phew

Say phew cos the costumes are finished..
I borrowed eric's mum's machine on saturday afternoon and in a day and a half of non-stop sewing I somehow managed to finish them. I really had to rush them a lot, so I'm not massively happy with the finish on them. They're not perfect and I hate to feel like I didn't make something to perfection. On the other hand I'm quite surprised I got them finished and that they've come out as well as they did considering the problems. So all in all I'm kinda satisfied.

Ok so the synopsis of the film is this: A thief who lives on the edge of a town in a caravan goes for a walk in the woods. He mulls over his future as the townspeople have become more cautious and their homes more secure over the years. His plan was to accumulate enough wealth to live in another town as an honest man. In the woods, he spots a small run-down cottage. A witch lives there who has jewels in her eye sockets. He steals these while she sleeps. In the morning he is a magpie and forever the witch’s servant.

Desperate to see if they had come out ok, and with no-one else around to model for me, here I am as the thief and witch.
The thief's costume. You'll have to trust me and believe me that it is actually man-size and a lot bigger on me than it looks in the picture! The backgrounds are from this book of fairy tales that I think was my mum's when she was a kid, and they inspired me with the costume. He has a irredescent blue-greeny-gold waistcoat cos later he gets turned into a magpie and all.

Do I look well crafty and skillful and thief-like? And back back back in the day-ish?


The witch. Eric wanted a loose floaty purple dress with a hint of klimt-esque pattern in a small panel...

I was going to make the panel more intricate and detailed, more klimt-ish but ran out of time. This fabric is from a screen-print design I did in A level. I was kinda stuck as to what fabric to use for it then I found some left over fabric from these screen prints and thought it would work pretty well.


Aaand I altered my striped skirt from the previous post just now when I got back from uni, so now the only question is what to wear with it. It shall be getting it's first outing tomorrow, I'll take pics.

to-do list

Ok so this week is 'reading week' meaning a week off uni to read loads and study and do work etc etc. Uhhh yeah. I always get so excited before any break from uni, thinking I'm gonna do so much stuff, finally get time to make this, do this project etc etc, and then the time flies by and nothing gets done. This time I'm feeling kinda evil and thinking I should devote my time entirely to my makings rather than uni work...or rather cram everything I absolutely have to do into the sunday before I go back.
Who wins, you decide.

Anyways I've always got loads of mental and post-it lists of things I want to make but since I'm so forgetful and theres like 8 million other things to do aswell, I tend to forget them. So I decided to keep a list here and hopefully actually get some done. This is the week I'm making the costumes for eric's film so I'm not sure if I'll actually do any of these but it's so great to actually be making rather than studying. Here is a sneak-peak, the sleeve of the witch's costume.


First up, I've been meaning to make something out of this old jumper of my mum's for aaages.
Looks pretty dull huh. Well I wanna combine it with this pillow cover fabric (charity shop),

which I also used ages ago to cover my desk chair...I just noticed the saw on the floor on the left...lol...I'm not sure why thats there...can't remember what I was using it for..

Anyhow, I did plan to cut off the sleeves, take it in, use the sleeve fabric to make a collar, add the pillow fabric to the bottom to make it longer, and make it into a side opening jumper-dress with nice brown buttons. Since then I've been thinking to make into something a bit....simpler I guess...more vestatile..with a different shape. These bad scribbles kinda illustrate what I mean, ish.


Next, I wanna (get the marks out and then) take in this dress of my grandma's so it'll fit me. (Actually I got quite a few of my grandma's dresses I want to alter but this is top of the list for now)


I've also got an abundance of ties waiting to be made into tie-belts.

And I've still got the shirts and the dresses from Traid to alter.

Tights. I'm getting really excited and inspired with everyones tights experimentation here here and here and elsewhere which I can't think of right now. I particularly like the ones inspired by these and since I'm love with tights after suddenly getting over being uncomfortable wearing skirts, I so wanna get doodling on the tights. But I can't decide what!! Any thoughts anyone? I was thinking to ask my friend Jen to draw some of her designs on some for me which would look fab I reckon. But I also wana have a go myself...so heres thinking...


I really gotta burn a cd for my friend Shadi, I've been meaning to do it for aaages since the last one I made got lost in the post. Stupid post. Will deffo get around to this one tc.

Oh and I've been dreaming in a skirt resembling something like these. Massively. Yum yum yum. Want want want. So IF I get any time I think this'll be top of the list.


Lastly, I'd just like to share with you this insanely large dessert I ate today. I was getting lunch with my dad and bro, and they decided to have dessert so I thought I will too, and I thought, No, I won't get this dark and white chocolate truffle cheescake on a chocolate cookie base, no that will just be super rich and way too over indulgent. No, I'll get this Italian apple crumble, fruity and not so over the top right?
Uhhh wrong! It's the size of a frying pan!! Needless to say I didn't eat it all yet I'm still feeling super full. Groan.

bootin and lootin

Another thing I'd been looking forward to going to was chiswick car boot sale, I'd heard it was generally a good car boot, and also seen a lot of man-shoes from there on fem brogue blog. So braving sickness and the freezing damn freezing cold, me and eric skipped along. I went with the aim of finding some man-shoes of course, and some watch/pocket-watch ness if possible, and what a treat we had.
First up, maaan-shoes, or rather man-boots. Ok they're not silver, but they're still pretty swish for £2.

Second up are these two tiny cute lady watches (everything is getting genderised now!)...they were £1 each..

I wasn't expecting them to work, I was planning on wearing them as non-functioning accessories (I never wear a wrist watch so I'd never get used to telling the time from anything but my phone) but when I got home I got it to work kinda...it ticks but doesn't keep time well.

I love the stap of this one...it slides along and wraps around it self then snaps to fasten it.


Then there's this one,

when I got home I found out it has these hallmarks on it...don't know what they mean though


Lastly I got this watch face..it only had one hand but I like it and I'll figure out something to do with it..


Eric's loot included this ingenious horse brooch, earrings and necklace in one!

This cauldron thingy which is a prop for her next film, about a theif who steals a witch's eye,and gets turned into a magpie, and features shadow puppets. I'm going to be making the costumes for it.

And a super 8 camera !

A definate success.