Thursday 23 May 2013

Zipping away...

It has been a funny old week this week, nothing vaguely creative at all until this morning. Too busy catching up with dull things after Arts Week (and spending half my life in school last week felting flames), and getting things sorted for holidays. When I say nothing creative at all, that is actually a lie because I've had to make an outfit for my 5-year-old to wear tomorrow; at the end of their Great Fire of London topic my two have to dress up in Stuart-style clothes. As for her she will actually kind of look the part, if a little bit First World War nurse:-


The dress will be shortened afterwards and I am going to sew a big flower onto the front; it will be great for warmer days, maybe messing about on the beach in Brittany this summer. My eldest on the other hand is decidedly more Fred Dibnah than Samuel Pepys with ebay flat cap and waistcoat. Not particularly proud but at least he is happy to wear it after a bit of a bribe. And then the next bit of making was converting a Japanese kimono into a summer-weight dressing-gown (chopping off half the sleeves, sewing up under-arm holes, sewing a loop into the neck so I can hang it up and making a belt for it. These were jobs that needed doing for over a month so had been playing on my conscience.

But today was more fun. My friend Laura organises monthly creative group Thursday mornings and today was one. And we all went to visit our friend Romy at Clevedon Craft Centre and soaked up the atmosphere. Laura had brought not 1, not 2, but 3 different sorts of cake, plus all the equipment and materials for making cappuccinos with flavoured syrup. Romy got out a big container of old zips she had been given and we had a project. She started showing us how to make a flower brooch out of one. She showed us the first petal and we were off, no further instruction was needed. I started off with a plastic zip but after a bit of trial and error I have come to the conclusion that metal ones are much more effective. Here is my finished article, complete with some more zips that we took away to create more...
 

What a great morning. Romy made me feel thoroughly envious of her beautiful studio, maybe one day... At the time I was sewing, I remembered spotting some zippy brooches incorporating felt when I was looking online to see if anyone had ever made a felted paisley pattern like mine (here it is again if you haven't seen it already):-
 
So I looked again just now. Just google "zip brooches" (but do come back afterwards!) and see what amazing images crop up, truly inspirational. Who would have thought that something that is so thoroughly tiresome if you've ever done dressmaking could turn into something so beautiful. I will need to investigate this further!
 
Not right now though. We are off to France for a week in two days and there is much to be done. 


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