Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear: From Seed to Style the Sustainable Way

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Onion is a great choice, as it can be cultivated easily and if people lack space to grow it, it’s common enough to be able to source skins. It may vary depending on the fabric, water pH level, time in the foraging season, the freshness and quality of the crop etc. Right now, the book offers a very feasible experience that does not involve growing plants to extract fiber, dyeing those and then weaving them into a fabric. The garment patterns are included in a folder within the book and are for a dress, a duster jacket, a bolero, a shirt (dress) and a pair of shorts. It’s the best, most natural embodiment of a circular economy, something that’s often perceived as an academic and lofty concept.

The patterns are easy to follow with detailed instructions for each garment - even a beginner could follow quite easily, provided they can work a basic sewing machine. Rhubarb is a zero waste plant – dye with the roots and eat the stalks; the leaves are poisonous but powerful mordants to prepare fabric for dyeing. In the book’s dye section, I share instructions on how to extract dye and a color map for each crop. I was inspired by Bella's unique proposal for growing, cooking, and making clothes in an elevated and stylish way. The common phenomena now is that people wear things once and then throw it away, particularly in the UK.A miniature circular economy highlights the journey from seed to crop, from harvest to plant-based cooking, food waste to DIY natural dyeing and contemporary dressmaking. With clothes, as with vegetables, the end product is often presented in a manner detached from its origins and it’s too easy to forget that everything we eat, consume and wear comes from nature. Each chapter focuses on one crop from sowing, cultivating and harvesting, to several delicious recipes, to notes on dying with examples of the range of colours that can be achieved.

She has a clear, engaging vision of how we can live sustainably and shares this with warmth rather than worthiness. Focused around five crops (blackberry, nettle, onion, red cabbage, and rhubarb) that can be foraged or grown in an allotment, planter, or container, the author shows you how to embrace a holistic garden-to-garment lifestyle in her book: Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear. Extracting from her own experience as a fashion designer and plant grower, Bella inspires a more sustainable lifestyle through a journey from seed to crop, from harvest to plant-based cooking and utilising food waste to create fabric dye for contemporary dressmaking. AS: You speak about the link between fashion and psychology, in a context to who you become on the journey of making your own clothes. Her cooking is influenced by the principles of sustainability as well as by the flavours of her Tel Aviv childhood.The book will guide you through every step of the process, you will learn not only how to forage, sow, harvest, and cook your own fruits and vegetables, but also how to use your homegrown produce to create natural dyes. The aim here isn’t for readers to grow all of their vegetables, hand make all clothes, or even convert to a strict vegan diet.

The book also tells my story – because I worked as a designer for big fashion houses around the world and became incredibly disillusioned by the industry. More often than not, circular economy and DIY approaches don't excel in the style department, however the photography, styling and overall taste in this book is on a different level and a proof that there is a way to live in a more thoughtful lifestyle without giving up the pleasures of a delicious meal or a beautifully made garment. It is about establishing a more intimate connection with nature and finding a new perspective on mass-produced products. If you are interested in slow fashion, growing your own food, vegan recipes and producing less waste this is the book for you. Also used in food processing, alum is not poisonous in small quantities and it is a natural mineral.

Once you’ve mastered dying your own fabrics, you can then transform those fabrics into exclusively designed pieces of clothing (including a shirt dress and a duster coat) using Bella’s five full-size pattern sheets. One of them is pH level in water – modifiers like lemon help intentionally change the pH level and so a murky brown can become pink. Inhaltlich hat mir das Buch so gut gefallen, dass ich es mir nach der Kindle-Version noch in Buchform bestellt habe. Once you’ve perfected the process of dying your own fabrics, you can then transform those fabrics into exclusively designed pieces of clothing, including a shirt dress and a duster coat, using Bella’s five full-size pattern sheets that come together with the book! If the initial age verification is unsuccessful, we will contact you asking you to provide further information to prove that you are aged 18 or over.