Little bit closer...

I was talking with my tutors and have decided to make my collar a little differently, I'm gonna buy a vintage collar and put my butterflies on that so it'll look a little bit like this...

Pretend Butterflies

Well, had a very busy few days of sewing, sewing and more sewing and I've made quite a few butterflies for you to see...

It's not finished or even close but thought you'd like a peek in my head of what it'll look like :)

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Fiiiive Roooo-oooo-biiiins! (that bit must be read like you'd sing 'five gold rings') I probably should've waited a few days untill it was the 5th but I was too excited.

I've been sewing away at Christmas things now it's getting close to Christmas and I've been making little robin baubles for christmas trees and thought I'd share them with you :)

Camberwell Beauty

Had a very exciting friday, I made a pretendy neckpiece base for practice. I used plain cotton for the top and layered chiffon over plain cotton for the collar. That bit didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped, mainly cos I'd been ignoring the fact that chiffon was quite so see-through so its ended up with a big hem so I'm gonna try overlocking and, fingers crossed, that'll work better.

Then I sewed and sewed and sewed and made some beautiful Camberwell Beauty Butterflies...

This one is is organza with free motion machine embroidery

This is a photocopy on acetate that I machine embroidered the detail on.

 

I loooove the organza one, I was so excited I didn't wnt to look at it while I was sewing the bottom wings on which I think is why it went a bit wonkey lol. The thing is though, because the fabric is so light and the embroidery is so heavy, the wings just fall. I think that when I've gont a lot together I'll be able to put a little stitch between the wings and that'll sort it.

The acetate one actually worked a lot better than I thought it would which was quite a nice suprise. I might put the occasional acetate butterfly on to keep the wings upright.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

It's off to sew we go...
Spent yesterday dyeing and today sewing, what fun. I've been playing with Organza, Chiffon and Crepe de Chine and these are some of the beautiful colours I've come up with...

Except I found out after I'd spent all day sewing these wings that chiffon sort of shrinks and wont stretch back into the proper shape no matter how hard you try.

Hopefully the organza will work better.

It's getting exciting now...

I've been playing with my 3D butterflies and I'm a bit excited now - I pinned them onto a mannequin neck to see what they'd look like and I want to make it now!

These are my fave 3 layouts...

Was thinking of doing either the first one or the last one, I just liked how the middle one reminded me of a bowtie :)

Flutterbys

Got some more pretty butterflies for you :) These ones are the '88' butterfly, because of its markings, the zebra butterfly and I think it's called the Blue Adonis - it's a teeny tiny blue one I've only ever seen in Guernsey...

 These ones are all British ones (I think the top one is anyway, not sure where it's from cos I took the pic at Manor Heath Park and Jungle Experience in Halifax). The other ones are - Red Admiral, Gate Keeper, Purple Emperor, Camberwell Beauty and Small Heath. Well, thats what it said on the website and it looked very official.

All done with watercolour and pencils :)

Butterflies this time

I know, it's been a while but I've been off researching for this new project - fashion embroidery this time - and my theme is butterflies :)

Moodboard - didn't make me hate it this time which is always a plus

These butterflies are pencil or watercolour.

Now I just need a way of turning them into stitch and make something fashion-y out of them...

Fish Mobile!

Finally finished and handed in! Hoorah!
Here it is...

All fish made of silk, real (and very painful when you accidentally stab yourself with) fishing hooks and wire and took about a million hours to make.

Hope you like :)

Dead line...

Well, dead line coming up soon and have been living at college, even had a shower there the other day when I dropped the shower head when I was cleaning my screen!
Got everything finished and will even show you when I've handed in :)

Look who I found :)

It's Nemo!

And he was with a pretend Flounder...

I've been bouncing round all day cos I was so excited about them lol. They're gonna be hanging from fish hooks on wire from a piece of driftwood, I want to go make it noooooow!

Dory fish!

Had a fun day finishing some prints and sewing a fish and look who I made....

Dory!

I know it's a bit funny looking but it was kinda fiddly and I think for a first attempt it's not too bad... Now she just needs to help me find Nemo :)
I blame the girls at college for distracting me though, first by talking about work experience placements then the New York trip in May for Surtex. Hi America! Anywhere I really should go visit?

They'll fulfil our dreams and we'll be free...

I'm back on Mumford again :) (This time it's the song Not With Haste)
 
After I eventually stop listening to them in the mornings and get to college I have been doing a fair bit of work, we've started actually printing now which is quite exciting. I'e spent the last few days dyeing fabric to find which to use (I decided on silk for a change) and experimenting...

 (the fabrics are cotton, silk, devore satin, polyester voile for each colour)

The fishes aren't finished yet, Dory needs some yellow and they both need sewing together but it's all getting quite exciting. I've ordered some fish hooks to hang them from cos I think I might make them into a mobile...

Devoré

Got some more print samples for you, wooh.

These are Devoré samples - you print onto the back of the fabric, iron it on the back till it goes golden brown (like chips :) ) then wash it out and where the Devoré paste touches the fabric it burns some of the fabic away and it goes all nice and see through-y!

The top one is Devoré velvet and the bottom one is satin. It hasn't worked so well in some places and I think its cos not enough pressure/paste was applied but you get the idea. If it's done properly it looks so cool!

Advanced Print Stuff

Had an exciting Monday, we learnt lots of new things about printing and did a million and one samples of them.
We did...
Varying strengths of Discharge paste (strongest at the top)

(This is varying strengths of discharge on silk that's been dyed with a DS acid green and an IL acid purple. The IL acid doesn't discharge out so the green gets removed to leave the purple)

Flocking - this is all furry and nice :)

Pigment discharge and Illuminating discharge - the yellow is pigment discharge where the discharge removes the colour to leave the yellow, the white is the illuminating discharge where the same thing happens

We also did metallics and pearls but they didn't turn out so well - they were quite pale colours on white and quite hard to see so the photograph didn't look like anything.
I'm actually quite excited to start playing with them, I really want to use the flocking for something but I dont think furry fish will work somehow...

Even more fish...

I know, I thought there were no more species of fish left for me to draw but I found some!

And I painted my sleeping mermaid...

Well, from today there will be no more drawing, we're moving onto new print techniques and screen development so possibly say goodbye to mermaids cos I think I'm sticking to the fabric fish...
Sad times for mermaids :(

3D fish

It's not Mumford (sadly, how cool would that song be?!) but it is what I've been doing today...

That and a few mermaids again (the painted mermaid does look better now I've done the sea darker)

 I wonder what other joys I can come up with over the weekend for you... :)

Give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light...

Have not stopped listening to Mumford and Sons for the last few weeks and it's becoming my little theme tune to my under the sea stuff. (Title is taken from their song 'Ghosts That We Knew')
It's helped me with these last few pages...

(I dont like this mermaid as much as the other one... I think it's cos the colour of the sea is nicer on the one I did before and because she's a bit funny looking in the picture. She looks better in real life, honest :) )

Mermaids and Dragons

(Not real dragons obviously, that'd be silly. Mermaids, of course, are real)

Well, thats what I've been drawing the last few days - Leafy and Weedy Sea Dragons, mermaids and Blind Cave fish (they are actually blind, they have no eyes cos it's so dark in the caves they live in they dont need them. They have nice sparkley scales instead though)
I've somehow got superpowers and have become quite good at drawing, I think it's down to the new Mumford and Sons CD, it's fab :)

Here's my Weedy Sea Dragon, I forgot to upload the Leafy one but it's like the Weedy one just with more leafy bits.

...And the mermaid and her fishy friends

I'm not too keen on the fish, they just dont look finished but I'm soooo tired I wont be able to do anything to them without ruining it.

I like the mermaid though :) It's a lot better in real life, kinda loses something in the photo.

Drawing again!

I dont actually mind this time, who knew mood boards could be that hard?!

Anyway, we're back under the sea with Ariel, Flounder and Sebastian and some of their friends...

(These might be a bit hard to see cos they're only in pencil.)

 Ta Daa :) Will have lots more soon so you can pretend to be a mermaid too (although I actually am one, my legs fall off if I stay in the sea too long)