Indrani Perera

poet, publisher & mentor

Tag: bespoke

Cross-Crafting

I am so pleased with this pouch I created to hold my eco dyed cards. Over the last couple of years I've been slowly eco-dyeing and accumulating a pile of eco dyed paper from my experiments. I've torn them down to size and intend to make them into oracle cards. If I can bear to write on the paper – I love beautifully embellished and layered objects but find myself creating very minimal pieces. I think it stems from a fear of ruining the beauty of the material I am working with.

I dyed the wool felt pouch with gum leaves and wrapped it around a rusty aluminium can. I hand sewed the felt with embroidery floss from my stash. I carved the button from an avocado stone. The fastening is made from a piece of vegetable tanned kangaroo leather. I wove the cord from lomandra grass growing on the median strip out the front of my block of flats.

Using all my different skills (foraging, dyeing, sewing, carving, leather work and cordage) to make this special pouch was a wonderful experience. There are definite advantages to being a jack of all trades – you can make beautiful pieces like this one!

May 14, 2018
Cross-Crafting

I am so pleased with this pouch I created to hold my eco dyed cards. Over the last couple of years I've been slowly eco-dyeing and accumulating a pile of eco dyed paper from my experiments. I've torn them down to size and intend to make them into oracle cards. If I can bear to write on the paper – I love beautifully embellished and layered objects but find myself creating very minimal pieces. I think it stems from a fear of ruining the beauty of the material I am working with.

I dyed the wool felt pouch with gum leaves and wrapped it around a rusty aluminium can. I hand sewed the felt with embroidery floss from my stash. I carved the button from an avocado stone. The fastening is made from a piece of vegetable tanned kangaroo leather. I wove the cord from lomandra grass growing on the median strip out the front of my block of flats.

Using all my different skills (foraging, dyeing, sewing, carving, leather work and cordage) to make this special pouch was a wonderful experience. There are definite advantages to being a jack of all trades – you can make beautiful pieces like this one!

May 14, 2018
Savouring The Pleasures Of Making

In my quest to declutter and organise the house I'm uncovering creative projects that haven't seen the light of day for years. Organising cupboards is always a dangerous and distracting business – you just never know what you're going to find buried right at the back! I found a whole lot of cardboard, gorgeous sheets of A4 paper and a stack of A5 paper. All just waiting to be made into books. One of my many passions is bookbinding. I adore books. Reading, writing, collecting and reviewing them on my A Little Bookshelf blog.

I spent what was meant to be a couple of hours yesterday finishing these books. The first one went so quickly that I decided to finish all the books in my craft hoard. Nothing like the start of a new year to get motivated! These books are Oriental side stitched books and are made with acid free papers and sewn with linen thread. The one on top has an illustrated story inside for my daughters. Like all good things, it took a lot longer than I had anticipated.

Ever since I attended an Eco Printing Spring Circle late last year, I have been more mindful of my thoughts while I am making. And I noticed something interesting while I was making these books. At the start when things were going well I felt happy and pleased. It was easy and quick. I thought to myself, "This is easy. I can make ten of these." and "This is going to be quick, I can also do x and y and z as well." My thoughts started to wander to the future and that's when it happened. It became unpleasant to make these books because I was making so many of them and thinking about all the other things I would be doing that day once I had finished. It felt too hard and I was regretting biting off more than I could chew.

But I ploughed on until the end thinking that rushing to the finish would somehow make all those unpleasant feelings go away. Oddly enough, it didn't. At the end, I felt flat and dissatisfied. Not at all happy and proud of myself for my achievements. Look at all those gorgeous books I made. I should be dancing for joy, not looking for the next thing to make that will give me a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction.

I realised that this is my pattern when I am making things. It's time to radically rethink my actual process of making. To be more mindful of what I am doing and thinking while I am making. In the future (there I go again, living in the future :0), I'm going to try and savour that feeling of "This is easy." To really enjoy and appreciate it. To be in that particular moment of ease and pleasure. To turn the easy into the pleasurable as I learnt from Simon Thakur of Ancestral Movement. To smile! Because I need to learn to savour the pleasures of making.

January 21, 2016
Rekindling My Shoe Making Passion

Last week was all about my new craft love, eco-dyeing. You could be forgiven for thinking that I am fickle, (well I admit I am sometimes!) flitting from craft to craft. For a long time I was trying to focus on doing one thing and mastering it. That old saying, "Jack of all trades, master of none" with its implication that being a Jack was a bad thing used to haunt me. But it no longer does. I now embrace my fickleness. I can't help it – I get distracted by new, bright and shiny things! And there's just so many of them. My friend Eleni summed it up perfectly, I like the creative challenge of a new craft and once I have mastered it, I move on to something new.

I do however, return to my old craft passions when the need arises. Somehow, amidst all the making for Christmas, a new pair of shoes appeared on my list of things to make. I desperately need a new pair of shoes for summer. My Birkies are ten years old and I think it's time for a change. Of course I could always go to a shop and buy a pair but apart from it being against my ethos of trying to make for myself the things I need, once you've worn a pair of hand-sewn barefoot shoes, it's very hard to put on a pair of the clunky, ill fitting things they sell in the shops.

Having someone to share your passions can also help to keep the flame alight. Jessie who I met at The Village Continumm has been sending me pictures of the boots she made for her kids. Seeing those cute little feet wearing handmade shoes got my fingers itching to sew my very own pair of deerskin shoes. I did start a pair of boots but it's just not boot wearing weather and they're not going to be finished any time soon!

Like always I'm getting these done, five minutes at a time, here and there. I even took my shoes to the beach and sat and sewed while the girls played. If you're thinking about doing the same thing – don't! It was a very windy day and the sand got everywhere including stuck all over my artificial sinew. It made sewing very tricky and it took ages to remove all those pesky little grains of sand from my sinew when I got home.

My shoes are now finished, just in time for my annual Christmas trip to Canberra to visit family and friends. The leather is from the tropical Indonesian Rusa deer and is nice and thick. I love the colour of these shoes and my feet feel very happy in their new home. It's so good to make something for myself as well as for everyone else!

What are you making for yourself this Christmas?

December 17, 2015
Make Your Own Handmade Book

I am a huge bookworm. Ever since I was a kid I have been hungrily devouring books and exploring the new worlds contained within their pages. Heaven was sitting with a new novel by English author Noel Streatfield and a bag of lollies, happily reading and munching. I even spent time trying to make my own books as well as writing and illustrating. One early, unfinished masterpiece was called The Piffle Poffle.

Since then my love affair with the written word has continued and I have had a book of poetry published and done some book binding courses. You can get fancy with hand made books or you can keep it simple. I am going to show you how to make a simple book. If you want to learn more complicated techniques I would highly recommend doing a course. If a course isn't being run near you, check out these books for ideas and inspiration:

The Book Book by Sophie Benini Pietromarchi
How to Make Books by Esther K Smith

The lovely thing about making your own notebooks is being able to get creative with using different papers and methods to bind. Instead of using brads as I have done, you could try sewing with wool or hemp.

Handmade book
1 sheet coloured A4 cardboard or paper
10 sheets plain A4 paper
Ruler
Pencil
2 brads

Awl
Hammer
Chopping board
Pegs

Fold the coloured card and paper in half.

Open out the card and paper again. Lay the plain paper on top of the coloured card. It will be the cover of your finished book.

Peg around the sides of your bundle to hold paper in place.

Using a ruler and pencil, measure where you want to place your brads.

Lay paper on a chopping board and use the awl and hammer to make two holes.

Put brads in holes, remove pegs, fold bundle in half again and voila! You have your very own book.

September 28, 2015
Teaching Shoemaking

{Leather, tools and shoes}

Last weekend I ran my very first shoe making class. Over the years I have attended a lot of craft classes. However, this was my first experience of being a teacher rather than a student. The workshop was held in beautiful Gembrook on my friend Kate Horne's 1/4 acre block. It has gorgeous views of the mountains and backs onto beautiful bush. On the last afternoon a wallaby popped past to say hello. Stunning setting for a barefoot shoe making workshop, I'm sure you'll agree!

{Kate making her shoes}

There were three students for the class – River, Kate and Jacqui. Everyone already had some craft experience. River is a free-from crochet queen, Kate makes gorgeous clothes and Jacqui does eco dyeing. It was so much fun teaching what I knew and watching everyone as they created their shoes. The most exciting time for me was on Sunday when the first shoe was sewn and fitted on to the foot!

{River modelling her moccasins}

I'm so chuffed with the results. The shoes look amazing and River and Kate got to go home wearing them. How awesome is that? Go away for a weekend and come home wearing a pair of shoes you have made with your very own two hands!

Don't worry if you missed out on this class. I'm going to be running it again in November at the The Village Continuum. Check out the courses page for more details.

September 24, 2015
Make Things For Yourself

I had high hopes for my 42nd year, it being the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything as fans of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers to the Galaxy will know. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan and for the first time I'm feeling my age. I look at folks in their twenties with a mixture of sadness and regret. I used to be that young, with all the promise of the coming years in from of me. Now though, I feel weighed down by age. I know I'm being a tad melodramatic here but it's true. I feel old. Not as old as my nana, but old nonetheless.

I'm sure this funk will pass and I'm doing everything I can to help it on its way. My answer? Make something. Not just a handmade gift for a friend but a handmade gift for myself. It's very easy to get caught up in making for others and forget that you also need nurturing, pampering and spoiling! Especially when things just aren't going according to your master plan!

I've made myself an all natural perfume using organic oils. It smells divine and the dark colour comes from the vanilla essential oil which along with rose are two of my all time favourite scents. I've used both in this perfume along with some sandalwood and orange essential oils. All organic, all natural and all fabulous! The carrier oil is organic jojoba. I've used a vintage perfume bottle found in a country town garage sale. I got a whole box of gorgeous old glass bottles from a lovely old little lady for the princely sum of two dollars!

So for my 43rd year, I'm not planning big goals or lofty achievements. This year I'm going to focus on happiness in the every day, right where I am. And while I'm doing that I'm going to be wearing my very own bespoke perfume!

September 17, 2015