One of my friends came over today so I could teach him some sewing basics. Another failure of the US school system; this was his first time picking up a sewing needle, but he was eager to learn. Afterward, I sewed the last few buttons onto this shirt that he had been planning on buying from me. He also asked that I shorten the sleeves a little for him, which I simply folded over and re-hemmed. Took some photos!
Today worked on some reference sheets for Art Fight this year! I won’t be posting everything I draw here but I’ll be sure to link my account for those interested. Drawing 2-dimensionally (whether traditionally or digitally) has always been a skill I wish I had. I can get something across as a reference or a concept sketch, and occasionally even make something I like, but it always felt impossible to just pick up a marker and draw a half-decent doodle of a character I like. I took multiple technical art classes in college, so the practise helps more than anything
Spent all of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon cutting out patterns. I had cut out two shirts the day before from some California Raisins sheets I got on ebay (probably one of the most expensive fabric purchases I've made in a while, even if I was waiting for a deal and it was still cheaper than it would be by the yard) - and today cut out two more along with four fanny packs and two from a Peanuts bedsheet. It's curious to me trying to keep track of what I can make out of a single bedsheet - I managed to cut two shirts out of this sheet with more to spare but barely managed to get two out of another sheet while substituting with white for the back yoke. Though if the other sheet was a fitted sheet and I just forgot, that might be it. Fitted sheets are mush smaller than top sheets, a fitted sheet and a pillowcase gets you two with a little extra to spare, or one top sheet gets you the same. I probably still have enough for a few more fanny packs, but it's large enough for another project too.
I don't really want to make more than four fanny packs at a time anyway, I still have almost all of my Raggedy Ann ones (need to take pictures of those tomorrow so I can post them for sale).
Pigeons are all finished! All that was left was painting the pins that hold them together so they blend in. I wasn't sure if these would be a strong enough attachment for puppeteering, but they allow you to move them around which helps a lot with different poses. The team said they loved them, so I'm going to go ahead and call them done!
First things first, sewed the buttons on the yoke shirt as a bit of a warm-up. Later in the day I went out to take nice pictures! You can find the rest of them here.
Time to take another look at those pigeons for Fogtown. I mixed some forest green paint and lightly dabbed it over the lighter green wool. Then, deciding i liked the effect, did the same with some magenta to bring back the purple underneath. Both I and the rest of the team liked this effect, so on to the legs!
I had already done something similar on a test version, so I went ahead and bent wire to form the legs for the larger pigeon, with big round circles at the top where I could sew them to the body. For the smaller one, each toe could only be a single wire wide, so some careful crimping and a little bit of superglue made that happen. Meanwhile I sewed on the legs to the larger one, and decided to felt over the wires to hide them. Unfortunately ended up breaking my last two needles (stabbing thin brittle needles right next to thick metal wire went about as well as you'd expect) and had to hold on to the last inch of a broken needle with pliers. So I ended up not doing this for the little one, but the superglue makes it a lot cleaner anyway and not as noticeable.
Today, the Fogtown team posted a little teaser. That's right - those are my moths!
P.S. I am amazed at how easily that embedded, it looks so out-of place here.
Last little project of the day, started cutting out the pieces for my next collection of shirts! But I'll talk about those more when I work on them tomorrow.
So starts my first blog post! It's a little strange to be starting it in the middle of so many projects, so there'll be a few entries with some summarizing to do. No time like the present to start! I plan to do this every day that I work on something creative.
Today I am in the middle of two main projects. I have two shirts, made out of groovy-patterned cotton I picked up from ReClaim It. I've been going there for almost a year, and used to volunteer a lot so they all know me there. This fabric had been put aside by their social media manager Jonath, who sews as well and has more of a cottagecore/space gay vibe. He didn't end up knowing what to do with it, so before putting it on the shelves theey asked if I wanted to use it! And I said hell yeah! Got it all for eight bucks, it's at least six yards all together.
I knew the red was just enough for a half shirt, so I used my XL Aloha shirt pattern and mixed it with the mustard yellow flowers (which I have plenty of left - at least a yard). I've used this pattern a half dozen times (traced it myself from one of my own aloha shirts, here's the tutorial I used if you're curious) so it went pretty smoothly. Took the leftovers of the red and decided to make a yoke shirt, I used this pattern I had bought before and cannot reccomend. The instructions are simply awful, there's about three pictures per step and little to no text. It takes a lot of reverse-engineering and cross-referencing the seam allowance and fold lines on the patterns themselves. It went smoothy though, just tediously.
These fabrics definitely aren't my style, but I had a vision of what they'd look like and knew I just had to use them. They're for someone out there, you know? One of my friends is already interested in the short-sleeve. Today I put the button-holes into both of them. The aloha shirt is getting coconut shell buttons, of course. The yoke shirt is getting plastic ones that I found very last minute, I wanted wooden ones but they were too expensive at the nice quilt store I usually go to, and I didn't want to wait until I could get to another fabric store. They're not bad! I like them more than a really dark brown, I feel like that would have been distracting.
Above: what happens when you run out of thread with one buttonhole to go. I figured might as well make it more intentional than going with a slightly mismatched yellow.
The other project is finishing up my work on the puppets for Fogtown. I've been working on them on and off, turns out I do not have the patience for needle felting. At the moment, I'm finishing up a pair of pigeons: one sized to the puppets (VERY small) and one larger for its independent close-ups. I found some green wool roving at ReClaim It, so I was planning on using that in leu of buying a whole new ball of wool for this tiny section. Looking at it now though, the shade feels a little too light. I checked in with the team and they said to try painting/dying it, but if it doesn't work they don't mind the lighter shade. I always do a wet-felt as a final pass, which means I can't use my acrylic paint before that final step. So I am painting on a darker layer after feliting on the lighter green.
Meanwhile, I've been selling some of the shirts I made originally for my booth at the Raggedy Ann Rally. I'm glad people are interested since I didn't sell many there!
I was also contacted by one of the producer/director/artists at Imago (I've been working there as a stagehand and usher since Deccember, but have not get gotten to do much creatively) asking for some of my portfolio work. He liked what he saw and wanted to know if I could make a sewn puppet for his upcoming show this fall! We'll be meeting to talk about it soon. Exciting stuff.