untitled (tight squeeze), 2024
18 x 19 x 23 inches
just realized i never posted this piece here?? i made this in an intro to sculpture class that i took during my last semester of college and its something im really really proud of, i learned how to weld for it!
link to PDF
Excellent resource if you're new to sewing and want to start doing some clothing repair!
Professional seamstress here, who has taught intro to sewing many times, saying: this guide is excellent!
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ALTFINALLY got good photos of my sculpture final. This is my dog his name is Sock.
Look at my fish.
unstablebookwyrm asked:
The copper sculpture booth at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in upstate NY had a stellar piece this year and I thought you might enjoy it!
Hard to tell in my pic, but there were was some fun color halo effects on the eye feathers, and the statue overall mimicked the iridescent feather colors really nicely. Nothing as glorious as your beauties, but certainly lovely to see!
kedreeva answered:
Ah that’s really cool! Anyone that dares to take on making a peacock’s train by hand in sculpture deserves some respect!!
There’s actually a Bronze mutation, it looks a lot like that!
There’s a regular at the fabric superstore. She’s at least 80 years old, and she just got back into sewing after giving it up for 40 years. We’ll call her Irma.
I love Irma.
Irma is constantly surprised by the newfangled sewing gadgets our store sells. Today she bought some extra-fine glass-head pins and a magnetic pincushion. As I’m ringing her purchases up, she tells me very seriously, “did you know, if you’re careful, you can sew RIGHT OVER those pins? You don’t need to take them out!”
I told her that I liked that you can’t accidentally melt the head of the glass pins with your iron, and she nodded. “They used to all be like that, but times changed.”
I love old sewing machines and asked what kind of machine she has, and she goes, “Oh, it’s an old Singer Featherweight that my husband bought me when we were first married. It’s probably not worth anything anymore, but the thing sews fine. Have you seen the ones those girls over there–” indicating the sewing machine sub-store in my location “–have? Those things go in every direction and the needle always comes to the top when you stop sewing! Imagine how handy that is!”
I mention that I used to sew on my grandmother’s Featherweight but now there’s a intra-family war about who owns Grandma’s Featherweight and so no one gets to use it. It’s genuinely the best portable straight-stitch machine I’ve ever used.
I warn her to never let anyone tell her that Featherweight isn’t worth something. “I know, I miss my husband and it’s always going to have a place in my heart, just like your grandma’s.”
“I mean, Irma, there’s that, but they’re also worth a really notable amount of money. The Singer Featherweight is really financially valuable. I almost never see them for sale around here for less than about $400, and that’s in bad condition.”
“It’s a good thing my husband’s dead, honey, because if you told him that he managed to buy a sewing machine that’s worth more in 2021 than he bought it for in 1950, well, he’d be so smug that I just wouldn’t be able to tolerate driving home with him.”
please tell irma I love her
A new fall-inspired GHOSTCAT has appeared!
My first ever plush has been designed in collaboration with STEELWITHTEETH!
Preorders launch on OCT 15TH @ 12 PM CST!
You can choose the "notify me when available" button on this page if you want notifications!
IT’S AVAILABLE NOW!!! ✨✨✨
i want to do a painting of a tiger taking a bath to put in a bathroom (bathroom-themed bathroom) and to this end i made a little maquette out of clay and i suspect this will scope creep into having both a painting and sculpture of a tiger or perhaps only a sculpture of a tiger. if i do both should they be displayed together or separately
ALTTiger maquette by the way 🐅
Working on cutting out a large piece of wood to do the painting on, which is a constraint that will either be really fun or really annoying. Maybe both
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The finished Ms. Tigers
Do yourself a favor and check out Swanson's Fabrics! The physical location is in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, USA, but the online shop will ship to you!
I can't remember who first told me about Swanson's, but they're a textile thrift shop that collects and repurposes donations of unused sewing supplies. Their physical location, The Stash House, offers community sewing resources and a studio. For non-locals (such as myself), their online shop offers fabrics, patterns, and notions. The shop restocks on Thursdays, and they have a constantly-rotating collection of items. If you like thrifting secondhand craft materials, Swanson's is for you!
Via their official "about" page:
Swanson’s Fabrics and notions are gifts from retired sewing stashes. They are the fabrics and supplies that sewers and fiber-artists naturally accumulate. I had a suspicion that the reason we all collect so much is that we didn’t have a place “good enough” to take it. So I made the place. Turns out I was right, and thanks to my community (and yours) of makers and crafters, I can resell these fine materials at a low, approachable cost.
ALL FABRICS ARE $5.00/yd, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE MADE OF. REALLY. I MEAN IT. I KNOW. UNBELIEVABLE BUT TRUE!
As we come to grips with the climate crisis, interrupted supply lines, and our dependency on slave-labor in far away countries to produce our cotton and fiber goods, we need another way to approach the fabrics in our lives.
We have a massive resource of textile goods in our country and it is time to tap into it. Our attics, basements, thrift-store donation bins, and dumpsters are brimming with discarded fabrics. It is time to start making and trading for the things we need, and stop buying so much new stuff we don’t. We need to see ourselves as trash-rich.
Customers at Swanson’s can pay for goods and services with goods and services. I accept trade of sewing and fiber supplies/materials, and trade for help in the shop.
I hope to inspire you to make your own clothes, to mend the ones you have, to shop second-hand and alter things to your taste. There is a lot of power in dressing yourself. Custom is king, and you can’t have a revolution in your master’s clothes….
❤️💪🏻
-Kathryn
The CovidSafeCosplay blog and its admin are unaffiliated with Swanson's Fabrics, and are simply sharing the resource.
Do you have a favorite place to get your crafting supplies? Share in the comments or via a reblog! Bonus points for those that prioritize sustainability, accessibility, community, and trade.
Lots of cities / areas have stores who also sell repurposed or donated fabrics! Here’s one directory of creative reuse stores. (Though ‘creative reuse’ is usually the key search term)
I get most of mine at Scrap in Ann Arbor (they also sell some items online) and New City Sewing Center in St. Louis.
apparently this is not common knowledge among punk diy sewists but if you’re sewing patches / doing any sewing that requires pushing a needle through multiple layers of fabric, use a needle grip. they’re little rubber things that have excellent grip on the metal needle so you don’t have to pinch the needle as hard. you will save your fingers soooo much unnecessary pain.
there’s two main types. the basic type is just a little circle of rubber that you fold around your needle, and the fancier type is a little rubber cap for your fingertips. they’re very cheap, under five bucks for the fancier kind and less for the basic, and they last forever. you can buy nice ones from your local craft store or steal them from the quilting section walmart idc. if you’re in a pinch (pun intended) and can’t go out, if you have a non-slip mat under a rug, cut off a little corner and that will work decently. please treat your fingers kindly <3
