Tuesday 17 April 2007

Closed for Re-Construction

Yesterday afternoon Derek broke up with me.

Subsequently I am taking a short break from the blog to piece myself back together.

Short answers:

I'm OK

No I don't know what I'm going to do (ie move back etc)

No I don't really want to talk - I am OK though.

Phone calls, emails and texts are appreciated but please understand if I don't respond, answer etc

I can't say what happened, I'm still deciphering it myself.

So for a short while, bye.

Tuesday 3 April 2007

Dez's Banner



Some how I forgot to add the finished pic of Dez's banner

Festival Crush and Productivity

So I've surprised myself. Here it is 6.40pm and I'm packing for Festival with only a few small hand sewing jobs to be done which I can do in the car and at site!

Banners in a weekend. I'm nuts, I decided to make a silk banner for Dez but discovered the silk I had was quite wide so it would be appropriate to make 2 smaller banners than 1 large. So UI made one for Cairnfell too.

I made them with silk paint (iron setting). I traced Dez's design on and had a device on acetate which I projected onto the silk at work before I finishes on Friday. I'd spoken with Art and took on her safety pin and rubber band stretching technique.

I guttered up the lot and got painting. Dez's design is quite simple and was done in a flash. It' looks great and he's now sewn on his tokens and tassles he's won (he's so cute like that!


Then I got started on the Cairnfell one, infinitely more complex, infinitely more opportunity to f**k it up... which I did.





Looks pretty good I hear you say... Well, I neede to make the gutta thicker in some places. Also I need to use some smaller, skinnier brushes and to remove stray
bristles earlier!










So you can see there's some serious bleeding from green to yellow. I think the yellow was still a little damp when I did the green so it bled a lot more. I waited longer before doing the black and it didn't bleed nearly as much.

Lessons learned: More gutta, more waiting between colours, iron fixing is goood!

Also today I made a fighting shirt for Dez with padding at the kidneys and elbow (lots of swearing at that one), 2 coifs for Dez, and I made a red surcoat for me to wear which will match him. No pics as the camera's packed already.

Still need to hand stitch the necklines of 2 underdresses... actually I could just go sewing machine them now, and their cuffs. Also hand stitch the tops of the over sleeves for the blue dress of disasters. Then I think I'm done.

Better go do it all! See you all at Festival