ketsumeishi - train
A simple and pretty song and animation for the middle of the week.
fashion class time
I swear I don't just sew and think about fashion, because if I did, I'd have something to show you every day. And maybe I'd dress better on a daily basis.
I really mostly waste time surfing the web and watching asian dramas. But that's boring to hear about, right?
The Canada College spring 08 brochure arrived in the mail yesterday, and wow, there are a lot of good evening and weekend fashion classes this year! I've been waiting for french pattern drafting to show up, so I'll be re-registering just for that. You get to create slopers based on your own body, which makes pattern creation so much easier. No time to take another full course like tailoring, though lingerie is just 2 Sundays ... hm.
I fixed the back issues in the built by wendy tunic by taking out a good 3 inches from the center back. Is my back that misshapen? I redrafted the sleeve because I didn't want a puffy one, and now I'm stuck on it being too tight because I don't know how to draft sleeves.
*topic change*
By the way, if you are a Guitar Hero fan, you must watch South Park's recent episode. Hilarious and spot on from beginning to end. And wow, viacom's quick with the take-down-from-youtube action. Here is a choice clip. The other part I liked, of the kid showing off his guitar hotness in the restaurant, isn't on their site.
built by wendy: boo hoo
I had been chugging away at that Built By Wendy pattern.
I cut out all the pieces, let them sit on the floor for 3 weeks, then sewed almost everything in the past 4 days. Then I tried it on last night and found out that the back is about 2 inches too wide. Whyyyyyy? It looks like a hospital gown. I will wear it for those special visits to the doctor.
I even pin-fitted the paper pattern to check size. Guess I should've pin-fit the fabric pieces too after I cut them out. I only had the sleeves and hem left too ... Not sure what I can do at this point to fix it besides taking the back entirely apart (the yoke is fully faced). Take out the extra fabric in the center back and run a flat felled seam all the way down?
I did not feel like tackling it tonight, so instead I drew lots of pictures of food I like to eat. I wonder where all those etsy artists print their stuff?
bad design
From the NYTimes ... MIT Sues Frank Gehry (via). Ha ha! I never got the chance to use the Stata Center (my years there were full of noisy dusty construction), but I remember seeing the model during the few hours it was stealthily available for public viewing and wondering what they were thinking.
Good design solves user needs, and great design solves them in a beautiful and compelling way.
Bad design makes pretentious statements while leaking rain and dumping snow on emergency exits. I heard there was even a lecture hall whose crazy paneling made people sick with vertigo!
wedding project: invites
An old wedding project for those ladies planning their weddings out there :)
We hand-silkscreened our invites (S made all the silkscreens). I would maybe not do that again and print it all on a laser printer instead. Gory details below:
We already had the quail symbol, and I extrapolated their curly-cue dongles as decoration. Main typeface = Bembo. Snell Roundhand = accent typeface. I'd share my illustrator/photoshop files, but I don't think they'll be useful to anyone. Unless you are also getting married at B.R. Cohn winery, in which case, wow, I've got a whole bunch of stuff just for you!
The main folder/card was a nice soft watercolor paper I got in large sheets at an art store. I cut several out per sheet, to a size that would fit in an envelope we found at the office supply store, and silkscreened a pair of quails on each. That part was not so bad, and the thick paper took the ink really well.
Then we had 8.5x11 cardstock that we printed with black on the laser printer for the pieces inside the card. 2 silkscreens were made for the red accents. Let me tell you, making the thin map route lines show up well and registered correctly was a huge pain. And maybe it wasn't a good idea to silkscreen a script typeface with thin strokes. Note to self: next time, just get it printed on a color laserprinter at the local copyshop.
They dried on the floor, and when we ran out of floorspace, they dried in letter racks. A last pass through the paper cutter gave us all the pieces.
The main invite got pasted on the left-inside of the card, and the other pieces were of staggered length so that you could see the title of each as they were stacked inside the pocket of the right. Pretty standard format I think.
My favorite part though, has to be the reply postcard ... S had the idea to have pictures of the animals you'd be eating, so I put in baby animals. Mua ha ha! We also left a big empty space for comments, and got back some fun drawings and notes.
We ran the envelopes through the laser printer for the addresses, stuck on the stamps, and that was it. No finished put-together pictures unfortunately. I think we were pretty sick of them by that point. The end!