Project Roundup

Hi Everyone

It's the last day of my new projects week and today it's Dorset Buttons. If you never heard of these items, Dorset Buttons have a long story. Just to give a little background, a Dorset Button is a style of hand crafted button originating in the English county of Dorset. Their manufacture was at a peak between 1622 and 1850, after which they were overtaken by machine-made buttons from factories in the developing industries of growing cities in England. During their heyday making Dorset Buttons was a big and very important industry, practiced by many people. 

The buttons are created using a ring (in my case - made of Brass) and thread or yarn. The yarn or thread is wound and woven around the ring in various ways to form many different styles of button. I'm taking inspiration from a couple of Pinterest examples to develop my project.

                     

The necklace maker can be found on Etsy here and the earrings here. I'm not quite sure what my end project will aim for at the moment ? I'm focused on practicing the actual Dorset Button basic technique today and will find inspiration while I'm making. I quite like the idea of using different colours within each button but I've no fixed ideas.

Details from my other projects  this week can be found on blog episodes each day. I've made prototypes for each project and costed for a workshop. I need to make some modifications for each and will write up tutorials over the next few weeks. Hopefully, I will have 5 new workshops - ready to go by the end of June. I'm planning further work on the series of workshops next week and will share photos here on the blog.

Just a little peak at yesterday's initial results of the Paper Flower project :

                     

As its Friday, I'm  also sharing progress on the Hanabira crochet cardigan - 

                       

Read back for more on this project (each Friday). I've started to crochet the body of the cardigan. The top part of the cardigan is complete and the arm holes are prepared. I'm feeling the project is going OK at the moment. I've mentioned before, my reservations about my own crochet skills and the potential sizing issues but at this point -  I'm enjoying making this garment. So all is well !

Thanks for calling in today. Have a great weekend.