoil my frock....

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Rush out NOW and read this book.
EVERYTHING that Shannon advocates for in Radical Homemakers is what I've been about since I was 14 years old. Everything. It is downright amusing that a radical sociology book about taking back the home can make me CRY. But it does.

I feel validated for everything I have ever believed and striven for. And she describes the three stages of the process, and I can agree with her conclusion that if one spends too long in Step Two that one becomes subject to the kind of depression and futility that Betty Friedan wrote so passionately against.

She also argues against the wife-mother as chauffeur car culture that arose after the Second World War - which was totally foisted on us by the corporations. We are not here to drive our children from this and that or to buy this or that for the husband and 'the house'! That is not our role in life! But we have been pressurised into that role. Unless we rebel...

=) Here's to rebellion! and making a real home.

Viz:
Renouncing: increasingly aware of the illusory happiness of a consumer society. Recognise and question the compulsion to purchase goods and services that they feel they could provide for themselves 'if only...'

Reclaiming: Recovering many skills that enable one to build a life without a conventional income. This phase can take a few years or a lifetime and will perpetually be returned to as one builds ever more skills. If dwelt only in this phase for too long begin to manifest symptoms of Friedan's housewife's syndrome - 'what's all this for?'

Rebuilding: Take on genuine creative challenges, engagement with community, make significant contributions toward rebuilding a new society that reflects one's vision of a better world, through artwork, writing, farming, fine craftwork, social reform, activism, teaching, or a small business.

'The choice to become homemakers is not an act of submission or family servitude. It is an act of social transformation.... it is time we come to think of our hoes as living systems. Like sourdough starter, the home's survival requires constant attention. A true home pulses with nonhuman life - vegetable patches, yeast, backyard hens, blueberry bushes, culturing yoghurt, fermenting wine and sauerkraut, brewing beer, milk goats, cats, dogs, houseplants, kids' science projects, pet snakes and strawberry patches...'