A Coat for a Fool

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you've all had a thoroughly festive few weeks. I am back in the studio now after a couple of weeks of eating, drinking and be-merrying, ready for an exciting 2015. First of all though, a little project I finished last year on.

I was asked by my regular co-conspirator Rebecca Lee to make a frock coat for her Morris dancing pals Sharp and Blunt's Fool, to get its first outing on Boxing Day.

Rebecca chose a very nice wool-like red plaid, and I used a combination of this pattern for an 18th Century riding outft, and a Burda magazine jacket pattern.

Black velvet for the lapels.

And black velvet buttons on the cuffs.

A pleated tail section with a dipped hem and a couple more velvet buttons.

And my own little surprise of a taffeta under collar!

Pretty swish, no?

Traces Pt 2: A Bag for Miss Nichol

The second of my creations for Traces was this velvet and satin Art Deco inspired bag. It is lined in a printed silk in an original 1930s geometric print, and is built around a carpet bag type frame with acrylic handles.

Traces Pt 1: A Bag for Miss Harbrow

I created two pieces for Traces at Holdrons of Peckham, both handbags but both very individual. Each bag was intended for  staff member at the department store, and were exhibited in the staff lockers, along with personal items and ephemera that told the story of each of the characters.There is a great feature on it from Design Week here.

The first design I am going to share with you is 'A Bag for Miss Harbrow' - hand embroidery on vintage linen with a Liberty Tana Lawn lining and a sew-in brass colour frame. You can see my inspiration over on my Traces Pinterest board, and the bag in-situ on the Peckham Peculiar blog.

 

 

Also, a very big thank you to everyone who donated to the Kickstarter fund as a result of badgering from me :)

New Year, New Projects: Traces 2014

Happy New Year to you all, I hope everyone has eaten and drunk to excess and is now begrudgingly back in work! I personally had a rather busy festive period, full of the usual Christmas Fair mania and a some other new ventures that I will tell you about soon... For now, however, I will stick to one exciting event that I am completely thrilled to be a part of .



Straight from their page, because they explain it much better than I ever could;

Traces is an immersive and theatrical multi-disciplinary art & design event inspired by real stories and histories of buildings. Every story, however hidden, leaves a trace… Have you ever wandered through a dilapidated and empty building, wishing you could see it as the last inhabitants left it?
For ten days in February 2014, ‘Traces’ will take a neglected old building and bring it alive again with the smells, tastes, touches and sounds of days gone by. Immersive and theatrical, ‘Traces,’ is a new kind of art and design event, showcasing the work of over 100 artists. Painstakingly researched, it will map and elaborate on the actual stories of the inhabitants of our event’s secret location.
The public are invited to discover these histories for themselves; wandering through the rooms left as if only a moment before, and unpicking their secrets. Interacting with the specially commissioned and selected art and design pieces, to unravel clues about the building and it’s inhabitants, whilst also having the opportunity to buy their favorites at the end of the night.

How amazing does that sound? So while I get to work designing and making my pieces (all top secret of course) Traces HQ will be doing their best to raise the money needed to make the event happen, and that's where you can help! By pledging even just a little bit of money you'll be helping scores of up and coming designers, and the brains behind Traces itself, to get a platform for their work and create a truly memorable experience for everyone involved. There are lots of fun rewards for your pledge too, so take a look at the Kickstarter page to see what's on offer and find out more about the project.

And if you're in London, or could be, then I really recommend following Traces on Twitter to get the clues for the location of the event and get down there for some site-specific, immersive, theatrical, art and design fun!

Custom Creations- Think Pink.

Occasionally I am asked to create a completely unique item for a customer, the most recent of which was a bespoke purse for birthday present. Word of mouth was instrumental in this one, with the good folks at Really Now pointing the client in my direction.
After some discussion about styles and shapes of purse, using my Flickr album for reference, the customer decided on one of my embroidered snap purses, with a flamingo on the front and pink polka dot lining, all excellent decisions!

With something more figurative like this I try to do some research first, so I know what I'm aiming for. I find Pinterest really useful for this, as I don't need to go printing out sheets full of birds for just the one project.

And now I've remembered what flamingos actually look like, not always pink it would seem, I can start scribbling.

 

Once I've got a general idea of the design, and it's placement on the purse, I use the iron on transfer pencils to get a simple outline on the fabric to work from.

A Year On My Own

It almost slipped by unnoticed but as I was walking to a client's house this morning I remembered that yesterday was an exact year since I was made redundant from my day job and forced to become a full time freelancer! It is in fact the first time since I graduated that I've gone a whole year without being on payroll somewhere and I have to say it feels pretty good. A lot of that has to do with being sat on the sofa in my lovely little flat, in a leafy suburb of South Liverpool, the cats on the balcony, the sun streaming through the windows and me devouring a packet of coconut macaroons. But the rest of the good feeling is to do with being my own boss and deriving my (small) income from purely creative work for the first time ever.

I'm not going to turn this post into some 'You can be a millionaire craftsperson just like me!' piece, beause I'm not, I don't think they exist, and I'm certainly not someone to be telling other people how to do anything (with this exception, I draw your attention to my current position on the sofa stuffing my face with macaroons; this is NOT how you increase sales or drive traffic to your website.)

Whoops.

I am just going to point out that my ability to do this has been made much easier by two things. One is my wonderful boyfriend who has a much more sensible job than me and so keeps us on the right side of the rent every month (thanks!). The other is the wealth of other small and independent businesses operating in Liverpool who provide opportunities for me, and other creatively minded people, to make a living from their practice. One of the virtues of being a relatively small city is that communities of like minded people, be it in craft, music, arts, theatre, food...etc. grow quite naturally and make everything seem much more achievable than they would if you were stuck out on your own trying to make it happen by yourself. And being such a small city word of mouth does a lot of the work for you, friends of friends of friends are an invaluable source of business!

So, just to finish I would like to thank, in no particular order, all the people and businesses who have kept me in baked coconut snacks for the past 365 days;

Open Culture

Made-Here

Really Now

Capstans Bazaar

Kirsty Doyle

Bluebird Tea Co

Craft Creative

Blank Note's Super Summer Fair

The Liverpool Craft and Design Show 

 Also the Merseyside Etsy Team for sharing your knowledge and experience with us all.

And finally anyone who has ever bought anything from me, ta!

A Flock of Bluebirds

At the end of July I was contacted quite out of the blue by someone I used to work with about a potential commission for their new business. Since I worked with her in Liverpool Krisi had set up her own company, Bluebird Tea Co, with partner Mike and they'd been busy building a following at fairs, festivals and events all over the country. (You can read more about their story on the brilliantly written blog ThatBluebirdGirl.) Obviously in July we were all thinking about Christmas, right? Well, I know I was, and so were they because they very kindly asked if I'd be interested in making some decorations for their Christmas gift packs!

As I'd never done anything quite like this before in terms of the size of the request (currently 320 birds!) I tried to keep the designs simple but interesting. Fortunately Bluebird have a very strong brand identity so there was a lot to work with, and we decided to create a little felt bluebird the reflected the company but would also be something special to hang on your tree. I started with some Pinterest research, and then a bit of scribbling.

 I tried out a few shapes and stitching samples.

 When I had a shortlist of four birds I sourced materials, costed each design and sent the samples off to the guys at Bluebird.

After a brief back and forth of messages on Facebook we came to a final design, and I soon got to work!

How I go about cutting repeat shapes is constantly changing as I try to find the quickest method.

Production line.

Sepearating batches of bird parts into bags has been very helpful.

Perhaps I would get more done if I didn't waste time doing things like this?

Nearly there!

See all those threads? I have to tidy them off, one by one...

A stack of finished birds, complete with my labels.

If you want some funky loose leaf tea and a little handmade birdie too then keep an eye on Bluebird Tea Co's website for their Christmas gift packs or go and visit them at one of the many events they'll be doing. (I did spy on their website that they'll be stocking up Turl Street Kitchen in Oxford with their teas, so if you're in the area you should get down there, the food is delicious!)