SHB#2's favorite things right now are the colors pink and purple, flowers, butterflies, ladybugs, and taking care of her best friend, i.e. a stuffed bear almost as big as she is, named Buddy Bear. I'm not really sure how this happened, because I have most definitely not been pushing her toward (if anything, I've been pushing away from) stereotypically feminine colors or iconography or expectations for future childcare responsibilities. She does also enjoy large trucks and construction vehicles and Star Wars, but I'm trying to be a good feminist by not only not pushing her toward traditional feminism, but also not looking down on those interests if that's what she honestly enjoys. To that end, February's Kraft-tex project was for her.
When I got the February's Kraft-tex color of the month package, Orchid, SHB#2 immediately claimed it as her own: "Oh, eet's poh-poh! Eet's my favorite!" (i.e. it's purple: I love the way her toddler self pronounces things.) She's also been wanting a bed for Buddy Bear; ever since starting preschool she's been wanting to reenact her day with her bear: feeding it breakfast, doing circle time, teaching it songs, taking it to the potty, and putting it down for a nap. That last one is tricky since it's been established that the stuffed animal bed is a dog bed that's in SHB#1's room, but most of the time we need to leave the door to his room closed lest she destroy his Lego builds, so she could really use her own stuffed animal bed. I figured the size of a Kraft-tex sheet (18.5" x 28.5") was about the right size for a very shallow tray that would look more or less like the dog bed, since in SHB#2's mind, that is what stuffed animal beds look like.
With a little pillow because I had some scrap muslin and batting.
Since I still haven't taken my machine in for servicing (hello, #onepersoncostumeshop season), I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything that involves joining two layers of Kraft-tex together without getting unsightly gaping or weird stitch tension issues, and ideally I wanted to be able to flatten the bed and potentially harvest the Kraftex after she gets over this stage of play, so I thought for a long time about how to make a tray that fit those parameters. I ended up lining the Kraft-tex with a piece of flannel (pink, with ponies and butterflies and flowers, per her choice from my stash) and then doing some experimental folding to get it vaguely tray-like. Once I figured out how I wanted to fold the corners, I creased all my fold lines with a hera marker, then used those lines as guides for stitching. I also made two channels along the long edges so that I could insert large cable ties (leftover from corset-making) to help keep it from being quite so floppy. Then it was a simple matter of using my awl to punch holes in the ends and then threading some ribbon through to tie it all together. I was originally going to insert grommets for sturdier and more photogenic ribbon holes, but TBH my customer did not care and has already claimed the bed for use, so maybe I'll go back and insert them later. But probably not.
So much pink and purple. I just folded over the edges of the flannel and zigzagged all the way around the edges. It's not the prettiest but it's functional and I think actual bias binding would have been too thick for all the folding.
Here's a diagram showing how I did my folds and stitches and holes. The corner squares are 4" x 4", and all the lines inside the rectangle represent stitch lines where I sewed the flannel and Kraftex layers together. In addition to stitching, the dashed lines represent valley folds and the dotted lines represent mountain folds; the dash-dot lines that were NOT folded are my additional lines of stitching for the cable tie channels. Lastly, the circles mark where I put my ribbon holes. I punched these with my awl through all three layers at once when the entire thing was folded up (with WonderClips to hold the edges in place) so that I could be sure they would line up with each other properly. The final tray is just the right size for Buddy Bear, but still leaves a large flat portion of Kraft-tex in the middle that can be reclaimed and reused when SHB#2 no longer needs it as a bed. The ribbons also make it so the bed can be "taken apart" and flattened should it need to be stored away.
I feel like the SAT Math test, having to post a disclaimer that this diagram is not to scale.
Perfect size for Buddy Bear (who, in case you want to know, is from Target's Cat and Jack kids' bedroom line).
All tucked in!
Of course, most people don't need very shallow tray beds to fit this very specific bear, but you could use this same principle to make a different sized tray depending on your needs, and maybe you'll actually take the time to put in nice grommets!
[Note: C&T Publishing provided the Kraft-tex for this project.]
This past Christmas, I celebrated (okay, posted on IG stories) my sewing machine's tenth birthday. Mr. Cation got me the machine for Christmas in 2019, and the first thing I did was sew a whole slew of zippered pouches. I started out with unlined pouches, then added appliqued cats, then graduated to lined pouches and then even pouches with little "windows" that gave a hint as to the contents. It was good practice for sewing in straight lines, being precise, and thinking about how one would need to arrange right and wrong sides of outer and inner fabrics in order to get the correct sides showing and raw edges hidden, and the mass output was fine because you can always use more containers for things and they made for nice little hostess- or stocking-stuffer-type gifts. Then I discovered garment sewing and, with the exception of some forays into plushie- and quilt-making, I pretty much stopped sewing non-wearable things.
Now that I have small human beings, though, I need more zippered pouches to contain all the miscellaneous things that they "require." Requirement being a loosely applied term, though, because the other day SHB#2 "required" that I bring for her 1) a reusable ice cube, 2) two unopened packets of hot sauce, 3) a small pair of tongs, 4) a slap bracelet, and 5) an old hotel key card. Kids and their treasures of the day: you never know what piece of junk will be indispensable! At any rate, it's much easier to contain all these little things in a zippered pouch instead of in three tiny pockets or two tinier hands or one enormous diaper bag that also contains changes of clothes and washcloths and restaurant toys and water bottles and sunscreen and hats. So, more zippered pouches it was!
Coincidentally, at around the same time that I realized I was going to need more zippered pouches, C&T Publishing contacted me about trying out Kraft-Tex, a leather-like fabric that is made from mostly paper and a small amount of synthetic latex. I was intrigued, because I don't love using leather (when I do, I try to source it from thrifted items) OR pleather/vinyl (which is terrible for the environment), but there are some costume items that kind of require leather or leather-looking materials. I agreed to try out Kraft-Tex, thinking that if it worked out, I would be able to use it for the "leather" sections of the Pozu-knockoff Rey boots I'm theoretically trying to make. C&T Publishing has a color-of-the-month program for bloggers, where they send you a different color 18.5" x 28.5" sheet each month in exchange for a blog post about a project made with it. January's color is Crimson, which worked out because you know, Chinese New Year! Much red! So lucky! Very fortune! Wow!
Tiny toddler hand sneaking in to grab a pouch because this girl loves bags. She is forever running off with my make-up bag, my pattern weights bag, my pencil case, etc.
I was able to get three zippered pouches out of my piece of red Kraft-Tex, and I learned a lot in the process. I've had some experience sewing with trickier materials, but this still felt like a pretty steep learning curve, mostly because, like leather, once the needle goes through the Kraft-Tex, the hole is permanent. The Kraft-Tex is very stiff, so while it is bendable, it's not easy, so manipulating around curves on a non-flat object was tricky. It's also quite thick, so my (admittedly cheap) machine didn't have enough power to get through multiple layers and I had to resort to using the hand wheel. Also, I still haven't been able to get the thread tension right (although that might also be because of my machine, not the material, since my machine is oh, two years overdue for a tune-up), so there's a pretty visible gap between the pieces when there's tension on the seam. All that said, I do really, really like the look and sturdiness of Kraft-Tex, and the fact that I don't need to interface it, so I want to try again after my machine's been serviced and see if I can't figure out a better way to sew with it. Anyway, here are the details!
It's hard to photograph this bright red material with an iPhone, but hopefully you can see that it does have a nice leathery-looking texture.
Wonky hand-stitches on the bias binding, because by
that time I couldn't be bothered with keeping things
neat while sewing with pliers.
The first pouch was Aneela Hoey's Zip-Up Tray Pouch, which I first heard about from SewBrooke. It's a tray that zips up into a nice little carrying case. I originally planned to give this to my son for putting Legos into so that he could bring them to different places to build, but since it doesn't close up all the way, tiny pieces can still fall out. I'm using it for my sewing stuff instead, since I really do like how it zips up somewhat compactly, but still allows for opening up to see all the contents without having to rummage to the bottom. In retrospect, this was a poor choice of first project for a new material, since there's a lot of tricky maneuvering to get around the corners, and the bulkiness and stiffness of the Kraft-Tex made for hideous stitching on my bias binding. It's kind of embarrassing to look at, but it's functional? I think I forgot that, just like with garment sewing, it's important to match the material to the pattern and not assume that you can force any material to work for a particular project.
Fat and happy taco cats! And burger cats.
I then made the Noodlehead Open Wide Zippered Pouch two times, thinking that less weird maneuvering would be better suited to the Kraft-Tex. Since my machine didn't like sewing through multiple layers of the material, I used a different coordinating fabric for the part that would actually be sewn to the zipper. My sister was planning to donate this sweatshirt with cute junk food cats all over it; the print is cute but the fabric is 100% polyester and feels pretty awful. I figured it would work for a non-garment application, so I fused a some light interfacing to the back to increase stability since it's a knit. I thought everything would be pretty easy since I wasn't manipulating strange shapes under the presser foot, but I realized when I flipped the pouch right-side out that my thread tension was all off, so the bottom looks pretty bad. It's still functional, but I wouldn't want to say, gift it to anyone. I made one more pouch with the same combination of fabrics but without the boxed corners on the bottom, thinking that that would reduce the obviousness of the thread tension issues, but it was only partially successful. The gaping is less noticeable, but still present, so I wouldn't quite call this a win.
Top pouch, lined with a fruit-print quilting cotton from the stash, has been claimed by SHB#2 for holding her random treasures: a garbage truck, two magnetic pigs, pink and purple Duplo blocks, some Trader Joe's stickers, and her "phone," which is actually a random remote. The flat pouch, which I keep in my backpack, has extra utensils for if we go places that only give out disposable ones. The fold-out tray has all my essential sewing stuff for bringing to class: paper scissors, fabric scissors, pencil & eraser, fabric marker, tracing wheel, chalk, seam ripper, awl, tape (for flat pattern manipulation), hera marker, French curve, and extra bobbins. I should have a box of pins in there too, but I took it out to use.
In the end, I do have three serviceable pouches that have already been corralled into holding things, and I love the look of the red with the cats (which vaguely remind me of the similar-colored Chinese lucky cats). It's very appropriate for a Chinese New Year set of projects, although cats are probably inappropriate for it being the Year of the Rat and all... Also, I'm feeling more motivated to actually take my machine in for its tune-up, which always seemed a little silly to me, seeing as how that costs as much as the machine itself originally did, but then I remember that I'm all for making things last as long as possible.
So ummm, last time I blogged, I was very pregnant and had just finished a quilt for SHB#2...two years later I have birthed the SHB#2, made a whole bunch of random things (plushies! a tiny hut on chicken legs! art! more than 250 nativity figurines!) and a few costumes. Due to said SHB#2, who is less inclined to play by herself than SHB#1, I've opted to do save my me-time for making things instead of blogging, relying on Instagram to quickly document most of my finished projects. I do miss the more detailed, longer form of blog entries though, and always meant to get back into it. Now that the new school year is starting and I have cosplays to finish before SVCC next weekend, this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry, y/y?
Since my sewing area is accessible to the kids, and I don't really need more clothes (more on that later), I haven't done much sewing until recently, when SHB#2 got old enough to (kind of) understand that she needs to leave Mommy's things alone. And even then, I was so brain-dead most of the time, I couldn't handle complicated things like fitting or figuring out new patterns, so I've defaulted to making quilts, which are not easy per se, but at least once I have the pieces laid out, it's more or less mindless sewing of straight(ish) lines.
I made this from florals that I inherited from the school drama teacher's mother-in-law's stash. All straight lines, and can you tell that I really didn't think too hard about the placement of my blocks?
I mean, look at how haphazard all the piecing on the backing is!
After the stashbusting quilt, I made a few quilts for important babies in my life:
Very simple, vaguely sportsball field-esque look.
A dear friend's baby had a difficult start in life, spending time in the NICU and then working hard to recover for the first year of his life, but now he is a healthy, thriving boy who outweighs my own little girl, despite being almost a year younger! Maybe one day he will play sportsball for one of his parents' alma maters, you know, because the quilt I made him is so inspiring...j/k.
The back was fleece (no batting inside, since San Diego weather doesn't require a lot of warmth). I'm glad the school colors don't clash.
Another dear friend had her third daughter, and I wanted that little girl to have something special of her own that wasn't a hand-me-down from her older sisters, so I made a Harry Potter and Star Wars mashup quilt so that she would have both of her parents' fandoms to wrap her in love. And then because those are also two of my big fandoms, I made an almost identical one for SHB#2. Like her big brother, Chewbacca is her first favorite SW character (SHB#1 has since moved on to Darth Vader, mostly because his lightsaber is red), so she enjoys pointing him out.
This was a challenge to design (even though it's all just rectangles) because so many SW fabrics are so dark, and HP fabrics are so bright, so to put them together in one quilt and have it look somewhat cohesive was tricky. I'm inordinately pleased with what I came up with!
This is the back of the one I kept. The one I gifted had a border of Hogwarts house crests instead of the spaceship blueprints shown here. All of these licensed character fabrics are from Joann's.
And lastly, one of my college friends struggled with infertility for many, many years, so when she found out she was expecting, I knew I had to make something for her baby. She and her husband are huge LOTR nerds (they previously attended my LOTR birthday party and her husband won the trivia contest), so I wanted to incorporate that somehow into a quilt that also illustrated their story. While googling LOTR-themed quilts, I came across this amazing art quilt, but I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate something like that, nor would it really be baby-friendly. More googling of landscape quilts yielded this one, which seemed much more doable with its pieced strips (yay straight lines!). I decided to try to combine these two ideas to make my own take on an "Into the West" quilt; the more I thought about it the more I was set on it as the perfect representation of their journey. They had walked through the wasteland of Mordor in their quest for a biological child, and now after all that exhaustion, they were finally getting to sail into the west, into the rest and peace and hope of the Undying Lands. Not that having a newborn baby is at all as restful as I imagine Valinor to be, but you get the idea.
I had purchased a sizable lot of quilting cottons in various colors a year ago from somebody else's destash (some of the pieces were used to make up the rainbow blocks in the HP/SW quilts), and I tried to use those as much as possible in this quilt. I figure elves and hobbits would be all about being green and not purchasing new fabrics, right? The only new fabrics I had to buy were some browns for the cliffs and the backing fabric. Anyway, I started by laying out my fabrics in a semblance of the final image, then I got to all the tedious cutting and sewing of sky and water strips.
I initially wanted to have hobbit boles at the bottom, hence all the green bits. After doing some measuring, though, I realized it would end up being too long of a quilt for its width.
Figuring out the cliffs and greenery was more fun and challenging. I wasn't sure how to attach them, so after more googling I treated them as appliques, folding the edges under and hand-stitching them down. The little boat was done the same way, but I interfaced the pieces since they were so tiny and fiddly to work with.
I chose a neutral gray, vine-y backing fabric; I wanted a fabric with some kind of busy pattern to disguise my inevitable quilting errors, and vines seemed appropriate for the elvish theme of the front. For the binding I went with a plain solid navy blue since I figured the edges would get dirty fastest and I didn't want to take away from the design. The quilting was all sort of haphazardly done; I didn't mark any of my lines beforehand and just sort of sewed with a vague plan in mind. I think it turned out pretty well, all things considered. One day I'll take a quilting class and figure out how to do things the real way instead of just winging everything...
This quilt took a month's worth of nighttimes and naptimes, but since AP exams were over it was mostly a relaxing way to wind down after a hard school year. We were even able to make it down to San Diego as an entire family to deliver it in person at their baby shower; it was gratifying getting to watch them unwrap it. This is why I'll probably only ever make quilts for people I love a lot -- I don't think most people would be willing to pay for the hours and hours it takes to make one, but this is the best way I know how to show how much I care. I may not be a baby person, but I'll be a sewing-for-your-baby person as long as it's my idea and not an outrageous request that belongs on @canyousewthisforme!
These last two pictures taken by the mom-to-be's sister.
I made a whole host of things for SHB#1, most of which are still perfectly useable for SHB#2, so I didn't make a whole lot during this pregnancy. Also chasing a toddler kind of precludes having the time to sew and paint very much! But one thing I definitely wanted to do was to make SHB#2 a quilt; I wanted each child to have their own tangible piece of evidence that I was thinking about, dreaming about, and hoping lovely things for their lives. Since SHB#1's quilt was ocean animal themed, I decided that SHB#2's should be land animal themed, with a bit of a feline bent, because obviously cats are great. This decision was also helped by a dear friend bringing back a pink cat quilting cotton from Japan. Although I'm not a huge fan of pink, I decided to go ahead with a pink/red color scheme for this quilt, if only to set it apart from SHB#1's teal blue quilt. I managed to find fabrics with a lot of yellows and oranges as well, though, so it's not overwhelmingly pink in a froofy pastel princess way.
Back when I made SHB#1's quilt, I kind of just chose every single ocean animal quilting cotton I could find, and that's about all the thought that went into it. Maybe because SHB#2 is a girl, and I've been thinking a lot about the world she's coming into, and what my own experiences were like growing up as a quirky, nerdy girl who didn't come into her own until a quarter of a decade into life, but my fabric choices and sewing experience with this quilt were much more thought out and meditative.
I realize that a lot of this is going to sound overdramatic (and a lot like the made-up symbolism for my art class essays), but this is really what I was thinking about while sewing. I thought about back in the Laura Ingalls Wilder pioneer days when women would make quilts by hand with meaningful fabrics, and I tried to think of the whole process as sewing my love for this baby girl into a blanket that she could wrap herself up in. The pink cat fabric that started it all was from a long-time friend who helped me feel welcome and at ease when I felt particularly awkward in a new social situation, and despite living in different cities now, she remains someone I can look to to offer wise questions and compassionate understanding when I struggle with marriage, motherhood, and life. I want SHB#2 to have those kinds of uplifting friends in her life. The other small rectangles have different animals on them; I feel strongly that how we treat animals, who don't have a voice and represent the stewardship role that humans have, is indicative of our hearts. I want SHB#2 to have that kind of care and sense of responsibility for all the vulnerable and oppressed. The lion fabric in the middle features male lions with crowns, but I want SHB#2 to know that just because she is a female living in a male-dominated world, does not mean she can't rise up and still accomplish what she wants. The ombre-ish dot progression goes in both directions at the top and the bottom of the quilt; I hope that as she matures that she still maintains a childlike (but not childish) sense of wonder and openness and imagination. I hope that she has the courage to go in the opposite direction of those around her when necessary, and that she can see people and issues on a spectrum instead of as black and white, that things aren't always either-or, which is something that I struggle with personally. And lastly, the dotted backing fabric and striped binding fabric are echoes of her brother's quilt; I pray that instead of being jealous or rivals, they will enjoy a close relationship and love and support each other.
I thought it was fitting that as the little sister, she have little dots to his big polka dots.
"I just trying it, Mom." Of course he would like her quilt more than his own.
And then because I was on a quilt-making kick, and because the Warriors had just won the champeenship (Homestar Runner, anyone?) again and I still had leftover Warriors fabric, I figured that I might as well make a little blanket to match SHB#1's SF Giants one. That way, both kids will have a fleece blankie to commemorate the Bay Area sports team that won some big thing the year they were born!
I made it with remnants, hence the irregular logo distribution. At least all the squares made for easy quilting!
Bonus Warriors-related craft: I know this post's title says that this is supposed to be about projects for SHB#2, but here's a clock I made for Mr. Cation.
When Mr. Cation and I first started dating, I remember being really concerned about how much he liked sports (which is funny because now that I've met more husbands of friends, I realize he's not even that hardcore...he doesn't get depressed when his favorite sports team loses, nor does he spend a lot of time/money to watch/attend games). Sports and I have a terrible relationship, mostly stemming from the elementary school trauma of always being picked last for teams. But anyway, I was so worried about it that I actually talked to my wise older mentor teacher (who was also an awesome life mentor) about whether our relationship could even work. She advised me that he was a good guy who was worth holding on to despite our different interests, and pointed out that there would be different opportunities for me to show my support of his "fandom" with my crafts. She was so right of course, on both points, and while I'm still incapable of dribbling a basketball, I have enjoyed making these sport-themed projects for our children and for him. I'm so glad that our marriage has given me the chance to somewhat redeem my awful childhood PE experiences; I'm especially glad that with him as a dad, SHB#1 and #2 will have a better grounding in sports than I will, and hopefully won't have to suffer as I did!
This is pretty much what all sports sounds like to me.
Besides working on fashion illustrations and sewing plushies, I've also been crafting my fandoms and doing some cosplay-lite. I wanted to chronicle these, however briefly, before SHB#2 arrives, since this blog is supposed to be a record of my haphazard (and some are definitely more haphazard than others) projects.
I was late to jump onto the Hamilton bandwagon, but I console myself that once I jumped on, I jumped on hard. The soundtrack has been on repeat in my car for oh, more than half a year now, and SHB knows and enjoys a good half of the songs (his top requests: anything sung by Aaron Burr or King George; not his favorites: cabinet battles, anything having to do with Maria Reynolds). Although I'd seen it recommended by basically every blogger I enjoy and many real-life friends I love, I didn't get into it until my best friend's girlfriend got her into it. As a thank you to the two of them for finally getting me into my favorite musical ever (sorry Les Mis, you've been relegated to second favorite, although you'll always have the distinction of being my first love), I drew/painted these two pieces:
I took all of Alexander Hamilton's and Aaron Burr's best lines and turned them into a ham (A Dot Ham!) and a burr (A Dot Burr!).
Time is such a theme in Hamilton, so it seemed appropriate to make a clock. "Why do you write like you're running out of time?"
Bonus LOTR-themed clock that I pyrographed for Elaine:
I love the new craft kits that Target is putting out!
It's really thanks to my fashion illustration classes that I even did the first two pieces; I had all my nice pens and paints at hand already and felt empowered to use them. I also drew this little illustration based on my best friend's cat for her husband, who is a Toothless the dragon fan.
Cactus the cat looks a lot like Toothless the Night Fury, don't you think? Color pencil and pastel illustration.
It's been hard to find the time and energy to make proper costumes this year, thanks to pregnancy and a busy schedule, but I'm proud of myself for still managing a couple of less-involved outfits. Elaine and I went to see the next installment in the HP symphony series at the Silicon Valley Symphony, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I originally planned to make a Fawkes costume, but time and a baby bump got the better of me and I went for a much more low-key and goofy costume: the actual Chamber of Secrets! I'd seen all those Buzzfeed-ish "articles" about ridiculous uses of a baby bump in cosplay (Krang! the Death Star! an alien/parasite bursting out!), so it seemed to follow that my incubation chamber should hold a basilisk. I painted some painter's tape to make a quick "sticker" because I didn't want to paint directly onto a perfectly good black tee, then painted the door to the Chamber of Secrets onto a piece of craft foam and fastened it over my belly.
I put a bunch of painter's tape onto a piece of waxed paper and used acrylic to paint the basilisk, then cut out the shape.
I considered stressing about the not-quite-symmetrical door design, then decided it wasn't worth it. Same goes for the scale pattern on the snakes.
My crowning glory, though, was the tiny Moaning-Myrtle-in-her-toilet headband I made to direct people to the chamber:
Don't ask why I have a tiny pink plastic toilet readily available in my house.
Elaine was a great sport and let me slap a printout of the blood-painted warning wall on her dress, so that we could go together like we did at the first symphony, where we were McGonagall and her silver cat Patronus.
I'm hoping to get my act together post-birth and make a Snape-boggart costume for the third movie/symphony...we'll see how that goes.
Shortly after the symphony was the second Silicon Valley Comic Con; I wanted to dress up as something, but with AP exams coming up I had no time to make the pregnant Princess Serenity or pregnant Zoe Washburne costumes I originally envisioned. When my sister Emily told me she was going as Imperator Furiosa, though, I knew I could pull off a quick pregnant Splendid Angharad costume. Can you even call it a costume if you're just wrapping white fabric around yourself and throwing cinnamon and coffee grounds at it to dirty it up? At any rate, it was a very comfortable costume to wear and certainly easier for toddler-chasing than my original ideas. Just FYI, if you bring a two year old to a convention and you're pregnant, it's very helpful to also have the best aunts along to help chase and wrangle.
The orange convention wristband kind of ruins the whole look though.
Right after we took this picture, SHB squirmed out of my arms and took off across the exhibit hall to point at a Batman display. I guess I was asking for it by dressing him in his caped Batman shirt.
I was really excited for the Wonder Woman movie coming out, but sad that there was no way I was going to make either of my two preferred costumes from the film: the wool suit, which is actually quite historically accurate for a superhero movie, and the blue dress with the sword down her back, which is just awesome. I still want to make both, but they'll have to wait. In the meantime, I'm still pretty pleased that I managed to spray-paint my own maternity Wonder Woman top and make a quick craft foam tiara. Emily went as Doctor Poison, who, although a villain, still has a tiny piece of my heart as a female chemist.
Yes, I succumbed and bought the toy sword.
So that's what I've been up to this spring! I still have to blog SHB#2's quilts and then I'll be all caught up. Minus those Antigone costumes, of course.
For the last school year, I've been taking fashion illustration classes at Canada College in Redwood City. This is the same community college where I took Pants Drafting & Construction, Bustier, Copying RTW, Intro to Theater Costuming, and Textiles. In fact, the professor for this class is the same as the textiles class, and she is basically everything I would've wanted to be in a different life: an illustrator, knowledgeable about the chemistry of textiles, and a teacher! And what a teacher -- I haven't taken a serious art class in more than fifteen years, when I took an introductory drawing class my senior year in high school because I dropped out of second semester AP Physics. That was all about shading and stippling techniques and I think I drew a pretty awesome pine cone, but that's about all I remember. And before that class, the last time I picked up my paintbrush to do a serious painting was in eighth grade. Even then, I was pretty lost because my teacher's instructions basically consisted of "get your paintbrush wet and then paint until it looks good."
The one painting from that era that I don't cringe at was copied from a calendar when I was in a horse phase. I don't have any real pictures of it, but I found it in the background of this picture from Thanksgiving four years ago. My parents still have it hanging in their dining room, bless them.
With that background, it was like an epiphany when our prof actually gave concrete instructions on how to proportion figures, illustrate different fabric types, and use various media effectively. As I told her on my last day of class, I feel like a whole new world has been unlocked for me (you know, because I needed more types of hobbies that involve a cabinet of supplies). No more staring enviously at other artists' illustrations and wondering how they knew how to do that; now I can do it too! Er, kind of.
Last fall, after several weeks of drawing stick figures, blocked figures, various body parts, and types of fabric, our first assignment was to put all of it together to do a black and white drawing. I drew a 1920s-inspired figure wearing a beaded flapper-ish dress and holding a fox-fur stole. It's funny, I was so pleased with it when I drew it, but looking back at it now I see so many mistakes!
Her right shoulder is too high and her pose looks a little awkward.
The next assignment was to do a figure in sepia and/or monochromatic pastels, i.e. not a lot of color, but shading and texture as a focus. I went for a 1930s look, with a drapey bias-cut satin dress and huge fur coat. In contrast to my first assignment, I still love everything about this piece.
In the category of draw what you know, most of my figures read as Asian.
The third assignment was an illustration using colored pencils, so we were supposed to choose nubbly and textured fabrics to render. I illustrated what was meant to be a boucle wool coat with tweedy trousers. This was my least favorite piece from first semester, which at the time I attributed to the medium, but it's funny because I ended up using color pencil a lot during second semester. I think I just didn't know what I was doing yet. Also I went overboard on the background. Or maybe I just didn't like it because it wasn't a vintage look?
I realized that the white hair made her look a lot like Ororo Munroe, so in a late night, last minute decision I added in the background, then hated it. I've gotten too used to being able to Ctrl+Z everything!
Our final project was a watercolor illustration, and I went with an Erte-inspired Art Nouveau figure. Despite a mistake on the shading of the draped folds on her dress, I still love how this one turned out, mostly because of the cheetah. This was the illustration that made me fall in love with watercolor as a medium; I realized I could actually control the moisture in order to get the color to do what I wanted, instead of letting the moisture control me. It's amazing what a good teacher can help you achieve!
I debated whether or not to take Advanced Fashion Illustration during second semester, because I knew I was going to be super busy with prepping my AP students for exams, plus the inevitable exhaustion of pregnancy and the continued demands of caring for a toddler. I'm so glad I did it, though, because I was able to build on my momentum from first semester, and who knows when I'll be able to take another class? It took two years for me to carve out time for myself to take these classes after having SHB, and he's a fairly easy kid, so I figured I should do what I can while I still can.
We started the semester by drawing more "extreme" poses (read: more attitude) and working on profile and back views. This was my attempt at a Poiret-inspired cocoon coat (something I definitely want to make one day, if/when I find the perfect velvet fabric) from the back, using pastels and color pencils:
Backgrounds: not my strong suit. That tree is just sad.
Then we experimented with timed drawings, where we used brush pens to quickly capture a figure's style and movement. Unlike my previous pieces, these poses were based on fashion magazine photos since the limited time didn't allow for coming up with and perfecting my own figure poses.
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We also spent a class period playing around with acrylic paints in the Stipelman technique, where, according to our prof, you just smoosh paint around until it looks good. I somehow ended up painting a pink wedding dress. I don't even like pink.
The first official assignment was to render four different types of fabric. I did a floral jacquard, an iridescent silk dupioni, a gold-flecked acrylic sweater knit, and a lovely ombre organza that had little colorful crinkles in it.
My silk dupioni rendering looks too dark because of how the light hit the fabric sample. Doing the jacquard was lots of fun though!
I seriously love this fabric; it's hard to appreciate the gold flecks until you see it in person and the light hits it right. I'm really pleased with how I captured the fuzzy boucle-ish texture though. This outfit is based on the actual costume I created for our high school's production of post-apocalyptic Antigone. One day I'll get around to blogging those costumes...
My inspiration for this figure/outfit was a combination of Zac Posen's 2016 Met gala gown for Claire Danes and the announcement of Noma Dumezweni's casting as Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I had this lovely iridescent organza with periwinkle in it and I imagined what Hermione's head-turning Yule Ball gown could've been.
The next assignment was a fashion illustration portrait, where we were supposed to focus in on the face, which we hadn't really done before, while still illustrating at least part of an outfit up close. I chose to illustrate Anna May Wong, whom I've blogged about before, in her iconic Travis Banton sequined dragon dress.
I based the pose on this photo. I love how the sequined dragon turned out, but got carried away when doing the fabric at the bust area and it makes the dress look much less fitted than it actually should be. Also her face got too slim and doesn't look so much like Anna May Wong as it does my mom...
Then we spent several weeks working on an advertisement using a fashion figure; I really didn't want to spend that much time working on a random fashion line, nor did I have a business I really wanted to promote, so I ended up making a propaganda piece instead, for International Women's Day! I figured that I might as well advertise for something I actually care about, i.e. women's rights, and not a perfume or handbag.
I really wanted to capture the feel of teens-era women's suffrage posters, with the Art Nouveau-inspired font style and the vaguely military/heraldic imagery. I used an actual slogan from the women's suffrage movement on the banner.
Our final project was to put together a presentation board with the technical flats, specs (measurements), photographs, and illustration of an actual garment, as if we were trying to sell/manufacture it for RTW. I chose my Roaring Twenties dress, as I figured that it would involve relatively few measurements, and since I came up with the pattern on my own, I could say it was really MY garment that I was showing off.
Even though taking these classes made for a hectic year (hello, late night drawing, rushing home from work to drive across the bridge in time for class, and extended screen time for SHB while Mommy finishes up last minute cutting and mounting on the days assignments are due!), it was so worth it to be able to make beautiful art again. I remember being in college and having an Elfwood account (anyone remember that site?) and marveling at their artists of the day and being so blown away by the art of Stephanie Law and Anke Eissmann especially, and wondering if I would ever be able to draw anything that beautiful. I've still got a long way to go, but art like that feels achievable instead of impossible now.
