We have to reconsider our relationship with clothes. Through fast fashion we are bombarded with clothes and they have become disposable. The common phenomena now is that people wear things once and then throw it away, particularly in the UK. I find that baffling. If you went through the journey of making the garment, you would never throw it – you would mend it, pass it along to family and friends, it becomes a part of you and you become a part of it.

You have to have a willingness to engage. You might just cook a couple of recipes or you might experiment with dying. You need to be open to investing time. That's the most expensive ingredient in the book: time. Natural dye specialist Babs Behan laughs when asked about her favourite natural dye plant. "Like people, they all have such a beautiful variety of different characteristics," she says. "But, if I had to choose one, indigo stands out. It's not like any other dye. It's not water soluble – so you have to go through this charming, alchemical, almost mystical process, to make it bond with the fibre. Then you take the fabric out of the water and you'll see it turn from green to blue as it oxidises. There's something so special about that because it's the colour of our planet. It's the colour of the sky and the sea – and we can't capture it from anywhere except from this one indigo pigment." Transform your fabrics into five exclusively designed, essential pieces, including a shirt dress and duster coat.

Introducing Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear– a fully-illustrated guide that explains how to follow a completely sustainable approach to both food and fashion, by combining the two to achieve self-sufficiency in style! Swap food waste and fast fashion for homegrown produce, delicious vegan dishes, and a contemporary capsule wardrobe with the help of fashion designer, dressmaker, and writer Bella Gonshorovitz. That’s why I spent a long time on the sewing illustrations. If you don’t know how to sew at all, it’s probably not the best place to start, but if you have some experience, the onion dress is probably the easiest project. And the wonderful thing about natural dye is that, if you do have an old cloth that is imbued with memory and some stains, the dye works quite well with it. Transform your fabrics into five exclusively-designed essential pieces, including a shirt dress and duster coat. Create heirlooms from scraps with Modern Quilting: A Contemporary Guide to Quilting by Hand, by Julius Arthur of House of Quinn. A brilliant guide to making chic, minimal quilts, ideal for first-time crafters.

During the pandemic, I was making protective gowns for doctors in hospitals since the UK had a shortage. Then the title came to my head – Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear. I made the onion dyed dress from upcycled fabrics for myself, showed it to my agent – who helped me put together a proposal. It took three months for me to get the book down. It became a vehicle for me to share this ideology and everything played out organically. From sowing to sewing, Bella guides you with engaging stories, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step illustrations, and full-scale pattern sheets. Bella: I started my own made-to-measure studio - reluctantly at first, because I didn’t want to let go of design and fashion, as I perceived it then, and become only a dressmaker. However, once I started doing it, it solved a lot of problems I had thought of as ethical but which were actually sustainability issues. The idea is to embody circular economy as something approachable – where you can capture its essence in the title of the book itself. Every stage has tangible results that are in the reader’s hands. Since this circularity is on a small scale – starting in your own garden, in your kitchen with your own sewing machine, I call it miniature. However, it is challenging to live that way or even do the whole process of the book in just one season. Bella: I had the title ‘Grow, Cook, Dye’ in my head and thought ‘what am I going to do with it?’ I was growing vegetables in my allotment and working with natural dyes. And, at the same time, I started making artwork with a client of mine, an artist called Cathie Pilkington. And I just started connecting the dots between growing things and cooking things and dyeing clothing.

Read the latest edition of Wicked Leeks online

Whether you’re looking to rethink your lifestyle, embrace slow fashion, try a plant-based diet or simply give growing your own produce a go, Bella’s friendly, accessible approach to sustainable living will help you get started, create more and waste less.

Bel: I agree. Personal action is important. For example, I’m vegan because I don’t want to cause animal suffering. It would actually be quite difficult for me now to eat the body of an animal. Animal suffering and eating meat and dairy are inextricably linked. Likewise, if you know that the clothes you’re buying have been produced in a polluting, extractive, exploitative way, it should be quite difficult to buy them.I also tend to think of consumer responsibility as modelling new ways of living in the future. Because we need to learn to live in these ways now. Plus, in this time of crisis, we have to have everyone - ordinary people, policy makers, brands. So the re-education you talk about is key.A strong part of why I wanted to design in the first place, why I wanted to make clothes, was [to look at] how clothes become memory. I wear things for decades. Even if they don't fit anymore, I find a way to adjust them. I can't let go of things and if something gets lost, I’m devastated. When fast fashion became so big, I was just staggered that people could buy something and then just throw it away. Clothes are imbued with what you had with the garment.

Transform your fabrics into five exclusively designed, essential pieces of clothing, including a shirt dress and duster coat Bella: [The book] is for anyone who enjoys doing things with their hands. The book doesn't ask you for expensive ingredients or special knowledge. It's about doing quite a lot with very little, with a real emphasis on upcycling and working with what’s already there, whether that’s an old sheet or tablecloth.For example, using an iron mordant with the berries will produce spellbindingly deep, dusky blues, while adding an iron mordant to the pesky bramble branches and shoots will extract bluish-green, dusty greens. AS: In industrial dyeing, the waste water creates the highest environmental impact. What is the disposalprocess in domestic dyeing – can there be any harmful impacts? The aim here isn’t for readers to grow all of their vegetables, hand make all clothes, or even convert to a strict vegan diet. It is about establishing a more intimate connection with nature and finding a new perspective on mass-produced products. With clothes, as with vegetables, the end product is often presented in a manner detached from its origins and it’s too easy to forget that everything we eat, consume and wear comes from nature. AS: What is the elaborated concept of garden to garment? Author Bella Gonshorovitz shares her ideology on creating circularity at home, from the seeds in the garden to the garments in your wardrobe Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear – Bella Gonshorovitz’s book From sowing to sewing, Bella guides you with engaging stories, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step illustrations, and full-scale pattern sheets, as well as: