ms. shoes

BTW finding on-line information for Pellon sewing products is difficult. When I was working on the previous post I wanted to put in a link to the product page for the interfacing that I was talking about. Clarity and all that…

Not so easy it turns out.

www.pellon.com is the home page of Finnish company that produces farming equipment. (Well worth a couple of minutes rummaging through the piggery equipment…)

www.pellonideas.com is the badly organized, un-proof-read, consumer products site. A bit of shovelware, some press releases, and a handful of craft projects. When I entered Peltex in the search box it came back empty, and the menus… The Information Architect is crying…

www.shoppellon.com aka Products A La Carte actually has product information and will sell you Pellon products. But bloody hell - it doesn’t even show up on the first page of Google results for “Pellon Interfacing.”

My first experiment in building a structured purse.

I used the Dorothy/Evelyn pattern from Emma Brennan’s Making Vintage Bags. Charming bags and good instructions - a lovely book.

The pink boucle fabric jumped off the shelf at me in JoAnn’s one afternoon. It seemed like something that should be made into a Chanel jacket but I can’t wear that much pink and I have no occasion to wear a “suit” so…

pink boucle purse

I already had the lining, and the button was in the miscellaneous box. I had though I wanted a pink velvet bow - there’s one in the book - but finding pink short pile velvet turned out to be a fool’s errand. So the aqua button stepped in. I think it works well.

lining and magnetic snap

The experimental part was the interfacing. I wanted structure so I used a heavy craft weight interfacing Pellon - Peltex 70. Imaging something that is almost like packing felt - and really stiff. It’s easy enough to work with, and gives a nice plump feeling to the purse and keeps the body from collapsing but… it’s wonky. I couldn’t figure out just how or why but the result was not pleasing.

buckling on the top edge

Leave it to the DH to make sense of my intuitions. The problem is similar to “oil-canning” in sheet metal. Sort of… (You can find the wierdest stuff on the internet!)

In this case the problem is that the Pelmet does not roll gracefully, it buckles instead, giving the wonky top edge that I didn’t like.

After messing about with a piece of leftover Pelmet I’ve concluded that there is no way to make it roll smoothly over a radius as small as the top edge of a clutch. I can see where I would want to use Pelmet for something like a bucket tote, or the sides of a bolster clutch but it isn’t the right material for this project.

Ho hum, on to the next one…

Our recent vacation gave Jim the chance to take a lot of pictures of motorcycles and riders on the proverbial “closed course.” Some of them are in fact “professional riders.”

I now have tons of uncluttered photos to work with. Hence the creation of a new series of work, this time in engineered paper.

First up:

Solo Red Bike

Not a very imaginative name I know.

I had to remove the rider from the original photo in order to have a clear background. Now that I’ve seen the piece assembled I think that I could have left the rider on the background and simply built the images out from there. It wouldn’t be as dynamic an image but it would have saved a bunch of time erasing the rider and bike and rebuilding the background.

red solo rider - closeup

Assembly began with printing and cutting out six copies of the rider. Tabs are attached to the fronts of 5 of the images and the base (shadow) is folded forward so that it will show when the rider group is attached to the card.

all six rider images

Here the riders are attached to one another. I used a strip under the shadows to give the bases something to stick to while I was attaching all the pieces. I left the strip under the riders because it made gluing the bases down in the right spots easier. (I should have gotten a picture before I glued it all down!)

Red Solo Rider rider images linked

Here’s the finished prototype.

It was a little confusing in Maryhill with everyone switching up the bikes and riders. To the best of my knowledge that is Tim Keene on Rolf Vitous’ pretty red record holding bike. I’ll ask for the details next time I see Rolf.

I have a number of other photos that I’ll be using over the next couple of weeks.

We’re just back from the Gather. (Photos here.)

Yesterday this fine fellow arrived from Mexico (via San Diego.)

He was carved and painted by our friends Jacobo and Maria Angeles who live and work in Tilcajete, Oaxaca. You can see more of their work on their web page. (If you get a chance to stop by thier restaurant I recommend the Chile de Agua Rellenos. Wicked good.)

We ordered the buffalo when we were in Oaxaca in February. The carving was already done and we chose the basic color mix but the details of the painting is always left up to the painter. It’s always a surprise when the piece arrives.

The head shot shows some of the details and his little bit of a frown.

I have several pieces that Jacobo has made for me. All cats, until this one. One of these days I’ll dig out pictures of the rest of our pieces and some of our visits to Jacobo and Maria’s house.

These are match boxes. I buy them in Oaxaca Mexico. The actually come with matches in them. Though I have to throw them out before I try to bring the boxes home.

I got these two boxes in Corazon Zapoteca in Alcala street in Oaxaca. Both are approximately 2 1/2 x 4 1/2 innhes.

La Sirena is one of the cards in the game of Loteria.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is everywhere in Mexico.

Two new/old gothic arches. I found these while I was purging the working projects piles. They aren’t much to look at being just a couple of experiments with background creation techniques.

The birds and flowers was based on a piece of paper towel that I had used as a wiper for water colors in another project. I added more color by dropping leftovers from the palette onto the towel and then let it run and dry without interference. Instead of cutting the background out with scissors I used a fine pointed brush and ran a bead of dark brown watercolor around the shape I wanted and when the towel was damp through both layers I pulled the it apart along the water line. It made a nice tonal background to which I added some wall paper cutouts and feather from my parrot.

The balloons was an experiment in using gesso in making backgrounds. I collaged paper and then stamped images on the background. When the inks had dried I put a thin layer of gesso over the entire surface. I put cutouts and a bit of string on the top.

Gesso does give an interesting texture to what goes on top if it. Also a good deal of “tooth” if you want to work with something like pastels or crayons. But I don’t think I’ll be using it much. It just makes everything too muted.

The borders are metallic pens that I had just bought. The red is a brush pen from Pentel. it takes a lot of coats to get a good coverage. (Red and green ones are commonly on sale around Xmas.) The gold is Krylon’s gold leafing pen. This one is worth hunting for. A few tips. Shake before using - a lot. Run a test line of about 4 inches on scrap paper to get the ink flowing well. You’ll get a very consistent line after that. Work in a well ventilated room - this thing stinks of it’s solvent. (Propylene Glycol Monomethyl Ether.)

The caption “Stolen Kisses Require an Accomplice” is by Texas Bix Bender. (A name I could vote for.)

I made a box for my friend Elise. She wanted something to keep her needlework supplies in - Something that she could leave on the living room coffee table.

This spine box is 9 x7 x 2 1/2. The box is made of Davey board and covered in an Italian paper. The spine and inner lid liner are book cloth and the bottom of the box is lined with cork paper.

All told it takes me about 6 hours to make a box like this if haven’t made one in that particular size before. If I’ve already worked out the cut dimensions (and remembered to write them down) I can build one of these in about 4 hours. That doesn’t count the drying times. Because I cut my PVA with methyl cellulose the drying time is about double that of straight PVA. I find it worth while to get a longer “open” time. It does slow down construction though as I have to wait at least an hour - better two for pieces to be dry enough to be handled.

Everybody is doing it. Even here in the “bubble.” Using those ugly green reusable grocery bags.

Heartwarming eco-points 8. Style points 0.

I won’t even mention what they chose to fill it with for this image. Yuck!

I made this one yesterday.

Heartwarming eco-points 8. Style points 6. Maybe.

It’s still better than some vaguely polyester green thing with a grocery store logo on it.

I made it using the Charlie Bag pattern from BurdasSyle. At BurdaStyle you can also find several how-tos about making this bag using a serger, making the lined version (2 ways), and a gallery of bags made by burdastyle fans. (There are a couple of stunners - like this one.

This is the first thing I’ve made from a BurdaStyle pattern. It was an interesting but ultimately simple process. I’ll write more about burdastyle and their “print at home” patterns soon. Right now the sun is out and it’s Friday afternoon and I have a date with a sports car of my acquaintance…

I’m a little behind in my reading and writing.

I found a scrap of paper on my desk this afternoon. It says:

I am not wearing my good girl shoes.

I remember laughing hysterically when I first read it but now can’t remember where.

Oh well.

Word clouds are a fun way of finding out what’s really on your (blog’s) mind. The Generator Blog pointed to Wordle this morning and I’ve been having fun making clouds for various blogs I read/write.

Here’s one based on ms. shoes:

I think I spend a little too much time writing about the chickens. Though I do like the idea that beads and danger get about equal play in my life.