Accessories

My set of accessories for Module 11 were a felted hat and woollen shawl.  I'd only ever made one hat before (remember the "brain" hat in a previous post ... or as some thought - a world globe on my head!!) and was a bit nervous about making another but I'm happier with Take 2.

This is my lovely daughter in law, Jess, modelling the accessories for me.

I based my design on Module 2 - Shape.  The requirement for that module was to find industrial shapes, and my favourite was this pile of sea containers. 

Which progressed into this collage .... I do like simplicity!

It took me ages to decide on a set of accessories, as I wanted something I could wear that was artistic and creative, without looking like a Zandra Rhodes look-alike.  I'm not one for outlandish fashion and wanted to make something that was going to be functional and not just an assessment piece that would be shelved after the course.

I found some lovely poly/wool fabric that had a nice drape and feel about it, and appliqued purple and green cotton and spandex fabrics to it, then machine stitched around the squares.

I made tassels in the same way for the edge of the shawl, but wish now I'd appliqued both sides of the tassels.

The hat wasn't as difficult as I'd expected and the shape came out more or less as I'd hoped.  The hardest part was machine stitching the applique pieces over the rounded shape ... a bit awkward.

I needed a model in a hurry to get my instructions typed up, so popped around to our sons house and caught Jess on the hop.  She was a rather reluctant model, but I think she was perfect.

If I were to make the articles again, I think next time I would try and felt the shawl myself, so that both items are made of the same material, but I'm not sure I could manage all that rolling of something so big.

Now I've got to wait 6 months until winter comes around again to be able to wear my pieces.

I'm a square person

Work's progressing on my set of accessories .... I've gone a bit square for this one!

And I still can't seem to break away from my favourite colours. 

The fiddly work has been done, just need to put it all together now. 

I'd planned to do some whilst watching the AFL Grand Final .... but when the finals on, its hard to concentrate on anything else.

Felted hat

I had my second attempt at making a felt hat on the weekend.  The first one was so awful I wouldn't dare subject you to it ... this one was a vast improvement, but I know I'm not there yet.  One of my items of accessories for Module 9 is a cloche hat, so I needed to see if I could make one before I submitted my design ideas.

After 2 months of hunting through libraries and the internet I found a few varying ways of doing it, and purchased a foam hat mould to help me.  I sat dry needle felting for about 3 hours one night until I could hardly move my arms, then wet felted it over a rubber ball the following day.  I used a hank of space dyed wool and had the great idea of enhancing the hat with some hand stitching, but I think I've made it look like a brain !!!!!  Like I said .... still room for improvement, but its enough to submit my ideas in my design plan.

We've had another storm come through Perth.  We used to get more rain than we've had in the past few years, but now we seem to have dry months with very cold temperatures and then WHAM - a storm.  As usual there were patios found in neighbouring properties, tree's down, and garden debris everywhere, but luckily we managed to escape the worst, except for another downfall of hail.

It wasn't as severe as the March hail storm, thankfully, but made the day very, very cold.  In fact I heard it was the coldest July day on record.  Good days for sitting and stitching.

That said, we've decided to redecorate the kitchen/dining/lounge, so I'm off to strip wallpaper.  The stitching will have to wait a week or two.

Where has the time gone ...

Wow ... April just flew by and I only managed 3 blog posts.  I can't believe how fast the weeks are whizzing by, and the years too.  I got an email from SST telling me my C&G registration had expired and I needed to re-register to continue the course.  Panic set in !!  I really do need to get cracking and finish the course, I'm so close, so  its been head down and bum up for the past few days.

Since my last post I've been mega busy with general day to day things and not had much time for sewing.

I went to Brisbane, Qld for 4 days to spend time with hubby for his birthday.  Fell in love with a wonderful new housing estate set amongst the hills, but just need to win lotto to be able to purchase a block ... in the meantime I'll continue dreaming ....

Whilst in Brisbane I managed to squeeze in a day at the Modern Art Gallery where they had an exhibition of hats from the V&A in England, entitled "hats an anthology by Stephen Jones".  It was brilliant!  There were old and modern hats, way-out hats, delicate soft hats .... all mouth-drooling stuff.  Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take any photos, so I've included a scan of the brochure instead ...  I know! I know! it just isn't the same thing, is it?!   Some photographs would have been much better .....

I've also had a birthday recently and hubby bought me 4 new textile books.  The rest of the family gave me new pj's, a gorgeous lilac fleecy dressing gown, and massive fluffy slippers that make me look like the big Yeti ... so I'm now spending my evenings curled up in front of the tele, snuggled in my new night-attire, cuppa tea in hand and reading my books and dreaming of wonderful textile things I can do.

But of course, there's still the wall hanging to finish.  One requirement of the log book is that one of the finished pieces has to include hand stitching, so I'm throwing as much of it as I can into this piece and have just spent 3 days couching a celtic knot pattern along the side edges of the hanging.  Why do I always pick the most time consuming methods ????

So now its back to the grind stone and more stitching ....