Another quick little weekend project: tshirt panels for the bedroom.
Two old t-shirts stretched over artist canvas and stapled in place.
Top one (angry cassette tape) was spray painted by Chris Fischer from Unread Records, and given in turn to me by Kevin from Monotone Records.
Bottom Chincoteague Island shirt was purchased from Another Man’s Treasure in Jersey City over the summer.
Sick of looking at our old scale that had long lost its cover, I tried my hand at creating something nicer looking. Using an old Martha Stewart shower curtain, I transformed the scale back into something I’d like to step onto. Don’t forget to readjust or “tare” the weight back to zero to reflect any added weight from the cover once you’re finished. This project took all of about twenty minutes, minus drying time for the contact cement in the last step.
Thanks to Christina for reminding me about how awesome PictoBrowser is!
Retouching photos is a lot of work, especially when the photos are taken in drastically different lighting situations. Still working on the set I took on Saturday, but here are two outtakes I wanted to keep. I always wondered why this happens, and its to do with the auxiliary flash not firing properly in sync with the shutter speed.
Which I sort of think is neat, especially when it ends up looking like a bar staff.
Something amazing is happening tomorrow at Union Pool! You may remember me posting about how I was doing some promotions for the Girls Rock! movie. Well, tomorrow I get to attend and photograph a mini-rock camp for girls. The mini-camp is being held by the Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls, an organization that hosts a rock camp in NYC every summer, as well as an amazing Ladies Rock Camp, which serves as a fundraiser for the organization so that they can provide financial aid to campers who otherwise may not be able to afford to come to camp.
Advance tickets through the web site are $10 per person (18 and under).
Adults come free with a kid.
This event is best suited for kids ages 5 & up.
Adults who wish to attend without kids will be charged $12 at the door.
If you can’t make it, but would like to help out, you can make a donation on the web site, or bid on Fender Stratocaster “Girls Rock!” guitar right now on eBay!
To volunteer for future events, check out the volunteering page. Check out girlsrockcamp.org to read about the history of Girls Rock Camp, and how this all got started in the first place.
Allison and I will both be there, so if you can make it, please say hello.
Rock On!
note the cat.
Taking a break this week to puppy-sit for some family members who are off skiing, and have a change of scenery. I’m staying in my old neighborhood in Hoboken, which means that I might have a chance to see some good friends from a previous job. Regardless, I’m looking at it as a sort of retreat: I’ve packed only clothes, my camera equipment, toiletries, a notebook, and a few books lent to me by my roommate about processes of writing and other artistic sentiments. I’m still working, though I wish I could have a Spring Break and travel home to be with my family! Strangely, I also have this weird back injury from sleeping on a broken bed frame. I am getting old, I suppose.
I turned off my Half.com store, and put up a vacation message at ETSY, so that I can revel in my calm state. The condo where I am staying has a gym facility, but I don’t know if my back injury would really allow me much exercise.
Meanwhile, I am totally distracted these days, but that’s life. Thinking a lot about the prospects of grad school, and tuition reimbursement offered through my new employer. Its a year off, but I am doing my research to head into the Next Big Thing with more confidence and planning than when I entered college.
I ordered myself a used copy of last year’s Poet’s Market, and have finished reading Letters to a Young Poet from Allison. (Well, you know, from Rilke.)
Now I have a dilemma to work out about my true passions:
“Would I die if I could not write?” Absolutely. Yes yes yes.
“And what about photography?” I would die nearly as quickly, yes.
I have even resorted to emailing my mother, something about, “Do you think I am a better writer or a better photographer?” She answered me, saying pretty much both. “I even will venture to say that you have talents you don’t even know you have yet…” Did I mention I have the most amazing mother? Because I do. She makes me feel okay, even if I am being selfish and introspective whenever we speak.
And perhaps I will put the question to you, dear reader. I suppose I need to develop my writing in a public way a little more clearly for you to answer this fairly. A thought I’ve had is to develop www.gogodistro.com as a portfolio project. I think Allison can help, because she has the digital skills and the same creative sentiments as I. Like I have said over and over, lately, stay tuned.
So, yes. It really happened. The Canadian Discovery Channel came down and filmed a short spot on Rory’s Solar Xylophone today. This was filmed in Washington Square Park around lunch time.
I think this cell phone picture that Rory sent me is pretty telling.
Stay tuned for details!
Related:
What the heck is a solar xylophone?
Rory’s web site: Prize Pony
Rory in MAKE Magazine Issue 12
Well, we missed the deadline but we don’t care.
Today Allison and I worked on her skirt again. We did the zipper, side seams, and some experimental adjustments. She’s going to work on the hem, and waistband this week while I am away.
Her choice of a pink zipper is especially amazing. I can’t believe how nice and professional the skirt is coming along. Its like we knew what we were doing, or something.
*The skirt is inside-out in these pictures… and bunchy because we were making adjustments to the side seams with pins. The fabric is a heavy stretch knit with a tiny corduroy-like wale in the weave.
Related:
doing the darts and center seam.
cutting out the pattern.
the challenge itself on burdastyle.
We’ve been using these long, heavy vintage curtains in the music room. They were really great for privacy, but got in the way of plants and sunlight, and hung down well below the window sill so that we had to sweep them aside and deal with the excess fabric by basically ignoring it.
This afternoon I am culling through my stashes of fabric and craft supplies (in the name of avoiding doing the laundry, truly), and I happened upon this really gorgeous blend of silk and cotton purchased from JoAnn’s Fabric a few years ago when they were hawking the Indian apparel trend. I originally meant this for a skirt fabric, but I think it works better like this than as anything I would wear. I think I’ll make the excess into a scarf. Its really luxurious.
What is nice, aside from the curtain not intruding upon the room with excess length, is that the curtain throws a nice red glow around the room. I used some decorative stitching on my machine that I have always been obsessed with. It makes the curtains very “me”, I think.
Now I feel like we have more room for plants to live on the ledge! Each of us is also very responsive to bright color, so I hope that the red-orange hues make my roommate and boyfriend as happy as they make me.
Made a set of sweet pillows this evening. They are totally free-style, meaning that I had no desire this evening to measure a thing. I was going to work on my skirt, but I think we’ll just have to finish them after the deadline is over. This was much more satisfying. Each pillow took approximately fifteen minutes to finish.
Leave it to PMS to inspire some renegade pattern forgoing.
I will definitely remake these in a more formal way, but there was something really amazing about just challenging my sewing machine to a race against the clock.
The amazing fabric is ECHINO : Etsuko Furuya for KOKKA, which I picked up at Purl Soho yesterday. The jaguars reminded me of Ruby. I love how they are wearing tiny symmetrical polka dots, while the dots on the pillow look hand-stamped. This color acidic-yellow-green basically rules my life, also.
Click the pictures for better views on flickr.
I love how worn our hand-me-down couches are looking in these pictures.
Last night I was able to join Rory at a dance performance by our friend Nancy Garcia at Judson Church on Washington Square South. The event was put on by Movement Research, and was staged beautifully inside the church sanctuary.
Unfortunately, I forgot we were going to see this and forgot to bring my camera, but I did find some beautiful footage on Nancy’s website that I thought I would share.
Her piece last night featured television monitors, circular movement, and sounds produced by the dancers and by the prerecorded video. There were some really beautiful movements and moments, especially when the sounds were echoing on the high ceilings and the front of the chapel. It was a really cool installation.
If you are interested in finding out more, you can check out Nancy’s blog, and her Dance Docs page. I especially love the tonal images on her main page.
She is going to be performing on stage with Thurston Moore Friday May 16th at no fun fest in Brooklyn, where she will be playing guitar, vocalizing and dancing along with him playing guitar.., which sounds like a dream.
Other upcoming appearances include:
April 19, 2008 Live Sh*t at The Chocolate Factory, Brooklyn, NY
June 5-6, 2008 with Chase Granoff, Renee Archibald, and Jon Moniaci, Dance Theater Workshop, New York, NY
Allison and I worked a bit on our skirts this evening for the BurdaStyle challenge, which is due Friday. Tonight we did a lot of prep work: we laid and cut out the fabric pieces (four, including the waistband), sewed the darts, pressed them flat, and sewed the center back seam. For her skirt we are opting to go without a lining, and to alter the shape when we are finished to make the bottom more fitted. Here’s what we have so far (more on flickr).
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Tomorrow I will follow these steps for my skirt while Allison sews her side seams and works on the zipper and waistband instructions. Stay tuned!
Related:
cutting out the patterns.
the challenge itself on burdastyle.com.
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Last week, my roommate and I went to Mood Fabrics to check out the scene, and find her something with which to make her BurdaStyle skirt. We wandered around the garment district for awhile, and later talked about making a trip to Purl Soho, which is like a little boutique candy store for fabric hoarders. Money is kind of tight right now, so I didn’t indulge in anything other than a zipper for my skirt, which set me back about $1.20.
As nice as it is to have all the access to garment-industry warehouses full of fabric, and higher-end designer fabrics, I absolutely miss being back home at my parents’ house and visiting our local JoAnn’s for more leisurely fabric shopping. That’s why I was happy to stumble upon the small object’s round up of places to purchase fabrics. Its such a great list to keep in mind. I have so far ordered online from both JoAnn’s and reprodepot, and had great experiences. I have to say that the most annoying thing about NYC shopping is not feeling comfortable in big fabric stores! As far as shopping online, there is a lack of the tactile experience you get by walking around a store, and physically touching the fabrics you are interested in. Same goes for finding notions, in my opinion. |
I am going to do more research by exploring fabric stores in the city when I can, and I’ll report back if I find a great spot for trims and notions. I have some lists from a sewing class that I took at FIT that I haven’t even bothered to open. Rory also sometimes goes into the city to purchase supplies for projects both for school and for his internship. There are a lot of resources for me to tap, but its all about finding something convenient for me (a store, for instance, I can stop in on my way home from work).
There used to be a fabric store on Grove Street in Jersey City called “Fabric King”, but it looks like it recently closed down. What a bummer!
Just going through some old film photography and digitally archiving.
First set:
self-portrait, music room, 2002
loans, 2003
ali – i heart you marry me, 2003
Second set:
Hannah in the woods, 2004
Wearing a scarf recycled from an American Apparel dress that I’ve since given to Allison, because it came from her dress in the first place. Lots of great stuff this weekend, but I’m too busy to tell about it just yet.
Oh, and speaking of recycled, Rory re-purposed some discarded memory he found for my computer and now it is running twice as fast! Now I can run filters in Photoshop while listening to music, all to my heart’s content!
Carry on.
My roommate Allison and I are doing the BurdaStyle.com mini-challenge sew-along, a challenge to sew a skirt from a pattern downloaded from the site in time to meet the deadline (March 15th).
Step one was to print out the pattern, cut it out, and tape everything in place. This was easy to do, but we had to slightly move furniture out of the way in order to accommodate both of our pattern layouts at once. Because BurdaStyle is an Open Source web site, we were able to download and print our patterns for free, and because there is no copyright, we can also decide to go ahead and alter the designs or sell any creations we might make from these patterns.
Next we have to measure ourselves and decide which size pattern to cut out. This is not my favorite part, because I always inevitably end up off the size chart and have to figure out a way to alter the pattern in order to fit my voluptuous curves and tall frame. That is no problem, however, thanks again to BurdaStyle’s How To Section. Its important to measure yourself properly and be true to your measurements. Remember that you can always take something in if you create it a size bigger than you need, but you can’t necessarily make something bigger after you leap in and cut out all your fabric pieces.
Allison plans to alter her pattern to make it more like a pencil skirt, but she is keeping the general size layout of the skirt as it is, so she went ahead and cut hers out this evening. I am going to do some measuring and cut mine out tomorrow, following the How-To on how to grade the pattern to a different size.
So, maybe this was a little time consuming, but it was definitely easy. Allison was like a pattern puzzle piece ninja–she had her patterns taped up and cut out quicker than I thought imaginable. Will we keep this momentum going and complete the project? Stick with us to find out. We plan on going to the fabric store on Wednesday to pick up all of our fabric and notions, then we’ll spend the evening in front of the TV, watching the Project Runway finale as we pin and cut our fabric!
Find out more about the challenge here.
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