Keeping the Tradition Alive

Happy New Year Friends and Crafters! If you celebrate Christmas I hope you all had a wonderful season and are sufficiently stuffed full of turkey. If you don't celebrate Christmas... well I hope the same thing really.

My mum truly cashed in on my sewing obsession this Christmas by buying me a beautiful sewing basket, something which I have never had before. Don't get me wrong, I chose it and carried it most of the way home from Leeds, but then I had to wait the painful 4 weeks before I could open it and start organising my sewing tools (which I was keeping in a pile on my coffee table, and therefore now have coffee stained white thread).

Sewing Basket from HobbyCraft

I'm going to do a full post about this later, along with my sewing essentials. As today's post is about two amazing things which I inherited last night. But first, I need to tell you about my Grandma Lisek.

Zofia Kwoka moved to Britain from Poland after the Second World War, during those safe couple of years of freedom. She arrived in London and quickly met and fell in love with Adam Lisek, my grandfather. From there they moved to Halifax, where many Eastern European immigrants were living at the time, settled in and had a family. Zofia worked in a factory, sewing and creating for good old M&S; Adam was an engineer. From the stories which my mum has told I know that she was a talented seamstress who passed her knowledge down to her youngest daughter, very much as my mum has done for me. Sadly, she passed away in 1989, three months before I was born. Yet even though I have never known her or met her I feel like she makes up a large part of who I am. Which is why I cried last night when I was handed her sewing basket. 

I haven't had a chance to investigate it fully, as I have a day job, but I had a wee look through it last night. Many of the threads are industrial standard as they came home from her work. There's also some haberdashery gems from the 60's and 70's, including this...

In my head everything used to cost 2 and 6 pence back in the day...

As well as her sewing basket I was also gifted her old button box, which is probably where my first memories of sewing came from...

Apparently it was originally a present from Santa for my auntie, but became my grandma's button box. The majority of these are from outfits bought between the 50s and 80s and are pretty weathered. They're what vintage means in my eyes. So yeah, if anyone wants a rustic button look no further.

I've always heard stories about my mum making her own clothes with my grandma, and I imagine it all started with these boxes. I'm proud to have taken after them. Between my obsession with Poland and my sewing 'talent' (albeit however little there may be of that...) I feel more like a Lisek than ever.

So there you are... my new toys. I'm currently working on a mini project which is keeping me out of trouble during my skint January and will have my first travel post in the next month ('cause I'ma going on holiday next month! :D)

Please let me know if you found this interesting and until next time lovelies!

Kat, over and out.