Day 6

Another paper cutting today. This one was inspired by the Gothic rose windows. I took a class all about Gothic art and architecture last year. It was a bit cut and dry but I still admire the details on many of the Gothic cathedrals I had to study, including the windows.

I would simply love to get my hands on some colored paper and place it behind this to add a bit more to it. But I still fall into the category of "poor college student" so no fancy colored paper for me. I did manage to impress myself by completing all of the circles without going crazy. There are so many circles I thought I would be working on this for a week.

White Dragon

This little critter was sewn three years ago. I’m a fan of dragons and the idea of being able to crochet my own made me over the moon. I don’t recall exactly where I got the pattern; I believe it was raverly. I think it’s a snow dragon and I used the wings off of some other critter.

This is an amigurumi piece as it’s crocheted in the round. I learned how to crochet in the round which was great fun as this was my first project doing so. I have since made other dragons, one was given away with the safety eyes. That was fun to do and a pain to get the eyes to fasten together.

As you can see this little guy has some items sticking out of him. I use him as a pin cushion for my yarn needles and crocheting hook. He has yet to complain about being used as such. I've also made a few other variations without as much success. As I'm not feeling too well today, I should make more of these cute little dragons. Sure sounds better then working on my thesis while I'm battling a fever and sore throat. Good news is I have meds for that, although the hospital I went to could not confirm or deny that I have strep throat. But I get meds for it anyways. I am definitely not complaining, although they do make me a bit loopy...

Donkey

I used the same pattern for this donkey as the elephant. Or more accurately the same envelop, different pattern.

I was trying to make it look like a horse, but according to my family it looks like a donkey, so a donkey it is! This was done with cotton cloth I had bought. I believe this was part of a remnant I picked up and it was just enough for this lovely critter!

There’s only one small problem with the elephant and donkey. They need to be given away. As cute as they are I would rather give them to friends who have kids as I have none of my own quite yet. But none of my close friends are having kids just yet. These guys may stick around until I have my own... That could be years.

You may have noticed that both of the stuffed animals do not have eyes. I got a bit lazy and decided not to add them. I’ve been told it makes them look Amish, I’m okay with that. 

Days 4 & 5 for drawing

I have discovered that embroidering is just slightly addictive. I have also discovered I cannot do a whole lot of it in an hour, especially when it involves lettering. I attempted to go back to my architecture roots here and embroider the plan of a small house (it's a bath house that goes along with my thesis).

I'm not overly pleased with this embroidery. Trying to follow pencil drawings are rather difficult. It's also hard to draw straight lines without a ruler or straight edge, go figure... After that I decided to try another method of drawing: paper cutting.

Now, I chose to attack a snowflake. Maybe I miss the flakes back in Ohio or maybe I just want to torture myself with them. Either way below is my first paper cut snowflake. It's the outline of the states the Appalachian Trail runs through along with some lovely text.

This in itself was a wonderful exercise on patience. This was over an hour and getting all those small details was just a slight pain. But I somehow managed to enjoy working with it. I'm just a glutton for punishment apparently!

Elephant

During high school I went through a phase of making felt dragons. I had modified a pattern for a monkey and overbought on the felt. No, I don’t have the dragons with me at the moment. They’re back up North and I won’t be hiking back that way anytime soon.

I did need to find a use for the yards of felt that I had bought. I think I had five yards of felt or something ridiculous. Now, there was no way I was making any type of clothing out of the felt. There wasn’t enough to do a coat and none of the colors matched, that was clearly out of the question. So I picked up a pattern for stuffed animals! 

Here’s an elephant made out of felt. This was a quick pattern from Simplicity 2921 and the instructions were less than perfect. I was expecting a step by step guide much like clothes and I got diagram... Yeah, not impressed, but it was detailed enough that I could  make sense of it. Plus, I ignore the patterns on everything else, so that shouldn’t have been a big deal.

Out of all of the patterns on here I found that the only one that the felt is good for is the elephant. I attempted to do the horse out of felt and that failed miserably. I couldn’t turn the creation right side out.

Day three of my 50 one-hour drawings brought on my favorite piece so far. This little heart!

I have a great liking for anatomy, although I hate blood, guts, and dead things. Give me an internal organ and I’m happy as a clam (although don’t literally give me an internal organ, that would be weird...). This is the second time I’ve done an atomically correct heart. I’ll likely get into other organs as I continue to explore subject matter with my drawings.

As you can tell the color matches up a bit better with this piece. I am going off of sewing thread that is running out, and as of now all of these colors have been used up. This is great for me because I’m going through my thread and using things up. This is not so great because it means I have to go buy thread for the colors I actually need. I’m not looking forward to spending money, so goes the life of a graduate student. I’ll likely be tempted by cloth and patterns when I go, I shall try to abstain.

Happy Belated New Year!

Happy New Year all!

I’ve been incredibly busy these past few months. The past few weeks I was up North visiting family and friends. I haven't done much sewing in the past while. School ate up my time (as per usual) and I didn’t touch my sewing machine for the past 6 weeks. It’s been tempting me horribly. Unfortunately the sewing machine cannot write my paper for me. I’ve asked the machine nicely, bribed it with nice thread, offered it wine, and threatened it, no such luck with. Apparently I’m going to have to write my papers, so not fair.

I hope that will greatly change over this quarter, but I highly doubt that. This quarter I have a drawing class, I’m TA-ing, and I am working on my thesis. Add in two jobs (part time, thankfully) and balancing my social life, things are going to be super busy. So, I believe these next few weeks will be spent in a stress induced haze complete with rum, lots of rum. I may get some sewing done in correlation with my drawing class. 

For my drawing class I have to do 50 one-hour drawings. This will prove to be an interesting exercise. I all ready have one of my drawings completed. I had chosen to go the traditional route with a subject matter that relates to my major, then I got bored. Me bored is never good it leads to things like trying to take over small countries in my quest for world domination. 

This was a bit of challenge for me. I hate sitting still for long periods of time. The time dragged on a bit, but once I got into my drawing time passed too quickly! I found that I went from area to area randomly. Maybe I should have laid off the permanent marker? Hm... Likely.

I then cut up some of my remnant fabric (where the white came from I'll never know) and pulled out some thread I was hoping to use up. These are supposed to be lily-of-the-valley, in red of course! I hadn't embroidered for months before this, so I was doing this from memory. While I don't think it's all that great, it was much better than drawing!

So, it looks like I'll be working on small embroidery for a few days or other drawing related things. I'll be sure to share them so it doesn't look like I'm falling off the face of the earth. Once my thesis is complete (only roughly 40 pages to go...) I hope to get some garments out, but we shall see.