new things

I have some new beginnings lately...although I'm not really sure where I'm heading!
I finished the latest baby cardi...a friends new bub is just about here :o)

I got onto my elbow patch project, using an old well loved printed cardi, and some of the crocheted grannies I was working on here.  This cardigan was my favourite "go to" cardi around 7 or 8 years ago (my fav now is a big oversized machine washable grey woolly that came from the op shop).  There's a nice narrative of remnants and mending within it...

I swiss darned across a little ladder in the cuff, and used the granny squares to stitch over the elbow holes.  These particular grannies were made using the remnants from first of the sock yarn cardies which I made for my niece.

In this last pic you can see the previous mending - the darning which my mum did lots of years ago.

I'm taking my everyday craft practice into other projects...using leather remnants stitched together to make a thick leather yarn which I have then crocheted into a massive granny square using a 20mm hook...

I'm unsure how this will be applied to a garment form at the moment.

New things are popping up in the garden like these dwarf beans, the last for the season...I hope we have some continued warm weather for the last of the summer crops...

And the water tanks (1 in the front garden, and two in the back) now have a wire mesh covering to grow some lovely plants on them.  This one behind the workroom is filled by the water from it's roof, and connects to the watering system for the adjoining patch which you can see in the pic above.  I planted two old fashioned noisette roses next to it - Lamarque, and Mme Alfred Carriere in the winter, which now are able to be tied up away from the trampling doggles!  I'm hoping that next spring will see them flourish and bloom and eventually creep over the workroom roof to create some nice living insulation :o)

kris kringle

We had our RMIT staff Christmas party yesterday...it was lovely and jolly with lots of food and drink and so kindly provided for us by the fashion program...
We had a secret santa/kris kringle where we had to bring a secret pressie within a $10 price range.  Since I've been wanting to focus being a bit more spontaneous with making, I had an idea for a crafted kris kringle and went for it...

I decided to use a technique I was playing with when I was developing ways to tessellate the leather remnants...this is a sample modeled by a 1/2 scale mannequin where I've punched holes in the leather and joined with jump rings...

I have a stash of parts club bits from when I was in Tokyo a couple of years back so I got these out to see what I could utilise...

 I had some beautiful quality kilt pins, so I grouped together some of my teensy leather remnants that I've been saving (I realise that I've developed a filtering process where I have a different technique for different sizes of leather remnant and this would be the last stage!) with one of the pins to create a brooch.

This is in progress...I had to play around with slightly different sized rings to get the balance and the fall of the pieces right to my eye...

I stupidly didn't take a pic of the finished piece and I wrapped it all up nicely in a re-purposed box and some of the paper I spoke about here and gifted it onwards before I realised...but I liked how it ended up being evocative of a some kind of a map of a continent, maybe Africa, but open to interpretation...it went to a very lovely person...S.R. I must catch up in the new year to get some photos!

Christopher Kane "home spun" leather

Response through Making

Another aspect of Material Expression is Response through Making.  Being responsive through the making process is similar to rendering a wall where the material tells you what action is required.  In the example of the calf leg shirt, the response was via sight when piecing the shirt together.  When stitching the pieces together, the response is via touch as tactile information is gleaned regarding the pliancy of the strips of leather when using it to stitch.  As the “situation talks back” (Schon 1983, p.79) the information is fed back into the process.

Leather Patina

Aged patina mentioned by busyman last week brought this back to my mind.  It's something I need to keep in mind when working with the material expression of leather.

Calf leg shirt

Back in August last year when I had a big hiatus from the blog, I was working on this leather garment following an example from traditional american indian clothing.  The important findings here related to material expression.  The natural shape of the leather has inherant information which guides the making and design process.  The neck part of the animal creates a shape similar to the head of a sleeve.  I named this approach "whole hide use" and differentiate between this and an approach of zero waste.  When this traditional American Indian method of creating garments was conceived, the concept of waste didn't exist.  Thinking in zero waste terms would be anachronistic.  Being in a headspace where waste doesn't exist or have meaning offers a very different way of looking at the problem.

Conn, R & Denver Art, M 1974, Robes of white shell and sunrise : personal decorative arts of the native American : [catalogue of an exhibition] Denver Art Museum, November 9, 1974-January 19, 1975, Denver Art Museum, Denver.

 

new year blog resolution

The blog has changed it's name and my new year resolution is to post on a regular basis.

I've been busy so far this year - I've been doing bits and pieces in the workroom, lots in the garden, more renovations and written a paper for a conference!

It's been so long since I've posted, so it will be a bit random.  A bit of catching up, and a bit of what's new here and there - whatever I'm feeling.

Just a few things that have been happening....weaving leather, growing pumpkins, rebuilding fences, picking plums, parsely and beans, growing zuchinnis....more to come!

Northern plains shoe update

I've been wearing the northern plains shoes on and off for a couple of weeks now - pretty much around the house.
I have some before and after pics now...

Top, before

Top, after

Front, before

Front, after

Wearing, before

Wearing, after

Wearing and pointing, before

Wearing and pointing, after

Side, before

Side, after

Back, before

Back, after

You can see that the leather of the shoes has started to lose it's structure as it moulds to the shape of my feet.  The shape is starting to become informative of the experience of wearing through the marks and creasing and the breaking down of the material.  To really test the moudability of the leather and get a more intensive evidence of wear in the leather I will make another pair based on this pattern, but fitted more closely to my individual feet.  The imprint on the underside of the shoes will help to guide the fitting process as it shows the point of contact the foot has with the ground. The heel section definitely needs to by narrower so that the blocky shape of the heel will start to soften and mould - at the moment the corners are hanging away from my heels.  Take 2 coming soon!