for this project i wanted to do something i hadnt done yet because i have the most time before may to cock it up and save it :) i want to make something BIG AND TEXTURED AND COLOURFUL and i wanted to pick something that would make my brain hurt
i summarised all the set briefs to make it easier to pick and i must be very stupid because the idea of doing something about digital identity makes me want to rip my moles off and i ALWAYS do briefs about belonging so i went for MATERIAL BRIEF YAYYYY :0.
once id picked my brief i decided STRAIGHT AWAY i wanted to use vr and make a massive replica of my head that people could go inside and walk around my brain and see all the colours and textures which is BAD because i do this with every project i need to calm the fuck down and read lots and gather information before i start picking the final outcome of the project WHEN WILL I LEARNNNNN however it is a fun idea so maybe this happens maybe not kristian said he'd help me set up the VR part so it will be a magical mystery :0
synesthesia - neuropsychological trait in which the stimulation of one sense causes the automatic experience of another sense.
kristian told me about synesthesia after talking to me about colours, i did some INVESTIGATING and i think i have the personality = colour one and i sometimes know what colour and sensations are for songs but that might just be my brain having fun. i wanted to do an experiment and see if i associated colours with personality types subconsciously, like the colours i associate people match to other with the same personality.
looking at this all laid out i can figure out why i associate people with colours a little bit :) i also think of textures and objects when i think of people so i'll make a little colour key to explain what each colour means in my head.
green - leaves, trees, moss, no loud noises, friendly, chill, terrarium, would be interesting to see inside their brains, cold breeze, sun when its freezing, teapots, rain, wet logs, reading, good listeners, apples
dark red - scary resting face, chocolate cake, evenings in winter, crazy backstory, pepsi max, wet pavement, coats, reserved (excluding ruby lol), refillable drink machines, dark wooden tables
dark blue - computers, chips, showing people things on their phone, savoury food, february, having a collection of tshirts, telly on fridays, full-fat coke, lizards, googling symptoms, 2010's, cold baking trays with crumbs on them, clever about specific things, think lots
purple - wine, glitter, sequins, magical, chinese takeaway, dressing up for the pub, re-useable water bottles, holey socks, bread, caring, fun drunk, chatting at night, staying up late, cold nights in summer, automatic porch lights, grapes, music
pink - cherry flavour, particular, superstitious, make-up, prosecco and chambord, going out for tea, meeting in town, photographs, pretty hair, would love to be them for a day, rainy spring days, flowers, perfume, saving presents, baking
mauve - hugs, tea, familiar smelling houses, sleeping on setees, biscuit tins, reed diffusers, warm, autumn, wooly hats, driving past churches, shopping at 8pm, M&S, christmas, twinkling stars, earrings, straight hair, walking boots, virgin radio, sparkly jumpers for new years eve.
yellow - september, cry at dogs trust adverts, lemonade, raincoats, fun days out, pubs, cider, holidays, candles, sundays, old clothes, putting washing on the wirlygig, sound of fridge beeping, fireplaces, blankets, english puddings, going to the seaside when its cloudy, hot donuts
light blue - hot chocolate, excited, snow, meadowhall, weatherspoons, chips, instagram, beanbags, shower gel, tic tacs, watching films on laptops, sunday dinner
orange - banana bread, fields, video games, fruit juice, clever, dogs, old plastic mcdonalds toys, cinema, leaflets for theme parks, gift shops, seaside, tourist attractions, fish and chips.
after tutorial with everyone kristian recommended i look into why i'm so interested in this, and do as much research as i can and the reason i'm so interested in how texture and material can tell a story is because i like how everyones brains process and see the world differently. i think it stems from my sister (shes doing graphic design 2nd year on floor 8), she got diagnosed with dyspraxia and dyslexia when she was 18 and she sees EVERYTHING completely different to me. i find things difficult that she finds easy and so on. i always think we'd be good on race around the world because im good with directions and being independent and she was a very friendly face and demeanor so could get us lifts. knowing how differently she sees the world compared to me even though we've had almost the exact life experiences makes me curious about how people with different experiences see the world.
i also started tattooing people from school, most of them said they were happy to see me and to see that i had got the job i'd always wanted. there was one person from school i was terrified of tattooing because of some of the things he'd said about me in school, id hated him for Y E A R S, but when i saw him again he was completely different like i was and he was really really lovely. he's one of my regulars now he brings me cherry pepsi max and sweets and talks to me about his favourite hozier songs and it made me completely rewire my brain to stop hating people SO MUCH for things they said when they were 15. it was like taking sunglasses off after wearing them for ages and so much pettiness and hate evaporated out of my head because i realised all these people i was scared of were just other random 15 year olds that hated school too. i wonder if everyone met the 4 people they hated 10 years later, whether it would change their perspective too for better or for worse.
how perspective of life can change for one person and how it varies for everyone FASCINATES me
ANYWAYS, while looking into all that stuff i wanted to look at why people hate or like certains things. a good place to start was food because people have very strong opinions on it. its abit of a crap video but there are lots of fun facts and summarised it baso says people hating food comes from bad connotations with the food (eg. i used to have frubes every day for school but their slogan was "rip their heads off and suck their guts out" and then id imagine blood coming out of the frubes and i couldn't eat them anymore :0), and also genetics like the genetic that makes coriander taste soap and the one that makes you sneeze at the sun
another reason for hating foods in hypersensitivity. a lot of neurodivergent people taste and smell and feel touch a lot stronger, like fish and chips with lemon on will taste like flat out lemon, and supposedly flavourless food has an obvious flavour like mushrooms!!! my sister hates lots of things like alcohol and tomato sauce and baked beans and fizzy drinks because of the texture of the food or the smell, she feels like sensations are 10x stronger for her.
i think is similar for people with textures. 1/5 people have severe trypophobia, which is similar to the amount of people that have claustrophobia. there are some theories why people are scared of holes, some people think we have a primal fear of spots because of poisonous animals, some think its because alot of diseases are associated with spots, and some have found that blood naturally accumulates at the back of the brain when looking at images that trigger trypophobia (they dont know why this happens :0).
there is also a phobia called textophobia which is the fear of certain textures. the texture that people hate varies from person to person, normally from a past experience as opposed to an innate human fear.
i finished reading this book for the project! it's about a carpenter thinking about why he was so drawn to craft and whether what he wants to make related to how he wants to be. its a really short book about 600 pages and it made me swim around my brain and figure lots of stuff out.
it made me think about WHY i want my work to look a certain way and is it representing how i am now or how i want to be in the future. Korn's career was constantly changing and his favourite times in his life were when he wasn't working as a carpenter, and he explores how dedicating his life to a craft altered how he views the world and how learning a craft has aided his thought process in different aspects of life.
i started looking at how mending changes the history of an object, and how it can tell a story! i REALLY like mending and altering clothes it is my silly little pasttime when i'm not knitting :)
i started teaching myself visible mending about a year ago to cover all the ink marks on my clothes from work. i also wanted to mend all the holes in my white socks because i have NONE LEFT !!! i find it therapeutic and i like picking contrasting colours, and i think it makes me love my clothes more
here are some of the most recent mends ive done! i mended a bag my mum got me for my 14-15 birthday, i used it all the time and took it on holiday and then decided it was TOO BRIGHT and stopped using it. the other week my knitting needles made a big slash in it, so i patched it up green and pink (the superior colour combo) and now i use it all the time because im proud of looking after it for this long!
the jeans were my mums that she wore after she'd just had me and my sister, she gave them me a couple years ago they fit SO WELL which is rare for me so i wore them to RUIN i took them on the uni eurorail trip and had lots of strong beer and fell over a few times so they needed a heavy duty mend so i can keep wearing them to get drunk :)
the pages below are showing the two main mending techniques i know, sashiko and darning. i love them both and i love how sashiko is pattern-based while darning is colour-based in terms of visible mending and they both have different fabrics that they work best on.
we ALSO did a task in the studio where we had to make a picture and then destroy it so i made fish in a net and ripped them up in water and turned them into MORE fish so now the fish are freed and i want rainbow paper for all my sketchbooks. making things into paper is a different kind of repair because its repurposing used paper by taking it apart and rebuilding it into a altered version of its original format. i used a fountain pen for the lines because i like how it spits ink like my machine and its unpredictable and the lines give the fish emotions.
the colours from the paper are what reminder me of my nail polish cloth!
i was re-reading the brief and thinking about how materials can tell a story on their own. i've used this scrap bit of tshirt to take my nail polish off for the last two years. you can see where i've bought a new colour and used it alot, and you can tell when it was summer and winter and you can ALSO tell im almost out of space lol but at least i've saved lots of cotton pads from the bin :) this scrap of material is an insight into my life and is like a map of how i live it. it shows my favourite colours and that i'm a person how likes to customise themselves. im interested in finding other materials, from other people too, that act like a map of them as a person.
BROKEN a really GOOD book, i like knowing what has motivated all the artists to start mending. they all view the damage to objects in different ways, most of them seeing the damage as an addition to the repair and not what they need to cover. my favorite artists in the book are Celia Pym, Linda Brothwell, and Bachor.
these are all my favourite quotes from the artists out the book :)
this was another favourite quote from the book:)
i might feel completely helpless in the light of worldwide events, but what i can do is impact my immediate environment - paul scott
repair mends and heals, and repair returns us us to a place of comfort, nurture or solace. repair completes us. repair calls us home - John wackman & Elizabeth Knight
the act of repair suggests that if a damaged object is worthy of repair and can be function or beautiful after its been fixed, then perhaps the person mending it can see themselves as worthy and beautiful again - katie treggiden
where holes happen (2018) by celia pym plus some of my other favs of hers
i've admired celia pym for ages, she was one of my main inspirations when i started visible mending and i've followed her on instagram for years without ever really looking into her work! this is my favorite project of hers, she set up a mending station in the V&A and would fix any clothes that people brought in. while she mended she would ask them to sit and chat with her which most people did and enjoyed talking about how they made the hole/tear to someone who would listen. she would then duplicate the mend onto a black tracksuit so it became like a map of how we wear through our clothes. it's like a map of the human experience and i like that all the mends are in similar places because wow were all very different but we wreck our clothes in similar ways.
her sock mends are my favourites. i love socks i love making them and mending them. i love pym's colour choices and her technique with darning, she always uses chunky embroidery thread and big wobbly shapes and i always think it looks like the thread has come to life and its burrowing itself into the sock like a worm or a mole. it's nice to see someone take mending with a relaxed stance.
another artist i found in the BROKEN book was Bachor. he's a chicago-based mosaic artist who fills in potholes with fun little images. i love the pigeon one the most, roadkill makes me feel weird because my cat got run over at the end of my road and i had to hold his little cat body and carry him into the vets, but i do think pigeons have pretty jewel-tone colours and dead pigeons are everywhere so i think it's nice to immortalise one in all its beauty in the mosaic. it's like a gallery and a solution at the same time. i have an obsession with potholes because there are 2389398402394t934 on the road up to my house and they're a n i g h t m a r e, but i do think potholes are pretty and i think they can be mended in a way that adds to the road rather than replaces it. also mosaic materials can be harvested in lots of sustainable ways ADDED BONUS.
on friday 121 with kristian i showed him all the research and bits and bobs that id found that was fun and we looked at alot of celia pyms work, and we talked about what motivates my work and i showed him my animation from the summer about selston and THEN we were thinking about how communities mend themselves, like selston would have had to after the mines shut down. kristian wanted to know why i liked mending and the idea of fixing things so much and i had a few surface level answers ( sustainable, grew up having lots of second-hand clothes, busy hands). then i was walking to the tram stop and through MAYBE im drawn to the idea of mending because it was talked about alot when i was younger with my heart and my lung :)
not me dw this is off google lol but this is pulmonary hypoplasia
ELLA LORE - i was born with a hypoplastic right lung which meant it never developed when i was in the w o m b, so when i popped out i had one normal lung and one grape-sized one and a big gap where it should have been. my heart moved across into the gap meaning my heart's on the left rather than the right (partial dextrocardia)! so if i get stabbed in the chest i might survive HORRAY. the interior wall of my heart is curved (scimitar syndrome like the knife) meaning one sides smaller than the other, and because its pumping blood to a lung that doesnt work, my heart gets high-pressure blood pumped back to it rather than low pressure so my little hearts working like a steam powered engine very fast. i also have scoliosis and webbed ribs :0
ANYWAYS when i was growing up i had to be carefully monitored and had to be all healthy so that my heart and lung was and strong as possible, and then when i hit puberty they were worried the high pressure blood might get abit too much and they were thinking of taking my little lung out so i had lots of tests done between 12-15 years old and they decided that my body and FIXED itself theres the link lol
they decided that because i was born like this my body had just rearranged itself to work together happily and they didn't want to intervene in case they cocked anything up. i think of it like im a 22 year old terrarium that you can't open. maybe because i spent a lot of my life hearing the terms mending and fixing in relation to my body and conditions its made me drawn to it in my life now.
the repair cafes in amsterdam is a massive commitment to limit waste and fuel a cyclical way of consuming. each cafe specialises in a different category (tech, fabric, furniture) and they are normally run by volunteers so are only able to be open a couple hours a day. i saw one of the cafe ( i think it was the textile one) when i was in amsterdam with uni and it has FASCINATED me ever since i wish there was something like this in notts MAYBE I COULD START IT???
i have a fun little plan to do a mending day at uni where i sit in 907 all day with my stuff and let people bring me things so i can mend them and write how it makes me feel :)
another method of mending is TATTOOS YAY!!!! coverups have become more common in the last decade or two, because they are a way to cover something you regretted in the past. since coverups have become the norm, there have been a few different styles of them :)
the one of the left is called a blastover, where a new design is plonked on top of an original one, not necessarily to cover it but to add a new layer of meaning to it physically and in terms of the tattoos layering. blastovers are really new and can be done in any colour ink so they can look VERY COOL
the one on the right is know as a rework. its similar to a coverup, but it normally means just redo-ing a bad tattoo but with a good concept. the lad i tattooed had gone to his neighbour for the first tattoo and he was unlicensed so it did not go well :(, he sent me the reference he had originally asked for and i just did my best to make it look like how it should have!!!
its like visible mending for humans.
im really happy with all my feedback all of it makes sense to me and i've booked onto the bio-kitchen induction because i love the idea of making bio-silicone to patch up elbows and knees. id like to have a go at making bio-leather for patching up shoes and furniture too !!! i also know i need to explain how the materials i use are sustainable (second hand and from chazza).
in tutorial we'd been talking about the front of my sketchbook relates to the project, i normally pick a print that fits the brief out of my collection of postcards and then over the course of the project i add things that relate!!
the one on the far left is my sketchbook for this project, i think the mirror slaps identity ON THE NOSE and then i added dana's drawing of my head (because thats someone elses perceived identity of ME), shell because i want to live by the sea, and a little worry doll from when i was little because how you were as a child to me is about 50% of who you are now and i was a WORRYING CHILD.
the middle one was my sketchbook when I went on holiday this summer. I was going on holiday with my boyfriend so I could bring all my colourful clothes and all my colourful make up and I don't have to worry about my mum having a go at me :0 I chose a print that was multicoloured and said 'what are the rules there are no rules' BECAUSE IT WAS A RULE-FREE HOLIBOBS. I got the print from Kew Gardens which is one of my favourite places ever and I also put on some fun foamy stickers and some fish because I was going to see some fish in Italy and i like the seaaaaa.
The last sketchbook on the right was one that are used on a holiday right at the start of second year. I'd taken sketchbook with me and I bought the print while I was I was in Spain and it's really important sketchbook for me because I got quite bored so I was doing drawings late at night that I turned into flash for work and they were the first flash designs that done that really took off and people liked them and I think the sketchbook was the catalyst for all my flash designs and me doing designs that I want to do, and not what I think people want. I'd got the print because the colour of the dress matches the sketchbook and shes so mysterious and magical with the crows, and that's what I was aspiring for in second year to be magical and have crows.
im on a mission to take all the books on mending out of the library and give them a big read. i got this one out because the author Molly Martin is also an illustrator and i wondered what her collection between mending and illustrating was. she went to a Steiner school when she was little so was taught to mend as part of the curriculum, so she did mending as a side-hustle while illustrating. the book goes into lots of different sections of mending and some of the philosophy behind it, but i enjoyed the history sections the most (hussifs)
Because of the Art of Repair book I started looking at HUSSIFS, which I had when I was little but I want to look at the history of them. they were a little sewing and mending kit that was part of the uniform for soldiers, but they had been around in western society since the victorian era. The hussifs were not supplied by the army then, so often it will be wives and daughters that make then for the men in their life that were going to fight in the war. That meant that they could be customised, and sometimes then have pictures in and memorabilia to remind them of home.
these are some modern hussifs !!! when i was about 7 i was given one that looked like a coin purse and it said 'sew cute' and i used it until it fell apart. these were made for women's use and modern hussifs were a lot more decorative and they utilise scraps from past projects because they only need small amounts of each fabric. I really like practical things have been decorated really tedious and illustratively it's one of my favourite things in the world, it's like having a pair of tweezers that's been engraved with flowers and the stars. i have really good memories of these from when I was little and I was wanting to make myself one and Im interested in all the techniques and patterns that could be used for them!!!
hussifs remind me SO M,UCH of pocket altars too!! these were transportable alters that became popularised in the 14th century or prayer away from church, but now they have evolved and are associated with paganism and witchcraft now. these also tickle the part of my brain that likes overly decorated mundane objects AND they are so similar to hussifs it HURTS, i think its the homemade nature of them and the scrappy fabrics and stitching that makes me connect them to eachother.
medulla textiles (Johanna Mark) makes BEAUTIFUL pocket altars, mainly to deities and nature. they have the same focus on colour, texture, and detail that the hussifs do, but with the same purposes as a pocket altar. i wanted to combine the two to create an altar for the act of mending and love. alot of people including me see mending as an act of love for people and a protest against consumerism. i love the idea of an act of protest being decorated and lovely and a part of everyday life AND i do d e s p e r a t e l y need a sewing kit oops two birds with one stone :0
in the friday session i had a look as possible ways i could make my little kit and baso i can use any net for a 3D shape and make lots of fun little patterns !! i wanted to make one that looked like an envelope because mending is like a l o v e le t t e r to whoever you're doing it for, so my little kit is my envelope for sending it!!! also its the best way to stop scraps from falling out as the bottom section folds in and holds it all together !!
on the monday morning i started winging a pattern together ! i used some old linen i had left over from previous projects to make a draft, and then started going through my scrap fabrics to pick a combo. i wanted the outside to be a plain dark fabric and the inside to be all sparkly and magical like mending is !! i had some brown and shimmery blue fabric from the charity shop, so the only thing i had brought first hand for the mending kit was the pale green ribbon!!
THE CRAFTING CROWN!!!!
i stuck lots of my charity shop buttons onto an old headband with superglue at the start of the project when i was first looking at mending, even though this isn't mending it more like repurposing. I love doing a craft and making little boring things better with decoration, a bit like how I feel about the hussifs and the pocket altars. i finished the headband and I called my crafting crown and I wear it now every time I'm having to uni work and my embroidery because it feels nice to my fringe of my face and it motivates me to do a crafting work when I have my crafting crown on. it's a bit like when you could sear fancy dress when you were little for going to the shops because wearing fun clothes made it more exciting.
i stuck lots of my charity shop buttons onto an old headband with superglue at the start of the project when i was first looking at mending, even though this isn't mending it more like repurposing. I love doing a craft and making little boring things better with decoration, a bit like how I feel about the hussifs and the pocket altars. i finished the headband and I called my crafting crown and I wear it now every time I'm having to uni work and my embroidery because it feels nice to my fringe of my face and it motivates me to do a crafting work when I have my crafting crown on. it's a bit like when you could sear fancy dress when you were little for going to the shops because wearing fun clothes made it more exciting.
These are my options for what am I embroidered on the back of my mending kit, originally had the idea of the bird but has no relation to mending at all I just like drawing birds :0 my mum came up with the idea of the butterfly because it signifies change and renewal which I thought was a good fit and then I added the hands because it's like my hands are the cause of change and then the little man is me sharing all my love out into the world through mending.
I went with the butterfly because that represented why I was making a mending kit for me and I wanted to include my little chubby hands. also knew that id make more of these and that I was happy to do the other designs another time. I was I think the butterfly for the kit was the best because of the fabric that was using would need to be hemmed so I will have a little bit less space, the butterfly left the most room for the hems to be done right and give the embroidery the space it needs. I bought some water soluble stabilise the fabric for the embroidery for this project it means I'm able to draw straight into the stabiliser fabric and trace off my iPad as opposed to ruining the real fabric with a ballpoint pen. it also makes for a cool video when you put it in the sink !!!
this is what the stabiliser fabric looks like when it dissolves :0 so fun
and this is the finished thing!!! i'm going to hire out the photo studio once i have a few more of my creations to take some proper pictures of them but im really happy with it!!! i love the colours i used and the beaded sections, and it folds up nice and small so its handy. if i was to redo it, i would be careful with the corners of the pattern, you can see where the fabrics puckered and not caught in on the bottom inside corners, hence the green thread, and i think i would make the scrap pocket bigger to hold the fabric more securely. i also think id like to have a better pocket for my scissors because they fall out sometimes and are SHARP.
i had THE MOST FUN EVER making this, ive always wanted to combine my love for textile crafts and uni and i hadnt found a way to do it yet but i think this is the START of lots of fun ideas and be branching out of 2d illustrations to make something tangible and practical. i want to use this so much that it needs mending so that it all comes full circle :0
in tutorial I showed off my mending kit and all my research into pocket alters and hussifs and kristian was talking to me about what an altar would look like if it was about me, or what it would look like if it was about Selston, so it's not really an altar but it has the layout and the same amount of detail and care put into it as an altar would, abit more like a textile storybook or timeline. its more the act of making and spending the time to decorate it expresses your love for the subject.
i like the idea of scavenging for all the textures and materials and messing around with beading more, and making myself a big embroidered thingy, this is L I T E R A L L Y my dream project so i'm having the time of my life thinking about all the things i could do and make :)
after doing my mending kit i wanted to experiment more with beading embroidered, so i kidnapped one of eves bags to fit that was W R E C K E D to the highest degree and she had lost her keys with that bag and we love eve so we've MUST MEND. Because your fabric on the bag was so fun and it was fish themed and I love fish. I felt bad that it got a big stain on it so I covered the stain with a beaded fish that i traced when the original ones from the pattern and plopped it over the top! i also experimented with some different darning techniques, the perfect square ones are my normal favorite because i like the checkerboard from the different threads, but looking at celia pym's darning i had a go at her more relaxed style and it works really well for small holes!!
i wanted to mend eves bag so i could write about how it feels to mend something for some one u lovvEEEEEeEEeeE teheh hi eve ;) the bag took me about 4 hours to mend completely and my eyes hurt by the end of it but the whole time i was thinking YAY eves going to be so happy when she sees the little beaded fish and i want her to be able to use all her things again, i like doing things for people because i like seeing them happy AND i feel good for saving something from the bin. i think everyone gets joy from using their skills to help people it's like having magic powers and choosing to use them for good rather than evil. i don't know how i could embroider for evil but ill find a way. its also free, and i dont know if its because most my friends are creative, but i think people appreciate something made with your hands as opposed to being brought.
TIME TO MAKE MY OWN ALTAR I AM GOD dont worry if i was god the world would be a magical place and we would all mend our clothes and pomegranates would grow in every climate.
i liked the idea of the altar looking like an archway opening up THAT WAS MY RIBCAGE :0 i think its nice to imagine ion that inside of me there are no organs just this pink stripy land of happiness and beads and it hammers in my lungs mending themselves lol
i wanted to include the things most important to me, like tattooing and where i live and my love for being alive, and my caravan because the happiest i ever am and ever have been is in my caravan. i wanted to do a mermaid because i wish i was one i love them and id sell my other lung to have a interchangeable fish tail so i can haunt skegness and make it a cryptid site. i want to include a shark because i have a CRIPPLING PHOBIA of them and its a bit part of my brain AND a manta ray is needed to fight the shark because they're my favorite animal in the world i love everything about them.
the picture on the right is me testing out some fabrics, im trying to use as much stuff i already own as i can, so im slightly limited but i think the limits FORCE me to be more creative horray. i want to use pink and green because its my favourite colour combo and theyre the fabrics i have the most of, and im using the shimmery blue from my mending kit for the underwater sections of the altar.
I'm just over halfway done with the finished altar! I still need to add the pocket that comes out when you open it and it will have the shark and the manta ray on and i still need to add all that embellishment because I want to add tassels and important charms in relation to me and buttons. the green backing fabric I want to make double sided so i can add a quote on to the back and then I want to add a hook so you can hang it up on display and you can take it off easily and then open it.
So far this is my favourite thing that I've ever made at uni :0 I loved doing the appliqué (which is where but the ribs in the lungs are sewn straight onto the fabric and then you can embroider or bead on top and it's really secure)!!! i love beading so much and I think the heart is my favourite part that I've done so far. the pink fabric i used for the face of the heart is from a present that my boyfriend got me when I was 18, they were some skating trousers that are too small for me now so I chopped them into shorts and kept the scrap fabric and now it has a USE and its nice that my heart has a story!!!! This was also the hardest part to make because I had to tack the shape of the heart and then sew and stitch the ruffled ribbon onto the back, and then add the beading in the embroidery, so it took a while, but I think that's why I like even more because I'm proud of it and proud of my patience
I also really like my map of Selston!! I want to do a lino print for this because I wanted to look a bit grotty and lino has the messiness and it leaves little marks that's what I like. I wanted it to be in like a teal colour to match the underwater fabric however it didn't go completely to plan because I don't have any fabric block printing ink so normally I just use acrylic, but i haven't used acrylic years so its all dried :( it took a lot of practices are mixing it with a little bit of acrylic ink into the paint to try and get the right consistency. I've cut the piece of linen that I was practising on because I want to use it for another project in the future. i want to patch on something as a mend. I added a bead where my houses on the village map, and I covered it in frilly pink ribbon, because it's camp and i know id get hunted down with pitchforks if i decorated selston with pink ribbon IN PUBLIC :0
Next on my list of things I want to do for this project is I want to finish this altar I'd like to make one for Selston and I want to make one for the act of amending that isn't amending kit itself. I also like the idea of making wearable altars maybe a T-shirt that opens up or a heart or a necklace. I want to set up my own mending day hopefully in the next week or two before we break up for Christmas, where people can bring their clothes on and I can fix them on the spot. This is my favourite projects I've ever done. I've loved all the freedom and ive combining multiple parts of my life into one project and I really enjoyed reading more. I've never normally read books for project and I think it's made a massive difference for this one because ive fully absorbed myself in everything about mending and why we fix things.
I've been able to explain how much I love the world and people and how much I love helping with my skill set! ive not been able to express it before this project so it's nice to elaborate on generally why I'm in a good mood and it's been therapeutic to look at why I personally love mending, and how it relates to me in terms of my history. :)
AFTER FEEDBACK!!!
heres the link to the feedback so i can look back later on :0
SO HAPPY WITH MY PRESENTATION i managed to cover everything i wanted and i think i got my point across and it was really exciting and kristian baso said to GO BIG OR GO HOME which is what i wanted to do and i was waiting for the green light to go mad and make massive tapestries!!! it was nice to know my project was making sense to other people and they could tell i was excited through what i was making :) im going to finish the current altar im making to the best degree i can and then focus on the next project for a week or two soley (i think i get the best results when i let myself be a b s o r b e d into a project, and then ill come back and make some more plans for a new altar, maybe one about selston!
making this was a pain in the ARSE im not even joking
After the presentation, I wanted to spend the whole reading week doing as much work for my altar as I could and I managed to get the mermaid finish and started on one of the foldout sections. The mummy tell me roughly a week mainly because this so much weed on the hair and the scales and also sewing around the flesh section was tricky however I do have an embroidery foot my cemetery now which will make it a lot easier I mean hopefully that looks a little bit better. Also because the fabric was so thick on the mermaid especially on the tail because of the beads in the' break and because I couldn't make the mermaid until I'd finished the basic structure because I wouldn't know how big it needed to be want to put it together so I had to use fabric glue to attach them I made rather than saying on what is held up really well so I think it's going to be fine
I started making the manta-ray for the foldout section. I'm not sure what else I want to do on the section that has the mantaray I am on the other side I'm going to have a shark because it shows my most favourite animal and my least favourite animal and what I'm scared of.
I also painted and varnished some seashells to attach because I like collecting seashells and I've added a lot of beads and buttons to make the sea section look sparkly. It felt too plain to me and I wanted to put as much into this as possible and it to be really heavy and I wanted to not be a single section of space that isn't being used to add to the whimsy of it :).
I'm really happy with how it's looking so far, and I really like how the buttons look next to the mermaid. I thought about the buttons for a while because there was too much empty space, but I like how it keeps the pink and green theme going on the bottom half of the altar. I also really like how the material on the manta ray turned out—it’s a shimmery fabric that adds texture. The fabric was tricky to work with, but u cant tell with the beads around the edges. the fraying isn’t too noticeable SHHHHHHH. I was really intentional with the mermaid’s size; I went for it and put a lot of work into it. The little beads next to all the buttons and the bigger plastic beads create a nice texture, and it’s fun to touch. I want people to be able to interact with my work and have it be a tangible representation of my life that they can hold.
I think my next step will be to finish the part that pulls out with the manta ray. Once I’ve sewn the other side of the shark, I can add any extra details. I also need to add a closure for the doors and some tassels along the bottom. I want it to be able to hang on the wall and open up, like it’s on display. I also want to turn the green section of fabric into a bit of a backboard and add some embroidery around it.
its been nice to come back to this project during the place project, whever i got stressed out i sewed on a few buttons, its been abit like my little calming task on the side. i really hope i get time to make another one of these before the hand-in, because place is taking up alot of my brain power, but i still really want to make one about selston.
at the luv it event, best symposium so far whoever is reading this , me and amelia ran a mending stall :)
i had such a good time i got to mend loads of peoples clothes who were on the course and their friends and some strangers. I even got to mend one of ellie's coats and she got me a book this payment even though we're doing them for free :0!!! I love doing this and talking to all the people, I love is helping them pick a scrap fabric or asking if they wanted anything specific and I got to promote myself and meet clients who came in and got tattooed after meeting me there. I liked this so much I thought to consider whether I could join a mending group or repair café myself. I know there is one in Nottingham or I can always start my own in Ashfield and just do it once a month in mend and fix some clothes.
because ive enjoyed the mending in the project, and have been taking lots of mending work on the side of doing my pocket altar, i wanted to reach out to a repair cafe (mending group) to experience doing it outside of the LUV IT day :)
nottingham fixers are one of the first repair cafes in the UK and luckily for me its in sherwood BIG BONUS!!! im going to go down and help at their next mending day and have fun and meet some mending people. because i loved doing the mending at LUV IT and afterwards, i like the idea of running a little weekly mending day in a cafe in town somewhere, where i just sit and people can drop off their clothes and either sit and chat with me or just go about their day and pop back later. i want to SHARE MY SKILLLLLLLS because some people cant sew and thats okay, but i dont want it to mean they throw their stuff away. i know some people in cafes in hockley and sneinton, but i could also do it from the tattoo studio staff room in sneinton too!!
heres some of the things i mended at the cafe and i LOVED IT :) it was so fun and i met lots of lovely people and there was ginger cake too yum o my god i love ginger cake s o m u c h. imended an old mans teddy from when his wife was younger, and woman brought in her daughters jeans for me to patch up, i fixed too beanbag lap tables and some other little bits and bobs. i must have looked very happy because they've put me on the register to work at every one HOORAY.
there currently isn't one near me, but the community centre in my village would be PERFECT and i'm sure they'd be up for it so that might be my little summer project !!!
for the degree show piece we decided to go BIG and in my blind ambition i swore down that id make a massive stuffed me to mount my pocket altar on to someone come and lock this girl up shes unhinged :). i took my sketch from the start of the project and did zero planning ofcourse because wheres the fun in that, and i had been making my quilt for PLACE for the last month so my brain was heavily in sewing mode and i felt quite chill. i knew big ella was going to need a structure inside so i sketched this up no clue if it was going to work or not, and i sent it my dad while he was at work so he could magic something up in his lunch break.
the reason i wanted to make a doll was because of a combo of all my research into mending and scrappy sewing for this project, and the doll i made for place, i got really into heirloom dolls they're so cool. i love how consistently through history, and in most cultures, there has always been some kind of doll for children. heirloom dolls are normally made by a member of the family out of scraps and are completely personalised for the children. abit like when mamas knit baby blankets for their grandchildren. normally lots of care is put into them to display the amount of love. LOVE THIS SHIT WISH I COULD DO A WHOLE PROJECT ON IT. i wanted to make big ella like a well done present to myself kind of thing, and also as a way to display my altar.
this is what my dad made with some scrap wood hes very clever i just showed him the picture and then however big this was would be how big ella was, we just made sure that me and the ply-wood skeleton were the same height (a whopping 5'5 AND A HALF). this is probabaly the first time anyones degree was benefitted by having a tradie dad big up joiners.
new the limits of my own skillset i wasnt going to make big ellas limbs posable or anything so i only had to cut out two matching shapes. i traced around myself and then added a good couple inches of seam allowance incase i cocked it up. (future ella here to say that if i did ledd seam allowance oin the inside arms i would have gotten the arms closer to the body rather than the square up position that she ended up in lol). once the big shape was cut out i got to do the fun bit YAY.
I drew out the plan for where everything was going to go (using wax crayon btw what a fucking mistake it does NOT COME OUT OF FABRIC) and picked the fabric sthat i was going to use for my organs. alll the fabrics were scraps from the vintage emproium in sneinton, they let you fill up a bag with fabric for £1. using the applique paper i used for my PLACE quilt, i stuck all the fabric organs and bones down before sewing them on so i could double-check if i liked everything.
here she is all organed up and alive :) i knew that my alter would be removable, so i could have fun with the colours that were going to be behind it and it wouldnt wreck the vibes. the areas that WERE going to be on show were the spine, ribs, face, and veins, so i kept them pinks purples and teals to match the altar like two separate pieces that slotted together. the front piece with the face took me about a day to do because it was my first go, but the back was easy because everything was all planned out. i wads SO MOTHERTRUCKING HAPPY with the flat pieces, i loved the shape and how it looked like a wall tapestry. i think in the future id like to make wall tapestries like these that would be so cool, like 2d heirloom dolls. knowing that i could just whip this up no stress in a day or two was cool and it made me proud. also made all the tears figuring out how to make my quilt worth it.
here she is looking all beautiful and flatpack. once i had both front and back pieces all appliqued up, i sewed the sides together on my machine but left the insides of the legs so that i could get her onto the skeleton. everything was looking bang on, the framne was the perfect heings aqnd it help up her shoulders in the right place so i was good to GO !!! my plan was to stuff her with fabric scrapslike i had my other dolls id made this year, so i chopped lots up very small, but made her look lumpy and mishaped because they weren't as spongy as normal stuffing. i had a little panic wondering where the FUCK i was going to find 2kg of stuffing t o d a y, but luckily facebook marketplace saves the day again and a lovely man was selling 2 enormous bags of stuffing for £15 hashtag resourceful. he did ask me what i was using it all for and i just told him i did textiles at uni because i thought saying a mas making a massive stuffed version of myself would give him nightmares.
i also took big flat ella outside to give her a bath bc she was covered in wax crayon. DID NOT WORK and made considerably more water stains but i gave it a go and that is what matters :')
the new proper stuffing was MUCH BETTER but still it was very difficult to stuff her right. i needed one of those leaf blower things they have at build-a-bear so that i could get a good amount into each limb without it needing to be rock solid. the easiest way i found to do it was to work my way up from the legs. i hand sewed up the inside leg seam and ripped the seams either side of the hips so that i could fill the legs, torso, and arms from one spot. i used a big shoe horn and a straw to shove the stuffing around the wooden skeleton and this took AGES because i was being very picky. i didn't want there to be any creases in the fabric, but i couldnt put in too much stuffing or it wouldn't be squishy like a doll. i used ladder stitch to seam the sides back up again once it was all done, and them ripped the shoulder seams to move up to there. because the volume of big ella increased, she got abit shorter and you could see the wood stitcking out her head so i ripped the seams and chucked abit more in there too :) need a good round head to put the hair on. shes
HAIR TIME!!!! this was so satisfying. baso because shes just a massive rag doll i can make the hair out of yarn and it looks good, so i did l o t s of research into doll hair on both plastic and fabric dolls and did a mix of both. i sewed rows of yarn onto her scalp, leaving gaps inbetween each stitch, and then crochet-hooked long strips of yarn through the gaps. i covered her whole head like this so she had some big chunky layers and a little fringe, but you could still see the fabric through the yarn so it looked like i had done a shit job. i couldnt add more fabric bc i had no more yarn this colour.
as we can see on these loverly barbies, the scalp on then is normal made of plastic the same colour as the hair. this is so there is less hair needed during production making them cheaper. i got acrylic ink and mixed it to be the saem colour as the yarn, and then painted the scalp so no blank fabric would show through. this made me feel very clever lol and it worked really well so i felt cool. once her hair was done i gave her a trim so we had the same haircut and big ella was FINISHED :0 !!!!! the last thing last thing i had to do was make a way to attach and remove the altar once THAT was done.
now to finish the veryyyyyyy old altar. :) i still needed to make the section that unfolded when the altar doors opened, one side with a mantaray on and the other with a shark :0. the mantaray was already done. but other than that the side was empty, so i made the most of the symmetry of the manta and beaded some gorse flowers on either side of it. gorse is my favourite because its massive and grows really well in the worst places, like along the side of the motorway or on industrial estates ands it smells like cocnuts. the flowers are so bright and gold and they make me think of home and when i die or get married i want to be buried or married holding a massive bouquet of them. for the otherside i did a great white shark because of my crippling shark phobia, and i appliqued him because i KNOW how to do that now after quilt and big ella :) i beaded all red blood slots around the shark to make him scarier and beaded some fishes around him too, like i did on eves bag. i remeber kristian saying not to leave ANY spare space on the altar and i agree FILL ALL THE GAPS.
i felt like there wasnt enough of the magical razzle dazzle outside peaking out when the altar was closed so i added some trim i ALSO got from the £1 fabric bin in vintage emporium and it worked 10/10. i liked that it had bits of brown to match mermaid ellas hair. to make it look seamless i glued it on rather than sewed it, and i used the leftover teal ink from big ellas scalp to hide the cream threads holding the trim together because it looked UGO and i like doing tedious jobs.
out on a magical mission to get fringe the PERFECT pink colour for the altar and then proceeded to find the right coloured pink fringe in a bag when i was tidying my temporary sewing room 4 days after doing all this shit but its okay we live for adventure and all that. i got some white fringe scraps off my friend and used acrylic ink to try and dye them with it bc i didnt want to send time on dye. boiled the fringe in my lovely ink dye and let it soak in the fridge so it absorbed as much pigment as possible. did end up a 10/10 colour and i used the leftover ink to dye one of my sketchbooks :)
using some teal sparkly trim i got from the chazza shop i sewed the fringe along the bottom of the shark/mataray piece so that when the altar unfolded it looked all dramatic with the fringe, and it was another aspect of the altar that encouraged people to touch.
base of the altar was done i got to add loads of fun stuff, like a little fake eyeshadow and eyeshadow brush that i made glittery with some liquid metal, and i also added some of my earrings and a worry doll (i had only one left after putting one on my mending kit). because i wanted the altar to be removable i wanted it to have a pretty back too, because thats a WHOLE CHUNK OF ALTAR REAL ESTATE!!!! because i now officially love quilting i wanted to quilt the back, and this would also help give the altar structure as well as texture. using MORE SCRAP FABRIC and some left over interfacing from scratchcard quilt i made a big label. i though it was funny gthat it said to return my ribcage to me because if id lost my real one id be dead. and if this is aphysical representation of my soul its cool to think of someone returning my soul to me like im possessed.
the last thing to do was attach the altar to big ella, and find a way to make it close. i tried a couple of ways of making the altar doors stay shut, my initial idea was to use velvet ribbon and to tie a bow but it left a big gap right down the middle. i thought about my diaries when i was younger and the little sketchbooks i had, and made a winding button latch on the top and bottom of the doors. this worked BANG ON and it meant that the doors lay flat and also added some decoration to the blank sections on the ribcage.
to make the altar removable from big ella i used hook and eye clasps (like whats on bras). i painted them with nail varnish to make sure they weren't an eyesore, and that they didn't ruin the overall effect of big ella when the altar wasn't attached.
i also used liquid metal to paint the ribs, because they were scuffed and stained from being in my wardrobe for a year AND i'm a glittery girl so obvs id have glittery ribs :) i used some plastic trim around the outside of the doors to give the base of the altar structure, and to ass some razzle dazzle, and i hemmed the whole thing with some of the blue trim that i used on the pink fringe.
one thing that i would change now is that i wish i had added some magnets to the inside of the altar doors and big ella's chest, so that when the doors are open they're not flapping around. at the moment i am pinning the doors to the ella fabric to keep it open for long periods of time, but it does get rid of some of the freedom people have when exploring the altar and sculpture.
this project has been probably the most important one i've ever done and its completely changed how i think about and enjoy illustration. i never thought id make any thing like this while at uni, and i'm proud of myself for going for it this year and using all my brain on making stuff i love. this project started me off reading books as research too, and that's definitely changed the way i tackle briefs because its changed what i think of research as.
I'm hoping big ella gets to visit a few galleries in the next couple of years, and that this helps broaden people's mind to what they consider illustration, and that its a proper job because its meaningful. I'm going to keep mending at the sherwood repair cafe, and i'm going to try and start a mending club at the Tin Hat centre where i did the mural. I'm glad that i did what i want, and not what i think i should have been doing. I'm happy that im making things that little ella would have loved, and that i can now seen a future where im blending everything i love together into a career of tattoos, fabric, and drawing.