Friday Update

I finished a pair of socks for George.  Cheapy sock yarn from Sullivans, 75% wool and 25% nylon - but nice bright colours and he loves them.  The usual toe-up easy pattern.

Friday Update

I finished the bead embroidery! It was perfect to work on during the last three hot days when I couldn't face sock wool.

When I say finished, it isn't really. It isn't backed or turned into anything. I made it the right dimensions to make a cuff (with the addition of a clasp of course) but I don't think I would wear it and it isn't good enough to sell.

But it definitely brought back to me how much I love bead embroidery, and thanks to Freebird I have been reminded of, and encouraged to rejoin, the Bead Journal Project for next year. I had attempted it twice before, but both during the time I was studying, and I never finished it. The first time I joined in, which I think was the first year it ran, I only did about four months worth, and the following year I dropped out almost immediately. But now I have a real incentive to do it properly!

So watch this space.

Friday Update

I went to the Bead Expo and a bead embroidery class last Saturday.  I had booked the class a couple of months ago when I was feeling very low, lacking in energy both physical and mental/creative, and thought it might help to kick start me a bit.  In the meantime I have recovered some of the lost energy but haven't really got any more creative than socks and hand towels, so this was still looking like a good idea.

And it was!  I was intrigued by the teacher's (scanty) information.  I couldn't find anything about her (Cheryl Hartwick) on the web other than her listing on the Bead Society of Victoria and I was interested in her style of bead embroidery, which looked similar to mine but was not identical.  She uses brightly coloured printed fabric as the jumping off point for her work and I wanted to see how that would work.  The class was advertised for Beginners, which I know I am not in terms of bead embroidery, but I hoped she would forgive me.

It was fun.  She did forgive me.  I snuck Harry along for the ride and once I had confessed about my complete lack of noviceness, I passed him around and felt quite chuffed at the responses.  I didn't exactly learn anything but it had the desired effect of making me put needle to bead and cloth once more, and I felt energised being around beady people.

She takes the aforementioned brightly coloured print cloth, backed with a substantial interfacing (she uses iron-on, I prefer to tack felt down to the back because I can;t abide doing hand-stitiching through anything sticky).  Something in the pattern or the colours, or both, starts her off (shapes, whatever) and then she lets her mind and hands run away with themselves.  With lovely, colourful results.

I am not too sure about this particular piece I am doing.  The beads are cheapies because I didn't want to waste good ones on an experiment.  I don't think I have done the best design I am capable of, by any means.  But I feel thoroughly back in the groove and feel lots of good projects will flow from this in one way or another.

I will finish this piece and I will blog about it.  I thought it was interesting to take day by day photos for this week, but I won't take any more until it is finished now.

Oh, and a couple of items came home with me from the Bead Expo.  And they were bought before Decluttering by Numbers was initiated, so they don't count!

This was the fabric I used.  The overview shows how I used the central leaf as a starting out point.

After outlining the leaf veins and doing two lots of shadowing around the shape of that, I added some extra, bigger beads and worked them into a design.  Wombat at this point said that it looked like someone who had just realised she had missed out on a shoe sale!  (He knows too well how addicted to shoes his mother is).

A day later and I had filled in various bits.

 And this was yesterday's finishing point.  I have marked out the dimensions of a cuff on the fabric and I will stick to that size and shape, though whether it turns into a finished cuff depends on how I feel about it when I have got that far.  I will blog about that when I have got to that stage.

 And these are the things that followed me home.  The only Robyn Atkins book I don't own.  A Bead Zapper thing that melts beading thread (when you want it to!)  Wombat asked if it was another Sonic Screwdriver.  I agreed that it could be,  And Silk Strings, very hard to get in Australia and absolutely luscious.

Friday Update

A completed pair of socks for Baby Bear. Knitted in Miami, made in Italy and sold in Australia through Bendigo Woollen Mills, where I bought it in the Back Room on special some time back. 40% wool, 45% cotton, 15% nylon, and 100% satisfaction from the recipient!

Friday Update

Surprisingly, some craft still occurs in this blog.  This is the latest pair of socks, Scrappy Socks, for George.  Made from the leftovers of six other pairs of socks.  He likes them!  Knitted to my usual pattern (for him) of 68 stitches on 2.5mm needles.  The yarns are a mixture of Patonyle, Spotlight, Opal Hundterwasser and Araucania, so from the el cheapo to the sublime!

Friday Update

Mutter mutter mutter AARRGGHHH!!!!! swear !@#$%^&&*()

I spent hours on those papers I posted about last week. Hours painting them in multiple layers. Tearing them up and collaging them, double sided onto card, sealing each side with three coats of Mod Podge. Then trying to cut them out with paper punches - too hard, on the whole - cutting them into shapes - they feel tacky to the touch despite much drying time and I hate them. Pity, I rather liked the original papers! I am keeping them in case of something original springing to mind some time in the future, but for the moment that idea has been shoved to the back of the queue.

On the good side - I rediscovered the joys of painting and colouring and I personally think they were quite attractive. I will do more papers. Painted, inked, collaged, whatever. But I will not treat them the same way.

My scatterbrained approach to creating is not working! I think it is time I set myself a proper task (the book idea was a good one but I got bored too quickly) and actually apply some of the discipline of design and experimentation that I spent three years studying. At the Australian Quilt Convention last week there were some 'art quilts' that really caught my eye. The inverted commas are used there because I am not sure how small something can be before it is no longer an art quilt, and some of these were small! I also really want to do some bead embroidery again. I wonder how much bead embroidery can be on an art quilt?

After no craft shows in Melbourne all year, fate (I won't use the word 'organisation') has decreed that there will be three in May. Last week, the Australian Quilt Convention. This week, the Stitches and Craft Show. At the end of the month, a bead show. I 'need' to attend all three. I actually thought Stitches and Craft was next weekend until I picked up the brochure last night for a leisurely look through and realised that it was on now. So I am off to that today.

Cookbook evaluation - had big plans for this week. I had chosen two chicken dishes from various places and I was going to cook both of them. They both needed chicken breast fillets (or at least I had decided to cook them with chicken fillets), oh which I thought I had plenty in the freezer. I didn't. We will eat chicken next week. I didn't feel like baking, either.

Nothing more to show for this week. Other than a reassessment of thoughts and some new ideas. No pictures though.

Some hours later - Stitches and Craft was weird. Not at all like it used to be. Much fewer exhibitors but some really exciting small independent craft labels. Also, however, some huckster stuff that made me feel like I was in a bazaar. A very strange confection altogether. But I LOVED IT. It made me feel good. It was also not very busy, which is probably bad for them, but relaxing for me. I bought some stamps and another book. I did some more serious thinking. I feel happy.

Friday Update - the Sequel

I had fun at the Australian Quilt Convention! See the goodies I bought.

There was interesting quilts there, too. As usual, I liked the smaller art quilts the best, but could appreciate (and like) a lot of the more traditional quilting as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But I came away feeling perturbed about something. The three years I spent studying textile art was supposed to enable me to discover my 'voice' and come away with a defined body of work which I would build upon for ever afterwards. In one way I did discover my 'voice', the very detailed bead embroidery that I love the best of everything. But nobody is ever likely to pay the price for that sort of work that I would like to sell it for, so I am unlikely to make money out of it. Maybe I could write and (probably) self-publish books on it, which is a possibility but would still not make money in any serious way. I am a lousy teacher - too impatient. There are other things I love to do too. Nothing I bought today had anything to do with bead embroidery (I already own the books I like the best on that subject, though there may be some new ones that I don't know about yet!) but with other things that I have already experimented with but want more inspiration and technique to encourage me. I have had a couple of forays into selling on Etsy, or rather NOT selling on Etsy, though I am planning to start again. There is also an Australian equivalent that I am building a shop for ... From the market research I have done, for things to succeed in these online marketplaces they need to be reasonably inexpensive and postable (obviously), and preferably have a unique selling point. I am working on things like this.

Anyway, that isn't meant to be a rant or suggest that I have not enjoyed my day nor that I am not feeling creative. But I wonder if I suffer from some art-related form of ADD - can't I stick to any one thing but have to keep experimenting and trying to find new things to try? All of which require new supplies and books. If only I could add the hyperactivity part to it - I am so slow to get anything off the ground.

And now I will indulge in the wonderful procrastination of doing nothing about any of it, but drinking tea and knitting a sock instead. Oh, and I might start to flick through those new books!

Friday Update

Painted papers. I will be tearing and collaging these to make two-sided ... bookmarks, maybe, depending on how I feel about them at the time when I have done collaging and whatever. I was really pleased with these papers until the final layer. I just didn't know when to stop, did I! I had never used iridescence medium before and thought I would be clever and water it down and sponge it all over the papers. Well, it doesn't look very iridescent, more spotty. But the collages are going to be sealed with Mod Podge and glitter and hopefully that will be less noticeable by then.

These were great fun to make, just adding layers of shapes and squiggles with drying periods in between, using ordinary acrylic paints. I would like to do similar things with inks and watercolours too. Watch this space.

It was a short week, being away over the long weekend, and I am very pleased to have achieved anything creative.

I have also been working my way through some more cookbooks. This time, a handful of the vast number of tiny ones I have - you know the A5 format that you either buy for a few dollars or are given away with magazines. I have picked some recipes and will blog about them as I do them.

I hope to spend next week collaging.

Friday Update

There was going to be a Friday Update last week but it never quite happened. There wasn't really anything to say. I have completely abandoned the plan of working through a specific project a month and I've gone back to flitting around trying out different ideas all the time. The original plan helped to focus me at an unfocused time but has served its purpose, at least for the time being. Now there are other things I am more excited about, though the general flitting approach is not proving very productive as yet!

There are no photos this time as most ideas remain that, ideas. I was going to paint papers today and photograph them but motherhood as intervened and I have more important things to do. The (long) weekend is also going to be spent being a wife, a mother and a daughter-in-law (with, hopefully, a quick gallery visit in the middle!) and although there will be talking and eating and sock knitting and reading, there won't be paper painting. At least one craft book will make it through the weekend though so that I can continue to think inspirationally.

The cookbook thing (as a friend called it, an 'anti-Julia' approach) started off well and will continue. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook is a 2006 fully revised edition of a classic Australian cookbook, bought for Baby Bear to encourage her to cook (with some success) and therefore it was never going to be discarded from the cookbook collection. The problem with it from my point of view was that most of the recipes that would appeal to the family are ones that I already cook by heart or else have many versions of. I ended up cooking Cardamom Cookies to go with coffee at the end of an extravagant Good Friday lunch with friends. They were hugely successful, very easy, and would have earned the book its place on the shelf even if it wasn't exempt in the first place! Subsequently many books have been scoured through but no new recipes cooked, though that will resume soon (not in the next few days, unless it is baking again, as there will be a lack of opportunities for family meals at home for most of the next week owing to visiting over the long weekend and then George being on a business trip).

Next week there might even be photos. And more regular blogging. Honest!

Friday Update

It's been a bit of an unproductive week, really. A child with gastro and unpleasantly hot and steamy weather has left me feeling limp and uninspired. But not totally.

I enjoyed embellishing the denim shirt so much that I decided to do another repurposed and embellished item, even though I had completed the two that fulfilled my personal challenge terms for the month. I cheated slightly by buying a new top, which isn't really what repurposing is meant to be about, but it was 20% off in a sale, so I hope that counts!

First of all, though, I spent several satisfying hours organising my button collection into colour groups. This was largely inspired by seeing my MIL's collection at the weekend, neatly organised into old Twinings Tea tins and carefully labelled. Then I sewed blue buttons to this white top.

Over time I have bought a few packets of themed buttons in patchwork shops, and most of the buttons for this top came from one of them. The heart-shaped button in the point of the V, however, came from old stash and I think was left over from some top I made in the past.

I have added to my personal challenges for the year, too, though this one is not time critical. The other day George pointed out that I might have to cull the cookbooks in order to fit in the newer ones. He is probably right, but I decided that before I cull anything, I will cook a recipe from it. Not necessarily once a day or once a week or anything like that, and I am not aiming to do a Julia Child here! But before I get rid of a book I want to see if there is anything in it that at least three out of the four of us will eat. I will post something about any such recipes/books each Friday here. I have chosen a recipe for next week, though admittedly it is from a book I bought Baby Bear so it won't be thrown out anyway.

Friday Update

It's been a bit of a manic week. We had a long weekend so I am still feeling a day behind. And then there was THE STORM. Supposedly the worst in 100 years, or forever, or something. Hail the size of .. take your pick of a large spherical object. We personally were lucky, no damage apart from another fallen limb from the eucalyptus that isn't (lemon scented gum - apparently now no longer a eucalypt in scientific terms), but George has been phenomenally busy since. Which, given that he was already doing too much work, has been a bit of an issue.

I have been repurposing a shirt. But decided yesterday that it was just not working, and ditched it. No pics of the failure, I am too annoyed with myself for not putting more thought into it. Last week's worked so well that I think I am suffering from hubris right now!

So last night I sat down with a denim shirt that I had also intended to chop up and be clever with. Feeling crestfallen after the failure, I stuck to embellishment instead, and I'm delighted with the results! I will probably wear it open over a white singlet.

This means that I have finished my craft challenge for March! As half of April will be taken up with school holidays I thought I might make an early start on something for the last two weeks of March. I;m not sure what yet but will blog about something next Friday.

And no real progress on the visual journal, though I have printed out two images to use as backdrops which will need sealing before I do anything on top of them.

Friday Update

I exercised my prerogative to change my mind and substituted an activity not on my original list of challenges for the year. I decided to spend March attempting to alter at least two op shop (charity/thrift shop) finds into more interesting/better fitting clothes that I would actually wear, hopefully only using things from my stash.

I have made excellent progress! In fact today I am wearing the first item. I bought a skirt that I really liked, that already looked like altered art but was a bit too snug around the tummy/hip area for me to wear.

So I cut it down one side seam and chose something to insert there. I had originally planned to place insertions on both sides until I realised it was asymmetrical, so decided to make the long side longer. I did stash dive and almost settled on some fabric but it was the wrong colour, weight and too frayable, so did another op shop trawl and came up with a pair of jeans with side decoration that looked very 80s as jeans, but would work with this skirt and leave me plenty of denim left over to do other things with.

Half an hour on the sewing machine, et voila!

I tried to get a picture of it hanging off the hanger but the denim bit doesn't drape nicely that way. It looks nice on but I am not prepared to do model shots!

The original skirt cost AU$7 and the jeans cost the same. So for AU$14 I have a skirt and left over denim for other projects.

So I am very happy with my progress this month. I haven't started the latest two page spread of my visual journal but have settled on the images for it, which are an important part of it.

And as Tuesday Artist is proving to be a bit time-consuming, I will be substituting it with Creative Tuesday in future, where I show a picture of something that I have made, at some stage, either brand-new or in the dim distant past.

Friday Update

At last, after two months, an entire, wearable garment made on the tamed overlocker. I learned a lot making this. Now I can sew a balanced seam and do a rolled hem (though next time I might make the rolled hem wider. It isn't perfect (it's a nightshirt for George, so perfection is not exactly necessary). I made the stupid and elementary mistake of not trimming the hemline straight before I did it, so it dips slightly - that isn't just the way it's hung in the picture. I made a total hash of the neckband and had to recut a new one from scraps and redo it. It is still wonky on the inside seam, which I overlocked. Not a good move. I should have used the sewing machine for that. I did use the sewing machine to sew the band to the neckline, which worked well. I should have thought through that I have never been very good at V necklines and that doing it on an overlocker for the first time could be disasterous. Funnily enough I managed to apply it with the sewing machine perfectly, better than I have ever put in a v neckline before!

All in all I feel very happy with my effort. I learnt a lot about the overlocker and feel very confident about using it again and again. It has now become a proper member of the arsenal of tools I use for various tasks. Pity it took me two months, but I did set myself eleven challenges because I thought the wheels would fall off at some point - just not quite so quickly! And I said I would not stress over completing them, and I am not.

I also finished the two-page spread for my visual diary thing. Again I am not showing this month's. Off to work on next month.

I am still deciding which challenge to pick for March. And, in tune with my changeable nature and inability to make decisions, I may be changing some of the items on the list anyway!

Friday Update

Where I post an update on my challenges for the year.

Two page spread for visual journal thingie is coming along nicely. IT will definitely be done by the end of the month.

Taming the Beast - the new official title for my challenge with the overlocker. I have spent a fair bit of this week fiddling with it, practicing, getting George to examine it - he diagnosed the major problem, which was that the upper blade was binding and not engaging properly. Now I can happily say that I have pretty much mastered threading it and doing a four stitch overlock that is the right tension, etc, and I have started on the nightshirt that was the project (for January, admittedly!) I haven't done much yet, having been interrupted in full flow yesterday afternoon by a school crisis with Wombat (hopefully solved now), but at least the seams sewn so far are straight and look quite good. That will now definitely be done by the end of the month. So I am a month behind schedule but had promised myself not to stress about it, so I am not. Pictures will be posted when it is finished