Who listens to the radio?

Three ladies attempted a conference call the other night, via the amazing technology of Skype and mobiles.

The other two ladies could hear each other fine, although there was a big time drag, so that they constantly talked over each other. But all I could hear was these weird computer noises, and it sounded like a Commodore 64 singing to me from the past. Very pretty, but not really condusive to converstation. Eventually, we gave up.

And it reminded me about the time the stereo in our car was dying. Well, that's a little dramatic, as it's not far gone from where it was when we got the car. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Let me tell you a story.

Our car is 16 years old and came sans aerial. This wipes the radio off the list of entertainment possibilities whilst in the car. It has a tape player, but the first time we tried it, it chewed the tape and spat it back at us. And it wasn't the choice of music the car was objecting too, who could turn down Andy Prettyboy (of which I'm unsure of the spelling but sure of the music).

Then we had the bright idea of buying a faux tape thing that attaches to a cd player and using the stereo that way, which, after much searching of technology stores, we did. we plugged it in excitedly and pressed play on the portable crappy cd player we found under the bed and waited for the strains of music to well up. Unfortunately, the one working speaker under the dash didn't live up to our surround-sound hopes. But we had music and we were happy.

But a few weeks ago, I was driving around and suddenly the music went weird. Well, it was a song from Avenue Q, so let's say it went weirder. The drum dropped out entirely and the guitar sounded odd and the vocals were suddenly far off and sounded like a delicate machine was singing them. Then these weird dreadfully 80s synth-pop sounds started mixing in with the song and before I knew it, I was suddenly listening to odd sounding 80s remixes of all the songs on this mix cd, sung by machine. It was if machines had evolved to such a level that they were now a fully functioning aspect of society and had started putting out dreadful pop songs. Although they could sing in English, they still had their native machine accents on the words.

It was the aural equivalent of when the dvd player screws up and everything gets weird and disjointed and pixellated. It was actually very pretty. Depending on which layer of the track would drop out, I had 80s techno, acoustic without voices or accapella drums. I drove around all day listening to all my favourite songs as I'd never heard them before. Truely a soundtrack to the new millenium, played by a bunch of machines from the previous century.

Rock (or machine generated synth-pop) on!

And the weirdest thing was, after about a week and a half, it reverted back to how it used to sound, which is crackly from the dying speaker but once again recognisable.

We have a quirky car.

tutorial: Dead simple cushion covers

These cushion covers are really, really simple. You'll need a design in mind, something simple is better to start, some material and a needle and thread. THat's it. Fleece is perfect for this project, it's soft and warm and inviting and, best of all, it doesn't need hemming, so it makes it a much faster project to sew. However, feel free to use any kind of material at all. My advice is to pick something hard wearing, as it's to cover an item in use.

Today I'm showing you how to do it using road markings as the inspiration. You could do anything thou, the sun, a burning garbage can, geometric shapes, anything at all. Simplify it down to it's basic shape/s, and you'll be away.

SO, You'll need:
A cushion (and it's measurements)
a design
material 2 1/2 times longer than your cushion
more material for the design
a needle and thread.

An overlocker or sewing machine makes this go faster, but it's not totally necessary.


First thing's first. Step One: Measure your cushion. Mine are 65cm sqaure (they're floor cushions), so that makes things nice and easy.

Step Two: Lay out your material, and cut a large strip 2 1/2 times longer than your cushion and for the width, make it the same measurement as your cushion PLUS 2 1/2cm hem allowance on each side. Thus, for a 20x30 cm cushion, cut a strip 50cms long and 35cm wide. Or, with my example, cut the material 162 1/2 cms long and 70cms wide.

Step Two Point Five: If you're using material that needs hemming, now's the time to do it.

Step Three: Fold your material 5cms longer than the cushion back over itself, and then fold the extra on top (see drawing below) all with the right sides IN


Step Four: Pin along the two open sides that don't have the foldback, and sew them up. The foldback is to help hold the cushion in the cover once you're finished.

(Take no notice of the white stitching in the photo at this time, I was a little ahead of myself when I took the photo)

You can see the the foldback, the back and the front more clearly in this photo:



Step Five: Now you're ready to fold it inside out and stitch on your design. Mine were simple straight lines, and it sewed up pretty quickly. At this stage you'll need to hand sew it, as machine sewing will be too difficult (I'm a hand sewer over a machine sewer). If you want to machine sew your design, stitch it to the material (step five) before you sew the edges into the cushion cover (step four)

Hopefully you've come up with something simple, especially for a first try. Think about your design, and pare it back to it's basic shapes. The sun idea becomes a big yellow circle and some little yellow straight lines. On a blue cushion cover with a couple of white cloud shapes it would look fab. The burning garbage can breaks down into a grey cylinder for the can and some triangle flame shapes in yellow, red and orange. A dog is a circle for a head, an oval for a body, straight lines for the legs and a long half circle for the tounge. If you can't picture how to make the image you want, google it, you'll find cartoon versions of pretty much everything.

Cut the shapes out and pin them to your cover. Stitch them firmly in place with cotton the same colour as the material.

And that's it. You have cushion covers for your cushions and you've crafted away an afternoon. Congratulations!

Workshops and Chookas

EEE! I went to the workshop today and one of the ladies had bought a doll in she made over the week.
She's made a doll of her art teacher as a gift for her. How great is that? It's so personalized, from the stockings to the glasses to the jewellery to the hair and hair wrap. Oh, I was so thrilled she made this! I'm so happy.

In related news, the workshops will run until the end of the year now. We're looking at other craft to teach the ladies, machine sewn sofites seem to be the front runner at the moment.

In unrelated things, I worked at the Chookas festival at the Arts Centre for the last 5 days, encouranging children to draw on the Arts Centre walls. It was a lot of fun, but totally exhausting. Mainly I was getting them to draw circus-themed things. Check out the photo below. You can see a guy on a tightrope, a seal balancing a ball on it's nose and a rabbit in a hat, amongst others



Here is the producer of the event (recognise the wings she's wearing?) writing on the wall on the last day


And here are some of the Front of House staff wearing their uniform, also drawing on the wall. EVERYONE wanted a go, when else are you not only allowed but actively encouraged to draw all over the arts centre?



There were SO many awesome drawings over the 5 days, but below is my favourite, a smiley lion. I even considered getting it tattooed, I am so taken with it. But I thought better of it. But there's just something so amazing about it.


It was an incredibly tiring week, but packed full of fun and I loved it.

Tutorial - Easily Customisable Fairy Wings

Wings are SO simple to make. Some coat hangers, some thread, a bit of material and a couple of hours and you'll have a brand new set of wings to flutter around with. Check out these two, a Dr Suess inspired red pair and a set of elegant black cocktail wings. They're both made to this tutorial, from which endless varieties can be created.


You can use any kind of material to make the wings, the best sort is stretchy material, but you can make them from non stretch as well. Material that doesnt fray is the best, so you don't have to go to the bother of hemming it first.
WHAT YOU NEED:
2 coat hangers
pair of pliers
material for the membrane/skin
a cheap pair of stockings to tie the wings on
decorations
needle and thread
sissors

First thing is to design the wings you want to build. Do you want feathered angel wings? fairy wings? bug wings? other? What colour and shape do you want? What decorations? You can google fairy wings for some inspiration, or just make them up on the fly.

Draw some shapes on paper. Try to envision the final product. Do you want them decorated or plain? If you want them decorated, with what? Glitter, paint, fake or real flowers or leaves, buttons, bells, feathers... let your imagination run wild.

So after you have a shape you're happy with on paper, grab one of the coat hangers. Use the pliers to unkink any dints or divots in the wire so you end with a semi-round shape. Then bend it into your preferred shape, using your drawing for reference. Take some time to make it right, it's always easier to make something right the first time than go back and try to fix it halfway through the process. Once you're happy with it, straighten out the hook, and then use that wing to create a second the same shape.


I like to twist a little spiral into the end of the wire, to make it look more finished (plus, I like spirals) but you can just bend it back in on itself if you are unkeen on this look, and it'll be wrapped into the decoration. More on this later.

For wings using stockings for the membrane
Cut across the where the leg starts from the waist. Cut the toes off and cut it in half at the knee. Then slice each one open along the leg so instead of a tube of material you have a single layered rectangle.

Fold an edge over the wire shape and sew it on, stretching the stocking out as you go to ensure that it fits by the end. Try to stitch it on without any wrinkles, but sometimes it's unavoidable.


For wings using other sorts of material
Lay the wire shape on top of the material and cut around it, including about a 5cm (2 inch) hem allowance.


Fold the wing membrane over the wire, and stitch it on, following the long side of the wing first (if there is one) and then gently stretching the material as you sew the second side. Try to stitch it on without any wrinkles, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

for both kinds of wing

The best way to stitch the membrane on isn't around the wire, but long stitches just underneath the wire. See the diagram.



Once the membrane is stitched onto the wire, cut the excess off, leaving around a 2cm (3/4 inch) hem. If you've sewn the membrane tightly, the hem shouldn't stick out too much. But if it does, you can glue it down with a hot glue gun or PVA/craft glue, or you can stitch it down.

Now, to join your wings together.
Grab the second pair of stockings. I usally use black stockings, as it's a fair bet that I'll be wearing black clothing underneath, so they'll blend in. You can use any colour you prefer.
Cut a leg off, as close to the waist as you can go. Now cut the toes off and slit it up both sides of the leg so you end up with 2 single layered long rectangles.

Tightly wrap the straight wire with the stocking several times, so it's about 1cm thick. You'll probably use about half the stocking length for this. Stitch the end tightly down. If you didn't make spirals, wrap the wire to the end. If you do have spirals, don't wrap them, just wrap close to them.


Then wrap the second wing the same way.

Place both wing wires together and stitch tightly against eachother at the back and the front. If you've made spirals at the end of the wires, make sure they're both at the front.


To hide the stiches, wrap the middle with more stocking, or another material, and stitch closed at the back.

Now comes the fun part, the decoration!
- Draw on the wings with fabric paint
- Sprinkle glitter on the wings after painting, the wet paint will hold the glitter like glue
- stitch or glue feathers on
- stitch buttons or sequins on
let your imagination run wild!

The last bit to do is the ties, so you can actually wear the wings

Get the second leg of the stockings, and cut off the toe and slit down both sides as before.

Position the wings in the middle of the stocking, and tie firmly around the middle wire.



If your wings are top heavy and swing downwards when you try them on, stretch the top tie up the wing a little and sew it on, as in the photo.


That's it, your wings are now ready to wear or give as gifts. Go forth and make wings my friends!

Sydney exhibition

I am in an exhibition in Sydney that opens Thursday 6th of Nov. It's part of the Bike Festival and it's on at the At The Vanishing Point gallery, in Newtown.



It's being curated by Mitra Jovanovic, who is being mentored by the gallery, and it's been a really interesting process, beig curated by someone else while curating Totem.

So Sydney guys, go check it out! And let me know what it looks like :) Details below...

Tutorial - big bow tie

Welcome to my first Page 63 tute. Just in time for Halloween, here is how to create a big bow tie al la Cat in the Hat.

You'll need the bow tie material, I've used poly cotton here. You'll also need thick interfacing, as thick as you can get, I prefer iron on as it's faster. Then you'll need some bias binding to tie in on at the end.

And off we go!


For the Bow bit, you'll need a piece around 60cms by 10cms. Iron or attach the interfacing, then fold both ends in and overlock down the long open sides. The Tie bit is around 30cms long and 12cms wide. Fold it in half and overlock down the long end. Above is one just sewn and then one turned inside out. Guess what the next step is!

Turn both inside out ;)


Here are all the parts of your bow tie. The Bow and the Tie, then around 90cms of bias binding and a small piece for the middle of the Bow (called, for our purposes, Middle), around 10cms long and 6cms wide.

Grab the Middle. Fold each of the lengthwise sides into the middle, put a couple of stitches across the gap to keep it folded.

Turn the Bow over, and lay the bias binding across the bow. Gather both Bow and bias binding in the middle, wrap the Middle around the gather. Stitch the Middle closed, making sure you stitch the bias binding in at the same time.


Fold the Tie in half (making sure it's on a little bit of an angle rather than perfectly aligned) and stitch the fold to the back of the Middle as in the photo.

The last step is to trim the bottom of the Tie, I used pinking shears but if you dont have them, cut it into a small 'v'.

And that's it.

The Arts Centre job

Chookas is The Arts Centre's festival it runs for kids every year. The theme this year is a circus/Dr Suess one and it's going to look ace!

One of the producers contacted me a week and a half ago, they needed 50 Front of House uniforms for the guys, and I had a 11 days to make them in. The brief was it needed to fit in with the circus/Dr Suess theme, and it needed both the Chookas and Arts Centre logos on it. And the budget wasn't huge. As in, it wasn't much at all.

I wanted to go a bit wacky and Cat in the Hat while still staying true to the Arts Centre corporate style. A big ask, but not an impossible one.

So above is the original plan. It utalises the uniform they already have, the black tshirt with the Arts Centre logo on it, which custs down the cost.

The three circles are badges, the top badge is the Chookas logo, the bottom two are buttons. Then there is a big bow tie, Cat in the Hat style, stripey sleeves with shirt cuffs and then not pictured is a red white and black tail too.

Three of those eleven days was taken up with bump out of Totem, so I had 9 days to make all of this stuff, 50 bow ties, 50 tails, 100 sleeves with cuffs. But I did it, and handed them in yesterday. I took some shots before they left my house, but I'll wait til the festival to show the entire ensemble on.


These are the sleeves, created from socks that have been cut up, and then stitched to the cuffs. Each pair has a white and a black button, the white buttons are sewn on with black thread, and the black buttons with red thread. The cuffs are different sizes and the buttons are deliberatly stitched on differently, either with a cross or two dashes, to ensure that there's a bit of Cat in the Hat chaos to the items.





These are the tails, created from fleece plaited and tied at each end. Each tail has a little loop of elastic at one end, to enable the wearer to attach it to a belt loop at the back of their pants.



These are the bow ties, all 50 of them. Just before they were finished. They just needed to have their ends cut with pinking shears. Damn! I should have photographed them after that! My original plan was to use fleece for everything, since it doesn't run, but it's late spring and I was worried that the guys would overheat. It's really important when designing costumes to remember that people have to wear them and do whatever they do in them. Try to picture yourself wearing whatever you've designed. I imagined that wearing a big bow of fleece under my chin would make me really hot, plus fleece cuffs around my wrists while doing stuff would make it worse. So I changed the design to be cotton/polyester instead. That meant I needed to use really thick interfacing as well, to ensure it stayed the right shape. You've got to be flexible in designing as well. The idea you had might have been perfect at the time, but you need to be willing to change it as you go and as you discover things. Don't be precious about the original idea to the detriment of the final product.

This makes me think of creating props too. Often when people make props, they forget that the reasons props exist is that actors need to use them. I've seen so many times people making fragile or precious props and then if the actors break them in normal use, the prop is gone. Always remember the final destination of the prop, which is in an actor's hand. Ensure you make it as tough and as durable as you possibly can.

So there is Dr Sayraphim's short lecture on prop making. And now back to the Chookas fesitval.

And lastly, the badges. I was really happy with these too. They came from www.stayhuman.com.au and they turned out really well. They're really shiny, so they didn't photograph as well as I'd hoped, but they still look ace.

more Halloween mentions!

Jennifer from Handmade Crafty Goodness listed my marionette as part of her Halloween showcase! That's so lovely of her :)

There's some cute prints and a couple of adorable dolls too, so pop on over and check it out! Thanks Jennifer!

the workshop culminates in a cake recipe

The turkish ladies knitting workshop was drawing to a close. Today was the last day and the dolls were all going to be hung in the Neighborhood Justice Centre tomorrow. But so many of the ladies were keen to keep going we've got another week :)

I've got all the dolls now, they're all so cute! It's amazing to see how different the dolls can be since they're all created on the same pattern. They'll be hung tommorrow, so I'll take some photos then.

But one of the ladies bought in Semolina Cake for the last day, and it was really tasty. So I asked for the recipe.

So, without further ado, here is Knitting Workshop Semolina Cake

1 litre of milk
one cup of semolina
one cup of sugar

Boil the milk, semolina and sugar for a little while, stirring constantly.

Pour into a shallow dish and set in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, make up some jelly and pour it over the set semolina.

Put the cake back in the fridge to set.

There was also suggestion of fruit in the jelly, or nuts on top.

I was send home with several more pieces, which you can see on the right. They fell over on the plate before I photographed it thou. Rest assured it was much prettier before!

Phone Pics

I love the fact they invented phone cameras. It makes me so happy that I can whip out my phone at any time and photograph something that captures my interest.

And today, while I'm brain dead from being half way through the bumpout of Totem, I thought I'd share a couple. Most of them relate to crafty things I've found, and that makes me happy too.


These are the traditional slippers that the Turkish women in my Knitting Workshop were telling me about. One of the ladies bought them in. They're little knitted slippers that are beaded or embroidered and are worn in the house instead of shoes. The one on the left was hand crafted by the lady who bought them in, the one on the right was made by her mother in Turkey and sent over.



I was working on Pacific, the Stephen Spielberg mini series, and they needed coloured light bulbs for a party scene. The question was how to dip 100 light bulbs and then leave them to dry without the glass paint running onto the metal socket. So we rigged up cardboard with heaps of holes and screwed the bulbs in. Then I dipped 25 into each colour. If you look carefully you can see the permanent texta lines which indicate the different colours.



It was messy work, but the pattern it made on the floor was very pretty.
Until we had to clean it off again.



I was once at Como House, which is an old National Trust house in Toorak, and this was in the hallway. It's a taxidermied bird, hung upside down. I asked the attendant why that particular direction was chosen. Apparently, once the birds are killed they're hung from the hunters belt, and so there was a fashion in the 19th century (I think) to taxidermy them that way. To be true to the form, as it were.



At the Lithuanian Club for Fringe, we dropped by the bar for a honey vodka (and you SO have to try one next time you're there!) and hanging above the bar was this little marionette. This photo is centered, it's very strange.


And this is me with my Totem monster. It's like a family photo!