Worthing's BugCycle community garden has just become even more colourful thanks to a generous donation from Gudrun Sjödén, Swedish designer of sustainable fashion and champion of environmentally conscious design. Gudrun kindly sent us a bundle of eco-cotton fabrics and home furnishings to use in our burgeoning wildlife garden.
BugCycle was set up by community arts producers Creative Waves in partnership with Worthing Wildlife to regenerate an area in one of the town's central parks. Since February this year, they and a team of volunteers have transformed a disused part of Beach House Park using largely found, recycled and donated materials into a living, educational, sensory garden for all to enjoy.
Gudrun Sjödén sent us a selection of Långrand striped organic cottons in delicious shades of guava/turquoise, lavendula/sky, asparagus/pineapple and peony. I decided to make gardening hats and aprons for our volunteers to wear, as well as some cushions and bright bunting to decorate and furnish the garden. I used these fabulous fabrics together with some Gudrun Sjödén material left over from previous projects.
The aprons are based on Gudrun's perfectly practical Nyttan gardening apron with one large divided wrap around pocket and long fastening ties (I'm wearing a ruby red Nyttan apron in these photos). The hats are made using Etsy shop WorthyGoods super Over The Top sun hat sewing pattern. I sewed simple envelope back cushion covers from the Långrand cotton to complement two of Gudrun's Melissa and Flox print cushions. All left over pieces of fabric were cut into triangles of different sizes and sewn into colourful bunting. Not a scrap of material was wasted!
These photos were taken at a Creative Waves BugCycle Art in the Park workshop, but on another day you could see the Worthing Wildlife Team at work here, one of the town's community groups or up to 120 local school children using the garden as an outdoor learning space.
We'd like to thank Gudrun Sjödén for bringing her Swedish design with a green soul to our own very green and thriving community garden!
Gudrun's eco-cotton fabrics and home furnishings are available from her web shop.