Wild Blossom Life started in 2007, under the name of Tea and a Sewing Machine, as a blog about sewing. In the beginning, I had no idea even what a blog was! I opened a shop on Etsy at about the same time, and I’d read that I needed a blog as well.
Very quickly, it became a place where I shared sewing tutorials. It felt like the most natural thing to not just share what I’d made, but how I’d made it, and encourage other people to do the same.
Things continued in this way for a few years, with lots of tutorials for sewing projects, techniques, and sewing tips. At the time, my children were little, and we hadn’t lived in our current house for very long. I was always making things: for my home, for my children, and for myself.
The sewing thing expanded into other crafts to encompass all the things I was making, including embroidery and crochet. I found my way with the Etsy shop as well. That became a place where I sold craft kits and sewing patterns for the projects I shared on the website. It still exists today.
A frustrating experience of making clothes from patterns led to an experiment to see whether I could sew clothes for myself without using a commercial pattern. I found that I could! So this became my focus for a little while, and led to an ebook I wrote entitled Making Clothes Without a Pattern: 6 Projects to Kickstart Your Handmade Wardrobe.
Eventually, in the way that things often do, I found that I had said all I wanted to say on the subject of sewing. I’ve made so many things over the years, and the tutorials are all still there, in the archives. My children were all older and didn’t want to wear cute little outfits I’d made for them, and I didn’t really need anything for myself or my house. At one point I found myself making things just to have something to post on the website, which I’d never wanted to do. So I realised that things needed to change.
As I no longer wanted to write just about sewing, I decided that I would write more generally about creativity. I tried with a few posts, and I felt that that was the right way forward.
At the time, it felt like a huge decision. But then an odd thing happened. This thing that had felt like an enormous shift actually wasn’t at all! It was all the things I had wanted to say through the sewing tutorials, the crochet and the embroidery projects. Via the tutorials I encouraged being creative, slowing down, and being present. I explored what it means to be rooted where we are, and what it means to be a human, in particular a creative human. I wanted to give space to ideas about alternatives to overconsumption, perfectionism, hustle culture and being eternally busy.
So that’s where we are now. Wild Blossom Life is a safe space for creative people to explore and nurture their creativity, in the context of gentle, peaceful lives. Through it, I offer low risk, gentle ways to be creative. If you feel dissatisfied with consumerism and busy culture, and a world where creativity is only valued if it is viewed as a commodity, then this is the place for you!
So please make yourself at home! Have a look through the archives and read some of the things I’ve written. If you like it here, you might consider signing up for my email newsletter. I send them out weekly (ish!). You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook.
Please feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or anything you’d like to talk about.
