January 2014 – eternal magpie

Two more hats…

Today’s been a pleasantly busy one – a good old rummage through my haberdashery boxes this morning, followed by two more completed hats!

I particularly like the understated style of this smart dark grey one. I don’t think it would look out of place on a film noir femme fatale, topping off a great big coat with a fluffy collar, and a slinky dress worn with beaded shoes.

Equally, I think it would look fabulous with jeans and a jumper – effortless weekend style in that “I look awesome in my jeans and fancy hat” kind of way.

This one’s a different sort of a creature – very eye-catching, and in all my favourite colours at once! It’s designed to be worn tall – with space between the crown of the hat and the top of your head. But if you want to, you can pull it right down and hide inside it, with the back of the brim flipped up for a different look.

I have three blocked hats still left to work on – a pale grey, pale pink, and the same bright fuchsia as the band of the hat above. I have some lovely black guipure lace that looks very striking against the fuchsia, I just need to buy another piece that’s actually long enough to go all the way around the hat! I’m not sure yet about the pale grey and pale pink. I have half a mind to embroider flowers all the way around the pink one and top them off with lovely buttons, but I don’t want it to come out “whimsical” in a bad way!

Anyhow, the two hats above are now in the Etsy shop, along with made-to-order versions of each style. I’m off to let my poor old fingers recover from all of this hand sewing. I might make a few more hoods on my next day off, to give the machine a bit more of the hard work!

First brand new hat off the blocks!

Yes, I know I showed you my pink cloche the other day, but as I didn’t make it completely from scratch it definitely doesn’t count as my first brand new hat. This one, on the other hand, does. It’s finished, it’s for sale on Etsy, and I’m really pleased with it! I hope somebody else will like it enough to want to offer it a new home.

I’ve decided that all of the blocked felt hats I make between now and the end of March will be listed for half price. What that price turns out to be will depend mostly on the cost of the materials used in the trimmings, and the amount of time it takes to make them. I suspect this will vary quite a bit! Hopefully this will bring in enough money from hat sales (she says, optimistically!) to buy a few more wool hoods, than I can then make a few more hats with. I will also offer custom orders, for a limited time only, to see how they go.

Something else that’s also now for sale on Etsy is this cute little hood! Again, I’m intending for this to be the first of many. I have different styles in mind (this is the smallest – they get bigger and sillier from here!), lots of different fabrics, and different fastenings too. I recently treated myself to a set of Clover Asian Knot templates so that I can start to make my own frogging. I think that will look lovely on these hoods, and it might make some pretty hat trimmings too.

Now I just need to stop being quite so nervous about having finished my first blocked hat! I need to step away from the Facebook likes and the Etsy stats, and concentrate on making the next one. And the one after that.

If you’re interested in keeping up with progress on the hats, the best place to do it is via the Eternal Magpie Facebook Page. I post quite a lot of working photos there, little snippets of what I’ve been up to, and I can update it on the go more easily than writing a whole blog post. Mind you, snapping photos on my phone and uploading them in all their graininess is making me rather covetous of a new phone – or a clever camera that connects to the internet. Probably just as well I’ve spent all my money on hats blocks!

Slow progress

I was hoping to show you three finished hats today – but apparently that was a vast under-estimation of how long it would take me to do all the hand sewing! Admittely there were interruptions (doing the laundry, finding a mouse in the kitchen, rearranging all the furniture in the sewing room, stroking the rabbit…), but hand sewing is still very slow – especially around the inside of a hat.

The one above is finished, and it’s actually one I’ve had for ages. It’s a Whiteley hat that I fell in love with, but didn’t wear very often.

It used to look like this. I took off all the trimmings, soaked the felt, and re-blocked it into the cloche shape above. Fundamentally the same hat, but now in a shape that I’m much more likely to wear!

This is as far as I’ve got with the black cloche which was one of the first onto the new blocks. I’ve sewn the band inside, which took ages, as I was trying to discover which would be the best needle to use. (I’m still not sure.) I’ve sewn brim wire all the way around the edge of the brim with a stitch that’s like a blanket stitch, but with a french knot thrown in for extra security. I’ve also sewn the black grosgrain edging to the inside of the brim, and you can see that it’s just pinned into place on the outside. I’m not entirely sure that this was the best type of grosgrain to use, as it’s 100% polyester, and I’m not convinced I’m going to be able to steam the fullness out of it so that it sits smoothly in place.

The red grosgrain, which is just pinned in place to give you an idea, is a vintage one that came to me in a donated pile of ribbons, and it looks to be a much better quality. The button I just happened to have in my stash, along with a matching purple one that’s going to look lovely on the purple hat that’s blocking on my table now.

I think my next hat day is going to be Monday (unless I manage to sneak in a few stitches at the weekend), so this is definitely going to be a very slow process!

The hat blocks are here!

Aren’t they beautiful? My very own multi block cloche set from Guy Morse-Brown. You may have already seen pictures of them on Facebook – I’ve been saving up for these all year, and was very excited about their arrival! All the sections are interchangeable, which means that eventually I can buy more crowns and brims to make different styles of hat. But I think cloches make an excellent everyday sort of hat, and I want to make hats that people actually wear, not stick in a cupboard and only bring out for weddings. So, cloche hats it is!

The blocks are covered in cling film, to prevent dye transfer from the felt, and to prevent the stiffener that’s impregnated into the fabric from sticking to the wood. The floppy shapes on the table are called capelines – which my spell checker keeps insisting is two words, grrr! They’re made from wool, and I bought them at Broadlands about four years ago. About time I put them to good use!

Some people use steam, but I just used hot water to soften the felt enough to pull it down over the block. The red band is a blocking spring, which holds the felt in place at the crown so that you can keep pulling and stretching it over the brim. It’s hard work – this kind of felt is very stiff.

This is the brim, held in place by fifty special blocking pins. Once the felt is completely dry, I can cut away the excess, trim the brim, add an inside band, and then decorate it. I think this one’s going to be mine!

And here’s the second block, which has more of a sweeping shape to the brim. The back of the hat is on the right. You wear this hat slightly pushed towards the back of your head, so you can see out from under the brim. Speaking of the brim… I might need to work on this one a bit more. I think this is where steam will come in handy, as I had real trouble blocking the brim to fit the concave shape of the block. I don’t think the string was tight enough in the groove to make a really neat edge to the brim, but I won’t find out until I’ve taken the hat off the block. The great thing about working with felt like this is that it doesn’t matter if I’ve mucked it up at the stage – I can simply soak the capeline in hot water, or steam the brim, and start again. Brilliant!

And because I am nothing if not enthusiastic, I’ve made a colour chart of the range of felts I can order from to make more hats! (Oh, number 20, Regal, is out of stock at the moment, so you can’t have that one.)

What I’d like to do is offer a discount to the first six people who pre-order a hat from me. This gives six people a hat at a fantastic bargain price (yet to be worked out, but likely around £40 + shipping), and gives me the funds up front to buy things like a big roll of brim wire and a bottle of felt stiffener that I can’t buy in single-hat quantities. I realise that nobody’s going to buy a hat based on two pictures of work very much in progress, but I figure that if you know this is happening, you can start to think about colours and trims for when the time comes!

Learning Curve

These past couple of weeks I seem to have been on a learning curve for all sorts of things. I’ve been trying to sort out the spinning wheel at work, which seemed to be going really well! I’d identified it as being a 1960s/70s Ashford Traditional, found a diagram to help me set up the brake band for the bobbin, and oiled it to within an inch of its life. It now treadles beautifully, and the flyer is very smooth… until I start trying to spin. Whether I’m trying to spin my own yarn or just wind readymade yarn onto the bobbin, as soon as I put the slightest tension on the yarn, the flyer stops turning. I know it’s a question of getting the tension for both the drive band and the brake band in balance with one another, but I just can’t seem to get it right! Very frustrating.

Last weekend (the weekend before? I forget), I made some bootlaces. This involved a great deal of swearing at offcuts of bias tape and various feet on my sewing machine. I finally managed to get the stitching even and without danger of slipping off the edge of the laces (the blind hemming foot turned out to be the thing I needed!), but then I mucked up the aglets.

I bought the lace tipper originally to put the metal ends onto corset laces. Then I stopped making corsets, so it’s been in a drawer for the longest time. I made some hand-folded bias binding for the Etsy store, and when it didn’t sell (despite a lot of people having favourited it – I think they all went away and made their own!) I thought I’d repurpose it to make pretty bootlaces. I’ve made laces with sewn ends before, but metal aglets are obviously much more durable.

Can I get the dratted tool to work right? No, I can’t. These laces were just too thick, so I trimmed them down… and didn’t manage to catch the trimmed part inside the metal. The instructions say that one side of the tool is bigger than the other, but it’s not marked in any way, and I genuinely can’t see so much as a millimetre of difference between the two. The laces are getting shorter and shorter as I cut the tips off and try again, and I’m not sure now many more little pieces of metal I can afford to waste!

So, the bias binding’s back in the Etsy store, along with the first batch of vintage buttons. Now I’m off for a quiet little lie down as, on top of everything else, I’ve somehow managed to put my back out again!

On the plus side though, I’m very excited to report that my hat blocks from Guy Morse Brown have been made, and will be arriving this week! I expect another learning curve to follow shortly…

Should’ve worn wellies.

It turns out that when you go for a walk on a flood plain, it might be a good idea to wear wellies. Particularly if it’s been raining SINCE FOREVER.

I set out at about half past three in the afternoon, which looked to all intents and purposes like a beautiful autumn day. Blue skies, no wind or rain, beautiful golden leaves. Just gorgeous.

You can see why photographers call the period just before sunset the “golden hour”.

Walking around the trees, with the sun so low in the sky behind them, was almost magical.

Even the pylons managed to look pretty. Although I did have to find a different way around… this was rather deep!

See? Just gorgeous. One of these days I’m going to put on my most ethereal-looking outfit (or make one), and get Paul to take some silly photos of me hiding behind trees. Why not?

This is usually a field. I’m fairly certain that fields don’t normally flow.

I’m sure there used to be a footpath around here somewhere…

This tree isn’t usually in the middle of the river. The river usually lives about twenty feet away. I’m very glad this beauty survived the storms though, many others weren’t so lucky.

If you don’t ask…

…you don’t get. Sometimes you can ask and you still don’t get, but if you don’t do the asking in the first place, you’ll never know.

I’ve always had a hard time asking for things. Always expected other people to somehow magically know what I wanted, which of course led to disappointment when they inevitably didn’t. I thought asking for things was bad. Greedy. Selfish. Needy. Rude. And so I rarely got what I wanted (sometimes, needed), and so I was sad a lot. My husband likes to remind me that he does not in fact have psychic powers, and that if I want him to do something, I actually need to remember to tell him. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I forget. But it’s always better to ask and be told no, than is it not to ask and to never know.

January is always the time of year for Resolutions. I used to be a great resolution-maker, very serious, and then always very cross with myself when things didn’t work out exactly as I’d Resolved. This year, I’m making a change. I’m doing two things: 1) choosing a word that I want to embody this new year, and 2) making a great big list of WANTS instead of Resolutions.

The word part was easy for me this year, and the word is action!

I spent so much of last year waiting, hibernating, feeling ill, that I just allowed my life to happen around me, for the most part. Clearly that can’t continue – I’ve done far more than my fair share of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and it’s time to move on. I decided to treat myself to Honey & Ollie’s One Word bracelet, which Rain will be making for me with the word action! stamped right across the middle. Any time I feel inclined to moan and feel sorry for myself about things not going the way I want, I can look at the bracelet and be reminded that there’s always something, no matter how small; there will always be an action I can take that will change things.

(Sometimes, yes, the action will be go to the shop and buy a giant bar of chocolate and sit in a nice hot bubble bath whilst eating it, because fibromyalgia sucks and I need a tiny bit of luxury right now. But an action’s an action, no matter how small.)

The other part, the I WANT part, still feels a bit weird, a bit selfish. But the important thing to remember is that just because I WANT something, there is nothing and nobody out there in the universe that is obliged to leap up and simply give that thing to me. If I WANT something, I have to WORK for it. And there will always, always be an action! I can take that will move me one tiny step closer.

So, these are a few of the things that I WANT for 2014.

1) I WANT a lovely garden
I have the bones of a lovely garden, but it will take a lot of work to turn it into the garden that’s in my head, and I’m going to need help. Fortunately my Mum loves gardening, and she’s offered to come over with books to help us identify what some of the giant overgrown shrubs are supposed to be. We have one friend who can help us to design and landscape the space, and another who can help me to keep on top of looking after it all. (We’ll pay them for that, of course, as that’s how they earn a living.) For now I’m reading Gardeners World magazine, and doing a bit of pruning when I feel up to it. I can do more when it’s not raining all the time!

2) I WANT to be more healthy
Well, my doctor’s pretty much given up on me with this one (long story, very dull), and acupuncture’s beyond my budget at the moment, even though I know it would help. So, it’s up to me to try and keep the fibromyalgia a little more under control. I’ve started by giving up coffee and caffeinated fizzy drinks. I kind of want to give up caffeine altogether, but I don’t think I could survive without tea! So I’m taking things a step at a time. I’m giving up dairy, because I already know it doesn’t agree with me, which I need to keep reminding myself means NO MILK CHOCOLATE. I also need to do more exercise. This can be a tricky one with fibromyalgia, because the increased blood flow through the body can make the pain much, much worse, which then makes the fatigue much, much worse, which isn’t terribly helpful! But, I’m walking a mile home from the bus stop most days, and when the weather stops being quite so revolting I want to start catching the bus a little further away from work, so these little bits will all start to add up.

3) I WANT a pair of silver shoes
Yes, that went from very serious to rather frivolous quite quickly, I know! I’ve spent the past couple of years building up my shoe collection, and the only gap left in it is for a pair of silver shoes that I can wear in summer. I have a moneybox which collects all my spare change as I save up for the pair I want… but that rather depends on whether Ren at Fairysteps decides to make any silver shoes this year! If not, then I’ll order a pair from Conker instead. I figure that the weather won’t be nice enough for summer shoes until at least May, so I’ve got a while to save up!

4) I WANT an instant camera
I recently acquired two boxes of Instax Wide film to go with a Fuji 200 or 210 instant camera. I have a friend who thinks she has the right model of camera and is willing to lend it to me, I just need to wait until our paths next cross at work. If my two boxes of film come out well, and I actually do something with the pictures, then I’ll decide whether to buy an instant camera of my own.

5) I WANT to run my own business again
Well, that part’s easy. On April 6th, the beginning of the new tax year, I’ll set myself up as a Sole Trader again, and start running Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium as a formal business arrangement. The difficult part will be deciding what I want to make, and how to sell it! As I’ve said before, the past year has been spent doing a lot of research, and I’ll be carrying over most things that are currently in the Etsy store. There will also be new things, once my hat blocks arrive, so I’ll just have to wait and see how they’re received.

There’s more, of course, but I think that’s plenty for now!

I have made one Resolution, which is to do something towards the business every single day, no matter how small. As it turns out I’ve been ill for the past few days (since I went back to work!), so the actions have been very small indeed. I’ve sewn some experimental bootlaces, sent out a parcel, re-listed some items on Etsy, and not much else! Once I’m feeling better (stupid tonsils) I can get back to doing more again.

New Year, New Dress!

First completed garment of 2014 – this is Marcy Tilton for Vogue, 8813. The fabric is silk noile, dyed in my tea urn with about six months’ worth of saved tea bags. I blogged about my failed attempt at dyeing the fabric and scalding my foot, but apparently I failed to mention the second attempt, which came out looking lovely! Well, I think so, anyway.

Paul doesn’t much like the black marks, which are iron stains from rusty nails. I’m slightly concerned that people will make “hilarious” jokes about tea stains, but I really love this fabric. I plan to over-dye it every six months or so with the tea bags that I’m still saving. I figure that each successive dye bath will add new stains and patches and colours, which will add lots of depth and texture.

Some of you have been following the progress of the smocking over on Facebook… ta-da!

I’m slightly peeved about the wonky bit in the centre, caused by a dart that I added after the smocking rather than before. Note to self: read the instructions all the way through, especially if you’re making changes to the pattern.

Often when I’ve finished sewing something I’m so sick of the sight of it that I can’t even think about making another one. I enjoyed working on this dress so much that I’m already thinking about different colour combinations, and wondering how many I can get out of the fabrics I’ve already got in my stash. There’s a version suggested with contrasting colour panels, one with buttons on the enormous pockets… and I want to wear them all!

Notes on the pattern: BE CAREFUL. It’s not difficult by any means, but there are a few places where you need to be really accurate otherwise you’ll come unstuck. You also need to read the instructions properly *cough*, as the pocket construction in particular is a bit origami-like. The back, by way of contrast is completely plain and flat.

Fitting-wise, the only measurement you need to worry about is the full bust. If the dress is too tight across the front, it’ll be too tight under the arms and through the cap sleeves. I still went down a size from my usual Vogue Large to a Medium, and there’s plenty of room to breathe.

This, as you may be able to tell, is not another dress. It is another Marcy Tilton though, Vogue 8499. These trousers have a flat front and elasticated back, large pockets, and darts at the knees. They’re very wide at the hips, tapered at the ankle, and sit very high at the waist. Perfect!

My only complaint about this pattern is that there are no actual garment measurements given anywhere! If I’d sewn my usual Vogue size 18 or 20, these would have been phenomenally huge, even for a very baggy style like this. After reading a lot of reviews online, I took a gamble and made a size 14. This has turned out spot on, thank goodness. Any smaller and I wouldn’t have been able to pull them over my hips, but thankfully there’s still plenty of ease.

Once again, parts of the pattern require absolute accuracy. I ended up with a tiny hole in the waistband where I sewed past one of the small dots by a couple of stitches, though it was easily fixed.

This picture doesn’t really do them justice, although I think you can get an idea of the shape. I think they’ll also work well in lightweight corduroy, or maybe a nice drapey suit wool. They’re so comfortable that, like the dress, I want to make more already!

2013 round-up

Well, 2013 has certainly been a very interesting year!

My formal diagnosis with fibromyalgia came right at the tail end of 2012, but it’s coloured the whole of 2013. My health this year has been dreadful – not being able to sleep, not being able to walk, not being able to manage the pain – but I’ve just had to keep going regardless. What else is there to do? Of course I’ve done my fair share of complaining about it, but at the end of the day all I can do is carry on and do my best.

Things at work have also been interesting… my role changed quite dramatically in March, when I stopped working every weekend and increased my hours to work a job-share rota as Visitor Services Assistant. This year will be even more interesting, as a lot of physical changes are happening to the museum itself (thanks to Heritage Lottery funding), but I have no idea yet how this will impact my role.

Our home life has seen perhaps the most interesting change of all, in that we now live in a new house! This was not something that we had been planning, but once the decision was made to look for somewhere new, we’d put in an offer on a bungalow in a matter of days! We then had to wait several months for the sale to go through, and getting to know the new place has not been without its trials (nicotine stains, dog hair, malfunctioning drains, a door that keeps falling off its hinges…), but we’re gradually making it into our own place.

The overall feeling of 2013 has been one of resting, nesting and hibernation. So much of the year was spent waiting for the house move to happen that I feel as though I’ve done hardly anything creative with my time. Looking through my photos reveals that’s not actually true, so here are a few highlights of what I’ve been up to.

The beginning of the year was mostly taken up with building Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium! Our first event in May was at a Steampunk festival in Frome, which was really a test to see how our offerings would be received. We learned a lot from watching people’s reactions to the stall, and it was successful enough that I decided to carry it on as an Etsy store when we came home. This year has been all about the market research, and I’ve learned a lot about how I both do and don’t want to run a business in future!

The key to the Emporium has been two things: Diversity and Branding. They might seem mutually exclusive, but (finally) putting my typography degree to good use to create a coherent brand has meant that we can include all sorts of seemingly unrelated things into the Emporium, and they all look as though they belong together. We also discovered that the faux-Victorian theme can work outside the Steampunk community, being well-received at a local charity stall just before Christmas.

Some individual products have worked better than others in terms of popularity and sales, and some have worked better than others for me in terms of what’s required to make them. I’ve learned that I enjoy working in small batches, but don’t like making custom orders. I’ve really enjoyed writing the little blurbs to go on the labels for each piece, but really hated making the Harris Tweed Cufflinks. (They’re beautiful, but I cut my fingers to ribbons as I made them!)

Having taken the time to do this preparation and research, I’m pleased to say that I’ll be formally setting up as a Sole Trader again in April, and running the Emporium as a proper business from then on!

I’ve done a little bit of more ambitious felting this year, making a hat, a pair of slippers, and a number of small experimental pieces to try and get the hang of felting in three dimensions. There’s something really satisfying about the nothing-into-something aspect of felt making, even more so than with sewing. You’re starting a process completely from scratch, with nothing but a bit of fluff from a sheep’s back, and ending up with a (hopefully) beautiful piece of fabric or a three-dimensional object. I have a huge bag of wool sitting in a cupboard, waiting for me to find a good space in the new house for making a mess with fluff and water and soap. I’ve also ordered a set of hat blocks from Guy Morse-Brown, so watch out for hand-felted cloche hats coming this way!

My natural dyeing experiments have been a bit hit and miss, to be honest. Reluctant to experiment with chemical mordants, I restricted myself to working only with substantive dyes to begin with… which basically means tea! Not having a great deal of use for miles of beige fabric (although I am currently making a smocked dress from the silk shown above), my future dyeing plans are now more long-term. I want to do lots of research into dye plants that will grow in my new garden, and then begin the process of planting and harvesting and dyeing. Realistically it could be two years before I have my first crop of dye plants ready to use, so this will be a continual background project for a while.

This little ball of goodness is my very first handspun yarn, made on a borrowed drop spindle. I’ve since bought my own spindle, and borrowed the spinning wheel from work, although I haven’t made a great deal of progress with either yet. Spinning brings with it the same sense of satisfaction that I get from felting – of being involved with every step of the process. I had fluff, now I have yarn, soon I can weave or knit or braid and make a whole new thing!

Going back to basics, unburdened by the demands of making things for other people, or without even considering the finished product at all, has been really important for me this year. Being able to immerse myself in a process, learn different techniques, and see where they take me, has been really liberating.

Mostly, I seem to have started a lot of things that I want to carry on with and learn to a much deeper level over the coming months. I’m planning to divide my time away from work between developing the Emporium to keep the sales coming in, and carrying on learning and testing and making things with wool and felt and fabric. I hate to use the word “whimsical”, it having been mocked so soundly by Regretsy, but that’s the direction I want to follow. Felting, spinning, dyeing, embroidery, beading, knitting, sewing… the theme for this year is to take my crafty skills, and turn myself into a Textile Artist.

Quite how this is going to happen I have absolutely no idea at the moment, but I’m guessing that sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a fluffy blanket and scoffing the last of the Christmas chocolates as I poke the computer isn’t going to make me a great deal of Art. Time to get up, and get on with it!

Month: January 2014

Two more hats…

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First brand new hat off the blocks!

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Slow progress

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The hat blocks are here!

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Learning Curve

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Should’ve worn wellies.

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If you don’t ask…

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New Year, New Dress!

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2013 round-up

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