School Daze

Back in school, and back to the crazy schedule of class/work/studio. But now I've got my own space, which is absolutely grand, even if it is already crammed full of supplies. I'm a terrible packrat when it comes to fabric...and yarn...and trim, and anything I can get my hands on.

Some pictures of where I spend just about every night:

I've got a desk for sewing, and a fabric-covered table for drafting/drawing/pinning/putting my computer on. I have about 30 yards of that red knit, so now it's my decor as well. I believe it came from some gala my school hosted, and it's been kicking around for a few years.


Supply madness--so much stuff!

So that's the space. What have I been working on, eh?

Well, in Into to Jewelry, I'm a big old newbie. Never touched metal in my life, but I really love it, and I think I'm picking it up okay. Our first lesson was a riveted brass piece for our notebooks.

Front Cover

Inside cover--you can see the rivet on the bottom where I messed up, but it's a small thing. I'm learning!

Advanced Fibers--our first assignment is "Drawing"

Some samples.

The one I'm going with-it's going to be a full length dress with a design like the tree drawing above. The leaves are going to be a big, gathered collar around the person, and the length of the dress will be the intertwining trunks. It's worked with 4 strands of thick string on a very loosely woven fabric, so it goes pretty quickly.

For Experimental Costuming, we did a quick t-shirt remix, then a thrift store remix. I did the same things last year, but they're always good to warm up with.


I patchworked my t-shirt--it got very small very fast, and I ended up using the scraps to make an open meshy shirt to go with it.

And my remix--I got an awful pair of short-overalls. Shortalls? And made a rather kinky looking vest.



I liked this project because I really broke away from my usual flat-patterning method. I let the shape of the pieces dictate the form.

And for Projects--no in progress pieces, it's sort of a mess right now, but here's the sketch/instructions I wrote up for myself.

Long story short, I scanned a comic, drew it with pixels, and I'm now knitting it. Then I'm going to felt it. It's going to be immense, the first panel is more than 2 feet wide. Crazy amount of work there.

I'm still here

Unfortunately, I've been feeling awful lately, so I haven't been doing too much--or updating too much, as you can probably see~! But school's less than a week away, and I promise there'll be plenty of things to talk about then.

Looking back, while I may not have gotten much in the way of finished projects this summer, I certainly have explored a good deal of techniques I think I'll be putting to work this year.

I've been keeping up with my knitting, and here's some of the thing bits and pieces (god, I hate having to admit my teachers were right, samples are essential) I've been playing around with.


I was trying out the idea of using multiple strands of yarn and adding them as I go to create a flared shape with cables. This one didn't quite work because it got twisted on my circulars, so I tried out a new idea. Chrissy Day had spoken to me last year about introducing new textures and materials into the soft, pillowy sort of work I've been doing, so I took my cables, and sprayed them with an aerosol rubber coating (it's made to re-coat tool handles) I love the result, it's flexible but still, and still looks like knitting.


Work in progress--a skirt that uses the the same idea as above, keep adding strands as well as increasing stitches to create a flare. I think at the end I might decrease it really quickly and make a tight-fitting bottom.

I've also been fooling around with quilting up the scraps of the t-shirts I've been using all summer. It's gotten much bigger since I last posted.


For scale purposes. Such tiny little blocks~~


What I've got so far. It's been slow going, the knit's a little hard to work with at this size. It's also a fair bit bulkier than a woven quilt because the seams get so thick. But I really love it. Sadly I'm running out of scraps, anyone want to send me some old t-shirts, gimme an email. I want to make this thing as large as I can, I think it'll have a real impact king-size. And then I want to quilt it with as many colors of thread as I can~

Sewing allll those little triangles in big long chains (I haven't finished these blocks yet)


Also doing a little bit of embroidery, after avoiding it all summer. It'll eventually be icebergs.


Next time I get a chance, I'm putting up whatever I have left from the flea markets for cheaps, I need to get it out of here.

Bust!

Okay, so I've been terrible, I haven't updated in forever. I'm not even terribly busy at the moment, just kept putting it off. So of course I now have a ton of pictures once again. First the stuff I banged out for the Philadelphia Independent Craft Show--which was a bit of a bust, I just about broke even. Most of the people there seemed much more interested in the free beer and the band than crafts. Oh well! At the least, I spoke to a women from the Philadelphia Sewing Collective about their swap-o-rama-rama, which hopefully I can participate in! Plus it means that I can relax for the rest of the summer, since I don't think I'll do the one in August.

Anyway, market stuffs:

Some Jo-Mar weird knit and t-shirt scraps with some screen printin'


Anteater!

Beluga!


One very ugly, large gold shirt and some purple t-shirts turn into this!

With a spicy back.


Maternity dress gets fitted and ruffled, with some new buttons~


Little flower prints have been rather popular, so I took a giant old-lady dress and made it a little more modern.


Three t-shirts make one color-blocked dress.


And here's my own work! Which I'm excited to get back to.


Using up some of the t-shirt scrap I have (two whole bags full of tiny bits and pieces from all the stuff I've been doing) I'm trying to see just how tiny I can make the quilt squares, these are about 4 inches across, so about 1 inch for each patch of these 4 patch squares. Any smaller and they just get a little difficult to handle. But I'm enjoying playing with the patterns and colors.


My practice piece before I started the t-shirt patches, I'd never quilted before, so just getting used to it. I still hate patterned fabrics, but I kinda like this in a tacky sort of way.


My giant cable collection is up to 4. Still not totally sure what I'm doing with them, but I definitely need some more. Going to go check American Thrift for some more sweaters to frog, no way I'm buying that much yarn, it would cost a fortune.


Stay tuned, I'm getting back into the swing of narrative garments, so I've been working on some full-arm gloves and knit button-up spats. Woo.

Punk Roc Flea Market Aftermath

Just one picture today, I was too busy during the market to snap many more! So the PRFM was a rousing sucess, I sold a good percentage of my stuff, and it was a lot of fun. This picture was taken at the very beginning of the morning, the people behind us hadn't even set up yet. It got very crowded very, very fast, and the air conditioning was blowing people's stuff clear off their tables, so they finally turned it off.

Oddly enough, it was the much weirder, kind of kitschy stuff that sold first, I still have most of the pieces I'm really pround of, but I guess people there really wanted something different.

And if you're reading this and you bought one of my pieces, send me in a picture! I'd love to see it in it's new home.

Final note: I think I'm doing the Philadelphia Independant Craft Fair on the 12th as well, so here's to trying to replenish stock before I go!