Thursday, September 12, 2013

harvest 2013: lavender sachets


back in July, I cut my lavender, just as it was starting to fully open. I tied it up and hung it to dry for a week or two. After they'd dried, I worked all the flower buds off the stems and placed them in a big brown paper sack.

I knew I was going to make sachets, and I wanted to stretch the lavender buds a bit further. So this year, I combined the garden lavender with a couple ounces of dried meadowsweet that I bought at Dandelion Apothecary in Ballard.

Meadowsweet is a traditional strewing herb. It was used in the medieval era to sweeten linen cupboards and floors, so I knew it would be pleasant. Its scent is sweet and grassy, about what you'd expect, based on the name.


Then one afternoon I cut out a bunch of rectangles from my favorite toile-printed cotton duck fabric. With right sides of the fabric together, I stitched three sides of the rectangles together, and then turned them right side out. I stuffed each one tightly with the lavender and meadowsweet before turning under the top edge and hand-stitching each closed.

Then we tossed 'em into our drawers. Every time I'm pulling out a shirt, if I can see one of the sachets, I grab it, squeeze it a bit, and toss it into another part of the drawer. The other day my overshirt smelled of lavender and meadowsweet all day. It was wonderful to inhale!

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