Spring/Summer accessories – blush

February 8, 2010 at 12:30 pm (Objects of Desire)
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One of this year’s colour themes, “blush”, gives a chic twist to ‘pretty’, with underwear becoming outerwear, glamourous and sensual. Chiffon, lace, satin ribbon, pearls, crystals, mother-of-pearl and feathers in soft natural tones of pink, rosewood, skin, cloud and cyclamen are strong features in this look, so I’ve created a limited range of accessories to work with that look:

The first piece is an antique lace doily (yes, I know), dyed beige and then stiffened and folded to create the fan-structure … and attached to a hair-comb:

With bows, loops, feathers and alice-bands still very much of the moment, I created this one using a piece of stiffened cotton salvaged from a girl’s dress, with a pink feather accent and finished with a gold-and-pearl piece of jewellery – taken from a pair of vintage costume-jewellery earrings. The whole thing is set on a solid-silver alice-band, which started life as a necklet – I reshaped it and finished the ends so it would fit and stay on a head effectively. The loop itself can be moved around the alice band to the wearer’s preference.

The final piece is a little fabric corsage … again, it’s a vintage piece of old table linen, linen with lace edging. I put a gather into it and manipulated the folds to give a floral effect, and attached a vintage pearl earring in the centre. The flower is attached to a pin …

All these pieces are available for sale at the Flora Lou gallery in Chobham, Surrey – tel 01276 856966

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Anthriscus

February 7, 2010 at 9:19 pm (Textile Art)
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The Surrey Open Art contest is running, with a deadline for submission at the end of February. I kicked around a number of ideas for what I could create for it, and whilst I was strongly attracted to 3 or 4 different ideas, in the end I decided to work a screen/panel based on this picture:

I took this picture along the Basingstoke Canal in the summer of last year, and I love it’s textural qualities, and the way the Anthriscus dominates the foreground. I thought it’d make a good base for the project because it’s local, primarily, and because it made an ideal subject for a double screen, with the background worked on one screen and then the Anthricus embroidered over the top screen on a sheer fabric, similar to the ‘White Wisteria, Rain Meadow’ piece I did last year:

I’m working it, sticking to my practice of only using vintage fabrics, recycled garments and other found objects, though of course the embroidery silks have to be new.

The frames: I stretched a piece of chocolate-brown suede from an old skirt for the background, and used a piece of organza left over from another project for the sheer top-screen. They are stapled onto the frames and reinforced with pva. The dimensions of this piece are 24″ by 12″.

The background gets done first. My starting point was a vintage tie, deconstructed and appliqued onto the suede to form the opposite bank. Over that, I used a piece of lime-green organza with embroidery and beading detail to make an impression of the water-weed and lily-pads, shirred and ruched and then appliqued with stab-stitch onto the suede:

The next step was the background trees above the opposite bank. For this, I’ve used a variety of different fabric manipulation techniques:

Clockwise from top left:

1) Vintage green silk scarf fragment, machine random cross-tucked, with snipped fringe effect.

2) Background layer of vintage tie-dyed silk

3) Vintage green velvet with double ruffle

4) Another fragment of the green silk scarf, this time with the reverse side of lattic-smocking

5) Vintage upholstery fabric sample, with flower-pattern variation smocking

6) Yo-yo in the same upholstery fabric

7) A small flounce, layered in four rows, from a piece of dark-green polyester dress-lining, salvaged from the scrap-bag

8) Another fragment of the tie-dyed scarf, with taper-tucks and snip fringing on alternate rows

9) More of the green velvet, in straight tucks

10) The green silk scarf, this time with the ‘front’ of the lattice-smocking showing

11) Yo-yo made from the green lining fabric

12) Another section of flower-smocked upholstery fabric

13) Yo-yo from the tie-dye scarf.

My next step is to add some surface embroidery to these elements to tone them in better together, to embroider some reeds onto the opposite bank and some water-surface detail onto the base, but so far I’m pleased with how it’s going:

The organza has been bothering me ever since I started this – although it’s sheer, it’s also highly reflective. If light is shining on the foreground, then it’s impossible to see anything of the background detail … so this afternoon I ripped the organza off the frame, and thieved some net off a dressing-up costume I made for Honey a couple of years ago (even though it doesn’t fit her any more, she still complained when she caught me at it!! Minx!), and I’m much happier with the overall effect now. That, however, will have it’s own price to pay, since the more open mesh structure of the net will mean it’s going to be harder to embroider the fine detail of the flowers … but I think it’s a price worth paying.

I’m wondering, actually, whether to carry on and embroider the flower detail onto the organza anyway, and then shadow-applique it onto the net when it’s done. It’ll be a terrible fiddle, but possibly well worth doing.

Thankfully, I don’t need to decide right now, since I need to finish the background detailing first … but I don’t have much time left! I need to get it finished up soon, so that I can get it framed and ready to deliver on the 26th Feb.

Suddenly, the clock is ticking very and extremely loudly.

I see some late nights ahead!

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Indian Summer

February 2, 2010 at 9:15 pm (Soft Furnishings, Textile Art)
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Another day, another pillow :)

These rectangular cushions are very popular at the moment …. this one is worked in a vintage saffron-gold needlecord, with an appliqued panel of chocolate-brown shot silk. I embroidered the elephant design in concentric rings of chain stitch, using different co-ordinating coloured embroidery threads.

I am seriously loving those bright, rich colours, especially when everything outside is so grim and grey.

I’m really pleased with how the embroidery came out – it draws on ethnic techniques and style, without going too overboard.

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Refashion: A set of skirts

January 18, 2010 at 11:59 pm (Refashions)
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Bella has outgrown all her cute dresses …. desperate to keep them going as long as possible, I’ve cut down a load of them into skirts!

I think this one is my favourite – it was originally a long-sleeved corduroy dress I snagged at an NCT sale last year, but it was too tight under the arms and across the chest, and getting far too short! I cut it off just below the armpit line – it had a shirred neckline so plenty of fabric in there, and just sewed a channel for an elastic to hold it up. Totally easy.

Not as easy as the next one, though! It was a little Boden pinafore dress I picked up in the seconds sale they had down the road last year … because it had the shirred back, I didn’t need to do anything except unpick the straps, et voila!

This was probably the most complicated of them. It was a proper old-fashioned pinafore dress, so I cut it off just across the arm-hole line. It was lined, so I turned in the hem and lining and re-hemmed the waistband, and it fastens with a hook-and-eye, with a press-stud to close the other end. I needed to open it along the back seam so she could get into it, and I’m thinking I might put in a zip just to finish it nicely – it stays closed just fine, I just get obsessive about those details, and I’ve got any number of salvaged zips in stash that would fit the bill ….

Another outgrown sundress – this one with shirring around the chest and simple spaghetti straps. I took off the straps and just hemmed the top with more shirring. I <3 elastic :)

And finally …. this is the only one that didn’t start life as a skirt (or dress). Originally, this was a pair of velour knit leggings and the little tunic-y sundress I pretty much always teamed it with. The leggings just got too short, so I revamped them into a skirt, and sewed the ruffle from the bottom of the sundress onto the bottom of the new skirt. I needed to use the overlock, since the leggings were a knit, but it’s worked out really very nicely indeed.

And that all made my oldest daughter grumpy, because none of her clothes get madeover – they get stashed for when Bella is big enough to wear them. I redeemed myself by making her a new skirt, to the style of her choosing, from the fabric out of stash that she chose …. trouble is, Rumpus thought he’d join in the makeover frenzy, and chopped up his favourite pair of pyjamas. Going to be a bit of a challenge, saving them ;)

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Tudor Rose

January 11, 2010 at 1:43 pm (Costumes)
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Honey is going away to Hooke Court on a school trip, as part of her studies of the Tudors. They will be having a tudor banquet at some point (no larks heads or stuffed swans, I hope) and have been asked to attend in full tudor dress.

Never one to miss an opportunity to play at costume making, I offered to make her tudor outfit for her … we had great fun researching tudor dress, and despite my best efforts to steer her towards the simpler peasant and servant dresses, she fell in love with this picture of the young Princess Elizabeth:

Reading up on the detail of how these dresses were put together on the Elizabethan Costume Pages was a little daunting – these are not single pieces, rather multiple layers, and without the benefits of zips, buttons and lycra, they needed help to get themselves dressed (hence tiring women and gentlemen of the chamber).  This presented a challenge – Honey’s costume needed to look authentic, but had to be practical so she can actually get into it herself, and not so heavy and cumbersome that she can’t move around easily into it.

To understand the structure of the garments I borrowed “The Evolution of Fashion: Pattern and Cut From 1066 to 1930” from the local library – an incredibly useful reference, that I’ve got on my amazon wishlist now …. again, the complexity was a bit daunting, but it gave my some useful insights into how to put the thing together.

So, having done the initial deliberations and got to the point where I understood how to put the thing together, I needed to get fabric!

Charity shops were my first port of call … I had in my head that if I could find a good thick pair of velvet or brocade curtains (or other fabric), then that’d be my best bet … as it turned out, the only curtains even vaguely suitable were pale green dupion silk, and to be honest I just felt it wouldn’t be right to cut into them because they were in such perfect condition (and, of course, that silk wasn’t contemporary to the period).

Instead, I rummaged through the clothing racks, and found a white gypsy-style shirt, a black bustier (size 8), a purple crushed-velvet dress and a gold-crochet smock top … possibilities started to open up! I made her a Narnia costume earlier in the year, and it occurred to me I could use the skirt from that as the underskirt for the princess costume … the colours weren’t exact, but helpful folks on forward motion and wardrobe refashion mentioned that there was a certain amount of mix-and-match  in dressing so I figured that would be OK.

In the end I made the costume in three parts – mostly so Honey could get into it herself.

The underskirt … initially I stiffened it (seeing a skirt stand up by itself is an amazing sight!) but Honey complained it was too scratchy and uncomfortable so I washed out the stiffening solution and left it as was. For the same reason, I ruled out bum-rolls, farthingales, hoops and multiple petticoats, andI looked a little earlier in the period where the costume was slightly more fluid, closer to medieval dresses but still recognisably tudor. I decided to use the gold crochet as the forepart and as decoration on the top half of the “french gown” element of the dress, so I unpicked the back and sewed it onto the front of the underskirt – to minimise the amount of work Honey would need to do.

The bodice – I turned the black bustier I found upside-down and back-to-front, so that Honey could zip it closed herself. I dyed the gypsy-shirt a burnt orange colour, and fixed the bustier over it (trimming away the excess fabric underneath), and then slipped the gold crochet front-and-sleeves over it, and sewed it in place, shaping the neck square as I went.

The third and final piece was the ‘french gown’ itself – for that I simply slit the purple crushed velvet dress up the front, and took a panel out of the bodice. I opted for a buttonhole fastening – non-authentic, but Honey-friendly, with a big, ornamented button that looked the part, and then finished it with a string of beads … after I’d hooked a cheapo stash crucifix onto it.

And then … the headdress. Ulp. Actually, not so horrendous. I started with a plain alice band – I cut a piece of stiff card and covered it in the purple velvet off-cuts from the dress, and made a snood out of an old bit of glittery black lycra … and then an old diamante necklace provided the required bling on the headdress itself.

Come the try-on, and Honey was thrilled! We’d been through an element of “having a homemade costume is embarrassing” (but she didn’t want me to buy one for her) which I found terrible confusing … but she’s really happy with what I’ve made. I made her a skirt before Christmas, and off the back of that (she wore it for the Christmas party) her teacher has been looking forward to seeing the tudor outfit (no pressure, then ;) ). Hopefully, though, it will all go well and everyone will be happy.

What do you think?

And a close-up:

Phew! I enjoyed the process …. and of course I’ll get to do it all over again in a couple of years time when it’s Rumpus’ turn to go through the tudor experience – a male costume should, I hope, be much easier. I wonder if I can persuade him that cardinal wolsey is a good look?

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Shabby chic blues

January 9, 2010 at 9:00 am (Objects of Desire)
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It’s a gift!

This is a commissioned piece I worked recently – a gift for a new house. The recipient had just moved into an ancient cottage, and adores “shabby chic”, so this sofa pillow seemed like the perfect gift.

The body of the pillow came from an antique linen tablecloth that was beyond use, and had belonged to the client’s grandmother. The strip of blue fabric came from an old blue antimaccassar, and I appliqued the pretty blue floral (which came from a pretty little girl’s dress) with the linen heart-shaped overlay, stitched and fringed.

I adore it, and I hope the recipient did, too.

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Caramel Dream

January 6, 2010 at 9:11 pm (Objects of Desire)
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I’ve created a range of corsages and hair adornments, picking up on the soft chocolate browns and oranges that I’m seeing everywhere at the moment.

Each piece is made using salvaged fabric from old garments, pieces of vintage material and other remnants, and an assortment of costume jewellery and found beads, buttons and other objects. Just about anything that catches my Magpie eye will get used in my work, one way or another …

These hair clips incorporate broken pieces of gold dress watch chain, old copper cufflinks, an antique clock key and sequins salvaged from a dress – the spares that come in a little baggie, like you’ll ever sew them back onto the dress ;)

All the pieces in this collection are worked in a gorgeous bold vintage cotton print – overblown cabbage roses. The pattern lent itself to these floral corsages with brass buttons gleaming at their centres. The pleated hair comb is hand-beaded, using coral beads recovered from a broken necklace.

These corsages are again worked using the same vintage cotton fabric, but this time incorporating a chocolate brown knit, obtained by felting down a motheaten old sweater. This time, the flowers look more like carnations than roses, and the deliberately frayed edges of the cotton work well with the softness of the knit. The orange stone in the big chocolate knit corsage came from a vintage pendant, and the beads are again coral, and again from a broken necklace.

This set of alice bands and hair-comb was inspired by the 40’s. The fabric has been stiffened before attaching, giving an elegant, structured shape that seems to float on the hair. A hint of sparkle is added with old buttons from the almighty stash ….

I love these pieces – parting with them is so difficult! Still, I have been strong (and because I made myself realise that I’d never wear *all* of them :) ), and they’ve wended their way down to Flora Lou in Chobham, where I hope they will soon make someone very happy.

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Patchwork experiments

December 17, 2009 at 12:02 am (Patchwork)
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It’s been a bit hectic round here, getting all the Christmas stock pieces done and out the door to the two galleries, and I feel like I’ve hardly been able to draw breath for the last couple of months. Once I’ve got myself organised again, I’ll post up some pictures of what I’ve been doing!

Finally, now, I’ve found some time to work on some projects for myself. Up until now, all the patchwork I’ve done has been reusing clothes, so the shapes have been dictated by the material, rather than the other way round. However, I acquired an old patchwork book at the school summer fair – a 1979 copy of ‘Patchwork & Applique’ published by Marshall Cavendish - and have been itching to try out some of the ideas from it. That meant cutting the fabric to the pattern, rather than letting the fabric dictate the pattern, so I used some scrap bits and pieces from the vast stash.

I wanted to play around with some different shapes, so I drew up a pattern on a grid:

It was only when I started numbering it that I realised how hideously complicated it would be to put together – the whole thing measures 40 x 40 cm. Nonetheless, I ploughed on and cut the fabric pieces, leaving about a 1.5cm seam allowance around each piece and pinning its pattern piece onto it. In retrospect, I should have thought harder about making up blocks I could put together, rather than just working my way out from the centre.

There’s a huge amount of fiddly, small-length sewing involved here, a lot of faffing about with the iron, and a fair amount of me wondering whether mixing the textures and weights of fabric was such a good idea. It didn’t help that I figured out pretty late on that it would have been easier to get a uniform result with the angles and alignment if I’d interfaced each piece individually to hem it into shape, and attached them together afterwards. Still, the overall result wasn’t too terrible:

I do love the little silvery/pewter buttons at each of the four corners of the central square! I backed the whole thing onto a square cut out of the good end of  a slowly disintegrating antique linen tablecloth that I had from my grandmother. I *love* old linen, especially the damask’d linen. It looks fantastic and it feels glorious, with its little silvery patterns and gradations in the fabric. mmmmmmm.

Just for good measure, I put together another, smaller cushion, this time 30cm x 30cm:

I like this one better, though the irregular shapes were hellish to put together. The button in the centre is perfect!

I’ve learned a huge amount doing this – it’s a much more complex process than working regular patterns of all the same shape & size as I’ve done in the past and takes a comparatively greater amount of focus and concentration and attention to the minutest detail of technique to get right. It’s something I will work on again, trying to hone the technique to get the results more uniform, though part of what I like about these is that they’re not absolutely perfect – they are handmade, not machine perfect, and the overall effect fits in with what I do and how I work – giving a contemporary twist on traditional techniques, using fabrics that would otherwise get junked – old clothes, vintage pieces, samples and remnants, so they’re not too twee.

Now all I need to decide is what to do with them - keep, or gift them on to a lucky friend or relative?

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Gift for a new baby

October 18, 2009 at 7:09 pm (Patchwork)
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Back at the beginning of the year, I made a playmat for my sister’s new baby out of old fabric baby books … they were too tatty to hand on in their original state, but the pages were so delightful and held so much interest for little ones, especially helping them get over the ‘being-on-their-tummy’ phase when they’re not quite crawling – plenty to discover and do – that I wanted to re-use them somehow.

JeffordPatchworkPlaymat (2)

I enjoyed making it, and her little boy has absolutely loved it …. and it has endured – I made it good and strong, but you’re never sure how much abuse these things are going to get, especially when older siblings get involved in the equation.

For that reason, it never crossed my mind that there’d be any sort of commercial demand for these, so it surprised me that I’ve made another 3 of these since then (I owe my sister a *huge* thank you!), and now a fourth … and this time, I’ve got permission to post the picture:

Hobbis Playmat (1)

Welcome to the world, baby Cian! I hope you enjoy playing on this ….

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An ancient friend …

September 30, 2009 at 9:54 pm (Objects of Desire)
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A long, long time ago, I walked past a charity shop, and there, looking all forlorn in the window, was an old-fashioned sewing machine, one of the cabinet ones, a Singer.

I don’t know why, but I knew I had to have it … at the time I didn’t do any sewing, and I didn’t have any money, really, but I scraped the £50 together and went and got it. I won’t tell you how long it took us to get the thing up six flights of stairs to our third floor apartment … but it’s been with me (us) ever since, 20 years now, and I still love it, even if it doesn’t work any more.

Here she is:

Landscape 035

Dated 1908, it’s a cast-iron treadle operated machine (still with the original drive band) that can slide back into its cabinet, and when I opened up the drawers in the cabinet, I found the original instruction manual and the box with all the accessories.

What I particularly loved was that most of the drawers had bits and pieces of notions and threads and needles in them, and it felt wonderful to have that connection back to whoever first owned and loved it.

I particularly adore the art deco design on the machine, and the tooled panel on the front is just gorgeous. Singer (3)

Singer (6)

I used it extensively when I first started sewing, and although it took me a while to get fluent with the treadle action, the effort was worthwhile because it was a beautiful, well-mannered machine to work on. Sadly, I wore out one of the springs in the tension plate – it snapped – and I’ve been unable to replace it, despite the best efforts of the lovely people at the Singer Sewing Centre in Woking. I sometimes toy with the idea of contacting Singer direct, but I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t be interested in my old croc, so I just keep her clean and admire her beauty ….

Even though I now work quite happily on a modern Frister & Rossman (modern! It’s 20 years old if it’s a day!), I don’t think I’ll ever part with this old lady – she’s part of the family, now.

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