London fabric loot

I went to gold hawk road today since Andrew had meetings and work. I took the train which was insanely hot, all by myself like a big girl. :)

I went in and out of a million shops on the left hand side of the street and by the time I started looping back on the right hand side, I was ready to buy. The choices are really overwhelming, but I tried to be stingy and not buy a lot as the dollar to pound exchange rate is so terrible. Well for Americans at least. I picture British people going to American playing "make it rain" ie lil Wayne with dollars.

I only bought three things, but they are cool and unique! This is four meters of Swiss voile in a very large, cool print. Pink and brown looks very nice with my skin tone, and I picture it as a maxi dress it something. 25£. Eh. I talked him down a little...

At a different shop, I bought this neon 1990s-meets-Africa print. Two meters for 6£. Knit, but not super stretchy.

This delight was absolutely worth 25£!!! It's an off white skin and then it's been printed with a shiny giraffe pattern in browny-tan-gold. Its a whole hide. I am going to buy a walking foot and make the sweetest, most awesome leather purse anyone has ever seen!!! 

London is super fun and I'm having a great time!!! We're here til Friday so I still have lots of time to explore!

A true masterpiece!

This was the last and best thing I made for my class. I used up a little bit of my leftover clay and shaped this by hand. At the end of my first class, Andrew said I should make a little hand giving the finger to hold my rings and I filed that idea away for later use.

It took a really long time to get fired and I was afraid someone stole it, but luckily that was untrue! The glaze is red clay and mossy green colors and looks awesome.

A true masterpiece! The pinnacle of my oeuvre! The greatest thing ever made from clay!! :)

Bowls galore!

I made nine bowls in my pottery class. They are easy to make and fun! The first five are all glazed differently, with the assistance of Andrew. 

 The bowl on the left is kind of a green and purple mix. The one on the right had pink slip on the inside, so I glazed it in white hoping for some contrast. Instead it is just ugly, which is sad; that was the bowl with the nicest shape and thinness.

 This one has a scalloped rim and is a variety of purple hues. It was supposed to be a larger bowl, but I pinched it too thin and the rim started to droop, so I went with the flow.

 The blue tones bowl is a nice size and the sea green one gets narrower at the base.

 These were glazed to be a matching, but not identical, set. There were five, but one of them disappeared.

 They were dipped half and half in blue and then green, with a stripe of overlap down the center. We did them all in the same order, so it's really interesting how the center stripe is different on two!

One more post about ceramic stuff and then on to my sewing projects! I have some new stuff in the works and I'll post it before we leave for Europe next Sunday!

Ceramics: Mugs and various "art" pieces

I took some pictures a while ago indoors, but the light just did not show off the glaze. Now my class was ten weeks long, but all of these were glazed after the class had officially ended. Five weeks later, I have all of my work glazed and home. 

Andrew was my glaze assistant; not only did it speed up the whole process, he has a really good eye for glaze combos that I would have never noticed. he also can spot the stuff on the out-of-kiln shelves so fast after just seeing my terrible sketches. 

These are my mugs and random things, all of my bowls will be in a later post. Andrew chose the glazes for the most interesting ones, 2, 3 and 4. 

 These were my set of "beer steins" but they are far too small! 2 and 3 are normal sized mugs, but very heavy. The "shot mug" was glazed in winter blue, which turned out super ugly! That was my genius choice. I was also practicing making and attaching handles.

 A vase and a wonky mug. The mug doesn't look too bad in this picture. The back lip is about 1/2 inch higher. I had planned to put the handle on so that the higher side is where you would sip, but then I forgot and put the handle on the other side. So that only works if you drink with your left hand. Andrew chose the vase's glaze and it turned out pretty cool!

 These were a cylinder and bowl that I screw up the rim and became very uneven and thin in places. Scallops are the best fix for that! There were always a lot of scalloped pieces pm the racks of glazed work, and not just mine! The blue I named "La Bombe" because it reminds me of a grenade, though it is technically a vase... The bowl I glazed in my favorite Temoku so it looks black and copper. I am going to keep it by my bed for bobby pins and earrings and such.

 And there's all of them from the top!

I think I made a lot of progress in this class! I would not say I am "good" at wheelthrowing yet, but some of my things were actually looking like THINGS by the end of class! :()

London Fabric Advice, please! Or Paris..

Hey hey!

Andrew and I are leaving for our honeymoon on the 21 July! He is meeting with a client in London first, so I am tagging along. We will be in London from the 21 to the 26 and I will have the days free while he is working to go check out the city on my own. We have both been there briefly (though separately in college) and I have done all the super touristy stuff.

I can spend my time exploring and doing fun stuff, maybe fabric shopping? I don't know. I know many of your will have good advice on things to check out or place to go for fabric shopping! You can reply in the comments or email me at mollysewsblog \a\ gmail.com

Then we are going to visit Andrew's grandparents and family in Corsica for a week. Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean and that will be awesome.

Then we are going to Paris for about five days before we head back to London for our return flight. We met in Paris, so that will be relaxed and we can go to places we like and visit old hangouts. I do want to go to Goutte d'Or, which is that African neighborhood in north Paris, and buy African wax fabric. I really wanted to do that the last time I was in Paris, but I think time was too short. That was 2007, so a while ago! I was not into sewing yet when I lived there in 2005, so that will be interesting!

So any advice on things to do/see/eat etc in London (or Paris) are very much appreciated!

June Winners

On our last trip in New Orleans, I made Stephanie come along with me to take pictures of things I love in the city. I love this sign, that says "Everybody loves a good egg!" and it has a big egg on top. I used to drive by it every day when I loved in Broadmoor and would drive across the bridge on the way to my teaching classes at UNO.

So I made Stephanie park at the bottom and we walk up and take pictures. She was very grouchy that we had to walk, it was very hot out, and that it is located in a horrible neighborhood right by central lockup. So we take our pictures and as we are walking back to the car a cop slows down, leans out the window and says "Are y'all lost???" We said we were walking to our car, he gave a look like we were absolute morons and sped off.  It was super funny.

For the June double giveaway, the winners are:

For the May patterns with a 34 bust:

Paula!

For the June patterns for a 32 bust:

Amy!

Ladies, please email me at mollysewsblog\a\ gmail dot com and send me your mailing addresses!

Thanks for entering!

So many cylinders!

I picture Sean Connery saying that in my head: shoooo many shillindersh! That's how you should read it too.

My ceramics class is over, but I am still fetching things back from their final firings. These are from the third, fourth and fifth weeks of class where we started trying to shape cylinders into mugs, vases, etc instead of just tiny flowerpots.

 They are all different, but making ten of them gave me a lot of practice shaping cylinders!Some are like small vases, some like jars, one looks like a pitcher w/o a handle and one is just a regular cylinder.

 That is not to say they are flawless, oh noo. They are weird and uneven and thick in some spots and thin in others. It was good practice! For trimming them too and practicing bases and feet.

I tried out a bunch of glazes and glaze combos to see what I like and what I don't. If we look at them like pool balls: 1- purple, 2- antique white, 3 and 9- temoku which looks like black and copper, 4 and 7- josh green, 5 and 10- yellow salt, 6- apple green, 8- antique white with purple on the inside. I would say 1 and 8 look gross, due to the purple, and the rest are interesting. 

I gave my brother the shorter black one (3) since he liked it and a few to Steven, Stephanie's husband, who made the mistake of being interested in my pottery haha. I also gave away my first four cylinders that I put plants in to the secretaries at school. This is good; I do not need to hoard every piece of pottery I make!!

I'm going to pick up more tomorrow, so brace yourselves for some bowls and mugs!