Month: September 2010

Twilight Photography

Twilight Photography, South Hill Park

Yesterday Paul and I went to South Hill Park, for a workshop in twilight and low light photography.

While it was still light, we went for a walk around the lake and staked out a good spot to take photos of the sunset. We then set the cameras to Manual (scary!) and started playing around with the settings to see what would happen.

Twilight Photography, South Hill Park

Once it had gone completely dark, we played around with artificial light. This is Paul, waving an LED torch around (mostly) in front of the camera. We also played with candles, sparklers, glow sticks and very long exposures.

You can see the rest of my photos on Flickr.
This is an extremely edited selection – most of the pictures I took by the lake were identical, just changing one setting each time until I’d found the best one.

I don’t think I’m going to take up photographing sunsets or waving torches around any time soon, but I do feel as though I understand my camera a little bit better than I did before. We’re going on holiday in November, when it will be dark for quite a lot of the time, so hopefully I now have enough knowledge to be able to take better photos while we’re away.

Art Apron

Apron

This is the apron that I made to wear during my week of art courses. This is an “after” picture (excuse the wrinkles!), which shows that I managed to keep myself remarkably clean!

Broderie Anglais Circle Skirt

Broderie Anglais Circle Skirt

I’ve been clearing out my fabric stash, and stumbled upon four metres of crinkle broderie anglais at the bottom of a pile. I bought this while I was working at a fabric shop, and had been sent to a different branch for the day. Black broderie anglais is a very rare beast, so I snapped up as much of it as I thought I could carry home on the train.

It’s been sitting in the stash ever since because the sewing machine I was using at the time would have made a dreadful mess of this crinkly fabric. Thankfully my trusty overlocker has no such problem, and I ran up this simple skirt in no time.

The spots of pink that you can see through the holes in the fabric are from my Giant Petticoat of Doom.

I have just over a metre of fabric left, and I’m planning to use it to make a matching top. I’m not a hundred percent certain about going out in an outfit made entirely from crinkly fabric, mind you. I don’t want to look as though I’ve been sleeping in it!

Simplicity 2307

Simplicity 2307

This is Simplicity 2307, a brand new Project Runway pattern.
The fabric is a cute little goldfish print by Heather Ross, that I bought from Cia’s Palette a couple of years ago. It was a skirt, for a while.

I have to confess that I don’t always like Project Runway patterns. They tend to offer lots of variations, which I do like, but they seem to make things unnecessarily complicated, which I don’t.

Having said that, there are only two things that I struggled with a little bit on this one. The first was the pleats at the top of the sleeves. You have to make two little pleats and then overlap them at the top. This looks beautiful when you’ve done it, but the instructions on exactly what you needed to fold to where to make this happen didn’t seem very clear. The second was that by the time I’d interfaced both the collar and the facing there were six layers around the neck, which makes it a bit stiff. Next time I probably won’t stiffen the facing, and I’ll trim the seam allowances of the collar a bit more closely.

Despite the fiddly aspects of the pintucks and the pleats and the collar and the little tie belt at the back, this was actually a fairly straightforward pattern to put together though. You do have to be super accurate in your cutting and sewing though. Otherwise you’ll find little frustrations, such as the sleeve bands being a couple of millimetres too short, or the sleeve heads not fitting in quite right. This is definitely a precision piece.

The pattern doesn’t give a blouse length, but I was restricted by having such a small amount of cloth to play with. I ended up using every last inch of my fishy fabric – you have to promise not to notice that the fish are in fact swimming sideways around the sleeve bands!

Action Man

Action Man Jacket

One of the joys of Facebook is that occasionally you receive a message from an old friend. In this case it was a plea from someone I went to school with – could I help him with his vintage Action Man collection? Of course!

Shortly afterwards I received two tiny little jackets in the post.

My mission was to remove the broken zip from the older jacket, and replace it with the functional zip from a newer one. No problem! I even used vintage cotton thread, for authenticity.

I hung on to the two little jackets for a while, in case I could turn up a second tiny little zip and repair them both. Unfortunately 3½” long zips with green tape and metal teeth are quite difficult to come by, as it turns out. Possibly their only use is in mending broken Action Man jackets.

Simplicity 5310

Simplicity 5310

This is Simplicity 5310, a blouse from 1972.

Skycarrots gave me the pattern a long time ago, and I’ve always liked the blouse, but my sewing machine hates making buttonholes. I’ve finally got around to making a version that doesn’t have buttons all the way up the front, and I’ll just put poppers on the collar and cuffs. Next I need to decide whether I’m going to make the super-long 1970s collar, or whether I’m going to make it a bit rounder or smaller.

I really like the basic shell of the blouse though, and I can’t wait to see what those enormous sleeves look like when they’re gathered into the cuffs!