Sleep.

How good is it! I think it is one of the most important things to get right. Cos you can get it wrong. All week I've felt a bit draggy, and every night my attempts to be in bed by 10 and have 8 hours unbroken sleep were thwarted. Sometimes the heat, sometimes the ponytail headache, sometimes the sewing obsession, sometimes an engrossing TV show. Last night I prepared carefully: relaxing shower at 8, before I got too tired; lemon myrtle tea and bible at 8.30; Erast Fandorin novel at 9, unconscious by 9.45. Ha-HAAA! High energy scootering to work in the morning!

Remaking shirt project #2.

This is the shirt remake I did on Monday and Tuesday nights, with the red stuff I bought on the weekend at The Fabric Store. First, this is what it looked like on the inside before I took it apart:

Because the pattern said to use interfacing, but the vilene I used was too heavy and made the shirt stand up on my like armour.  I cut the shirt yoke open, ripped out the vilene and sewed it up roughly. I used up the leftover vilene on bible covers. That's what I've been wearing for the last year! I'm not bothered by stuff if nobody can see it, although if it can be seen I want it to look proper.


So on Monday I just unpicked the shirt to retrieve the main panels of butterfly print, recut them a little bit and then cut new red bits for the yoke and waist. The new fabric I bought is a more faded red to match the now faded fabric better, and it is also quite light. In hindsight, some light interfacing would be useful here, because the hidden seams and gathers show through a bit, but it's OK.

This is the old yoke next to the new yoke.

This is the finished shirt.

Remaking shirt project #1.

Last year I bought a shirt pattern. It is one of those puffy shapeless blouses like a skinny Japanese girl would wear well. Destined to fail, but I dream. So the first one was so large and fat on me that I sewed in the side seams at least an inch each, and it was OK but not great. But I thought it had promise (because it's a very quick shirt to make, no buttons or collar, and I like pull-over-the-head shirts that aren't t shirts, so I had good reasons for buying the pattern in the first place.). Anyway, I made another one.

For fabric for the second shirt I used a dress I made when I was homeschooled which was oversized (because I was very body conscious in my teens and wanted to hide everything) and too homeschooly even for me. I was keeping it for when I get married and pregnant. But there is no immediate prospect of that and I would probably want to wear something less Amish anyway, so I washed it to get rid of the mildew and used the voluminous chambray skirt to make a nice shirt. Recycling! What a good Girl Of Slender Means I am!

I managed the right size perfectly, but it looked all wrong at the back because the gathers were now puffy at the top and pulled flat at the bottom. Hard to explain, but it looked like I had boobs on my back. If I was going for a more fitted shape, I didn't need gathers on the back anymore. So after 9 months I unpicked the back, undid the gather, recut the armholes and fit the whole thing back together and resewed it. Now it looks really good, and I've marked the pattern to update it, so I'm ready to make another one very easily, if I find another funky fabric.

I've also just rescued the fabric from the first shirt and resewed it, so that it is more wearable, because the fabric I used there is a good japanese design. I'll put photos up of that too.

I get good value out of sewing, because of all the recycling and refitting and resewing I do.

Spoils.

On Saturday I managed a trip to The Fabric Store which is near Central Station and I found 2 good cloths, which I'll show you later when I've started the projects, and even better there was 50% off! It was my first visit to The Fabric Store, and I liked it. The staff were very friendly, and I was given some bonus cloth because I wanted 2m and there was a little leftover on the roll... this is good fabric store etiquette. It's bad form to keep the last 30cm strip or whatever is left and sell is as an offcut. Give it to the customer, and she'll be a friend for life. Tessuti has been good to me in the past with pretty japanese fabrics, which TFS didn't have much off. But they had many useful things I still liked. It's handy having both shops so close to each other.

And I found my camera so I can show you my bible covers. One is a small hardcover, which was a challenge. I made the inside flaps a bit bigger and sewed them on in a sort of gathery way. It doesn't look as good as the paperback covers do, which really fit nice and flat. Still very effective though.

 Then I made a big sized bible cover for my flatmate. Unfortunately, I cut the fabric wrong, it was the same size as the vilene, so it didn't fold over the edge. I was crushed, and I had to ruin the lovely blue look with a contrasting colour because I ran out of blue. I used brown, and it's a bit masculine looking now, but my flatmate still likes it. And I'm proud of how I worked out how to put the strip in the middle and also turn it into the button flap, in one piece. It was a feat of engineering, and Fi who came over to sew with me last Saturday was very helpful, because I wasn't able to think ahead very far.

Sewing to come.

It was the sort of week where just turning up and plugging away every day feels like a major achievement. Not that I was struggling terribly, but I had a strong desire to go AWOL. If the weekend goes as planned, I shall have recovered my energy and have some sewing to report. It looks like good weather for swimming and being outside, my parents are probably going to visit, and I'm determined to do some fabric shopping. I'll be back Monday, fully sunned, fully hugged and with something pretty, I hope!

I have decided...

To get an iphone with the internet on it. But, I'm anti-upgrade, so I'll only get one when my current phone dies. Don't hold your breath. But I still feel like I've made a significant decision, and when my Nokia dies I won't be agonising, I can just get one. And I'm looking forward to being able to look up 131500 at home, and have apps, some day.

So that I can really put this post under the "feeling good about" tag, today I've also been enjoying that it's the third day since I washed my hair and I've got it out, not tied back, and it looks OK. Yaaaay!!! Good hair day!

anxiety

From The Rag Doll.

I've been painting for a week, so I've made progress on one book: painted all the clothes and some other stuff, then the skin. Now I've compared it to the work from the last books, and it doesn't look as good. I had some suspicion, but I thought it was just that they look weak until they are outlined. So I compared to the drawings from last year (not the books, but the drawings, which look 300% better than the books, not that I want to boast, I'm just disappointed at how much gets lost in scanning and reproduction processes) and the verdict on my current work is bad: my skin tones are heavy and flat, my shading is crude, and I haven't been as careful mixing the colours.

Today's work.

Allowing for the difference in the scan quality and lack of outlining, you can sort of still see inferior painting evident in the below example of today's work compared to last years better work. There's a bit of a test there as well, I'm wondering if I can photoshop the skin into a better tone, which does sort of work. Otherwise, I may start again, and just lose a week.

I think I've gotten complacent and lazy. Last time I was so insecure about illustrating actual books that I really laboured over them, but now I'm already an illustrator, so I must be good at it.

So I have to stop and think about it for a little while, go on to other stuff. It's partly also to do with work cycles I think, to use a hormone analogy. This is the PMS stage of the project where I've sunk my normal confidence, I think I'm fat (untalented), I have no perspective (everything looks terrible) my life (work) is crap and boring and I want to take a day off (a day off). Just need to let the cycle move on. I'm sure in a week it will all be better.

In other news, today my entry in ABC 702 Sculpture by the Desk was judged today and won equal first People's Choice! With 5 votes! Thankyou, staff of Matthias Media, and thankyou 5th voter who doesn't work with me.

Neat is nice!

I realised ages ago that neatness is nice. It requires HUGE discipline to straighten your hair, tidy your room, hang up clothes straight away, and sort out paper rather than leave it around to decide later, etc etc. But the reward is personal satisfaction, good first impressions on others, fewer times when you can't do something because of the mess, and more chance of being calm and organised.

Then I forgot my enlightenment, got obsessed with something else, and my default blindness took over for various reasons. There are particular areas of messy I now want to fix, though. My bedroom, and my desk at work. Housesharing demands that common house areas remain neutral, if not sparkly, so it's just the personal spaces that I let go a bit. And it would be nice to be neat. It doesn't cost money, it doesn't require imagination.  I don't want to be self-righteous about it, like I am about punctuality, maybe I can just take a little of my analness from timelyness and put it to good use in tidyness.

I confess I am a little bit inspired by Emma Pilsbury, but I don't want the OCD. Just some general neatness.

I've discovered that Emma Pillsbury on Glee is a total fashion icon, and now I can't stop noticing the clothes—it's half the reason I watch the show, along with Sue Silvester's bizarre meany lines. EP wears frocks, brooches, cardigans, beads, pencil skirts, and is in every way cute and vintage. Her hair is pretty unique as well, although she has lately lost the curly side fringe, and it's overall more flat and normal now. I'm getting obsessed enough to read What Would Emma Pilsbury Wear and look at the prices of my favourite clothes.  but this is such wishful thinking. I'm not a fashionable enough person. This is just a fad.

Wet paint!

Today I wet the paper! This is my workspace: the office kitchen. You can see I spread out, and I have a lot of things. Paint, piles of paper, glass of water to wash brushes, paper towel to dry and clean up messes, digital radio to listen to 2CH and James Valentine and WSFM PLUS Billy Joel month, water to drink, books to check work against.

This is my actual painting in progress. I have been angsting for weeks about what colour dress for Emily, since I'm avoiding pink and I've already used red and purple, and the boys are always wearing blue so it's all a bit too much blue. Today I had a brainwave: orange. I made a bit of a mistake and put red frills on it, I think it should have been all orange. But it still looks very cute with the pink stripy leggings!

And this is my plate of colours. This plate is often used for eating cake off. I've decided to leave all the skin tones till last, so that I can keep it more consistent. It's hard enough remixing strong colours, but subtle colours can vary so easily, and I think I did some correcting in photoshop last time. Hooray for technology! Nothing is lost (well, if not Nothing, at least most things can be clone stamped, retrieved or hacked from a pdf).

Happy 199th birthday Charles Dickens!

One of my favourite authors. A bit harder to read than Jane Austen because he waffles so long, probably because he wrote books as serials and was therefore paid for the length. But what a storyteller. The modern equivalent are TV shows like Lost, which start off with a simple premise (orphan boy, Scrooge at Christmas, death of a nameless man) and gradually expands on the lives of lots of side characters and weaves them together in backstories and so on, gets really engrossing, and brings everything to a big end. And good characters. With really good names. Lady Deadlock, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sykes.

Chickpeas.

Since the $2 a day grocery challenge I have stuck to eating more veggies and less meat. I like meat, but I don't particularly enjoy cooking it, and I'm happy to eat it when I'm out and not bother with it as much at home in my own food. I mostly cook with mince, actually. Mince is easy and yummy, but not the most gourmet foods, I can let go of it. And the more veggies the better.

I think chickpeas are just fantastic. They are so plain, but so versatile. I've been putting them in stews for a few years, and I recently tried to make hommus when I got JKs old food processor. On the weekend having dinner with some friends I discovered the chickpea in salad. Oh so good! with fetta, baby spinach, and red onion and some other stuff. I could eat it every day! I had no idea there was so much potential in chickpea salad. Analise tins are only 75cents each at Coles this week, and when their shelves aren't empty I'm going to stock up. Dry ones are cheap but never as good, so cheap tins are like gold, or anti-gold, because they are cheap.

SCULPTURE BY THE DESK: Pencils, brush, flux.

SCULPTURE BY THE DESK: Pencils, brush, flux.: "Jessica Green is a graphic designer and currently an illustrator. The two photographs here showcase her sculptural work in a more int..."

Here is another bible cover I made last week. I bought the fabrics in Leura, at the place we book our house for conferences. It is so cute, and makes my $5 NIV look very ladylike. I got a nice retro fabric as well, brown with green shells on it, and it will look lovely once I get an accent fabric, green, for the lining and closure.