Maria Manuela Rodrigues

Was at a really interesting lecture today held by Maria M. Rodrigues. She talked about her way of making art, about her life and her achievements. I really recommend to have a look at her website, I find her work very inspiring.

Bought two of her books, showing her works; I wish I was and "Nå koser vi oss" (enjoying ourselves). I am really looking forward to reading them!

Have to have - in process

Today I have started sewing the dress for the school project. I cut all the pieces out yesterday, and I am happy to notice; I can do this! It already looks like a dress, front and back is stitched together, and the side seams have to wait until I can try it on my model. The "fabric" sheds itchy treads all over me an my home, but I keep smiling! Gold paint is in the house, and I am - so far, very satisfied with the process and the picture in my mind of the finished project. One week left until presentation time - I feel on schedule.

First real assignment at school!

Have just started on the first real project at school. This is one assignment out of four that could count for 40% of my grade for this year! Scary and really motivating!

The assignment is named have to have - or something like that, and the inspiration picture on the paper is this:

Damien Hirst - Jeweled Skull

I am planning to sew a dress out of rugh sacks normally used for firewood etc and spray it with gold paint, to give the illusion of somthing beautiful... I am really looking forward to working on this! It is really fun!

Clothes - simplified form

Ok - coming to writing about clothes and naming parts of garments and sewing techniques etc in English - NOT so easy... You will have to bear over with bad wording on this I'm afraid..

Starting point
I wanted to test how a simple piece of fabric could be formed into a garment with a minimum of cutting and pattern use. I used a rectangular piece of fabric with a simple cut for the head.

Form
To avoid getting just "a sack", I needed to do something over the shoulders. I tried folding, but wanted a slightly rougher look and decided to make wrinkles by means of a seam.

Decoration
As decoration I wanted to do something to emphasize the “simpleness” in the dress. I chose to use crocheted “granny squares” (old Norwegian pattern I think?!) in different colors, which works very well with the dress.

I had initially thought having the armpits open from the waist up to the shoulders, but this did not look good because of the thick jeans fabric, and I decided to sew woolen (to catch up with the crocheted wool in the patches for decoration) in large cross stitches.
Impatience took me when I was to cut the length of the dress, so it was slightly shorter than intended, but with a rough pantyhose or tights it works!

Conclusion
It is not necessarily the pattern that makes the dress. Decor and simple adjustments work wonders with a single piece of fabric. I am satisfied with the result, I have learned a lot from the process and look forward to using my new dress.

Unfortunately I am not able to upload photos to my pc at the moment, will try to add some detail pic's later.

New camera!

I finally managed to decide what camera to buy. I have been thinking back and forth whether to buy a digital SLR or a compact camera, and ended up with this one;

Panasonic DMC-TZ10

So far I am very happy with my choice, and I'm looking forward to really learning to use all the different settings and start playing with it!