Recycle:Upcycle
Recycling has been a part of my life since my early teens when I hacked up a beautiful leather coat my parents had bought me, to remodel into a leather mini skirt. Their reaction was the first indication that not…
A New Order: Classifying and Measuring the Creative Industries
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport are currently in the process of re-classifying the ‘Creative Industries’ with the intention of deciding what stays and what gets rejected. In our culture, where that which cannot be measured does not exist…
May Day
I have just returned from this year’s mayday festival and I have been reminded how much I enjoy the traditions of this celebration. This is, for me, a festival I can experience and participate in without the heavy guilt of…
Sewing Tutorial: A Little Girl’s Circle Skirt
We were recently asked by the press to write a sewing tutorial for the Norwich Evening News, inspired by the BBC's Great British Sewing Bee. Last autumn we hosted a very successful vintage skirt dressmaking workshop and decided to adapt…
Realia:Digitalia
As the maker of things, and the owner of an online business, I exist in a liminal space – a no- mans land where I pace a porous border between the real and the digital. I can remember being a…
The Festival Collection: A Fictional Story.
The Mercerie is officially one year old. I know this as I posted my first blog on April Fool’s day 2012. The Mercerie emerged slowly and quietly, with no fanfare and no entourage. I just opened a door, stepped in,…