needled

I almost fell off the not-buying-clothing wagon — I purchased fabric and notions in a kit, which one cuts out and sews at home. Does this count? Nearly, but not quite, I reckon. Anyway, said kit came from Clothkits. I remember the original Clothkits very clearly from when I was a kid. Ma made a lot of our clothes back then, and while I’m pretty sure that none of them were ‘actual’ clothkits, there were certainly a lot of their catalogues hanging around being oohed and aahed over. (You can get a flavour of the full-on 70s feel of their garments here .)

Anyway my clothkit skirt arrived this morning. Wot a treat. I was in near raptures when I opened the package. Its just so bloody tasty. I had to make it up right away. The pieces are printed directly onto the fabric:

and it comes with zip, thread, instructions and a Liberty print lining:

The instructions were very clear and straightforward. In just a few hours, I had a skirt. This skirt made me seriously happy making it (so satisfying). And yet I am (if possible) even happier wearing it. It is a very jolly skirt. Just check out the lining and facing:

how jolly are those buggies on the lining?

Anyway, we just went out for a pint (to what, to my mind, is the best pub in Edinburgh — and also, happily, my local) and I got Mr B to take some pics. Here is the skirt from the front:

And the side:

and the whole shebang:

How nice to have lovely, long, light, Scottish evenings again.

So I heartily recommend the big-birdie. The pattern covers a good range of (5) sizes, and is a good fit; the fabric amounts were generous, and the instructions completely failsafe (I inserted zip, and attached facings and lining without breaking into a sweat or (what’s more usual) making some sort of bobbly, wobbly, rumply mess). But it’s the quality of the fabric and design that really swings it for me — a super matt baby-cord cotton exterior, a very appealing print by the wonderful Jane Foster, and a tana lawn lining. And everything made and printed in the UK.

I’m really enjoying the badge swap. Here are a selection of the wee treats I’ve already received:

Joy! Thanks so much, Anna, Amy, and Claire! I was particularly impressed with the speed of the post from Canada and Sweden.

Meanwhile, badge madness continues. This time, though, I’ve managed to turn out some I can actually wear about my person.

These are made from tiny samples given to me by a friend and originally from (sigh) Linnet. The quality of their fabrics is just superb — theres the same sort of pleasure handling them as there is in the fabrics I’ve seen in nineteenth-century sample books. They are priced accordingly (particularly if one is considering buying them from Japan). I also attempted to make a couple of badges out of my bag of saved selvedges (inspired by Jodie’s keyrings) but these were less successful. But my Linnet-fabric badges have the same sort of appeal as covered buttons. In fact, the badge maker might very easily be put to use making some of these . . hmmm . . . .

I’m following the train of a thought here, and very much bouncing off the ideas of Felix — who has just written a superb post about the joy of the tiny, one-inch, button badge. The tale of her numinous birds — separated from their childhood context, immortalised on a badge, then re-united with their original source — really gets to the heart of the allure of the badge-object, and has made sense of why I find badges so appealing. Its got me thinking generally about the miniature, and the metonymic.

If you are wondering what on earth I mean, you will find both in the work of Edinburgh Jewellery artist, Grainne Morton.

(image courtesy of the artist)

Morton works with found objects — tiny pieces of old lawn and lace, details, buttons, scraps of things — and, through a precise and very beautiful use of settings, combines all this wee stuff into small, numinous objects. In the brooch above, for example, the floral setting joins the unconnected scraps it contains, lending them the cohesion of a single, lovely thing. But what is so interesting about Morton’s work, to me, is less the formal unity of objects like this one, but rather the way that, in other of her pieces, the tiny fragments of stuff suggest themselves as figures or metonyms: they seem to be the last remaining parts of an absent whole. For example, the wee details in the piece below seem to be bits of a half-remembered story; what remains of a buried memory; the relics of a lost narrative that can’t ever be told again:

(courtesy of the artist)

The setting does so much work here. It acts like a spider-diagram of memory — drawing threads and connections between the different fragments — but it also lends each fragment the luminous quality of a piece of stained glass. Through the setting, the piece becomes a window, shining out of a pale-blue past which will never be regained. Proustian jewellery!

Miniature, wearable objects have long carried this kind of metonymic function (that is, as parts of an absent whole). In the Eighteenth Century, wearing a miniature portrait of one’s beloved made a presence of their absence as the tiny representation of the person stood in for the person themselves. When combined in lockets, friendship boxes or mourning bracelets, the miniature took on an even greater commemorative potency, as actual parts of the lost person (such as hair) might be preserved alongside their image. Wearing the fragments of one’s sentimental attachments about one’s very person reached a sort of peak in the eye miniatures popular at the end of the century:

(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

These miniatures were often produced following bereavement, and there is so much more to say about them than I can here*. What really interests me, though, is the way that this particularly powerful part of a person suggests (in a very distinctive way) the lost memory of the whole person: a memory which, like those called up by Grainne Morton’s brooches, will never be fully regained. For it is not just the past, or memory, or the dear thoughts of your beloved that you see in the eye. It is loss itself, looking right back at you.

Grainne Morton’s pieces do not (of course) suggest The Void, but I think theres an obvious comparison to be made between the use of settings in her work and that of this eye miniature. Surrounded by jewels, and jewel-like itself, the eye is made precious by its setting. It is made into a separate thing — a fragment separated from its whole — a tiny detail that, because it is broken from its context, can now be looked at, scrutinised, properly treasured.

It is Grainne Morton’s use of settings that makes her brooch of pale-blue fragments seem so precious and evocative. And this brings me back to Felix’s button badge, and to badges generally. Setting any detail or fragment into a tiny wearable badge-thing has an effect that is just powerful as that of the portrait miniature. It makes the scraps precious, as well as calling up the wonder and absence of a lost, proustian whole (See Felix’s post again!). And what’s so great about badges (unlike eighteenth-century miniatures) is that they are cheap, portable objects that everyone can wear. As such, they highlight how the ordinary is also immensely precious, intensely numinous. This is what’s so fantastic about the work of the Mundane Appreciation Society. By setting incidental stuff in an object that is tiny and lovely — but also democratic and accessible — their badges make jewels out of the everyday.

*See Hanneke Grootenboer, “Treasuring the Gaze: Eye-Miniature Portraits and the Intimacy of Vision” Art Bulletin (Sept, 2006). See also Marcia Pointon, “Surrounded With Brilliants: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth Century England” Art Bulletin (March, 2001). The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an incredible — and quite spooky — collection of late eighteenth-century eye-miniatures.

I have lots of writing projects on the go at the moment, and, after a packed day my head gets full of all sorts of gumph. In the evenings I need to empty it . . . through exercise, or a few beers, or chit-chat, or some sort of craft activity (or indeed all of these things). You will be grateful to know that I’ve taken a break from the sewing. But I have found other things to help me empty my head. Oh yes.

Yesterday Ma phoned me up to ask:
“What are you doing this evening?”
“I’m making badges.”
“Badges? What sort of badges?
“I don’t know. Just badges”
“Why are you making badges?”
“erm, I don’t know . . . I just fancy making badges”

All I did know was that a few days ago I found this in the letter-tray by the side of my desk:

It is a badge (obviously). It was made for me a few years ago by my niece, Robyn. Like me, she likes Spongebob Squarepants and (for the ignorant among you) the badge is illustrated with her incredible likeness of Spongebob’s canny pet snail, Gary. When I found this the other day I was impressed not only with how well Robyn had captured Gary’s perpetually exasperated expression, but also by what a neat little badge-thing it was. “I could make that.” I thought. So I acquired a child’s badge-maker and some badge bits. And, with them and some old moviemail catalogues and other scraps of stuff, I got on with it:

sweet badge madness!

there were some early attempts with images from the Ordnance Survey:

(this is just a tiny image from the online OS — worry not — I would never massacre me maps).

. . .and reproductions of manuscripts . . .

(Bergman’s 1939 notebook)

. . . and then some pleasing experiments with the faces of the early silver screen:

(Louise Brooks, ah me).

But my pointless badge-making activity soon resolved itself — unintentionally — into a particular aesthetic:

I like these badges more than words can say. It is not just what they depict — though obviously this is important (particularly in the case of the badges to the top left and right, which show favourite moments from my all-time favourite film, Lindsay Anderson’s O! Lucky Man. This, by the way, is now finally available on DVD in the UK! Rush out now and get yerselves a copy!). But really, its just the overall feel of the badge-objects that I like. They remind me very powerfully of the crappy summer fairs that would appear in Heywood, Middleton and Boggart Hole Clough and that I went to as a child. These were the sort of fairs where you could — and did — win goldfish; from which you might come home wearing a terrible pink scarf over which the figure of John Travolta cavorted, and where there was always a stall selling dusty button badges, in washed-out ’70s colours, decorated with the faces of Paul Weller, The Police, or a Low-era Bowie.

Apologies for this shameless nostalgia, folks. I am obviously liking the badges. Enormously. But what am I going to do with them? I no longer wear badges. Really, they are nigh-functionless objects resulting from an evening’s pointless activity. I suppose sometimes its just nice to make stuff. . .

I clearly missed crafting while we were away walking in Ireland over the bank holiday. I spent today’s early hours thinking about the logistics of a top I’ve been intending to sew. So I just got up and sewed it. I used one of my favourite tops as the prototype:

This top is very close fitting with a nice, hidden side zip. I didn’t fancy my chances at managing to sew in the zip neatly enough, so I decided my new top would fasten with an obi-style tie belt — and probably needed more ease in it in order to fit over my head. I also wanted the bodice and ’skirt’ bit of the tops to be in different fabrics. So I drew round the front and back of the bodice of the old top, doubling up for facings and adding in an extra half inch of ease either side. I sewed the facings and outside pieces together, turned them right way round and pressed them, then drew round the ’skirt’ bit of the old top, adding seam allowances (but no extra ease this time). Then I sewed the bodice and skirt together:

and then sewed on a tie-belt, top-stitching several lines at the front:

here’s the waist:

I finally sewed on some straps, and added some decorative buttons at the front:

(I heart these buttons)

. . . here are buttons and belt. . .

. . .and here’s the finished article:

Jeez! I made that!
(Messy Tuesday/Sunday kitchen . . . ahem)

The top is made from two different Japanese fabrics, bought (again) at the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate. The quality of the cotton is just superb — a broad weave with a slightly worn feel. I love the chrysanthemum (kiku) print against the indigo dye of the plain fabric. These are just delicious textiles. It’s probably a good job that its so hard to source them, or I’d probably be beggaring myself.

In this instance, I feel oddly lucky to have been cheated in the chest department, since I reckon this is the only way such a close-fitting top might fit over one’s head without a zip or other side opening. I am feeling rather smug all round, frankly. This is definitely the most successful thing I’ve sewn without a pattern. I really, really like it. If the weather stays like this I may even get a chance to wear it. The time is now, and in Scotland. . .

Here is some miscellaneous Good Stuff from the past few days.

First, some delayed stuff for a messy tuesday. We finally bottled the winter lager, which has been cold-stored for the past few months. There was some satisfying mess-making:

. . . an even more satisfactory tasting. . .

. . . and finally, the beer-drone (i.e. me) applied the bottle caps.

Next: having so far stuck to my pledge not to buy any new clothes in 2008 (those who know me will testify that this is a remarkable feat), I somehow felt I should congratulate myself with the purchase of a necklace made by Bronwen Deane, a Newcastle-based jewellery designer.

Deane’s work features cranes, high rises and factories, reproducing these familiar images and icons of industrial Tyneside in a new and unexpected context. On her website, Deane writes that “combining these images of brutal architecture with the delicacy and preciousness of jewellery encourages the viewer to examine these familiar landmarks and reconsider them.” I really love her work, and am very pleased indeed with my new necklace.

Finally, some really Good Stuff arrived in the post from the wonderful Felix

A whole bundle of treats from the Missability palace of dreams. This is a fantastic project and I urge everyone who hasn’t done so to check out the website, which includes details of the fabulous second knitted walking stick cosy competition, closing on May 1st.

Thanks Felix x

I have been making a start thinking about Belle’s quilts. She lived near Blackpool, and the first quilt will be a jolly sea-side-y affair, made up entirely of her stripey tops and T-shirts — of which she had over thirty. In the summer she was always in stripes. I’ve been looking at different methods of piecing and quilting striped fabrics:

. . .and getting lots of inspiration from the way that Jude makes — and writes — about the texture of memory.

Then yesterday I read Vladimir Arkhipov’s Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artefacts, and it completely blew me away.

Arkhipov is an artist, who, for the past decade and a half, has travelled all over Russia collecting and exhibiting ordinary and marvellous hand-made objects. The objects, and the human stories behind their making, are documented in this super book. The bigger picture here is Perestroika and Russia’s economic and political crises from the mid ’80s to the late ’90s — a period when not not only items of luxuriant or complex manufacture were difficult to get hold of, but when everyday commodities became both scarce and pricey. All of the objects in this book are useful, and the vast majority are born out of necessity — but scarcity and privation are only part of the story here. Arkhipov, and the individual makers whose work he brings to light, show how conditions of necessity produce a particular material grammar; a poetry of ingenuity out of the aesthetics of use.

Here is a poetry of mending quite different from those eighteenth-century darning samplers I wrote about a few weeks ago:

Lubov Arkhipova, Socks, Kolomna (1995)

Arkhipov describes his archive of hand-made objects as “socially responsible art . . . in which people are [authors] of their own histories, histories that have unique illustrations — the self-production of everyday things.” His collection shows individuals as creators not just of things, but of meanings, as each maker accounts for their object in their own words. These short texts and multiple voices often produce intriguing dialogues between the makers and their objects through the narratives, memories, and desires with which they are invested. For example Aleski Solomkin’s contribution to the collection is a doormat made of beer-bottle tops that his neighbour and drinking partner kept flicking over the fence into his garden. Forced to clear up the debris of several evenings’ drinking, Solomkin felt “it would have been a shame to just chuck them all away,” and created an object that, beyond its immediate function, is also a quiet celebration of booze, friendship, and neighbourly-ness.

Many makers also speak persuasively about the pleasure of everyday materials and the creative process. For example, this beautifully made leather cap is formed out of an old Soviet punch bag and a worn out pair of leather boots:

Aleksandr Yakimovich, Cap, Moscow (1993)

Aleksandr Yakimovich talks about how the leather of the punchbag softened up over fifteen years of hard use, and of the “great pleasure” he derived from “making something out of something else” and subsequently wearing it. “Its one of my masterpieces” he says of the cap.

In terms of my own thinking about piecing cloth and memory together, the object I was most drawn to was this quilt made by Galina Svistakova for her son, out of the clothes of his brother, his father and his grandmother.

Galina Svistakova, Quilt, Ryazan (c.1990)

Of this wonderful cloth Svistakova’s son says “I think that things possess the aura of their owners, of a person who may very well no longer be with us, that things all carry information and inform us, and harmonise with other people’s things. I believe they live their own independent lives and that we need to. . . harmonise with them and be sensitive to them, in order for them to work in our favour.” This is the sort of functional poetry I can only aspire towards.

Earlier today I crouched, covered in snow in an 80mph wind at the top of Arthur’s Seat, and felt a near-spiritual sense of thankfulness for my Walshes.

These shoes are deservedly a design classic (well, among the hill running community at any rate) because of their incredible combination of form and function. They are really one of the most favourite things that I own. They have a glove like fit, a feather-like lightness and are really, really grippy. You can scamper up a hill and zoom down it without worrying about where you are treading, for in the Walshes your feet will stay sticky as an insect whether on grass or mud or rock. They are shoes designed by hill runners for hill runners. The design is basic, unfussy, and entirely functional, and thus has stayed the same for more than thirty years. Many runners sneer at the Walshes ubiquitous blue and yellow, but I find the lo-fi look of the shoe rather pleasing. The pyramid-like studs produce a footprint that is as immediately recognisable as a rabbit’s paw when one is out in the hills, and I like this unobtrusive and temporary way that runners’ feet can add to the language of a landscape. And Walshes are also made in Bolton, not far from where I grew up, so I feel an absurd and meaningless sense of Lancashire pride as I pootle about in them.

They did some pootling today. Here is a view of the hills from my back window after I returned:

Arthur’s Seat is there, just behind the chimney. There were no walkers up on the peak at all. Visibility was nil, and charging off the top into a white-out felt strangely like insanity. But the Walshes did their job skimming over icy stones, through sticky bog and squelchy grass. In them, I hardly notice the grim conditions, for I am nimble as a weasel.

odd socks, who cares?

Treats arrived in today’s post! Helen very kindly sent me some lovely samples of the fabric she picked up at Hinnigans in Selkirk. There was a moment of serious rapture when I opened the packages.

What absolutely beautiful tweed. Thanks Helen! The sepulchral wintry light does not do justice to the quality of the wool or the colours in the fabrics. I am going to follow Helen to Hinnigans — I’m very excited to find some locally produced tweed of such superb quality. As well as picking up some pieces for patchwork bags and other small projects, perhaps I can treat myself to a couple of metres to make something I found in another recent postal arrival:

Cue further rapture! Thanks Titch! These delicious tomes are from two of the doyennes of Japanese home couture, Machiko Kayaki and Sato Watanabe. Like most Japanese sewing books, they come with paper patterns. I am in a tweedy sort of mood, as the first thing that stood out to me was this:

Which I intend to attempt without the, um, furry boa…The patterns come with pictorial instructions that are really fantastically clear, even for someone with no knowledge of Japanese. I got a reasonable sense of the stages of construction of this dress just from the diagrams in the book. But where diagrams are not enough, I’ve been helped out by the list of Japanese sewing terms and other information provided on Jennifer’s‘ fantastic blog. You’ll also find some great reviews of Japanese designers and lots of inspiring sewing and quilting on her site.

Some weeks ago I found a second-hand dress in a charity shop in Stockbridge. The dress had been made by Toast, was cut on the bias, and fashioned from a wonderful, autumnal greeny-brown lambswool. So what it was several sizes too big? So what it resembled (according to Mr B) a large hessian sack? At 3 quid it was clearly an unbelievable bargain.

Today I had an opportunity to transform the dress into something wearable. I hacked it to pieces, took about a foot off the bottom and sides, and re-made it into a pinafore, edging it with some vintage Liberty’s fabric in this familiar print:

The peacock fabric is a remnant - left over from the bottom of one of my favourite dresses that I shortened to fit me long ago. This other dress, with its alternating panels of pale green velvet and printed cotton, is a vintage 1970s maxi-thing. In it one runs the risk of resembling both the female characters on The Good Life simultaneously: it has Felicity Kendall’s hippy charm combined with Penelope Keith’s stately excess. Unsurprisingly, I hardly ever get an opportunity to wear it — but using a little of its left-over fabric on an edging or a button reminds me of just how much it appeals:

Then I made another patchwork scarf out of the woollen dress’s sleeves, the rest of the The Good-Life remnant, and a furnishing fabric sample in a burnt-orange colour:

Together, the scarf and the pinafore look great and quite, um, seasonal. Ironically, I can’t illustrate this convincingly because the light today has suffered from the seasonal weather — perpetual rain and darkened skies — and I do hate using the flash. Here is another ludicrous attempt:

Until I can post a decent pic, you’ll just have to take my word that I am foolishly pleased with the new life I’ve given to two old dresses.