Friday, February 29, 2008

unexpected day off

Well today is certainly a treat, I've had the past two days off, and today I was "on call". Being "on call" typically means I get a call at 6 am asking me to come in and begrudgingly work a thirteen hour shift. It is a very rare occasion when I don't get this call. I love days like today, an extra chance to continue with the projects I was working on the day before (or whenever).

Yesterday I was able to start and finish a project that I have been waiting to do for a while. I made my very own dress form using the paper tape tutorial on instructables.com


Here's a picture of my dress form in progress. I was able to do the majority of the front and parts of the lower back by myself. For the rest I enlisted the help of my TBF (trusty boyfriend), who was surprisingly good at this. The tutorial on instructables is fantastic, in my own opinion, the best piece of advice in the article would be to precut the paper tape in varying sizes. Preplanning this project (even if only an hour in advance) is a must. I cut darts in some of the strips that I was going to use on my curvier attributes to prevent ugly misshapen bumps on the surface of the form.


After being cut out of the form I taped it back up and cut off odd little bits that would not stay down.

















Once that was all done I finished the surface by applying two coats of clear acrylic gloss medium (cause I like shiny things). Please excuse the glare from my camera.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Chicken curtains





I've been putting off finishing up the kitchen curtains for months, but today I managed to do it (with plenty of encouragement from the bf). It was just a matter of finishing the top part of the curtains and hanging them up. However before I show off the finished results, I would like to point out some of the details. I am very pleased with how the backing of the curtains came out. The backing was a gauzy fabric that I had a lot of difficulty working with in a previous project.











The idea of an elastic curtain rod was inspired by the fact that I did not want to go out and spend money on a curtain rod that would require putting even more holes into the wall of the apartment before we leave in a few months. All the "rod" consists of is some old stiff elastic that was given to me by my bf's mom that was wrapped in the same fabric that was used to line the back of the curtains sewn together and tacked up to the windows

Okay, so I've gone on long enough, here it is all finished (and looking quite snazzy in my own opinion)
It hides the cracks in the glass and blocks the view of the ambulance dispatch parking lot and its nice and cheery, who could ask for more?

well thats enough time reflecting on my accomplishment, whats next?

Friday, February 22, 2008

First Post

Seeing as this is my first post I guess I'll tell you a little about myself. I'm kind of a "jill of all trades". I sew, knit, crochet, draw, paint, cook quality vegetarian meals, attempt claymation, screw around in photoshop... the list goes on and on and it quite frankly scares me. Every time I start a project it seems I stop half way through because I've come up with 3 other projects that I feel compelled to start. If you will look to your right you'll see one of my latest almost finished projects. I need to fix the side where my hand is resting because I wasn't paying attention while sewing and therefore the seam didn't turn out so great. In general the side seams could need reinforcing, but none of this has been done. Instead I started working on sewing a set of curtains for my kitchen windows, and working on knitting a lovely green scarf, oh yes and the self-portrait I was working on painting. Sadly none of these projects have been finished.
My boyfriend suggested to me that I start a blog (yes, another thing to add to my list) as a way to keep track of my projects and perhaps serve as an inspiration to finish said projects.

Heres to seeing how this goes