so it turns out that digi cameras do develop interference at higher isos which has a similar effect to film grain. given my fetish for natural light i’ve had my camera permanently set to 400 to enable shooting without a flash whenever possible. i just set it back to 50 as an experiment and my pics instantly look so much better.

it’s a pity the speed settings are squirreled away in a menu somewhere, as i’m not great at checking my settings at the best of times. my manual slr has a big label on the bottom saying “check film speed!” after one too many lost films from not doing so.

i’m trying not to think how much better sooo many of my pictures would have been had i realised this a bit sooner

the number of things your can fit in a matchbox

but if that’s not enough you can also find cunning ways to attach additional items to the outside of the box.

bracelet crocheted in cashmere then felted. super soft.

i just couldn’t resist the ripple blanket craze that’s sweeping the planet (well, here and here). but having neither the patience nor the mighty stash with which to accomplish such a feat i’ll settle for a doll-sized one.

it’s around 4″ x 5″, 4-ply cashmere, 2.5mm hook. i was surprised to be unable to easily find simple instructions for the ripple pattern online, but crochet workshop came up trumps. the diagram that explains the structure of the pattern is worth a thousand sets of written instructions where the overall pattern is a mystery until at least 2 rows in. i can see i’m going to love this book.

i didn’t have enough colours to go for the random stripe effect, so i thought i’d do a coloured stripe on the blue. when it turned out the colours in the wallpaper were pink, orange and green on blue i thought i may as well chuck them all in. i’m enjoying working with this yarn in different combinations, i find it interesting how different they can look.

the above pic is after washing you can see how much it’s bloomed compared to the stringy pre-washed pic. seeing as my motto for the dollshouse turns out to be the same as my overall parenting motto (”good enough”) there was no way i was weaving all those ends. after another wash the clipped ends will have felted into the knots completely.

now i must go and investigate that annoying smudge which appears to be on the bottom of my lens.

we have a much-played-with but sadly rather tatty dolls’ house. admittedly i never expected it to be treasured and well cared for, seeing as she was only 2 when she got it. all the soft furnishings that came with it have been shredded and it’s been repeatedly defaced too (i say rather her dolls’ house than my walls and furniture).

i thought that now she’s older, perhaps a little tlc wouldn’t be wasted. when i can work out the best way to paint it i’ll do that, but once the idea had formed i couldn’t wait to conform to proper decorating sequence - i had to paper the walls.

the scale isn’t right, but all the specifically designated dollshouse wallpaper i could find was a) stupidly expensive and b) dull dull dull, so i used scrapbooking papers from twopeasinabucket. i chose the designs and M decided where each one should go. of course that was entirely different to what i’d had in mind when choosing. i would have put the spots in the living room, the yellow flowers in the kitchen, the atomic in the kids’ (attic) room, the crosses in the adults’ room and the starburst flowers in the bathroom.

now i find myself at once drawn and repelled by the notion of adult women doing out dolls’ houses. i can really see the attraction of having *total* control over a house space. of being able to decorate and furnish it at will - without real world price restrictions - and have everything remain where you put it when you close the door. i can also understand to an extent the joy of miniature (i was stupidly taken with the mini-mac - thread). i think i’m uneasy at the implications of arrested development and - much more significantly - the utterly depressing aesthetic that appears to prevail in the 1:12 scale world. now i have to add that i’ve not looked deeply into this, but what i’ve seen in my intermittent browsing of those ebay categories has scared me off pretty effectively.

now if there were more furnishings available along these lines i could easily become hooked:

see more amazing pics and read the shopping sherpa’s spot-on discussion here.

but this dolls’ house is most definitely M’s not mine. which thankfully relieves me of the pressure of having to get the whole thing right, and allows me to just have fun with it. which is a damn good job because the papering was about as tricky as real world papering. i used watered down pva and got bubbles and creases galore. mostly they don’t show too badly, but i see them and it grates (heh, i notice i picked the creasiest corner for the closeup :roll:). gradually i’d like to add more furnishings, carpets, curtains, etc, but i’m happy with this as a start.

i’m a paint snob, i admit it. i’m utterly smitten by farrow and ball. i just love the subtlety and complexity of their colours, i love the deeply matt finish, i adore painting with their eggshell gloss, the lime white is like double cream. mmm. i also love that they produce a colour card that’s painted with samples of the colours, seeing the actual colour rather than a printed approximation makes choosing so much easier.

i’ve decided that sugar bag light is my favourite colour in the world ever, bar none. it’s a wonderfully nuanced green-blue in artificial light, a clear grey-blue in strong daylight and everything in between. our bedroom’s been painted this colour for the last 5 years and i never tire of it, i can’t imagine i ever will.

honestly, this isn’t as o/t as it may at first appear. i was once (briefly) an archaeologist and have always found design inspiration in the ancient world. i was just reminded how drawn i am to the motifs on british celtic coins, in particular the horses. many of these coins were made in imitation of greek coins (the gold stater of philip II of macedon, in particular):

over time the designs evolved further and further from the original, becoming progresively more abstract:

you can still see the chariot wheel in both my examples. the cross/ear of corn type pattern on the obverse is derived from philip’s laurel wreath (and ears?).

i was searching for a book with plenty of illustrations to use as a design reference when i came across the ultimate resource; the celtic coin index online. there are thousands of images, you can browse by tribe and every image is accompanied by comprehensive information on its provenance, composition etc.

love it

after my recent whinging i decided to take myself in hand and set out to try to find affordable sources of fabric. old bedding seems to sell fairly cheaply here and you get a useable amount of fabric (as opposed to clothing, which usually has way too many seams and awkward shaped pieces to make it worthwhile dismantling). if you can stomach some poly with your cotton you can get your hands on some cracking vintage prints.

the above aren’t all vintage; the far left is current stock ikea but display damaged so a bargain, i got a single duvet cover plus pillowcases and the print is a smaller sale on the cover, which i love. some of these are simple stash building, others already have destinies. M and i are both keen to experiment with pillowcase dresses for the summer. she really wants a dress out of the balloon fabric (a duvet cover with a rather fetching reverse) which i think i’m going to find quite a challenge

i got a new book this week. well, new to me at least. crochet workshop by james walters. when someone as talented as helle jorgensen who makes such amazing stuff as this:

highly recommends a crochet book you have to sit up and take notice. i found one online for a very reasonable price (if you’re trying to track down an affordable copy don’t despair!) and snapped it up. i haven’t yet had a chance to settle down for a proper read, but i love that it gives you the real nitty-gritty knowledge that informs a real understanding of the structure of a crochet piece.

i love vintage craft books, i love having a less-well-known source of inspiration. that’s not saying that following a project word for word from a book no-one’s heard of has any greater merit than doing the same from stitch n bitch or knitty (and not knocking that, particularly as a way to pick up new skills, or as simple relaxation). but it offers an alternative aesthetic, as well as techniques that may have been overlooked by modern authors.

i was pretty excited when i heard via inaminuteago that a 1912 embroidery manual - embroidery and tapestry weaving by grace christie - had been added to the guttenberg project. and oh how disappointed i was when i realised that guttenberg doesn’t support illustrations. i mean how much use is that? i’m not a particularly visual learner, i like words (in case you hadn’t guessed :D), but really, an embroidery manual without pictures?

i’ve also been browsing the art&design books on ebay and have found a few crackers, though they’ll have to wait for payday. i feel that going back to original sources like this forces creativity - the work isn’t done for you, you have to translate your inspiration into whichever medium you’re working. it’s reawakened my interest in acquiring a more systematic art education rather than the bits i’ve picked up piecemeal over the years. i still have half a shelf-full of art history books on extended loan that haven’t been read and are due back soon, so i’m going to try to work my way through them. now i just have to stop myself falling asleep in the middle of the greek classical period…

kid projects chez stitch usually go one of 2 ways:

1) the “can we make one of those?” project (usually a response to a telly make): give M a pile of supplies and the messy tablecloth, hide self behind lappie with a coffee, sum total of my involvement being an “oh yes lovely sweetheart” or perhaps some cutting out.

2) the mission critical project (e.g. xmas cards): hover over M with gritted teeth trying to explain medium-specific conventions e.g. inside and outside of a card, how it needs to fit in an envelope etc. failing dismally to balance artistic freedom with the production of a usable end product and everyone becoming more and more fraught.

happily this project was none of the above, perhaps heralding a new era of kid concentration/ability approaching a balance with mama perfectionism this was a true collaboration. we spotted the foil tray at nanny’s and i suggested cutting out the indentations and backing them with sweet papers (dada manfully helped out on the acquiring-sweet-wrappers front). i cut the windows and M directed me in cutting and placing the papers. trying to keep the glue out of the window spaces was beyond her and she shares some of my perfectionist traits and gets frustrated when she can’t get it how she thinks it should be and refuses to go on.

she was very specific about having one colour per window even though i tried to encourage her to see how the different colours interacted when they were overlapped. but once the windows were done she decided we had to use up the spare bits by cutting into thin strips. again she directed me with great precision in placing each piece. the glittery bows were just because

i don’t normally blog cooking, but since it’s entirely the fault of another blogger (who shall remain nameless :P) that i’ve been craving sweet stodgy things of late i thought i’d return the favour.

chelsea buns from sue lawrence’s book of baking (slightly over-browned in the oven but also made mostly from wholemeal flour). i didn’t read the recipe right through so didn’t realise they’d take 3 hours for the inital rising. so plans for tea yesterday had to be shelved and instead they went in the fridge overnight, ready to be baked thismorning.

so for the first time ever we had morning cake (or morning buns as M insists). does anyone - did anyone ever - really have cake every morning, like mickey? what luxury.

a parcel arrived this morning. i was expecting it, but i certainly wasn’t expecting it to be so very beautifully presented. you should have seen my face

this is part of the reason why i love to shop indie, the time and effort that goes into every aspect of the work is tangible. it’s as though the creativity and aesthetic sense bubbles through whether you like it or not.

but you might be forgiven for missing the whole point of the package from the previous pic. what i was expecting were these:

fabulously original coral and silver earrings from boldsimple @etsy. the first earrings i’ve bought for about 7 or 8 years after i’d pretty much decided i don’t do earrings any more. how much do they rock?

ps how are the pix looking? i made my little light tent, but i think my lamp just isn’t bright enough. they’re also disappointingly grainy - although i guess that could be from being set to 400 iso, is digi the same as film in that respect? happy with the white balance though, had forgotten i had settings for that.

one of my earliest memories is being at my childminder’s house and playing with her tin of buttons. it was a huge round biscuit tin that must have held at least a thousand buttons. i could sort through them for hours at a time, matching them into sets, arranging them by colour, examining each one in minute detail. my favourites were the tiny faceted clear glass ones, victorian, i guess.

almost as soon as i had a baby i knew i had to get a button tin - for sorting, not sewing purposes - but it’s taken me until now to get round to it.

as soon as i saw this tin i knew it was the one. this isn’t the first of this design that i saw - that went for more than i was prepared to pay - but there are loads of them knocking about on ebay, although this one seems to be in unusually good nick. it’s marked CWS biscuits - co-op wholesale society. i can’t date it stylistically, i initially thought it may be 1930s but this page reckons it’s c.1910.

i have a pitifully small collection of buttons that i’ve carried around for the last 15 years, and even though it’s a small tin i thought they needed some company. so i bought buttons too.

1940s plastic buttons…

buttons on cards…

buttons by the bagful.

i’m not sure i can bring myself to let M loose with them - let alone actually split them up and permanently attach any of them to anything. perhaps i should have a few happy hours sorting them tomorrow, to get it out of my system

i have flashophobia. the first thing i do when i pick up my camera is check the flash is disabled. i love my all-manual slr in large part because it has no flash. no available light, no pictures for me. which is a bit silly, considering i live in not the sunniest part of the world and take a lot of my pictures indoors.

part of my plan for revamping the blog was to pay more attention to my pictures, take some time to think more about photography in general. and i’m sure that stepping (tentatively) into the world of artificial lighting is probably the biggest improvement i can make at the moment, particularly where the blog is concerned.

bingo, right on cue i’m directed to strobist, in particular the lighting 101 and $10 macro photo studio. there’s also a busy flickr group, although at first glance it seems a bit kit-tastic.

doll pattern now available here and in a permanent link from the sidebar (disclaimer: proofread, but not tested!).

i made more of an effort to document my process this time, although i wonder whether the amount of detail is more confusing than enlightening. i wouldn’t advise looking too closely at the pictures as an aid to interpreting the pattern or you may notice a few discrepancies. e.g. where the legs don’t match because my gauge changed so dramatically that matching them row for row would have left one significantly longer than the other. or when i say i worked in spirals for the solid parts, when actually i did in some places and not in others and you can see the difference between the row-worked and spiral-worked parts easily

i would have included detail shots of her shoes but we’ve managed to lose one on the other side of the country already hence the number of shots of her in her undies (that and the fact i don’t have a pattern for the dress anyway).

oh and she has been rechristened, permanently this time i think, as boo.

(that’s post in the mail sense, rather than the blog sense)

to make amends for yesterday’s whingey post and to cheer me up on a dingy stormy day i bring you new fabrics

this is the one that started it all. when i saw it on sale at equilter i knew there would be no going back. all of these fabrics are destined for a quilt for M and the huge scale of this tropical volcanic island print only works in a large expanse so it will be the backing, perhaps pieced with white depending on finished quilt size. i got 2 yards for the princely sum of £5 (including shipping which worked out at £1/yd).

tropical/mod prints to complement the theme. this is where you see my fabric dazzle - these are prints that i simply couldn’t resist, though i’ve no idea how they’ll work together in the whole of a quilt. i’m thinking tentatively of using a star design, with the showier prints at the centres, and the smaller pieces for the points out of the “supporting” fabrics. i’m also planning to group each star colourwise, to make a little order in the chaos.

M asked for orange and pink, the purple and green came from the backing fabric, i hope i can get that many colours to work together. my usual instinct would have limited the palette a little, but then there’s no such thing as too colourful for a 3 year old is there?

i was really nervous about getting an import charge on this order - i’ve had it before on fabric and it’s not so much the VAT and duty that grates, it’s that this can be doubled by an “administration” fee from the carrier. as it goes equilter split the shipment into 2 flat rate envelopes each with a value below the threshold, so even though i ended up picking mostly fabricsw that weren’t on sale, i still got a huge bargain. yay!

the quilt is part of a bedroom revamp that we hope will help a) soften the blow of having to give up space in her room for new baby stuff (room sharing isn’t immediate, but we have nowhere else to keep attendant stuff) and b) encourage her to spend more time playing up in her room. i’ve found when visiting friends how delightfully calm it is when they disappear upstairs for a while, and realised that M spends almost all her time downstairs, even when she has friends round. we’re hoping that encouraging her to want to spend more time in her room (which is the biggest in the house, although you’d never guess with the amount of stuff crammed in there for lack of anywhere else to put it) will help us all to continue living happily in our little house when there are four of us.

and here for no good reason other than i love them are some lovely presents M just received from spain.

from left: coat, top, trousers.

skirt, shirt. see, my love of prints is genetic, i can’t help it

apols for not-so-great artificially lit pics, may as well be living in a submarine for all the natural light we have today.

so the last thing i need right now is another new craft to try to master, right? um, wrong, apparently.

craftzine just directed me to this stamp carving tutorial, which immediately pricked my interest. i designed a few screen printed fabrics at school, quite successfully, i think. i wasn’t bad at drawing, my painting sucked, but printing seemed to suit my strengths - i’m good at putting colours together, and detail-oriented enough to cut multiple intricate paper stencils (back in those technologically-challenged times).

when i first heard about gocco i was all set to go in that direction, but the news of its demise came out just before i invested and i’m glad too since paper really isn’t my medium. but printing onto fabric is something i really would like to explore and it would address some of the issues i have with fabric cost and originality. more than once in my recent craft binge i’ve considered getting hold of an old screen but storage issues have rather put me off. but rubber/lino stamps take comparatively little space to store…

okay so this isn’t in my immediate queue - no need for another category just yet - but i want to keep it in mind for future reference, along with any related links i’ll drop here:

fabric stamping instructions

me in the spirit of making the blog more welcoming i’m coming out of hiding behind a username. i may still be mama chez stitch but you can call me soph. i’m also known elsewhere as superfurry, or variations thereupon. i will add a little bio when the redesign hits, although i think i draw the line at a photo

i love reading blogs, really i do. i love reading blogs that are packed with beautiful, skillful, inspirational projects presented in an attractive, professional way, really i do. i don’t long for the days when every homepage was hand coded, with attendant blinking text and pictures that looked as though they’d been taken underwater, really i don’t. but lately i find reading all the beautiful, skilfull, inspirational, attractive, professional blogs can be as dispiriting as encouraging.

i find myself thinking, well i could take pictures that looked that good if i had a £2000 camera or a studio setup or a climate where the sun shone more than 2 weeks a year. i could make fabulous quilts if i had a stash the size of a planet, a dedicated sewing room and a fancy sewing machine. i could build a wonderful stash if i had access to quilting shop on every corner and a yarn shop on every other instead of having to double the price of everything with shipping. i envy all these talented bloggers their time, space and money.

we have one quilting shop and no (really, not one) yarn shops in a city with a population of over 300,000. the choice of fabrics in the uk - even online - is very limited and mostly dreary and/or extortionately priced. we seem to have lost any make it yourself culture we may have had in the past, so the raw materials just aren’t available. this is changing in the yarn world i think, but only at prices that exclude the vast majority. to buy internationally adds not only shipping but often customs and duty fees too. i chose to give up work when M was born and while we’re by no means badly off we have limited means and live in a 2-up 2-down. all my crafting is done on the kitchen table/sofa, my materials are crammed under beds and chairs and into any spare space i can find.

the one luxury i have gained through all of this is time, although not as much as you might think. having M at home full time up until september meant that my crafting was still squeezed in after bedtime, although i was able to get some of the household chores out of the way while she was around, giving me that evening free time. since she started nursery school i have 3 afternoon sessions of 2 1/4 hours to call my own. and now i’m close to handing over the voluntary paperwork that often occupied this spot i feel i have a huge horizon opening before me

and after all this whinging i do remember to count my blessings. i don’t believe for a minute that the glossy surface of a blog reflects the whole of the blogger’s life, and i wouldn’t swap my life for anyone’s. as a family we’ve benefited greatly from my choice to stay at home in many areas. it gave me the impetus to start this whole crafting gig in the first place, and i like to think that necessity is the mother of invention. there is a certain kind of identikit style that stalks the craft blogland, a unifying aesthetic, the same fabrics pop up over and again, the original ideas are adopted/adapted by many and quickly lose their impact.

which is why i’m drawn back more and more to blogs like shannon’s that plough their own furrow and inspire through force of originality and determination rather than purchasing power. i was sad to see the end of thriftcraft as the one thing i have in abundance nearby is charity shops and i welcome inspiration for repurposing materials that are available, affordable and unique. although given the huge following that hillary lang (deservedly) has i guess rashes of similar if not identical thrifted projects were likely to spring up across the globe too. can’t win i guess

can anyone suggest any good thrifting blogs or blogs-of-limited-means-but-unlimited-aspirations that i may have missed?

i’ve never been one for resolutions, but it just so happens my circumstances are changing right in line with the new year, so it seems like as good a time as any to take stock.

i started this blog before i even knew what blogs really were, as a way of documenting my learning process when i started sewing clothes for M. it’s still effectively my workbook. i write for the record rather than an audience and i include massive amounts of detail that i don’t expect anyone else to care about, but may come in useful for me in the future (and i find that writing out the process helps to fix lessons learned in my head too). also when i started i had a greater web presence elsewhere and didn’t want or feel the need to include personal information, unlike many blogs i now read. i’m still happier keeping my identity and - particularly - M’s private, hence the lack of personal photos.

but i find i spend more of my web time here than anywhere else nowadays, so i’d like to make this place a little more comfy, more homey, to reflect the whole of my life a little more. now i don’t intend to make this a general “what happened to me today” blog as i’m not a fan of those, but i’d like to broaden the scope to include M’s work as well as mine as a start.

i’d also like to invite more dialogue here. i’m not fixated on comments (good job too! i saw a blog strapline yesterday: “read by one person since 2003″ which made me chuckle) but i know i have visitors, and i’d like to make it more inviting for them to participate. i think it’s much easier to join an existing conversation than start one from scratch, so i’m sure that linking up outside the blog is a way to kick start this. i hugely value the connection i get with the wider craft community when i participate in various communities, so i’m planning to make more time to do that.

in the meantime, as a small experiment, readers! if you’re out there please comment on this post and make yourself known. i don’t bite much

i need to do general housekeeping here, tidying up, moving the furniture around a little and the like. we’re due a wordpress upgrade and i’d like a change of look. my original style guiding light was to keep the place simple, accessible and quick to load. while i hope i can maintain accessibility i think the look is a little austere and now the world (the majority of my visitors, at least) has moved on to broadband - and i’m told we have a nice fast server now too - i don’t have such a great need to limit the number of pictures. so don’t be surprised if the place looks slightly different (or slightly broken!) over the next few weeks.

the motivation behind all of this is that i have more time to devote to the blog and my crafting in general being in the process of handing over a voluntary position i’ve held since just after M was born. this leaves me with more spare time and a feeling of lightness at having the responsibility off my shoulders. not that it was a particularly responsible post, but i’m a terrible procrastinator when it comes to “work” work so the pressure of being constantly behind would loom over me permanently.

so i have a brief window of opportunity between now and the end of may (when i’m facing a new responsibility of a whole different order) to craft my socks off and to get back into the community side of crafting that i’ve always enjoyed so much. i hope a few people will come along with me for the ride.

in the planning stages. i have fabric stashed for a double quilt for me, which is staying well and truly stashed until i’ve worked up to it. i’ve got fabric on the way for a single for madam, but again i want to get some practice in first. so i’m planning a series of mini quilts to get a grip on the piecing, which i think i’ll try hand quilting - so that i can play with different quilting styles without having to master machine quilting at the same time. i enjoy handwork, i’m quite painstaking and reasonably patient, and i’m hoping that hand quilting will give me the control i need. i’m not over fussed on teeny stitches so i’m hoping that reduces the stress potential.

i’ve got 2 plans, one in blues on white, taking inspiration from islamic art. links:
geometry in islamic design
islamic floral patterns and geometry
origami star (part of an astonishing set of original origami designs via flickr)

the second i’m thinking of shades of deep red, geometric but loose, inspired by gunta stolzl’s weavings. i love keiko goke’s use of light and shade in her log cabin work, it has that bauhaus feel and i particularly like how she breaks up the shadow with the bright striped sashing in this quilt, similar to stolzl’s flashes of black and white.