JamFactory Glass Pregnancies

yep, posing in front of a furnace.  

this is my latest frock, a bit different to everyone else's maternity gear, but I still say I'm going to swan around in purpose built dresses!  This one is made from curtains I found at a jumble sale I went to with Darkcloud in March.  Wasn't trying to collect more fabric, but just thought it would be fabulous with the pattern.  Will get a pic of the dress with the pattern soon (once I find where I put the pattern again).

We are posing in order of due dates, first to go is on the right.

My day/main job

These are glimpses of a frock that got picked up this morning.  I'd put the entire picture up, but shall wait until after the event.  It's a 50's style dress with a full circle skirt (4m+ circumference with 6m+ of ruffle at the bottom (that's a lot of pinning!)  It's made from a sari and incorporates all the different elements of the fabric, heavily woven red top section, heavily embroidered orange silk, the plain silk and the border band.

Basically the types of clothing I make can be sorted into two categories, with a bit of overlap from each other.  I make garments for hard to fit bodies, and garments for people who aren't pleased with what's in fashion.  I don't really make things that can blend in with current trends, rather I hope, garments that stand the test of time because they're made for my client's tastes, so they'll want to keep wearing them forever!

I generally make simple clothing with detailing and contrast.  I hope to be able to make some things for myself that have a lot of embellishment on them.  I just need to fit it in the schedule!

fun with machines

I was very luckily given a knitting machine by my Aunty Sue, an Empisal KH 68O push button to be precise a while back and I saved it to learn this year, because I knew that I wouldn't have the time to devote to it last year.  I think it'd been stored for quite a while without use, I'm guessing maybe 20 years, but could be off.

I started teaching myself step by step care of the 'friendly instruction manual' (I think you've got to worry when it calls itself friendly) and here are my first samples below:

plain knitting with increasing, decreasing and a purpose put hole; various types of pattern textures (which were really cool!); playing with the lace carriage (quite a dropped stitch problem and tension issues with the cotton) and my first proper cast on and cast off!!

The first three I did by myself, and then realised I could be trying to teach myself out of a book for a long time, when instead I was itching to get into cool projects, so resolved to get a teacher.

I actually found a machine knitters guild and have since attended two meetings (separate chapter groups) and have picked up lots of tips as well as arranging some lessons.  The ladies all are very friendly and most are at least 25 years older than me, some up to 40 years older.  I think I'm a bit of a novelty to them.

My plans for the knitting machine is to make fabric pattern pieces to incorporate into garments, free form sculptural objects and plain mucking around.  However, after my first lesson, my homework is to do:

2 backs, 2 sets of sleeves and two fronts up until the neck section.

This is the machine, and getting ready to make the rib hem.  

And these are my two backs.  the multicolour one is a bit skew-if, I was doing a fabulous job of decreasing, but kept forgetting to put back the empty needle on the left side, so it kept adding more stitches.  The striped one on the right is (hopefully) correct.

I did a small jumper because I just want to learn the techniques, not because I think I'm going to have a boy and am preparing for when they are two....

I'm hopefully going to add some textured bits to the sleeves or front, just to make it a bit more interesting to do.

I think my favourite thing so far is using the yarn winder, to make a ball where the yarn flows freely from the centre.  it's such a lovely action, I might take some photos of that!

Adventures with Felting part 1

well.... I have only felted once before, and that was about 6 years ago, and it was a piece about 40cm square and I discovered that felting would be more enjoyable with someone to talk to while doing all that rubbing!

I did swear off it, but forgot about that declaration when I found these lovely pre-felted australian merino wool battings in fabulous colours.  I  had all kinds of ideas about the lovely forms I'd be able to experiment with.....I conveniently forgot about the process of felting before the making though...

So this piece is about 1.5m wide by just under 2.5m long - I think I should have felted a small sample first, and because it was so big I had to do the initial felting on the floor.  Halfway through I decided to fold it in half, as I was supposed to be finishing in an hour for a family lunch and I was nowhere near rolling it up for the next stage.

After rolling it around a tube I then rolled the tube to create the friction and bonding.  I have no idea if this is the best/fastest way to do that process, it was just what the instructions said.  If anyone has any suggestions, please share!!  I did it by watching two movies, Little Miss Sunshine (which wasn't what I predicted at all, I'd recommend it) and the Matrix, cause xkcd reminded me that it's been 10 years since it came out, and I wanted to see if it was as cool as my 19y0 self thought it was.  We poked fun at it a lot, but it got my mind off the felting.

I then microwaved it for a bit and bashed it around, but looking at it the next morning, it doesn't really look like felt.  So it's been suggested that I boil it heaps and shock it a bit.  I'll put up the results in part 2 (once I get the dying pot out of the cellar).  It's currently 1m x 1.4m so I don't think it's really shrunk as much as it is supposed to.

I like the idea of working with the material, but not sure about doing the process myself.... I want to play with the end product!  Perhaps I distract too easily.

I also put in the autumn vegie garden, which probably sounds strange to people who live in snowy winters, but here it's our prime growing season, as summer is just so hot, and with the water restrictions I believe it's really crazy and irresponsible to try and grow things when you have to use so much water on them and they still fry under 45C + temperatures day after day.  I get too depressed seeing all the brown things, so I let most of my garden go fallow, and celebrate when the rains come again.

We only made a small one this year, just things that you can continually harvest, sugar snap peas, broadbeans, spinach, chards, lettuces and pak choi.  I'm waiting til they look a bit bushier and then I'll take some snaps of the garden, also, we had to enclose the patch because our neighbour's cats like to sneak in and use our yard as a litterbox, and they love freshly dug earth, because they are lazy yucky creatures.  You can tell I've really been turned off cats by these pair.

Other than that, I've just been propagating the succulents and splitting a lot of my other plants, just to bulk up the space and because I'm sick of trying new things and watching them fail, at least with my own plants, I know they'll work!

The First Maternity Dress

There it is!  I was taking directions from Tom to get same pose as the middle lady in the pattern, but didn't quite pull it off.  However I am wearing my fabulous new birthday hat, which will be making quite a number of appearances come winter.  

Coming from North Queensland (which is tropical for those that don't know) to live in Adelaide (which has a 'Mediterranean' climate, ie boiling in summer, freezing (though not actually freezing and no snow, but still, when you live in an old drafty house it feels freezing)......my point being that I end up in winter gear a lot longer than other people and decided a while back to have a variety of colourful warm things to cheer me up.  And that means a variety of headwear so I don't wear the same manky beanie all winter.

I will pose in Darkcloud's mumu when I get a bit bigger, seeing as it's bigger than my cherry dress!

I have another dress cut out and waiting for assemblage so hopefully will get a picture of that up by the end of the week.

Trying to get the stash down.

I was in a segment a couple of years ago on an ABC program called The Collectors.  It featured my paper sewing pattern collection, at that time I had about 900 of them, ranging from the 1950s to the 1970s.  I love the styles from those three decades, any patterns I've got from the 80's are because they're funny, strange, or have a shape that was missing in the collection, but mostly for laughs.  (sorry 80's fashion fans)

I now have over 1600, that increase is almost solely due to all the wonderful viewers of that show, passing on their patterns (and fabric, and knitting patterns, wools, beads, buttons etc) to me (so they would be treasured, used and free up their cupboards no doubt!)  The down side of that generosity is that I've spent the last two years replying to letters, sorting through patterns I want to keep, multiple trips to op shops to pass on the ones I don't want.

The hoarder in me loved it, because every new parcel could be full of amazing treasures.  BUT I only have one room for my studio, so that soon overflowed into the hallway, and into the spare room, and boxes piled up and well, I didn't exactly know what I had anymore and couldn't lay my hands on anything! 

So, I think I've spent the last eight months or so trying to organise what I've got into some semblance of order and make my studio nice to work in, rather than feel like I'm going to drown in fabric due to all the teetering boxes!  

Many thanks to Dark Cloud for helping me, ordering storage and generally holding my hand when my eyes started to pop out of my head, or I got distracted by all the cool things I'd rediscovered.

What I've set myself to do is as well as finishing things I've already started, is to not buy anymore fabric (which I used to buy in lieu of shoes, clothes, books, anything anyone else buys for a whim really...) but to use what I've got.  I recently found a stack of curtains from the 60's in one of my boxes, and voila!My first beanbag! 

I did this because I've never had a beanbag before (deprived childhood indeed), I had a pattern, my husband wanted one and one of my studio mates (more about that later) decided that our studio really needed some beanbags (conducive to creativity I guess).  So this one will live at ours, and I've got enough material for two more, although one will have black stripes I think.

The beanbag is sitting on a rag rug crocheted by a great friend of mine who has been such an inspiration for me since she was my kindy teacher (there is a bit of an age gap, I'm younger than her youngest).  And she's always made such cool stuff over such a range of media!  I'm happy to finally have a space to place it in, as we now have a lounge room, before it was a non functional dining room/office/printing area, which just didn't work because it was trying to be too many things.

And a new couch - a friend said that buying a couch definitely means I'm now a grownup. 

how about that?

well here goes.....

I've been thinking about doing this for sometime, and have blatantly copied my friend, and friend's friends with regards to using this space as a way to talk about projects, share with other people, and in my case, use it as a motivating tool to finish said projects!

Also, it was my birthday yesterday, and I feel that birthdays are a second chance at starting the year anew, because often NYE comes around and there's not enough time to write that big list (which I love doing) of all the things you're going to do/change in the following year.  Often because you're on holidays/have relatives staying, ate too much, or are preparing crazily for two exhibitions and being morning sick (like I  was at the start of the year).

So, that's the intro, now for some projects!   I have been making this Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired patchwork for quite a while now....(at least three years, possibly more).  I had the top and central structure designed right from the start, but ran into a snag when I didn't have enough pink to do what I wanted to do with the remaining bits.  So I put it away to stew for a goodly amount of time, and pulled it out last year to finish it, as it was designed to be a roman blind for my sewing studio, and in it's place was a wool blanket curtain that wasn't wide enough and wasn't very pretty to look at or insulated.

I finished it last year, but needed help putting it up, so it sat for another couple of months until my parents came a visiting with a burning desire to be helpful.  So thanks Dad (and Mum for distracting me from what my dad and husband were brainstorming (we went and played cards)). 

So here it is:  chocolate, carmel, cream and four types of pink corduroy, playing around with grainlines and nap.  I'm still not sure of the ricrac, but my roses needed stems, and well, I think it's kind of funny having this type of work with lurid green zigzag braid.

And here's what it (kind of) looks like backlit, I like window pane patchwork, the seams make lovely lines.

I'm happy with finally having the blind up and finished, and am planning the next two - hopefully they won't take as long!