addicted to distractions/unfinished birds

I decided that it's high time to start filling up those empty curtain-hooks over my window.

With a bird-mobile.

Meaning, I get to cut out the same bird motif over and over again (in cereal box-type cardboard), glue string through the center, and sandwich the string by gluing on a cutout of newspaper on top.

And then painting it with gold acrylic paint.

Quite therapeutic work, actually.

And I think it will be pretty calming to look at when I finish.  The goal is to fill up as many curtain hooks as I can with these strings of birds, without making it look like my window has been completely invaded, say, by a flock of (highly stylized and rather small) birds flying south for the winter.

I'm excited.

memories of a t-shirt; done

well - a bug bite and a completely swollen ring finger unable to bend pretty much robbed me of productive activity friday and saturday.  I never truly appreciated that finger until then - no practicing violin or piano, no sewing or other art projects, minimal amount of drawing (even though I'm pretty much right-handed, that left finger really is important, somehow).

last night - with a much improved finger, finally finished the dress.  I hemmed it up and made the halter strap :)

this morning - zipped up the t-shirt scarf on the machine, flat-felled seams and all!  it's too bad the lime green really doesn't suit my skin tone.

dress! part 2 :)

went for the long dress look :)  finished cutting everything out, put in the zipper yesterday (of which i am very proud...); all that there is left to do is hem the bottom.

oh, and my mom seems to think that i should put on straps so that the entire dress doesn't fall down when i'm wearing it.  although after multiple adjustments, and messing with the zipper placement more than once, the thing is, uh, pretty fitted.  comfortable, of course.  but fitted.

so, experiments with said straps.  i'm thinking that the halter thing is gonna win.

a dressmaking dilemma!!!

So I started making a dress from this retro Butterick pattern.

The plan was, to use the pattern for the bodice (I love the detailing), and then attach a shorter skirt - so I could wear it as a little summer dress.

Well, I finished sewing together most of the bodice today, and now I have a seriously dilemma.

a short trial - me with a belt holding the top up, and the material tucked under the belt for the skirt.  It's cute enough.  Just what I was expecting.  But then, I had to let the material down.  All of it.  Of course, right?  Of COURSE I choose to make more choices for myself, and thus complicate life, JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY.

And here is like, something I would totally wear to the Oscars (without that really bad belt).  Or something.  Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration.

Anyway, major dilemma here.  Because while the first dress suits my personality the most, and its shorter length would allow me to wear it to more places, I still can't forget the longer version.  And if I did make it shorter, would I even wear the dress enough to make it all worth it?  Would it be better to just make the longer version, and wear it maybe only once?

OH MY GOODNESS.  MY HEAD IS SPLITTING.  CUTTING OUT THIS SKIRT IS GOING TO BE SO STRESSFUL.

This must be a sign that I have way too much free time.

Anway, I can't cut it out tonight.  I must think about it for a little while.  Even if this is not a healthy thing for me to do.

almost done...i wanna do something new anyway.

I got this giant cardboard-y paper at Costco for free - the kind that they somehow use for packing between boxes or something.  This was supposed to be my hour-a-day, two-week project.  Something new, since I have never painted anything this big before.  Just for fun, with practice I will (hopefully) get better, and acrylic paints are cheap.  Well, that daily project thing didn't quite work, considering I often switch gears and want to try something new.  So much for continuity.  It ended up being more like a month-long project, and I mostly finished today.  Well, it's not perfect, or finished, but I'll just call it finished for now.  I finished the hats anyway.  I based my painting off this black and white picture from that book on beauty through the decades, or something.

Anyway, back when I was doing the painting on a daily basis (all to the soundtrack of the lovely Madeleine Peyroux), I tracked my progress through pictures taken at the end of each session.  Like, 1-2 hour intervals.

So basically this is like the fast-forward let's-watch-a-plant-grow video.  But with painting.

I'm not too fond of these hats....

oh darn. i just remembered i forgot to fix the arm of the lady on the right.  oh well.

braided coaster/placemat/trivet + memories of a t-shirt

I have always been fascinated with braided rugs (I even started to make one - albeit a very a crude one - when I was little).  But they generally look so old-fashioned and country-ish!

New idea - use cool color scheme.  Like, black+white+red.  That way, it looks more modern...and I'm not going for an entire rug...a trivet will be good enough, thank you very much!  If it turns out I'll give it to my sister for her condo :)

I love the material together - especially the black and white patterned strip with the red!

Inspiration of this morning - a way to use up old t-shirts.  I used a really old t-shirt that I had painted on when I was little, for practice.

oh the memories...

making the first cut...always the scariest!

a rectangle cut from the front - and two rectangles of the same width cut from the back.

there! (whoops, got a random bit of my knee in there...)

and pinned together...okay, I lied - the whole thing wasn't long enough for me, so I cut out another rectangle from the front.

Now all I have to do is sew the bits together (I think I'll use flat-felled seams?), and...a comfy scarf!  There you have it!

on corsetry and tricks of the trade

First - I found out a more fool-proof way of making paper.

Everyone says that after sifting the mesh through the pulpy water, you should flip it over a piece of cloth, and then proceed to sponge out the excess water.  Well, I was sometimes having problems un-sticking the paper from the cloth, especially when I wanted a finer end product, resulting in paper like this -

So I found out that by putting ANOTHER screen on top of the existing cloth, and THEN flipping over the paper-and-mesh on top of that, problem solved.  I can squeeze away with my sponge, but the paper won't stick to the cloth, no matter how hard I press.  Because paper bits are very easy to remove from screens.  I'm so happy about that now, beautiful paper here I come! :D

Second business of the morning -

I drafted out a new corset pattern yesterday, by drafting out the princess seams from another pattern, and trial and error with paper....anyway, I had the whole thing cut out and stuff.

It looks somewhat like this:

with straps pinned in place - and not.

AND, I have boning this time.  So this morning I finished sewing in the channels to put the boning (plastic, 1/2") and inserted the boning!  I'm so excited!  It's going to be really nice, because this way the top will be nice and stiff, and it won't crinkle up in the wrong places...

(me holding it together - I haven't put in back lacing yet).

So I made the boning lines somewhat in accordance with one of the costumes from The Tudors (I don't watch the show, I just look at the pictures later...)

(from costumersguide.com)

I think this way uses the least amount of boning (even so, I used more than three yards of it!) - and I like the lines - more than these kind -

Anway, that's all for today...I'm back to my sewing!

making paper + a bit too obsessed

My new thing - making paper from old scratch paper.  It's turning out well!  I started yesterday, and am still going today...my sewing machine is, I think, feeling a bit neglected.

When you make the paper pulp, you're supposed to use the blender.  Alas, I do not own my own blender and my mom absolutely forbids me to use hers.  As it turns out, it works out quite well just to rip the paper by hand.

First step - rip up some old printer paper and dump it in a large basin of water.

The paper will then soften - the longer you soak it, the easier it is to break it down - and you can rip it further, until it looks more like this, and the water begins to feel thicker and becomes cloudy with floating paper fibers (beautiful, and it feels nice too):

The whole process is rather therapeutic.

Then, using a screen and a frame, fully immerse it in the water so that the little bits of paper are on top of the screen, shake it around in the water to even it out, and lift out of the water.  I used a plastic embroidery hoop and some mesh off an old screen door.

My first attempt - not so beautiful.

Anyway, what's really supposed to happen is, once the paper pulp is settled on the mesh, remove the frame and quickly flip the paper over on a piece of cloth (keeping also the mesh there) - then sponge out the water, pressing firmly.  (Second try - I added some old red paper - it looks like a valentine!).

Then remove the screen and gently peel the paper off the fabric - and let dry.  (I just ended up laying on top of some more old mesh, and air drying - it dried overnight).  Voila!

It ended up feeling like a thin egg carton.  I shall continue trying to perfect my method, until I get really nice paper.  See what I mean?  Obsessed.  I think I'll be spending a lot more bonding time with my bathtub over the next few days.

Anyway, CHANGING THE SUBJECT, I also discovered the "I Write Like" site, http://iwl.me/.  It somehow analyzes your writing, and then tells you how your writing resembles some famous writer.  Quite entertaining to use, since it's free and everything.

I discovered that for the arts articles I write for The Tech, the case is overwhelmingly

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

But for the rare occassion that I actually write more than a few sentences in my blog, the general consensus is that

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I've never actually read anything from these guys.  I think I will now.  Curiosity, you know.

I also got the random Charles Dickens, Dan Brown, Vladimir Nabokov...

morning at malibu + the boyfriend blazer project

out of summer school at last! and the first good grade that i've seen in...well, too long.

this morning we drove over to malibu and went walking on the beach.  just my kind of beach - sandy, but with lots of beautiful rocks and kelp and stuff to keep it interesting.

the fog was amazing...

and i love the houses on the beach...

although the undersides of them may just be infinitely more interesting.

ocean!

...and random bit of dead lobster or something.

changing the subject.

later, this afternoon i got a chance to start catching up with my sewing projects, etc.

today's project - fixing up my mom's old blazer jacket that i found at the bottom of my dress-up bin in my closet a few weeks ago (during The Cleaning Frenzy, and yes, i still have a dress-up bin).  the jacket was nice, but HUGE.  i wore it for a day and then realized that it looked ridiculous on me.  apparently i have an unusually small back, so everything is always too big right around there.  the solution - opening up the back side seams...and cutting.

aaahh!  hopefully i'm not in over my head....

all pinned up...and the proper bits cut off.

ta-dah!

(couldn't get a good back view because, well, one can only do so much when the only thing available is a mirror...)