This month’s book recommendation is, Forgotten Ways for Modern Days by Rachelle Blondel*. The book has a good variety of natural home and garden remedies along with personal care. As you can see in the index picture, this book covers a little bit of everything from crafts to gardening, home care, cleaning, to personal care. It’s well organized with how-to tip sections dispersed throughout the book. As the name implies, the book focuses on a variety of traditional home and personal care tips that use natural ingredients, or up-cycled materials.
Usually for my book recommendations, I try to lean towards authors that write about recycling and plastic-free living. But I felt like this month’s book would be a good fit because of it’s focus on traditional skills and knowledge which are great for sustainable and eco-friendly living.
What I was specifically looking for in the book
While I like the cleaning tips, the main reason I got this book was for the sewing and craft projects. It has instructions for making beeswax wraps, one of the plastic-free alternatives for this month’s challenge. I also saw a pattern for sewing cotton produce bags which would have been great for making bread bags last month. To make my bread bags, I went the tea towel route. I am going to need reusable gift bags here pretty soon. So I’ll be trying out the pattern for those when December rolls around, if not sooner.
But the thing that really caught my eye in the book was the “odds and ends comforter”. The comforter looks like a ‘biscuit or puff quilt’. I’ve randomly seen biscuit quilts at craft fairs, and there are tutorial videos on how to make them. But I really like the book’s pattern for this type of biscuit quilt. So this is the project I plan to start pronto! It looks like a good pattern for a beginner sewer like me. It will also use up a lot of old fabric and pillow fluff that I’ve been saving.
Why this is this month’s book recommendation
I would recommend this book because it has a lot of variety for sustainable, eco-friendly, DIY ideas. You can find it online or at my bookshop.org* page along with some of my other book recommendations. I’m still growing my book list, so if you have any recommendations for eco-friendly living be sure to mention them in the comments below!
I will only recommend products that I personally use and love and hope can be of benefit to others in their sustainable journeys. (*) indicates an affiliate link where Sustainable Pursuits llc may receive a small compensation for product recommendations. This helps to support Sustainable Pursuits llc and my ability to share these experiences with you!
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