TBT: Chiswick House
A little throwback to a visit to Chiswick House.
An early example of Neo-Palladian architecture; designed and built by Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington.
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Maker Monday: Embroidery...Bayeux Style
A little maker monday throwback to this wonderful embroidery kit that i picked up on my last visit to Bayeux in France.
The instruction manual explains the traditional stitches in both French and English which will help me learn the translations.
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In Honour of Issey Miyake
In honour of Issey Miyake who sadly passed away today, I wanted to highlight one of his designs that has always 'spoken' to me.
'A Piece of Cloth' or the A-POC concept as it's known, is 'a system of dressing created from one piece of cloth with no waste and minimal fabric cutting'.
A wonderful sustainable and creative solution by a true visionary.
📷 taken from Fashion: The Whole Story by Thames and Hudson
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Throwback: Anicka Yi at Tate Modern
Although i spent a lot of my time teaching fashion, i am also a great appreciator or art and creative installations.
More information about how the machines were built and the theory behind the installation can be seen below:
So today i'm throw-ing it back to Anicka Yi installation 'In Love with the World' at the Tate Modern at the beginning of the year.
In the turbine hall, a large number of flying 'Aliens' or Aerobes to give them their correct name, moved about the space gracefully, powered by small fans propelling them in all directions.
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The machines are based on mushrooms and ocean life forms. Two different shapes feature - the 'Planulae' are the bulbous forms, and the 'Xenojellies' have tenticles.
The intention of the installation is to question how these machine species that link to natural forms could become a new species to live amongst us and "evolve as independent forms of life".
I found the piece quite interesting as they seemed to fly randomly but never hit each other. The other very interesting aspect was when you were at a higher level, the 'aliens' know when to go back to their base to get a battery change (*see the above right video). When landing they had great spatial awareness and hovered above the person changing the battery pack - its almost scary how intelligent these objects were.
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Maker Monday: Self-Drafted Tote Bag for a Me Made Gift
I do love a me-made gift, so for a close friends birthday recently, I took out my sewing machine to create a reversible bucket tote bag as part of her gift.
I had some lovely spot fabric in my stash and I had previously picked up some shower-proof fabric from Barry's fabric Superstore in Birmingham for £1 a metre (a treasure trove of wonderful material - if you haven't been, I highly recommend a visit!) to place on the inside. As the bag may be used on the beach, a thought a wipe-able fabric would be useful for the sand!
This bag is quite large but you can create a tote bag as big or as little as you want; mine has diagonals at both bottom corners, but you can make it square, rectangular or curved. I would think about what you would like to use it for and decide the size from there.
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I sewed the outer bag side, diagonal and bottom seams together first, and then did the same thing on the lining layer.
For the straps, i sewed the 2 long edges together for each strap piece as i wanted 2 handles for the bag before turning them through, rather than an over-the-shoulder strap.
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I also tried the viral Instagram hack to turn the straps through...have you seen it? It involves a piece of string through the middle of the strap first and securing it at one end. Then sewing the long seam as normal and using the string to pull it through to the right side. This was a game changer for me and much faster than any other method!
I pinned the straps in place on each side of the outer bag (they should point downwards) and placed the lining bag inside that - this will 'sandwich' the straps in the seam - then sewed all the way around the top edge of the bag, leaving a small gap to pull the bag and straps through to the right side. Push the lining down into place in the inside of the bag.
The final step is to turn the edges in at the opening at the top edge of the bag, and topstitch the complete top edge to conceal it.
Et voila! The bag is finished.
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