Little Pieces of Me

I'd like to say that I've been busy with making lots of new things for the past week or so, but it wouldn't be completely true. I've been playing hooky a bit, taking advantage of  any sunny autumn day that comes my way. It really is my favorite season, and I'm enjoying being able to be out in it this year. Part of what I love abut the fall is tossing on a great scarf with jeans and a sweater. And this last round of T Shirt scarves falls into that category. Having used the t Shirts as-is, dyeing and tie dyeing them, my last version has involved discharge dyeing - that is removing colour from the fabric via various methods. The simplest way to do this is with good old bleach. I'm fond of using straight bleach, especially on sturdy fabric like a quality T shirt or denim. If the fabric is more delicate, the bleach can be diluted with water. I like to paint it on with a brush. For small details I fill up a water pen with bleach. I've read of people using a...

Really, after all these years, I should have expected week six. A little panicky yesterday. You see, it's week six of my sabbatical. In the big picture of things I guess 6 weeks isn't much, but I can't help but feel that I have not been pushing myself hard enough creatively. It is too easy to get caught up in the everyday chores and routines, and put off the making. Somehow I used to manage to do most things and work full time, so there is no excuse really. I just know that washing clothes is much easier than designing clothes. This week six anxiety is exactly what I usually see in my students! Week six is a marker - just a week off of mid term - and the point at which the enormity of what they have gotten themselves into hits home. The adrenaline of starting the program has worn off, and the heavy load of the work to be done becomes clear. The break week helps them catch their breath and then the same thing happens again around week 10. I mustn't forget about this!...

After last week's T shirt scarf project, I was left with a bunch of non-loop tubes. And a few days later I received a big pile of men's thin white undershirts, the kind without side seams. There was no choice but to make more scarves. Hey look at me... I'm up cycling! First off, I dealt with the left overs. The trouble with those non-loop tubes is that they were too short to use for a double wrap, and too long (and not enough of them) for a satisfying single wrap scarf. So I needed to find a way to add length. The solution was to make a band to extend the length. This has worked out very well. The flat band is invisible once the scarf is double wrapped. It actually sits very comfortably at the back of the neck and reduces the bulk of the material when worn under a jacket or coat. The sample shown could certainly be sewn better… had a little trouble with my bobbin thread for some reason… but you can see the general approach. Then it was time to deal with some of those...

I'm guessing that it's the cooler weather that is suddenly making everyone think about scarves and other cosy clothing. The most "repinned" pin on my Pinterest boards is for a scarf made out of a T shirt. The activity around this topic has been especially heavy lately, with 15 people repinning or liking this pin in just 2 days. So I thought I should make up a few samples. My first scarf turned out very well. Really, it is all a matter of finding the right kind of T shirt to start with. This sample is made from a good quality XL shirt which rendered up loops almost a metre long. As a result, it can be worn wrapped twice or thrice, or looped through it self. It's made from 17 tubes so it has a nice bulk, but is very light and soft. The tubes are held together with a simple wrap made from a short length of tube cut from the sleeve. The T shirt used for this example had long sleeves. So I had the potential for a lot of short tubes that were not closed loops. ...

I don't really think that Shabby Gothic is a style per se - or at least it wasn't until now. I have a secret love of Shabby Chic. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure. All that draped white cotton, old bits of lace and faded rose prints are so darn pretty. Of course the style has nothing at all to do with the reality of my life, how my home is decorated nor how I dress. Especially how I dress. The beautiful shabby chic clothes you see on endless Pinterest boards mostly look good on the young and the willowy – neither of which I am. And I'm not talking the over the top Magnolia Pearl  "oh, I think I'll just take this underwear I found in my great granny's attic and wear it with these old work boots and a table cloth" look. But even that has it's own crazy appeal.  So I thought that perhaps I could re-interpret Shabby Chic to my needs by working in black rather than pale pastels. And I think I might be on to something, except that not all my mate...

I've been doing some dyeing and that means that for one afternoon all the patio furniture on the deck was draped in drying fabric and trim. Lovely day for it too. For some reason all this was of great interest to the gold finches. When I went out to check on things, several males were sitting amongst the black and purple items. Not that I was expecting purple... but such is the nature of dyeing. I was preparing some materials for a black scarf in the shabby chic mode. The grey linen that I dyed came out nice and black. But the white and off-white cotton trim and recycled lace items from the doily department at Value Village all came out a very dark purple, even after a repeat soak. What was to be a black on black scarf is going to be purple on black. More goth than shabby chic ... So it was once I had these bits dyed and hanging out to dry that I discovered The Unexpected Legacy. When I was a kid my grandparents lived next door, and my grandmother loved to dye...

Week 2 of my sabbatical has been long and tough. It has also been a good learning experience in the end. The little voice in my head that says "What? You mean you haven't got a finished project to show at the end of the day? What have you been doing with your time? Don't you feel guilty?" was pretty loud this week. Like most people I know, my entire professional life has been about achieving outcomes with a known final deliverable and deadline. My days and weeks have been measured by hitting clearly defined milestones along the road to that deliverable. So to suddenly be on a not-so clearly marked road is a bit surprising and very disconcerting. I am really struggling with trying to change my ingrained 'have-to' thinking into 'want-to' thinking. It's going to take a while for me to easily allow myself the time for mucking about and accepting the non-linear nature of the creative process. Wait, isn't that the entire point of this undertaki...