Tag: lavender

Hop Pillows ready for the EMPORIUM

Hop Pillows

Remember the hops that I started making into pillows, way back in November? I finished one, for Sarah’s birthday, as she’d kindly harvested the hops for me from the skycarrots allotment. The rest have been sitting around almost finished, just waiting for the top of each pillow to be ladder-stitched together by hand.

Today, in a flurry of productivity, I’ve sewn them all together and wrapped them all up with labels styled for the INEXPLICABLE EMPORIUM. These prints aren’t particularly “steampunk”, but as I’m trying to recycle the remnants of my stash before I buy anything new, I decided to use them anyway.

You might recognise a few of these fabrics – some of them turned out to have been hanging around for rather a long time!

  • Koi fabric from a circle skirt and corset that I made to wear to a friend’s wedding
  • Sewing print left over from an ill-fated dress that I’ve never worn
  • Psychedelic design was the lining for my Beatles jacket
  • Sugar skulls from my favourite skirt!
  • Flames from Lettice’s skirt
  • Strawberries left over from a pair of BIG PANTS that went straight from my sewing machine to the charity shop
  • Rainforest creatures from a dress I bought that turned out to be so badly made that the only thing I could do with it was chop it up.

The clover & ladybirds print is the only fabric that’s never had any other incarnation. I bought it back in the days when I was making lots of tote bags, but it turned out to be a little bit too thin. I have a little bit left over (along with most of the other fabrics) that I’ll be using to make some matching lavender bags. I have enough dried lavender to fill a hundred bags, so that should keep me busy for a little while!

Pads, pouches, pillows and pockets

zipped pouch for Sarah

This is a zipped pouch that I made for Sarah’s birthday. It’s about 12″ long, but sadly not quite big enough to fit a 12″ ruler inside, otherwise it would have made a lovely pencil case! Although it is long enough for pencils…

I wanted to pop something inside the pouch, and it was just the right size for a wheat pad, a hop pocket and a little clove and lavender pillow. The hops came from the skycarrots allotment, but I didn’t think Sarah would mind getting a few back again!

Wheat, hops, lavender & cloves

Sarah and I are doing a fun art project together, where we take it in turns to create an image which we then share on a tumblr called scribblescribes. Each of our entries is “inspired by the day” and contains lettering. So far I think Sarah’s “scribbles” are much more imaginative than mine, so I want to try and think about my days a bit more creatively!

Today I am mostly staring at a blank Risk Assessment form that I need to fill in to apply for a market stall at an event in May. These things just feel so terribly soul-sucking. What risk can there possibly be from a stall full of haberdashery that can’t be avoided by the application of simple common sense? Okay, so we are hoping to take candles, but there’s a strong possibility that we won’t be allowed to light them anyway, so hopefully our chances of setting fire to all our customers and burning down the venue will be minimal!

(Note to self: must buy small fire blanket.)

Microscope photography

usb microscope

As I was catching up with all of your blogs (500+ unread posts, eek!), I came across Resurrection Fern’s fascinating iPhone microscope photos. Aren’t they beautiful? I was very disappointed when a quick search revealed that the microscope gadget doesn’t fit my poor “old” iPhone 3. A bit more searching ensued, and revealed a little usb microscope for attaching to your computer. Then a penny dropped – I’ve seen one of those at work! I unearthed it from the bottom of the Science Box yesterday, and brought it home for a quick play.

usb microscope

So far I can say that I’m really enjoying playing with the camera, but the software leaves an awful lot to be desired! First of all, this camera is too old to be properly Mac-compatible, which is very frustrating. Not to mention the ridiculous mini-cd that houses the software, which doesn’t fit into a single computer in this house. Thankfully the computers at work are old enough to have a proper cd tray, and I was able to copy the software to a usb stick. I installed the drivers on my netbook, which was easy enough, and the camera worked straight away.

usb microscope

Sadly, after I’d named and saved all 30 photos individually (no batch operations, how unhelpful!), half of them wouldn’t open. The jpegs turned out to be corrupted, so they obviously hadn’t saved properly. When I got the remaining photos onto a nice large screen, I could see that most of them were out of focus, which was disappointing. The focus wheel is pretty much the entire body of the camera, which means that as you’re trying to sharpen the image you’re also moving the lens. That’s never going to work, especially not at 200x magnification!

usb microscope

But, the microscope + netbook combination is easily portable, which means that I’ll be able to take the whole lot outside with me and see what I can find. And the newest version of the microscope looks to have much better software and higher magnification, even though it’s still only a 2mp camera.

I don’t think I’m quite ready to give Richard Weston a run for his money, but I do have some ideas for incorporating designs inspired by these images into some new textile work. The question is, will I ever have time to make it?!