Today I welcome Meike from Crafteln and am very happy that she answered a few questions about sewing and knitting. Meike is you certainly already one or the other time run over the way. Be it through your blog, or the Me Made Wednesday, or maybe you have also seen her together with Guido Maria Kretschmer and her co-candidates in the show "Geschickt eingefädelt" sew, suffer and rejoice. I was curious and wanted to learn more about the woman whose closet is richly stocked with self-sewn and -knitted clothes!

Image source: Anne Koch

Hello Meike, how nice that you visit me today. We know each other already quite a while from times in which we have blogged neither about sewing nor about knitting. Tell me how you got hooked. How did it come about that you now write a well-known sewing blog and even stood in front of the camera on "Geschickt eingefädelt"?

I am happy about the invitation, dear Marisa. Yes, we know each other forever. All the nicer that we have come closer again on the subject of DIY and blogging.

Making things myself has always been part of my life. Even as a teenager I knitted, crocheted and sewed. Although I've always done it, it wasn't until I had a child that it took on a special place in my life. Like many moms, I started sewing (again) and was suddenly infected with the sewing virus. I discovered that sewing my clothes changes so much more than just my outward appearance. I wanted to capture this development on the blog and not only in fancy pictures, but also in texts that make you think.

Having already published a few books on other topics, it was my dream to write a book about dress sewing as well. Participation in the TV show helped me realize my dream - in November 2015, "Nählust statt Shoppingfrust" was published. I wrote it for "women with figure problems" - who isn't?! Instead of fussing over your own body, I find it far more satisfying to sew yourself beautiful clothes. It's not our bodies that are inferior, it's a lot of what we find in stores. That's why it's a big boost to self-confidence to wear homemade clothes and feel beautiful in them. It's not that hard to do. It's something everyone can learn, whether they've never sewn before or haven't tackled adult clothing yet, even though they already sew great sofa cushions and children's clothing. With my book I take the clothing sewing novices by the hand and accompany them in their first steps.

Your blog has a name that could basically cover the entire "do-it-yourself" spectrum. How did your blog name come about, what does it stand for?

Crafteln is a made-up word derived from the English term "crafting". Since I couldn't find a fancy German word for handicrafts or DIY, I just use this invented new word. I find it charming, DIY just.

I blog mostly about sewing and knitting, but I also love to bake bread or make other things myself. The difference is perhaps that I am more engaged with my body when making my clothes. Making clothes is "closer to me", therefore it invites me to reflect and blog more.

Lately you've also been knitting more often again, or do you actually always do that in parallel anyway? Can you tell us a little more about the differences between knitting and sewing and why you are more addicted to sewing?

Knitting and sewing belong together for me. If you wear dresses and skirts, you also need cardigans. For me, both fall under my favorite topic "making clothing yourself" and differ only in the use of different manufacturing techniques.

I do needlework with wool when I just have a lot of situations in my life where I have to sit around and I'm not mentally fully engaged. I do needlework when it is too noisy to read. I hate sitting motionless watching a movie or sitting at a soccer game. If my hands are moving and I'm making something I enjoy, it's a much better use of time.

I mainly knit or crochet accessories besides cardigans. Having these is a nice luxury, but not a necessity. While I need several dresses over the winter months, because every now and then even the most beautiful dress has to go into the laundry, a scarf would actually be enough. Since I wear a dress size for which there are not so many nice things to buy in the stores, for a long time there was a very urgent need for me to sew clothes to my liking.

Favorite scarf "Smooth" from Stephen West

For me, there are two types of needlework: the first is knitting scarves or crocheting a sofa blanket. I make these things blindly and with little concentration, respectively. I like difficult patterns, but they have to have a certain logic, so that they don't overwhelm me mentally after a while. I find this sideline handiwork a pleasant time-second use for boring activities.

Favorite child cardigan from a "hacked" tutorial

Then there's the other kind of knitting that's very similar to sewing: form-fitting knitting. When I knit a cardigan, it's knit to figure, with darts to have a good fit in the bust area, well-fitting sleeves, tailoring, and and and. I once wrote a detailed series about this on the Spring Jacket Knit Along 2014 on the Me Made Wednesday blog. When I knit a jacket like this, it takes a fair amount of brain power to make the garment come to life the way I envision it. I create my own pattern as I knit. I don't knit a garment like this in passing. It needs in between again and again concentrated time windows, in which I think further.

You're currently writing a series on pattern fitting. That sounds insanely elaborate to me. So both, the fitting but also the series about it. How did this idea come about and what topics do you cover specifically?

Since I like to wear clothes for which there are no or only a few patterns in my dress size, I have been busy for a long time to learn how to enlarge and adjust cuts. After the TV show and the success of my book "Nählust statt Shoppingfrust" it was clear that there are many women who would also like to realize their "head closet", i.e. the clothes they dream of, and that they lack the know-how to do so.

Image source: VOX/AndreasFriese

To my knowledge, there is no book on the German market that contains everything I have read together from various books. In addition, these books are daunting for many people: everything sounds so complicated and scientific. My approach is to encourage people to just give it a try. Of course, none of it is easy, but we only learn if we try. Just start, is my credo. Once you have started "hacking" patterns and adapting them to your own needs, you no longer have to doubt yourself and your own body just because it doesn't fit the much-vaunted standard figure. Instead of feeling inferior to ourselves, we can definitely get upset about why the heck there isn't a pattern that fits. The great thing about DIY is that if something doesn't exist, we make it ourselves!

Just like with my book, with the blog series I try to encourage people to take their lives in their own hands and make things fit, instead of complaining that there is nothing suitable for them. So the series is a logical continuation of "Nählust statt Shoppingfrust" - the fact that people like my posts and that they help motivates me to keep going.

Is there already a new book in the works?

In recent months, I have developed in addition to the blog series to the pattern adaptations various workshops to pass on my knowledge. There was no time to write another book. A book is a bigger project that needs many months from the idea to the sale. At the moment I have so many ideas that want to get out faster and for which quick feedback from my blog readers is also important to me. Of course, it would be wonderful if a new book would emerge from these many individual projects.

You recently thought a lot about how much a fabric can or should cost. How do you feel about the topic of wool? Which are your favorite materials, what does not work at all and what else do you look for when buying wool?

I knit with inexpensive wool. To be honest, I often enter beautiful wool stores in awe, wince when I'm approached and quickly slip out again. I find it a sensual pleasure to imagine how nice it would be to knit very delicate, high-quality, fluffy yarn and then order baby merino in the sale at the store with the green boxes again, because price-performance ratio is right for me. Sometimes I wish I could allow myself more luxury, because after all, a woman is busy with a knitted piece for quite a while, but then I'm almost always too stingy for expensive material.

Current knitting projects shown on Instagram

What do I look for when buying? I prefer to knit with thin needles (2.5 needles), because otherwise cardigans become too warm for me. That means I look in the sock knitting yarn corner and try to find material there that is a bit fancier than just plain sock yarn. And if it says silk, I'll go willy-nilly anyway....

Is there an absolute favorite piece among your self-sewn and -knitted outfits?

When it comes to sewn things, my favorite part has long been my first jacket, which together with a circle skirt, makes a beautiful costume. When I sewed this, I had the feeling that from now on I could cover virtually all situations in life with my sewing skills and also be able to dress myself in a self-determined way for official occasions. Among the knitted things, my favorite pieces are the first perfectly fitting cardigan made according to "chopped pattern" and the most recently completed shawl made of "baby camel fleece".

Last but not least: What does blogging mean to you?

Blogging is a great way for me to put three-quarter thoughts into words and then get feedback for them in return, so that the thought can mature further. I also love how certain topics spiral unplanned from blog to blog and how people learn together. Linking up and networking are very important to me, which is why I volunteer on the team that organizes Me Made Wednesday (a weekly linking platform where people show up in their homemade clothing).

I think it's very important that people understand the power inherent in blogging. Instead of just consuming magazines and unconsciously adopting their ideals, blogging gives us the power of definition. Without being chosen by a bouncer, i.e. the publisher, as in the case of a book publication, for example, we show ourselves in our blog, simply what is important to us. We write in the first person and get personal. We show ourselves the way we want to be seen. In this way, we collectively create an image of women to our liking and develop a new kind of self-confidence - and all this, even though on the surface we are "only" reporting about our hobby. That's why I see blogging as a great opportunity and also like to give talks about it. If you want to, you can hear me talk about this topic on 3.5. at GLS Bank in Berlin or watch my talk from last year on YouTube. I just don't get tired in sharing my enthusiasm about blogging and sewing clothes. Hence the motto of my blog, "Sewing is fun. Sewing clothes makes you happy!"

Thank you for your visit, Meike!

 

You can find Meike on her blog www.crafteln.de or also on Instagram(@fraucrafteln), Twitter(@FrauCrafteln) and Facebook.