Wednesday 19 February 2014

Filou, the flounder


I can re-assure you, Filou is still alive. I haven't eaten him, I promise!

How it all started: I love flicking through the cooking books of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Not because I'm looking for recipes (you know that cooking is not my favourite past time, although eating is), but rather to enjoy the lovely illustrations. I particularly like the book "Hugh's Three Good Things", which has previously inspired my vegetable bunting

I have to write a little bit more about Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall as he is such an inspiring person. In 1999, the London journalist moved to the countryside of Dorset, to film a TV show about how he dealt with becoming a self sufficient small holder in the series "Escape to River Cottage".

 Along the way he shows how he deals with occuring problems due to his own inexpericence, gives insight in country life and  introduces the local farmers.

As the TV Series becomes more popular, he started expanding his adventures - included fishing, foraging, going on mushroom forray, seasonal farming, chicking holding, cheese making, bread baking, preserving, home brewing and much more. Besides his cooking books he has another more specific series of books "River Cottage Handbook No.1-10", in which he lets specialists detail about their own area of expertise (e.g. bread baking, brewing). 

He now supports many campaigns, like Hugh's Fish Fight (saving certain areas in the sea for fish population recovery. By the way, Tim Mälzer is a huge supporter of this campaign in Germany), Chicken-out Campaign (to stop chicken from being reared in cages for egg production or fatting them to sell the meat), the Land Share Project (to re-purpose unused land for allotments) and much more.

I respect Hugh as he is a man of simplicity who likes to share his gifts with others, is happy to trade knowledge and talent, he enjoys engaging with the community and promotes healthy living, and all in all he's very down-to-earth. It always inspires me to see what a single person can do to help others.  

Coming back to where I started ... I saw the quirky drawing of a flatfish in one of Hugh's cooking books, and so I decided to sew one just for the fun of it. 






I finally got round to using the embroidery foot of my sewing machine to embroider the felt patches and to create the textured scaling of the fish. Unintentionally, the embroidered scales created bubbles, which although probably wrong, I think looks great.

Another premier was the "quilting" of the fins and tail of the flounder. I stuffed the pre-sewed fabric with wadding and embroidered it with a wave like pattern.


I used up nearly all of my fluorescent NEON thread which I bought at Lidl, so I was very happy when I discovered, that Hobby Craft now finally stocks the NEON thread from Gütermann. I could stare for hours at my new NEON threads, my little gems.


What do you think of the new NEON threads from Gütermann and for what sewing project would you like to use them for?

4 comments:

  1. He is just divine! I love the unintended bubble scales.

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  2. Dein Flunder sieht total appetitlich aus und witzig dazu : )
    Klasse !
    Brigitte

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Danke Biggi! Flunder mit Pellkartoffeln, Butter und Petersilie... mmh!

      Delete

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