C&G Pattern cutting

This week has been all about my pattern cutting course.

I had worked out that my 120 hours of teaching would come to an end at the end of July and I thought that I would then have a few weeks before it was examined so I had been aiming for the middle of August and already thought that it would be tight. Turns out that I am being examined on the 21st July- arhhh!

Just to make it even more impossible I had an interview Wednesday and Thursday, worked Friday and was out all day Saturday and Sunday :-s so the past two days I have worked on getting my core 6 pieces completed, and, except for two waistbands which will be this afternoons work, I am there!

My tight-fitting bodice:

Basic bodice- Front

  

Basic bodice- Back

Redesigned bodice- Front

Redesigned bodice- Back

My shirt:

Basic Shirt- Front

Basic shirt- Back

My one-piece dress:

Basic dress- Front

Basic dress- Side

Basic dress- Back

My two-piece dress:

Basic dress- Front

Basic dress- Back

My skirt:

Basic skirt

My trousers (shorts, to save fabric!):

Basic trousers

I needed to get these finished today so that I can overlock all of the edges tonight at college but then I am hoping to be able to work on my folder a bit more as it is looking a bit bare still.

Hopefully I will get some of the folder work uploaded at some point soon.

By the way, I got the job that I wanted and start on Monday :-)

Love,

Mrs Jones
x

Getting into embroidery

Well after the success of my machine embroidered poppy, I decided to have a go at a hand embroidered one. I found this book at a car boot:

And started out with some chain stitch. It was relatively easy and I followed it with some cross stitch, basic running stitch and leaf stitch. I was relatively pleased with the results.

I enjoyed doing it so much that I decided to follow it up with some more little embroideries:

I particularly like her hair

Obviously this is a work in progress!

which will hopefully be framed and added to my etsy shop.

In between doing this I have been working on a larger embroidery that I picked up while on holiday in Iceland- a great project that is easy to pick up and put down!

As it is shown on the packaging

The flowers on one side

The flowers on the other side

So far!

But, these have meant that I have been neglecting my life-long cross stitch project!

How it will eventually look

So far!

I started this project when I was 15 and it was intended to be finished for the birth of my cousin. She is now 12, wouldn't really appreciate it any more, but I still pick it up from time to time and would love for it to be finished by the time Mr Jones and I have our own children (date unknown!!). I just find cross stitch a pain though because there is so much counting involved (you wouldn't believe that I am a Maths graduate!) and embroidery is so much more free even if you are following a pattern of sorts.

Lots of love,


Mrs Jones
x

Style Africa

As we have just had a four day weekend, Mr Jones and I thought that we should go on a day out. Mr Jones has been wanting to go to the museum in Birmingham and hasn't had the opportunity so we made a day of it on Monday. The weather had perked up from Sunday's horrible rain and we even managed a picnic outside while watching a live band in the square. There were a lot of events on for the Diamond Jubilee but it didn't seem excessively busy.

The museum had a Style Africa exhibition on which showed different fabrics from around Africa. The patterns were amazing and I have put some photos below:

Patchwork style

Lovely pattern

Embroidered

Printed banners

Dyed

4 different patterns

Some black and white patterns

Hexagon resists

With resists

Love,
Mrs Jones
x

Lost in Lace

I wanted to write a quick blog about the exhibition that I went to see in Birmingham just before the wedding. It was a week after my contract at work had finished, I had two weeks until the wedding, the dress still wasn't finished, but, I knew that it was the last day of the exhibition so I treated myself to a day off and didn't regret it, the work was brilliant and so inspiring.

Below are a few of the highlights:

Swarkozski crystal chandelier

War and lace

Lace imprinted in silicone

Black thread and dresses

Layers of vinyl with holes all hanging

Black paper with lace pattern

Rope lacework with floating feather bed

Love,

Mrs Jones
x

Patchwork, Poppies and Painting

OK so I have not been well and been pretty miserable with some rubbish weeks, which is an excuse but a valid one, and the other problem that I have is that I am trying to finish off the "wedding makes" blog post and although I am really proud of everything we made, the wedding seems like such a long time ago and so the enthusiasm just isn't quite there.

In the mean time, I am carrying on with other projects and the blog is missing out on them, so, I will leave the wedding post to simmer and in the mean time try and keep you updated.

A lot of work has been going into my patchwork kit that I got from a friend as a wedding gift. The top is finished. I have bought the wadding and found an old bed sheet in a charity shop to use as the backing and I am currently trying to line all three up without any creases so that I can quilt it. This is really not easy, in fact it is ridiculously difficult and I am panicking about the quilting so I think I will be getting some advice and reading some instructions before I attempt it. Here is the quilt so far:



My first patchwork


Outside of this I have been continuing with my C&G work. I have completed my basic two-piece dress:




Basic two-piece dress

 and, am looking forward to making it into my own style. I dug out some fabric today but it didn't look how I thought it did so I may be heading back to the fabric shop!

I have also been working on my bodice, shirt and one piece dress too so watch this space.

On a design front I found a few blogs today that showed people's sketchbooks from their C&G and it really inspired me to get going again. Here are a couple that really impressed me:
http://lizbenjeddi.blogspot.co.uk/
http://madebymelanie-cityandguilds.blogspot.co.uk/

I created my mood board the other day and it is full of poppies and polka dots. I started with Mr Jones' fantastic poppy picture:



Poppies in Norfolk


Then drew out a poppy onto some solufleece, attached it to some denim and embroidered over it:



Embroidered poppy

 I am really pleased with the results. Then the rain came so instead of going out I decided to do a bit of painting. I started with the end of a pencil (the rubber end) and moved onto some bubble wrap to produce these prints:




Using the end of a pencil




Printing using bubble wrap




Still bubble wrap but adding centres for the look of poppies

 Hopefully there will be more to follow shortly although I am off Norfolk for the weekend (which is where the poppy picture was taken!).

Love,

Mrs Jones

Wedding makes

As promised here are a few of the wedding makes.

Firstly, the table decorations.

I knew early on that I would like to have tea pots and teacups so I searched for ideas and ended up deciding on teacup candles and paper flowers in the tea pots. We had 8 tables and I wanted to put four or five cups on each table so about 40 candles to make and enough flowers to fill 8 teapots (too many to count!). We trawled the car boot in the area for a few weeks, constantly coming back with a boot full of china.


A small part of our collection

I made the flowers using tissue paper following a Martha Stewart tutorial Martha Stewart tutorial and inserted oasis into the teapot to help arrange them.


Close up of one of the bubble flowers

 

The candles were made by sticking pre-weighted wicks to the bottom of the cup using a glue dot, melting wax and dye in a glass bowl over a saucepan of water and pouring into the cups.


The candle factory!

Here is a photo of the finished product:

A filled teapot along with two teacup candles

Also on the table I wanted to create table numbers. I decided to use embroidery hoops and create the numbers by sewing buttons onto some plain fabric. I then decorated around the outside.

All that was then left for the tables were the favours and place names. We bought the card templates for the place names, added some tartan ribbon (because the wedding was in Scotland) and wrote the names on ourselves.

For the favours we chose Gingerbread men and woman. I decided that it would be fun to make these- this was a slightly crazy decision, on reflection, as they could not be made until the week of the wedding and, as I wanted to give a pair to each person, meant making about 200 of them. I spent a morning running a gingerbread factory and eating any that broke or looked a little too tanned!


Not all of the gingerbread people were perfect.

We put these into card display bags and Mr Jones carefully tied ribbon around each one so they looked spectacular.

The finished table

With flowers and candles

and the table numbers

Next post: the dress, cake, bouquets and anything else!

Love,

Mrs Jones
x