Drawing.

I don't often do a drawing as a final piece these days. It's usually as a sketch or design for something else. However, tonight I wanted to do something creative but a sinus headache is making small scale stuff very tiring on the eyes. So I got a big piece of paper and my pencil cases with this as the end result. On Saturday we went to Strawbs concert, and their album Bursting at the Seams has a song called Lady Fuschia. I just had an image of a lady in pinks and purples, with those fuchsia flower shapes in her dress. Of course it's hard to get the image exactly how you wanted, and I think this is a little too neat. I wanted more Gerald Scarfe type lines, and maybe a more elongated figure. I also wanted her to look sadder than she does. I'm very pleased though, considering she's drawn from imagination.

The song is based on a character from Gormanghast, which I haven't read, so she's completely my invention and not based on that character. I didn't want her to be too 'Flower Fairy', but a bit more edgy and punky. Perhaps something to revisit, now I've got a clearer idea of what I like and don't like about this image.

A patchwork denim skirt or how to make life difficult for yourself!

I bought this lovely, very simple skirt pattern - 3 pieces, a side zip, very straightforward. Unless you decide that you want to make a patchwork denim skirt, and that it can't be square patchwork, it has to be crazy patchwork!
I had an old denim skirt, which I had made from a pair of jeans, and had some old jeans of Adrian's. I traced the pattern onto freezer paper, then cut out pieces which I pinned onto the freezer paper. I used yellow thread and a zig zag stitch to sew the patches together. Now that all sounds quite easy, but I forgot to go forward and back when I started and ended my stitching, and then when I tried to pull the paper off the back it didn't come off very easily. So my front panel needed extra patches and some resewing. But, hey, it's all adding to the general worn, hippy style look.
I learnt some lessons for the back piece - by sewing back and forward and by overlapping the pieces more. Pulling the paper off the back still was a pain, and needed tweezers, but it worked.
So here's the finished skirt. Due to my weirded shaped back I had to make the darts much bigger than they were on the pattern, but I'm pleased with the end result. Denim skirts from jeans tend to be all of the 'adding triangle panels to the legs' variety, so it's nice to have done something very different!