Flowers for yesterday and today.
More exciting is the next stage of the lizards. They were all printed off but I thought I'd try for something a bit flash. I LOVE metallic thread (and all manner of other spangly stuff now you mention it) so thought some embroidered metallic diamonds up the lizards' backs might be cool. It didn't work out as well as I might have liked but they're still quite nifty. And it's all part of learning to use my flash sewing machine.
As promised, two flowers today, which just managed to be squeezed into the end of the fabric strip. I needed to rethread the machine so opted for the variegated thread. No special reason, just because.
I got overexcited about my screenprinting kit again today and printed some lizards onto some linen shirting bought especially for this project. It's a nicer green than it looks in the photo and works well with the black printing ink. At some stage I recalled printing ink needs to be handled with care because it gets EVERYWHERE. Indeed, one shirt front made the ultimate sacrifice and some more fabric will be required.
Here's the lizards on the back of the shirt.
(Yes I know one of them is smudged but just don't look too hard.)
No flower today (two tomorrow I promise). But! I have an excuse, and that is that I have spent nearly all day tarting up a dull old shirt with a nautilus. The aim was to get some more practice in with the sewing machine using different fabric and a slightly different technique. It mostly worked, with a couple of hiccups along the way. And then, because I am still really excited about the screenprinting set and the CRM flowers I thought I'd fill the sections with screenprint paint to see what happened. There was a bit of beginner's luck on hand: no ink got spilled, nothing got painted over the border and no paintbrushes went flying across the room only to land in the clean washing. There's a couple of minor not-quite-rights, but it's a reasonable first effort IMHO.
Because I have a broken toe I'm supposed to keep off my feet when at home. But because I am an idiot, and am still very excited about my screen printing kit, I have naturally spent all day on my feet. And that was without going to the march (come to think of it, going to the march would have been easier). So now my feet ache and my legs are tired and I really am going to get off them. Still, I've managed to squeeze in today's flower and here is the evidence.
Bye for now.
So here's today's flower and you'll see it's managed to capture the self-pattern of the fabric. I'm not sure what happened to the shape - maybe it's got the bloat, or maybe I need a new marker pen.
Today, on a whim (time to kill, happened to be outside the art shop), I bought a screenprint kit. I did screenprinting years ago but have mostly forgotten how it all works. Winkle the cat has taken it over for the moment but he'll move when it's dinner time.
But even better! Someone (thanks, Tracey!) has given me some flower designs to use as stencils. I can't imagine any of the relearning process will go smoothly but as you 100 day project people know (or are learning) it's persistence that is the key.
Quick post today - I've done yesterday's and today's flower plus made the lining. Now it's late and there's still dishes to do. The lining is shiny acetate so it's a bit hard to make anything out with the flash but at least there's evidence of progress.
Bon soir.
As one might have guessed, yesterday's work was a botch up. But today it was remedied, and the rest of the outer mostly completed. Need to do stuff like the collar but hopefully that won't take too long. Next step? The lining.
We haven't shown anyone else's work for a few days but tonight I thought I'd show you something from Marc. Marc is drawing people and their clothes and the drawings are colourful and stylised, with some of them ever-so-gently lampooning their subjects (not in a mean way, I hasten to add). We couldn't go past this hipster with his beard and Chuck Taylors.
Today I made one of the most serious decisions of the whole project: what buttons to use. I think this has been knocking quietly on my brain for a while but today I realised I have some vintage (and I mean vintage) big red buttons that will be perfect.
Because I was avoiding the news I decided start sewing. I have over 50 flowers and nothing to sew them on to yet. Oops.
Have you ever been held up on a project because you haven't been able to get past some minor hurdle? Then when you make yourself do whatever-it-is, it's really easy and takes about 5 minutes? So it was with the opening flaps. But wait! It was to be a night where nothing was easy. Somehow I've managed to lose my supersized reel of red cotton. Not a problem, I thought, I have lots of red cotton. Wrong. There's every shade of pink you can imagine in the thread tin but no red. Fortunately there was some of the right red left on a bobbin and I found a dark red that's close enough, at least for the wool seams. This meant topstitching the flaps with the bobbin thread showing (because it was the right colour). It's not ideal but never mind.
So onto the seams. I only had time for the front seam that attached the side front to the centre front. I finished the first long, difficult seam only to find out that the bobbin thread - you know, the thread that's the right colour - had run out about 3 inches into the seam. So there went another bunch of time.
The seam is shown below. You'll notice the curve is closely clipped. It really is worthwhile taking the trouble to clip seams when they're curved because they sit much better. If it's a jacket from I usually do this (from this helpful webpage):
Yes it takes time but so does anything worth doing.
I haven't overlocked the edges because the cape will be fully lined so no raw edges will show. Plus the seams are wide (1 inch and 1.5cm) and overlocking just adds to the bulk. Tomorrow I'll scuttle down to the local stitch 'n' bitch and get the RIGHT THREAD!
Evidence of today's effort. Shan't stay - spent some time this morning sitting in someone's cold house, am still waiting for my feet to thaw. When the medical people complain about children living in damp uninsulated housing trust me, it's really serious. And it costs us a fortune - it would be cheaper to just pay for the insulation and heating.
The fire is calling. That's all for today.
