Month: July 2009

A bit of scribbling.

Last week, at lunchtime, Channel 4 was showing an art programme, which was half an hour of life drawing. I found out about it in time to record four out of the five programmes, so yesterday evening I sat and scribbled along with episode two.
Life Drawing

It turns out that there’s a Flickr group where you can post your pictures. It seems as though some people have either re-watched or paused the programmes – unless they’re much faster at drawing than I am. I think that’s a good idea, as it gives you the chance to do a different kind of drawing than you could achieve in just thirty minutes.

Pausing the programme would definitely be a good idea for episode three. The model seemed to choose a particularly uncomfortable pose, and she couldn’t sit still! This is not an especially endearing quality in a life model.

Mind you, when I was at art college we had one model who invariably fell asleep if she was in anything even vaguely approaching a reclining pose. The great quandary at the end of the lesson was always how best to wake her up without touching her, and without frightening her to death by shouting.

I’d been thinking for a while about going to my local life drawing classes, just to get a bit of practice. It turns out that it’s on the same night as clog dancing, so I’m very glad that I have four of these programmes recorded.

Considering that I haven’t done any life drawing for five or six years, I think this little sketch came out okay.

Fresh from the bird bath.

Young blackbird

Here’s another bird picture, by way of an apology for my lack of posting. I seem to have been super busy lately, and I’ll have loads of new plans to tell you about very soon.

In the meantime, my baby blackbird is growing up!

Here he is, fresh from the bird bath.

New clogs!

New clogs!

Hooray, my new clogs have arrived!

Anne is right, and Walkley clogs don’t really have curved enough soles for dancing in.
But these were the only pair of clogs on Ebay, they happened to be in my size, and they were very cheap indeed. So these are the clogs that I’ll have to make do with, until such time as I can afford to buy a more appropriate pair.

They’re actually really comfortable. Certainly more comfortable than you might expect from a pair of shoes made from heavy leather and wood! They’re also ankle boots, which I didn’t realise from the Ebay pictures. This is good. I like boots.

The other thing I couldn’t tell from the Ebay pictures is that these clogs have partial rubber soles, which is also not very good for dancing. Maybe it’ll be possible to remove the rubber.

The clogs that I’m coveting are these beautiful styles by Jeremy Atkinson. Scroll all the way down and have a look at the “pixie” clogs. Aren’t they adorable?

I discovered a little while ago that Countryfile Magazine are having a feature about keeping traditional crafts alive. I don’t know whether clog making can be described as a country craft, but I’ve sent in a form telling Countryfile that I’d love to learn more about it!

I’ll be taking my new clogs for a spin in a couple of weeks, with the Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers.

Liberty Lawn knitting skirt.

I’ve had this fabric for about eighteen months, but I’ve been “saving” it for just the right outfit. First it was going to be Vogue 8470, and then McCalls 5431. Then I decided that neither of those options would be comfortable, and I couldn’t decide what to do instead.

Chris Zydel wrote yesterday about how precious art supplies can make you afraid to use them. That’s definitely true for me (don’t ask me how many blank sketch books I own), and it’s true of my fabric stash as well. Because I usually can’t afford to buy fabric from Liberty (this piece was given to me in part payment for a dress that I made), this lovely cotton lawn fell into the “precious” category, and I was afraid to use it on the “wrong” garment. I wanted it to be something that I would love, and not something that would just sit in my wardrobe without being worn.

Yesterday I made an executive decision that I didn’t want to wear the blue smocked tunic to the Albert Hall on Sunday, which left me still in need of a blue outfit to wear on the day. I knew I had a blue t-shirt, and it suddenly occurred to me that this knitting print was also blue, and would make a fabulous summer skirt!

The skirt is a full circle, with my usual fancy elasticated waist. I’ve added pockets to the side seams and a ruffle to the hem. The ruffle is made from 9 metres of fabric, gathered down to fit the 4.8 metre hem. The lawn was a little bit see-through, so I’ve lined the top part of the skirt (not the ruffle!) with a plain white lightweight cotton.

I’m really pleased with this ruffly summer skirt. I have a pretty piece of white broderie anglais with rainbow coloured stitching that I think would be ideal to make another one. I only hope that there’s enough summer left for me to wear them!

Fluffy Finch.

Goldfinch

I’ve been trying to catch a snapshot of a pair of goldfinches for ages, but they never seem to sit still for long enough. This afternoon I established my position as bird paparazzo extraordinaire when I saw this little fellow on the fence, grabbed the camera, spun around and caught him just seconds before he flew away!

Now I feel less bad about failing to chop down the enormous great weed that’s been growing vigorously in one of our abandoned flower beds. The goldfinches obviously have a very important use for all the fluff that it’s producing.

The smocked tunic – finished.

Smocked tunic dress

Here you go – the completed blue dress.

I showed you the smocking yesterday, and I’ve just finished the binding and the belt.

This is my usual raglan tunic dress pattern, with the neckline, sleeves and hem all finished with navy blue bias binding. I was hoping to be able to find a navy broderie anglais lace for the hem, but my local fabric shop only had white or black.

The fabric is lovely soft organic cotton from Bishopston Trading.

I’m not certain whether I’ll be making the tunics with smocking to order. Because of the amount of time it takes to do all of the hand sewing, it can make the resulting dress very expensive. In the organic cotton I think it would work out to something like £150, which is three times the price of the same dress without the smocking.

Smocking on organic cotton

Smocking

This is what I’ve been up to all weekend – working panels of smocking on the front, back and sleeves of one of my tunic dresses.

From top to bottom, the stitches are Trellis, Wave, Honeycomb, Chevron and Van Dyke.

I’m really, really pleased with how the smocking’s worked out.
Unfortunately, I over-estimated how much fabric the smocking would take up in the pleating, and I’ve ended up with a dress that’s much too big for me.

I’m going to be wearing the dress to the Albert Hall next weekend anyway, because I need to wear something blue, and I don’t have anything else. After that though, it’ll go up for sale.

(Best fit bust up to 42″, hips up to 58″, if you’re wondering!)

I’ll take some proper photos once it’s finished.

Shiny new website

Whilst I’ve been designing and building websites since 1997, I haven’t really been keeping up with what’s been going on in the world of good web design during the past few years. Given that I’m looking for a job at the moment, I thought it would be a good time to get myself up to date with as many skills as possible.

As a result, I spent today teaching myself how to use CSS to build the structure of a simple new portfolio/CV site.

I’ve used CSS to define the look and feel of websites before, but I’d always relied on using tables for layout. With a little help from a handy tutorial in Web Designer magazine (and a number of emails to Paul), I managed to put together a two-column design that I was happy with.

Now that I understand how the structure and syntax of CSS works, I can start to experiment a bit with more complex applications. I might go and have a bit of a play with the Zen Garden website, or maybe have a closer look at the style sheet that makes this blog come together.

I still need to run the new website through some compatibility testers, and there are bound to be some final tweaks to do, but you can see the fruits of my labours here: http://www.designbyclaire.co.uk

Early Bird.

Young thrush

Being based out in the garden, I’ve noticed that first thing in the morning is a really great time for birdwatching. The weather’s much cooler, especially at the moment, it’s nice and quiet, and there aren’t too many people around.

This young fellow was sitting on my fence for ages, happily singing away.

I’ve labelled him on Flickr as a young song thrush, because of his spots, but looking back through my pictures I’m thinking that it might actually be the fledgling blackbird.

What do you think? Are these guys both the same bird?

Heatwave.

At the risk of sounding like a miserable old so-and-so, I am really not enjoying this heatwave! My Shed is like a sauna, and switching on the fan only serves to move the too-hot air around a bit.

I went outside to stand in a shady spot in the garden, and caught sight of these magpies on top of my neighbour’s conservatory. I couldn’t quite work out what they were doing, so I pulled out the zoom lens and had a look. It turned out that they were drinking the drips of water from a leaky overflow pipe. Clearly they’re not enjoying the heatwave very much either.

My plan for the rest of the afternoon? Refill the bird bath, and see whether anybody else needs a bit of a drink.