Tag Archive for 'Craft'

dresses

Published
by
Dory
on November 16, 2009
in Craft and things
. 0 Comments

A lot of the things I look at regularly on the internet are about dresses. Some of it is about making dresses and some is unabashedly fashion. Yeah. I read fashion blogs!

Mostly it’s that journal articles are in black and white and badly photocopied and I need to look at pretty things every now and then, or I’ll wilt. It’s like the poster or print up on the wall at Kat’s house, “girls need cute things or they’ll DIE.”

mociun tie-frontDresess like this one! (which is from mociun) And Built By Wendy stuff. And all the vintage patterns over at A Dress A Day. I have a few patterns and some washed and pressed fabric that’s meant to be magically transformed into dresses, but I’m not actually working on that at the moment.

I will say, though, that I am bored bored bored of all the Japanese dress books and the adoration of them on many of the dress and craft blogs. The dresses are all so shapeless and boring (and no doubt would look terrible on anyone with boobs), and the books all seem so samey-same, with models standing in front of white or grey-ish walls, holding on to some inane object. It’s better than the overcutseyness of the amigurumi japanese craft stuff that I’ve never been a fan of, but I have no desire to look at any more shifts or tunics. Urgh.

For those of you that love the japanese dresses (or just don’t know what I’m talking about), Karyn has a quite a collection of them that you can see here.

three-dee!

Published
by
Dory
on November 13, 2009
in Craft
. 0 Comments

Oh wow, this dress is amazing!
3d glasses dress
From etsy, of course.

more friends, more quilts

Published
by
Dory
on August 24, 2009
in Craft and friends
. 0 Comments

So the most recent life-changing-event-secret-quilt-project has been quilted and bound and photographed and folded and handed off–this is the log-cabin quilt that I made for Anna and Naf’s wedding (coming up this weekend, in Rochester!)

anna and her quilt
back of the quilt
anna!

anna/naf crestOrange centre squares, other fabrics include some orange flowers, some John-Dere kitch, some city-print stuff, a thrifted pillowcase, an old skirt of Sarah Zarrow’s, some yellow katie jump rope flowers, some yellow stuff from Anna’s mom’s stash (which made it into a quilt she made me years ago!) and some grey and pale turquoise stuff I bought in Berlin.

I’m still working on some wedding stuff for A+N: handwriting the escort cards (that are not as awesome as these ones), and planning for the Brooklyn Sheva Brachot early next week, which includes drawing the little Anna+Naf crest you can see on your right there.

tuesday night notes

Published
by
Dory
on April 21, 2009
in Craft
. 1 Comment

1. That thing that I was working on, with the blue and white triangles is done:
awesomequilt
back of awesomequilt
In the photos it’s not bound or quilted, but those things happened, and it got shipped off to its rightful owner. It makes me so so so happy to have it out in the world. I’m kind of amazed that I only really knit for myself, but the quilts I make are meant for others. I have a new project in the works, but it’s still at the stage where I stare at strangers on the subway, looking at the colours of their shoes and totebags and wonder what they would look like as log cabins or flying geese.

2. I also made a new dress, for the studio presentation I have to give on Friday. It’s another Amy Butler Lotus Dress, in blue corduroy. Pictures eventually, maybe

hanging vines3. I’m knitting these socks, Hanging Vines out of dark grey yarn from Yarnia. They’re going quickly and are really fun, unlike the German Stockings that I bought the yarn for, and have started and ripped back twice. I love the way the German Stockings look, but they were so many stitches that I needed my super-long dps, and then I couldn’t knit on the subway because I kept poking people, so I gave up! Cookie A, I’ve made your Monkeys and your Pomotomous socks twice each, I’ve loved them lots, but the German Stocks are amazingly un-fun.

4. I made some maps of Saginaw:
saginaw housing

Get ‘er Done!

Published
by
Dory
on March 1, 2009
in Craft
. 0 Comments

I think I can I think I can

I finished this crocheted afgahn in November of 2005. I’ve been usinging to sleep under and rad on the couch with and give to guests when they crash. I’ve taken it on trips and am even using a photo of it as the header of my blog here!

Thing is, it’s not really done yet. There are about 8 million yarn ends to weave in, and I know that it will be a much more glorious project if I get it done. I worked on it during last year’s Oscars, and hauled it to Quilt Sunday at the workroom at least once. But mostly, I’m making no progress.

But thanks to the Crafty Slackers Get ‘er Done giveaway at the Toronto Craft Alert, I’m thinking about working on it again. I can’t really take this mammoth thing on the subway or work on it in class, so it probably wont’ happen before the March 16th project deadline, but I’m on it! Going to happen!

craftrant

Published
by
Dory
on December 24, 2008
in Craft
. 4 Comments

I went (with my friend Katie and roommate Kurt) to the BUST Holiday Craftacular craft fair a few weeks ago, and came away really disappointed. Lots of vendors doesn’t actually mean betters stuff, and the cool things seem to blend into this overarching sea of same-ness. Knit things, charm bracelets, silkscreened t-shirts, peacock feather headbands, more knit things, more charm bracelets, some silkscreened hoodies, and MORE PEACOCK FEATHER HEADBANDS. I bought one letterpress postcard and then left.

I think that my real disinterest is because all of it seems to be about adorning objects with the images that are currently in the zeitgeist. Birds, vegetables, pirates, ninjas, raccoons, whatever. The tacky crafts are the ones that say “hey, I’ve got some things cut out of a magazine and some bottlecaps, what can I glue them to? How about this picture frame! How about this notebook?” The stuff at the craftacular was much much nicer that that schlock, certainly, but it’s the same kind of idea, even if it’s putting a beautiful drawing of an octopus and printing it on an American Apparel t-shirt. Or putting birds onto charm bracelets.

Say you have a sister, and she’s really into mermaids. You’ll buy her pretty much anything that has a mermaid on it because you know that she’ll like it…but why are you buying that particular thing? The best craft stuff are things that are made because their object-ness is important. Like handmade furniture. This is what I think of when I think of craft–useful objects made in the most beautiful of ways. And so I like the things that are made because the maker is skilled at making such a thing–I find myself buying prints or postcards or flat things, because if I love the image, I don’t necessarily want it on my chest.

The booth of the kids who had made their own t-shirts in great colours and shapes–they totally prove the rule!

I like pottery. I respect soap. I bought beautiful hand-printed fabric at Brooklyn Flea many weeks ago that is now being incorporated into the secret quilt project.

I like objects (they become part of collections, which is something I’ve been thinking lots about and will write about later). I think that you should love the object you have because they either work well (you should have seem Emily’s face when she was explaining how great her square measuring spoons were) or because they are beautiful (I have some tea towels that I’m very very fond of, and not because they dry dishes better than others). I think people should make beautiful things, and make things beautiful. But so much craft feels like it was done because it could be, and lots of it starts to feel very cafe-press-like, with your design on a t-shirt! a tote bag! a mousepad! a thong! and not about lovely things at all.

Regarding collections, here is the assemblage of things on my living room wall. Since this was taken the colony of objects has grown a fair bit…
assemblage

And regarding craft: Look! The yellow octopus apron came true:
yellow apron

new secret project

Published
by
Dory
on December 20, 2008
in Craft
. 2 Comments

new secret quilt project

speaking of apples

Published
by
Dory
on November 3, 2008
in Craft
. 1 Comment

Here’s a small piece of a totally secret craft project I’ve been working on it. It involves this amazing fabric with these hilarious “I like you apples.”
i like you

crafty problem solving

Published
by
Dory
on May 19, 2008
in Craft
. 1 Comment

sweatshirt with leaves

There’s been this stain on my favourite sweatshirt for some time now, and I finally got around to fixing it–by appliqué-ing leaves over it and adding a few others to make it work.

After it was done, though, I realized that this sweatshirt now looks just like my favourite bag:

bags and sweater, orange and green

I have a new appliqué-heavy project that I’m working on now, but it’s best kept a secret for a bit.

Following Instructions

Published
by
Dory
on May 3, 2008
in food and things
. 5 Comments

I’m looking up scone recipes on the internet this morning, and they all suck. They all say things like “2 cups of bisquick” (bisquick? seriously? if was into using premade stuff I wouldn’t be looking up recipes!) or “spray pan with non-stick cooking spray” (that stuff is scary and gross!). Maybe it’s my own cooking up-bringing, raising myself on vegan cookbooks that all say things like “your choice of sweetener” to accommodate all the folks who don’t eat sugar/honey/agave nectar/whatever, but I want these recipes to say things like “do what you need to do to prevent these from sticking to the pan.”

If these recipes were in cookbooks, there’d be a whole intro section on nonstickage (or on sweeteners, or about substitutions, or whatever), and the recipes can refer you back to the what-cooking-is-all-about pages. But with the dumb internet, recipes are not part of a collection of anything, they’re one-offs. They’re hit singles with no album.

This makes me sort of sad–I feel like all these awesome skills, like the ability to curate or edit or collect or compile are slipping away. We get things totally disjointed and discrete.

I know that there are plenty of people curating all the stuff that’s on the internet–that’s what all those lovely blogs like CRAFT or Swissmiss or Kottke do. And I like them, but sometimes the endlessness of them feels tiresome. ESPECIALLY with the CRAFT blog–if anyone does anything crafty on the internet, it gets reposted there. And just as a link. It’s pointing: “look at this!” “look at that!” and most of it sucks. I know I shouldn’t get all righteous about something that is so clearly a promotional marketing tool for an overpriced magazine ($15 an issue!), but somehow it’s positioned itself at the head of the internet craft world.

Now I’m actually going to go make some scones.

First quilt on the right and straight on ’til morning…

Published
by
Dory
on April 15, 2008
in Craft
. 2 Comments

After 10 weeks and then some of my quilt class with Johanna Masko at The Workroom the quilt, my quilt, my first REAL quilt is finally done!

Here is is on the couch:
quilt on the couch
and on the balcony, in that spot where the hammock used to be:
quilt outside

The only other quilted thing I’ve made has been the Go board, which, now that I’ve made this one according the “rules” (or I guess, techniques that build on the wisdom of others), feels like such a misfit item.