09.22.08
Posted in Clothing Design at 8:54 am by deRomilly
Last Thursday, a friend on LiveJournal posted a meme to play dress up with her. Hee. Never one to turn down a challenge, instead of just finding clothes I liked, I had to actually get out the croquis and design things for her specifically. I wish that I had the time and resources to fly her out and actually MAKE this to fit, but maybe I’ll win the lottery one day!
I told her it would be done on Friday, but then I got sick and didn’t get it scanned in. Better late than never, though.
So Rebecca, here you go. One custom design in two layers. Sorry, I don’t do shoes, you’ll have to provide those yourself. 
If you want the goldwork notes mapped out in more detail, let me know. THOSE I might even be able to do as appliques! Click to embiggen.
This was fun! I like designing for people I know. It’s much easier than designing for a dress form on a standard “type”.
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09.17.08
Posted in General at 10:31 am by deRomilly
This is not a current issue. I’m not currently involved in many group activities, for many reasons, and the following rant is not one of them. But it IS something I think about off and on, and I’m considering opening my house to another stitching group in the next year or so… So I’m back to thinking about it.
I have never really understood the concept of a “stitch and bitch.” I understand the need to gab — to talk to like-minded friends. But the bitching? There’s too much of that in the world already to let it intrude on a good stitch-in.
When we’ve had stitch groups at our house, I’ve had to ban whining and bad-natured gossip. Because I’ve found if I let any of it into the house, that’s ALL that goes on - no solutions are found, no knitting or stitching actually happens. I find that very sad. And, coming out of it, instead of being refreshed by spending time with friends, I’m exhausted, drained, and soon I don’t want to see anyone anymore.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t discuss problems - whether just for sympathy, to get it off the chest, or to elicit suggestions and brainstorming from our peers. But there is a fine line between venting a problem and whinging for whinging’s sake. It’s the latter I try to ban, but it’s hard. There are cycles where everyone seems to have a problem - and if you try to be positive about life in general, there’s the feeling of betrayal from your peers. As if even the attempt is disregarding the problems they are having.
I had a dance instructor who at the beginning of a workshop session would remind us all that for the next few hours we were DANCERS. That the rest of the world needed to be put on hold. Indeed, could be put on hold while we concentrated on what we paid her for. No cell phones, no worrying about husbands, kids, work email or so on for that time period. I like this. It was one of the most focussed and relaxing (so to speak) workshops I’ve ever attended. I try to bring that energy into my classes and workshops. I’d like to bring something like that into our stitch-ins, too, but I’m not entirely sure how to approach it. After all, these are friends with whom I like to share interests, not strangers who are paying me for my time.
Anyone have any ideas? Does negative energy pervade your stitch groups? Or can you celebrate life in general during your time together, good and bad, without diverging into an emotional swamp?
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09.05.08
Posted in Samplers, Stitching Genres, Lace at 7:30 am by deRomilly
I got a bee in my bonnet to try to learn something new wieth my stitching recently. I’ve had a shelf full of needlelace books for years now, and every once in a while have pulled them out, failed miserably, and put them away again. I’ve been the same way with actual band samplers. I’m afraid I’m not really cut out for working my samples in a sane manner where they’re easy to retrieve. They always seem to work better when done on any old scrap of fabric I happen to have to hand at the moment.
Currently my band sampler is only about a foot and a half long. It looks like this, having some herringbone where I started doing TAST last year before I dropped out awfully quickly, and some buttonhole stitch…
This time I decided that since I’ve been doing stumpwork successfully for some time now, I should be able to do needlelace, too. I started a wired flower in cloth stitch (corded buttonhole) a month ago and had a bit of success - I still need to get green silk so I can do leaves, but it’s destined to be a brooch, and I’m really proud of the stitching. Photos soon, I hope.
So I pulled out my band sampler, and I’ve been doing all the boring gruntwork of learning many variations of needleace stitches - ripping out and restarting over and over until I get the hang of them. I’ve got several sizes of thread going here, and that is teaching me a lot about how sizes work as well. I think most of my problems in the past have been related to using too large a stitch for the size thread I was using.
This is fun! I’m liking the lace patterns that are emerging, and I finally think I’ve gotten a handle on tension. And I’ve got ideas out of my ears for designs and steps to go with this. Of course, that’s always part of my problem — too many ideas to actually manufacture the art! (and several of them integrate that wonderful bead stash from my last post!)
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