Thursday 3 May 2012

Spotted

This morning, a girl sat down next to me on the bus, took out a handful of 1 cm paper strips and proceeded to make the cutest little paper stars! I was too shy to ask her about them, but as she made at least a half dozen before getting off to go to school, I had plenty of time to learn through observation. On my lunch break, I made a few from scrap paper, and though mine aren't as neat and tidy as hers, I think they are pretty cute! It's also one of those things I want to try in differnt papers, foils, fabrics, etc. Endless possibilities! I feel bad that I didn't thank the girl and share my enthusiasm for her craftiness, but on the plus side, I didn't freak her out either. (As an aside, why does my autocomplete suggest 'firearms' instead of 'cuteness'?)


stars and tatting


In addition to the paper stars, this is also a picture of my current bus craft project. I have this stripy shirt that I love; the feel, the fit, and how it used to look. It was also one of the first fair trade fashion items I bought, so it has that ethical feel good factor as well. It's about 8 years old, and the collar wore through a while ago, so I decided to unpick it and re-stitch it without a collar, using a chunky running stitch as a way to acknowledge that it was no longer a smart shirt, but still a funky shirt. There's a long story to go with this, but to cut to the end: I was really pleased with the mending when I finally finished it, but then I noticed that my perfume had leaked and stained the shirt. Now, I am the sort that happily wears stained shirts, but this was too much for me:

stained shirt


I still loved the shirt though, so I kept it in one piece and eventually decided to use some tatting I had bought from a fellow embroiderer to cover the worst of the stains. The tatted flowers were too bright to go with the shirt, so I used some tea to dye (yes, stain is the more common term) them, just knocking the colour back a bit. My plan also involves some running stitch around the flowers, just to make it all a bit too fancy. That may involve some tea-dye on embroidery thread, if I remember to make an extra cup tomorrow morning.

Oh, and the art journal is not forgotten! I'll try to update my progress this weekend.



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