Online Portfolio - Silk

 It keeps coming up - I'm talking to someone about a thing I make, but I don't have photos of any of my work available online.  So - since it's been ages since I updated my blog, I figured I could park some photos of my work here.  This is the first - silk painting.

One of my first scarves - feathers.  Terrible photo, but the scarf itself is lovely.

Most of my scarves are pretty free-form.  This one is in progress, with rock salt still on it.

The island end of the night/day scarf:

The mountain end of the night/day scarf:

Two of the "grid" scarves:

Fall leaves

A style I worked with several times - make lots of outlines, fill them in with all different colors, then do a wash of one color over the whole thing.

What it looked like before the wash:

Yes, I do still exist. And I've been making leather masks.

 So, it's been three years since I've posted anything on this blog.  That's just because I have a hard time remembering to post things on the blog.  However - I've been making a bunch of leather masks lately, and this is a good place to collect a bunch of photos of them in one place. 

Without further ado, picspam of masks!  If I remember, I'll do a longer step-by-step of a few of them.  I did document the floral plague doctor and rainbow unicorn masks very thoroughly, and I'm working on a fall leaves design now that I've got progress photos of.

Scandanavian Turnshoes - a quickie

I backed the kickstarter for Jason Hovatter's instructional DVD to make scandanavian turnshoes.  (DVD is also available on Amazon.)

It was a quick project, and he says it all so much better, but here's a couple of pictures of the shoes I made following the instructions on the DVD:

Pretty comfortable, but I should add another layer of the goop sole for more cushioning.  The DVD is great - really easy to follow all the steps, and these went pretty quick.

Shoe School! Laughing Crowe and Internal Stitchdown

Finally - another shoe post!

In late April, I made it to Portland to study with Jason Hovatter at Laughing Crowe.  Jason does a variety of non-lasted shoe techniques, and is a real innovator and super nice guy.  I met him at the footwear makers' symposium last June, and was very excited to take his class.  Lucky me, nobody else signed up for that session, so I got a *private* class!

This is his own construction method, that he invented. Sort of like a stitchdown, it turns the upper to the inside, instead of the outside.  Here's what we did in class....

Casting the foot in duct tape, and drawing the design:

Making patterns: 

Cutting the insole and making channels for the stitching, and punching the stitchig holes themselves

: 

Cutting, skiving, punching and sewing the uppers; adding reinforcement where needed:

Stitching the uppers to the insole:

At this point, the shoes were soaked in water and given some vigorous shaping, and put in a dehydrator to dry back out.  Then, I added a layer of foam, for cushion, and a purchased sole.  Those were then trimmed, and laces added.

These are pretty comfortable.  I think there's still room for tinkering, to get the super comfy walking shoe I'm looking for in the long run.  But these are a huge step in that direction!

Catching up - Beaded Collar Dress

I haven't posted in *forever*, largely because a home remodel project and a convention took over my free time for much of the last year.  However, I did make a dress:

It all started with a piece of fabric I didn't buy enough of on a trip to New York:

I only bought a yard and a half, although, it is very wide.  So to make that tiny bit of fabric into a dress that would fit me, I made a wide, beaded collar to take up some space.  I started with a mockup in muslin: 

Drew the pattern for the collar on paper, cut it out of complementary fabric, and attached fusible interfacing to the back side: 

I made good use of the temporary fabric pencils to draw the design onto the fabric, and beaded it.  This was the first bead embroidery I'd ever done.  I attended a workshop at Westercon given by Theresa Halbert, and was inspired:

Then it was just a question of sewing up the dress with the collar.  There is almost no scrap fabric on this dress - it's not particularly flattering, but it's very comfortable.