Smocking, Traditional and Modern.

Smocking, traditional and modern

This is a sneaky peek at what you’ll be making if you come along to my Smocking Workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life. (It’s on September 19 & 20, and there are still places left! Book here…)

As you can see, we’ll be working the smocking stitches on gingham. For beginners it’s the easiest way to keep everything neat and lined up.

The top panel shows a variety of traditional smocking stitches – like the ones found on the smocks in the Museum’s collection.

The lower panel is made up of more modern smocking stitches that you tend to find on clothing from the 1930s onwards.

I find it interesting that the traditional stitches keep the gathering in very neat little columns all the way down, whereas the modern stitches are almost all designed to form a diamond pattern. The modern stitches are much more stretchy, but they take quite a bit longer to work.

In reality, although smocking looks very elaborate, you only need to know how to do one embroidery stitch, and you can turn it into all of these. If you can get the hang of back stitch, you can be smocking away in no time!

Keeping up with you all…

I’ve just spent a large chunk of this afternoon transferring all my blog feeds out of my email account and into Google Reader. Now I have 82 blogs with 601 posts to catch up on, which could take a while!

However, this much better than looking at my Inbox and seeing 2097 messages, and not being able to tell at first glance how many of those messages are blog posts, how many are genuine emails, and how many are spam.

Hopefully using Google Reader will make everything much easier to manage. I’ll have access to everything when I’m away from my own computer (which isn’t the case with my email), I only need to click one link in order to leave comments, and I can read (most of) the posts without having to click through to the individual sites. Perfect.

Leave a comment below with the name of your blog, and I can make sure that I’m following you!

Sew Beautiful magazine

I bought my first copy of Sew Beautiful magazine today. It’s an American magazine, but you can order it in the UK from Magazine Café. I just happened to stumble across a copy in a newsagent that I don’t usually venture into, so that was a very lucky find!

I picked it up because the July/August issue has suffolk puffs (yo-yos) on the front, and they have instructions for making pretty embellishments with them, similar to my flower tutorial.

The magazine is primarily to do with heirloom sewing, so it places a lot of emphasis on hand sewing techniques. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s full of smocking! There was a beautiful traditional Christening gown, as well as some women’s blouses which were adapted from current commercial sewing patterns.

The majority of the designs are for babies and children, but that certainly doesn’t stop me from being inspired by them. When I was looking for pictures of little smocked dresses, I came across Moxie Fab World. I’d happily wear any of the dresses featured in Cath’s Easter Parade post, despite being at least thirty years “too old”.

I’m definitely feeling inclined to make a few more incarnations of Butterick 5317, perhaps starting with a spotty one…

Travelling Massage Therapist.

Marwell Zoo
(These guys are Emperor Tamarins. They live at Marwell Zoo.)

It has to be said that I’m not having a great deal of luck with my job hunt. I’ve applied for a few things, but there simply aren’t very many jobs out there at the moment.

So, with the help of Seth Godin, Havi Brooks and Chris Guillebeau I’ve been doing a bit of creative thinking, and trying to work out what measures I could take by myself instead of having to rely on somebody else to provide a job for me.

The answer turned out to be something that I’m perfectly qualified for – massage therapy. However, my chances of finding a job at a local salon are quite slim. (My hair’s pink, I don’t wear make up and I’m not tanned – these things are immediate disqualifications in the beauty industry.) I also don’t want to give full body massages. They’re extremely hard work, and my own body isn’t well enough to manage it at the moment.

But there is something I can do which will suit me, and will also reach out to the kinds of people who might never think to go to a salon – and that’s working as a travelling beauty therapist.

By providing seated massage, I can limit myself to working on smaller areas of the body such as the feet & legs, hands & arms and shoulders & head. It also means that my clients don’t need to get undressed, or clamber onto a couch. The treatments can last as little as 10 minutes for an introductory session, or more in-depth massages can be combined for up to an hour.

I’ll be travelling by bus, bike or train, so my range is fairly local, and I’ll need to keep my equipment to a minimum. But if I travel to people’s homes and offices, all I need them to provide is a chair and possibly a table.

I think this will work really well if I can travel to an office space, or perhaps a local community centre, and offer treatments to a number of people from a single venue. It would also work really well as a pampering session – gather a few friends round on the sofa, and take it in turns to enjoy a relaxing foot massage!

I’ve made a start this morning by making a poster and asking the proprietor of my local shop to put it up in his window. The next step is to design some flyers, have them printed, and then I can use my lovely new bike to deliver them all around the neighbourhood.

I’ve also written a page on the Scents & Stones blog, explaining how it’s all going to work.

If you think your workplace might be interested in hosting something like this, or you fancy signing up for a pampering party, please could you let me know? You can leave a comment below, or send an email to claire@eternalmagpie.com. Thank you!

Butterick B5317

Butterick B5317

I started making this dress last weekend, but I’ve been so busy at the Museum this week that I didn’t have time to finish it until today. It’s Butterick B5317, made in black organic cotton from Bishopston Trading.

The pattern is marked as “Fast & Easy”, and for the most part it was, but inserting a zipper into a side seam which also has a pocket seemed a little bit tricky! I’ve never done that before, so perhaps it’ll come out a bit more neatly next time.

I shortened the shoulder straps by about 2″ to make the empire seam sit in the right place, but the neckline was still a little bit too revealing for my personal liking. I’ve added a gathered broderie anglais trim to the inside of the neckline, which I really like the look of. I might need to run a little row of stitches through it though, to keep it from folding itself over.

I chose this pattern for the empire line and the pockets, and it’s definitely one that I’m going to make again in different fabrics. My only disappointment is that because of the width of the pleated skirt panels, it can’t be made using 44″ fabric. That’s a real shame, as I have some quilting cottons that would look lovely in this style! I might have to fiddle around with the pleats, and see whether I can take out a little bit of the fullness. Then it would be absolutely perfect!

Crest of the Wave

Crest of the Wave scarf

I may have been busy working for the past few weeks, but I’ve still managed to find the time to do a bit of knitting. This is the Crest of the Wave scarf, by Judith Jacobs. You can find it on Ravelry, and the pattern’s free.

I’m knitting it with two different sock yarns. The variegated blue is one of the Kaffe Fasset colours for Regia. (I don’t know which one, as it came to me without a label.) The solid purple is another sock yarn from Opal. The transition between the two isn’t quite as harsh as it looks in this picture – the Kaffe Fasset yarn has just enough of a similar purple shade to blend in. I should have enough left over to knit the other end to match.

This is the first time I’ve tried anything lacy, and I’m really pleased with the way it’s coming out. It’s a twelve row pattern, but four of those rows are garter stitch, so it’s not too difficult to remember. Judging by the pictures on Ravelry I think this will look really nice when it’s been blocked. I’ve got a long way to go before I get to that stage though!

The project bag was a very kind gift from Good To Be Girl, to say thank you for the Liberty print knitting fabric that I sent over to them. It’s the perfect size for this scarf, and it’s pink! With cupcakes! You can see the bags that they made from the knitting fabric amongst their sold items. It looks as though you need to be quick if you want to snap up one of these!

Busy as a bee…

Bee

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting about anything other than work lately, but that’s because I haven’t really been doing anything other than work!

I have finally managed to buy a new bike, so today Paul and I cycled all the way to (guess where…) work, so that I could time the journey. The theory is that I’ll cycle to the Museum and back starting from next week, but I’m not entirely certain that my knees will agree with that decision. I’ll have to see how it goes.

It was an absolutely beautiful afternoon, so we mooched about in the Museum garden with the cameras.

Paul took the macro lens (how does he always manage to hijack the lens that I want to use?!), so I took photos of things from a long way away with the 300mm. I have some lovely ones of the chimneys on the East Thorpe building, but seeing as I’m so short of things to blog about, I’ll save those for another time.

Exactly what I need!

I’m sorry that the posts have been few and far between lately – I’m having far too much fun at the museum, and haven’t found time to blog about it all while I’m at home.

I’m partly helping out on the reception desk of the museum, and partly giving a hand to the visiting artists who are providing the family workshop activities. Today we’re making and decorating plaster of paris bugs, which should be fun!

The museum has a studio full of amazing resources. I’ve been learning all about wool with information packs from the British Wool Marketing Board, and feeling inspired to learn how to make felt.

I was just having a little look around the internet for felting resources (as someone’s helpfully checked out all the books from my local library – and they’re overdue!), and I came across the most useful thing ever – polystyrene lasts for making felted slippers!

The main stumbling block (if you’ll pardon the pun) in my quest to make shoes has been that the lasts are so expensive, and difficult to buy in single pairs. I never wanted to use the lasts for hammering, only for shaping the fabric as I sew. For that, these polystyrene ones will be absolutely ideal!

Who’d have thought that a felting website was exactly the place I needed to look for shoemaking supplies?

I love those moments when you find exactly the perfect thing, just as you thought you were searching for something else.

My favourite time of year.

2009 Doc Martens!

You may have gathered that this is my favourite time of year not because we’ve finally had a whole afternoon of unbroken sunshine – but because the new styles of winter boots are just starting to appear in the shops!

OH MY GOODNESS, PINK PATENT TARTAN DOC MARTENS. *faints with joy*
Mind you, I do already have a pair of bright pink patent Doc Martens, so maybe two pairs would be overkill…?

I’m not sure why I’ve accidentally fallen in love with these silver ones. They look like robot boots! I think they are probably the shiniest boots I’ve ever seen. And we all know that I just can’t help being drawn to shiny things!

I used to have a 20-hole pair of DMs, but they became too small when I had to start wearing orthotics. What I really want is a patent pair with a zip, but the only place I can find them in my size (UK6) is Zappos, and they’ve suspended their international shipping service for the time being. 🙁

The wingtip style are also from Zappos, and I deliberated about them for so long that they’ve sold out in my size. If I’d bought them when I first saw them, I could have had them shipped over from the US and been wearing them right now! But now it’s too late.

Every time I look at new boots it makes me deeply regret selling my Doc Martens collection. I got rid of them on the advice of a podiatrist, who I’m now fairly certain was trying to sell me some of his own very expensive shoes instead. Despite all my foot and hip problems, these three styles of Doc Martens remain the most comfortable boots I’ve ever worn.

Grow your own!

Toy Food

Contrary to the label on the box, this is in fact Real Food, from the MERL vegetable patch!

The Museum of English Rural Life has a huge garden, about an acre, and there are currently two vegetable plots. One is planted in a wartime style, and the other is modern. Both of them are yielding lots and lots of vegetables, thanks to the hard work of the staff and volunteers.

At the moment there’s also a Grow Your Own! exhibition, which runs until September 1st. The exhibition explores how gardening and vegetable growing have become embedded in English culture.

For the children (and young at heart!) there’s a Gnome Trail to follow. There are seventeen garden gnomes dotted around the Museum and in the garden, and some of them are pretty well hidden.

Something I hadn’t anticipated when I started working at the Museum was the necessity of learning the phrase “Garden Gnome” in other languages. In French, they’re Nains de Jardins, and in German, Gartenzwerg.

According to folklore, garden gnomes come alive at night and help out in the garden. If that’s true, they’ve been doing an excellent job!