Spring Bank Holiday – and the sun’s shining! In England! Sadly I’m not outside enjoying it, I’m sweltering away in my Shed with the iron on. The thermometer on the wall says it’s 33 degrees in here, and it certainly feels like it!
But, there’s still lots to do before the Frome Steampunk Extravaganza, and I’m busy visiting family next weekend, so I need to grab every spare minute I can to work on my preparations for the stall. My own outfits are just about coming together, and if the weather stays like this I won’t have to worry about not having finished the velvet pinstriped cape in time. (I am starting to worry that all the candles might melt though!)
My project for this weekend has been making lots and lots of bias tape – I now have more than 24 metres in total, divided into eight little packs. In the course of making it, I also put up a page with links to all the tutorials I regularly use. That way I don’t have to go digging through my bookmarks every time, and hopefully other people will find the links useful too.
In preparation for Life After Frome, I’ve treated myself to a handy little sketch book called a Fashionary. I’ve been wanting to keep some kind of a dress diary almost ever since I’ve been making the majority of my own clothes, but taking self-portraits is such a faff that I’ve never got around to it. Inspired by Rhinestone & Telephones’ lovely sketches, I decided that a Fashionary would be the ideal way of making a start. Over time, it would also show me which items from my ridiculously packed wardrobe I actually wear, and which ones almost never come out. Hopefully the sketchbook won’t just join all the others on the shelf – you know, the ones I bought with great enthusiasm and the found myself too afraid of “spoiling” to actually draw in. We all have those, don’t we?
I also want to treat myself to a packet or two of precious metal clay. I have all the tools I need for clay working and silversmithing, so I’m just reading through some of my reference books to see which type of clay would be best for the types of designs I want to make. I’m planning to start very simply, with flat pendants stamped with letters, possibly hung from the braided cords I’ve been weaving (and have apparently forgotten to tell you about). This would be a project just for myself, at least to begin with. After working so hard towards this stall, I really need to relax by spending a little bit of time making things for no good reason other than because I can.