April 2009

weaving damask

April 30, 2009

The current project that I have in school is weaving damask, a fabric in cotton for a dress and I love it!
There is a whole lot off stuff to do before you start and putting up the whole thing takes perhaps almost twist the time of a regular warp does, but it is so worth it. It makes you able to weave more figural patterns in the weave. It is hard to explain how you do it in English but Ill give it a try. The pattern is built upon sections of four threads, a pattern repeating 17 times over the width of the weave, threading through heddles in groups of four in points on ten shafts, and a liftplan. A bottom weave in 4 shaft cross twill (this is a direct translation from Swedish)

You thread the warp two times, first through the heddles in the back, the ones that you lift manually and then in the heddles in the front the ones that are affected by the threadles.

Pulling the little wooden handles makes the shafts and with that all groups that are threaded on that shaft (four threads in each group) rise up. Then you push the threadles and shuttle the yarn as usual as many times as you have threadles, for me four times. Then you take down the shafts and lift new ones (all depending on you pattern of course.) and repeat until you have finished you pattern.

Weaving this way with this setup is nice since you can try so many different patterns, it is just to lift the shafts in different ways.

re:design24

April 26, 2009

This Saturday I entered a competition called re:design24.
The task was to create a collection of five garments and two accessories made from thrift shop clothing and fabric during only 24 hours.
We were put in a big room with sewing machines and materials and were only able to leave the house for one hour on the Saturday and one hour on Sunday to collect stuff like zippers and so on and to eat something. It started 3pm at Friday and ended at 3om at Sunday.

It all started with material picking, our names were drawn at random so that it would be fair, we took one garment or bit of fabric and then they drew a new name, when everyone had taken one thing, they mixed the names again and we did the same procedure again until we were all agreed with having enough material to start working. The “leftovers” we now fair game to take when you needed. Here is some of the stuff that I took; I did not take photos of everything.

Then we all started working, I had not really a clear view with what I wanted to do, but I started to work on a summer dress, but the material was awful to work with so I gave up on that and started with another dress, the only thing I knew that I wanted to do was dresses, since that is kind of “me”. I love dresses and even though it perhaps would been seen as easier to do a skirt and a top because that is two items I decided to just make dresses except that I knew I wanted to make a corset out of this really cute strawberry fabric that I snatched up as the first item I choose.

I drank a whole lot of coke to keep my spirit up and I did not get tired at all, perhaps it was all the adrenaline pumping and as the clock reached 9am Sunday morning I had finished most of my things to 95% I needed some zippers and hook and eyes to complete my garments. So I took some pictures of my garments (I put them together with some needles were they needed them) an made ready for the presentation, wrote some text explaining my theme hat was the different seasons of the year, winter, spring, summer and autumn.
Then the clock became 10am (the time that all the shops open at saturdays) and I ran around looking for grommets like a crazy woman, I found all that I needed and then completed my collection with one hour to go.

I went home got a half our of sleep and then went back to the prize ceremony, there was some looking at peoples collections and drinking cider and then we went up on the stage and they did some talking about the competition and then the announced the winner, and it was ME. I was surprised of course since I thought that they would choose one of the two girls that had sailor collections since that is so trendy at the moment. But no they picked me :D The price was a sewing machine and to have a spot in a local shop Radiodays window display.
I am so happy I really needed a sewing machine to :D

Here is my collection (click on the pictures to see them in bigger size).

Winter dress with matching purse
I used a fabric with an odd surface for this one, and the button in the front is a really cute vintage button shaped like a flower. My thought about it was: toned down, cool and pale and gossamer, a winter dress longing for spring.

Spring dress
This was the oversized dress, It turned into a short dress with low low back. The words about this dress was: Flowers in the snow, carefully colourful, a dress with flowers making their way to the spring sun.

Summer corset with matching “shoes” and separate skirt
A long long long lace curtain for the skirt, some strawberry scrap fabric and old pants for the corset and shoes. The word for these things was: colourful, bubbly, sweets, cotton candy skirt.

Autumn dress
A old “granny skirt” and a pair of jeans was used for this dress and the words for it was: foul and rainy weather, sky of thunder, a dress speaking of the weather of autumn.
The ribbon in the back can be tied in all sorts of ways.

This is how my “display” looked.

And here is my price a Bernina activia 220 sewing machine, and some pretty flowers smelling like Jasmine.

If you want to check out the other people competing look at the competitions own blog (but it is in swedish)

what is hapening atm

April 20, 2009

Oh my, have I been busy, yes. But well I am ALWAYS busy. I’m doing a damask weave right now, and there is a lot of preparing work involved in the process. And I have also finished my “Six little black dresses” a project we were given in our design class. “Make a collection of 4-5 garments” was the assignment.

I kind of took it to overkill since I made six dresses, and also made 1:4 of life size mannequins and dresses. I also tried my hand on bookbinding for the first time making a book. If you wish to see the full collection please visit my “bilddagbok” (picture diary, it is in Swedish, but there is not a whole lot of text anyway) I am really pleased with it all, it all turned out as I wished.

happy birthday sister

April 11, 2009

My little sister turned 13 today, so I made her a cake ^^

Spongecake base with raspberry jam and vanilla cream in between. Whipped cream around and on top, then covered with marzipan. A traditional Swedish “princess cake”

finsihed rag rug

April 8, 2009

The rag rug is finally finished, it still needs some work until it is completely finished, on the picture I have just cut it out of the loom.

button corset take 2

April 6, 2009

Yes yes, I am making another button corset, this time it is in black coutil and as an underbust. The buttons are bright pink this time and all the same, and will not be overlapping each other as on the white button corset. And I have tried my hand on flossing for the fist time, and I like it! It is only on
the top of the bones that are flossed as the bottoms are under buttons. The flossing sort of balances the buttons over the hips in a nice way and it gives it that certain extra extra something :)

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matching

April 2, 2009

Do you have a matching purse to your dress?

I made another coin purse, out of my favourite fabric at the moment, the same fabric that I used for the gray little wool dress, a Italian wool fabric of high quality, the coin purse is lined with red polyester taffeta. As I wore that dress to school today I thought that I would take the chance to take a photo of the coin purse whilst wearing my dress. This one I am not keeping, even though it is pretty and matches my dress, I already have a functional coin purse, a red velvet one, not as fancy as this one but it works.