A quick recap
Recently I teamed up with the lovely Pugh family over at A year without supermarkets, for a gift exchange. You can read about it here and here.
This is all very exciting, and as I was perusing their great blog (it really is inspiring stuff, check it out, and we could all pledge to ditch the supermarket in the New Year!) I saw a post that they had done in celebration of their first month. You can read all about it here. And I thought ‘what a great idea’, a periodic recap of all the goings on that have happened.
So here is my edited highlights, or my Top 10, of the first 3 months (a quarter of the way through!!) of My Make Do and Mend Year:
- I have learned some mending skills, including pulled threads,
- I have made my own slippers
- Had my 5 minutes of fame on BBC Radio Wiltshire
- Been to The Big Mend, and met the brilliant Scrapiana, who is inspiring me to mend more and learn more!
- Learned to make better bread at River Cottage
- Joined in with The Love What You Wear Project-a group of about 30 (and counting) who have taken the pledge to not buy any new clothes for a year
- Made a pillowcase dress for the The Dress A Girl Around the World charity at a sewing day at Cordial and Grace with Morwhenna from The Love What You Wear Project, and Louise from Sew Scrumptious
- Become a guest blogger! The Upcycle Movement and The Vintage Fair both very kindly post monthly updates on my adventures. And of course, found a new ‘blogging buddy’ to swap gifts with, in the form of A year without supermarkets!
- Bought ‘new’ boots, been disappointed by new boots, decided to make do with ‘new’ boots, broken new boots and attempted to fix them (twice) and then dyed new new boots
- Been sent a gorgeous Bakelite darning mushroom and some vintage haberdashery

The photo doesn’t really do it justice-it is very warm looking and makes you want to pick it up and stroke it!!
In case you hadn’t noticed, I am having a ball! It has already proved to be a life changing experience, in that it has pushed me out of my comfort zone and introduced to a whole new world of people and organisations, all doing their bit to try and change the world. I have ‘met’ people both online via social media, and in real life too, that have inspired me to keep going and to do more, and do better.
So I am very excited about the next 9 months, and at the moment I really don’t want it to end! There are lots of exciting developments in the pipeline, that will hopefully take My Make Do and Mend Year onwards from what started as a very personal challenge to a much broader challenge to engage my local community, and the wider world, in a little bit of Make Do and Mend!!
Thankyou all so much for reading, and for all your comments (keep them coming, it’s lovely to get some feedback, and I love finding out what you are all up to too!). If you don’t want to miss a thing, then sign up for e-mails, and tell all your friends! Together we will Change The World (one mend at a time)!!




