Down to the Wire

My big Flea Market is in five days, and now I'm going crazy trying to finish everything up. If you're in the Philly area, you should definately come! Info can be found here

My intership is also over soon-July 6th, and there's still so much to do. I wish I could come in more, but I'm always working my real job.

We've dyed sooo much silk, that's all china silk and silk organza. The colors are incredibly beautiful, and I just want to steal it all and use it for my own work. The china silk at least, I don't really care for how stiff the organza is.

One of Juliet's dresses. All the dresses are just kinda rectangle shapes rather messily sewn together, it's really not my aesthetic at all, but hey, I'm an intern, I just do what I'm told. I tried to fit this one a little nicer, but my teacher didn't like it that way. Oh well~

My proudest moment this week has to be my self-made clothes rack. I have a little T-rack, but I sadly left it back home in Jersey, and can't get back to pick it up. So I did the next best thing and ran down to Lowes and picked up some iron piping. At first I was going to use PVC, but the iron is so much stronger, I'm glad I pitched in the extra money for it.

My poor hands after lugging those pipes many many blocks. I was also carrying two huge bags of materials from JoMar and the thrift store, so I ended up putting them on the ends of the pipes and carrying it across my shoulders. Not fun! It was one of the only times I wished I had a car up here.

And assembled. I'm stupidly happy with myself for figuring this out. It's super solid, and I can always take it apart!

And here's some more shirts and things I've been working away on~


Nice little pile of XL t-shirts I scored that magically became:




I think the bottom one's my favorite, opinions?


Also made an awesomely tacky daisy dress.

And a super comfy plaid dress.

I'm also keeping up on my Zodiac pendants--here's most of them printed up. All the fabric is hand-dyed, and all the ink is hand mixed with procion dyes and print paste.


And finally, a present for the my handsome man, an embroidered patch for his musical project, Days Run Away.

Mass Output

I keep promising I'm going to catch up to the point where each entry isn't a painfully large amount of pictures to upload. But it didn't happen this time at all. So get ready, many photos---I've been working hard~!


Finally printed up some real business cards! Yes, they're made of fabric, not paper. Why not? Also, I didn't have any paper or paper-appropriate inks. Please don't go to the Carbonmade site yet, I'm still working on it~


My Elements pendants are almost done, just have to get cords and put the pin backs on the pins. I made 15 of each, 8 pins, 7 necklaces. They're cute, but I'm not happy with how the backs look, I'm going to try something new with the astrology ones I'm working on now.


I do knit! Just not that often. One of the universities around here is having an eco fashion show, so I'm playing around with making some giant cables out of recycled yarn. Frogging all those sweaters was a pain, and knitting with 8-10 strands isn't very fun either. I'm working on a blue one now, but I'm hoping I can get more white sweaters and just make it all white.


Gives you a better idea of size.



Using the rest of my wing print fabric, just made a little double-ruffle skirt.


Believe it or not, the two ruffles are from the same piece of cloth, the top one accidentally fell into the water when I was bullet-steaming it, and the print bled out a bit, but I don't mind the effect.



A really comfy little tank dress I made--this one's really all in the details.


I love theses colors up against the dark gray.


Top stitching.


It's actually reversible, though I like the gray rather better, what do you think?



Astrid gave me massive amounts of that green and white fabric, this is it's first incarnation. Mixed with an old sweater of Kali's.


I think it'll be a nice fall dress.



I lost the whole shot of this shirt somehow, but it's just a normal cowboy shirt-ish design. I added the bib and embroidery.



Just a quicky shirt, my roommate said it reminded her of a superhero. Made from two giant polos.

Aghh, I just remembered I never even posted the sneaker tops I made her. Oh well, next time~~~

More crapola

Agh, I'm always 2 steps behind on my pictures. So here's what I did a few days ago, there's been more since (a lot! two shirts, a skirt, lots of printing) but I'll have to get photos tonight or tomorrow.


My sketches for the four elements pins/necklaces I'm printing.


Stack of Water prints. These have since been made into pendants and pins, and I've printed earth, fire, and air, but they need to be steamed and washed out--I don't use pre-made inks, I mix my own with procion dyes and thickener.


Been getting a lot of use out of my wing-print border design. Printed on an old bedsheet that I dyed pink fading to purple, it washed very light though.


The other half of the bedsheet I dyed darker, unfortunately, this one got all sorts of messed up when I was steaming it, the bottom half fell into the water in the bullet steamer and ran, so it looks really odd.


Dress that I over printed-it was impossible to line it all up on a dress that had already been made, so I just went hog-wild and overlapped them repeatedly~

Lots more to come, I promise~!

Embroidery Round-Up

Because I waited too long to make an entry, I now have about 10 million picture to share. This, plus the fact that I'm on shaky stolen wi-fi means that updating is going to be a struggle--so it's a two-part entry today. Later I'll post up all the print-work I've been doing, but for now, here's some stitchery~!


Deer skirt-the skirt itself is so nice, I found a bunch of Jcrew and Banana Republic stuff in great condition that week. And the deer came out so cute, I'm glad it translated from sketch to stitch really well


Close up. I was thinking of making a little booklet of animal pictures and things that I draw to sell as embroidery patterns with little sewing kits. If I can get it together before the Flea Market, I will. Hell, even if I don't, I can try to etsy it at least.


Whale skirt. I got a random request for a whale riding one of those little 'Rascal' scooters that morbidly obese people use in Walmarts.


So there he is. Chillin' like a villan.


And Astrid's been hard at work too, making little pouches I'm going to sew up tonight.


French whale (oui, oui!)


Happy little 'shroom.

And just so this isn't allll stitchery, here's the dress made out of the dyed cotton I had posted last week. I'm super happy with the piecing and the piping, unfortunately the back got a little messed up, and I'm going to have to do a lace-up finish so it will fit a real person and not a doll!




Hopefully later tonight I'll go back and show you the print work I've been doing~Lots of wings!

Half and Half

So I'm a little divided right now. On one hand is the opera internship, and on the other I've got all the work I want to do, both stuff to sell and just stuff for myself.

On the opera hand is tons and tons of felt and fake organza and a whole lot of conceptual set pieces that aren't precisely my cup of tea. But whatever, it's credit, so I'll certainly do it. The play is an opera version of Romeo and Juliette, and we've been working on props right now--mostly the 'balcony' and Juliette's bed.

Mi-Kyoung (my teacher) tracing out the giant onion of a balcony.

The Onion in it's finally form, 9 feet square and made of lots and lots of orange and purple felt. I didn't even know felt came that big!

Juliette's bed is made of hundreds of these little guys, who are deceptively time-consuming to make. I still think it's just going to make her bed look like it's made of hundreds of yo-yos.


But my own stuff is going well too, and having access to the studios has been excellent, I've been dying and printing yardages there to work with.

Some recycled and dyed cotton I'm make a dress out of right now. I love the color theme I was able to get.

Some printed bandannas and scarves, with my old screens. I'm trying to do a cloud repeat design right now, but I keep messing up the screen.


And a cute ketchup+mustard top I just finished from recycled t-shirts. My mate Astrid is embroidering this one now with a little mustard and ketchup bottle, then hopefully we can get it sold. I really need to start making money this summer. I'm afraid to make an etsy though, last time I did, nothing really sold. Crud.