One Hour One Hour Dress

Today is 11/11/11, which is awesome. However, I started to write this on Sunday, which is why about half of this is talking about "today" as daylight savings day.
After an afternoon spent stomping on leaves overflowing in my trailer, I realized that today is daylight savings even though my watch was still stuck on non-daylight savings time (except I don't know how to change that, so I guess it'll just be stuck on an hour late for half the year). So what did I do with that hour? Sew a tunic! This is something I've been putting off for a while from lack of time, but now there's no excuse what with there being a whole extra hour in the day. That means that I would spend my one hour being productive instead of just sleeping.
So the challenge of the day was: completing a tunic in 1 hour or less. Let's get started. I got this done in exactly one hour 17 minutes, but once that I realized that I have shoulders, and am not a tube with arms, it took about twenty minutes to fix. So really this only takes 57 minutes.
(NOTE: I have no idea how they teach people to sew easy things like this properly, but this seems to work pretty well AND it's a quick project, so it's worth a try.)
I used a jersey cotton-rayon blend fabric. It's extremely light and soft, and it drapes very easily.  Also before you start, I'd advise reading this whole procedure first, because it may not make sense to just go through step-by-step.

1. (ANOTHER NOTE: this requires some math, but don't worry because it's very basic math. Just division and addition.) Take your bust (#2), waist (#3), and hip (#4) measurements. For each individual measurement, divide it by two, then add 2 inches (for a looser dress, add a couple more inches. Use your judgment. Just make sure not to sew it too tight without adding any seam allowance. Take the measurement from your shoulder to your bust (bust point- #10), then to your waist (front waist length- #9) . Then take the measurement from your waist to your hip. From your hip measurement go down as low as you want- mine was a little above the knee). BurdaStyle is a really cool pattern website- I don't use it too often, but there are a ton of cool ideas on it. I think you can even submit your own patterns.
2. Make sure your fabric is preshrunk unless you are planning on only ever wearing this once.
3. Lay it out on a clean surface, folded over with the inside out.
4. Draw a line (with chalk, or mark it with tape) on the fabric, going down the middle. Then draw each line for the bust, waist, and hip, exactly the bust point, front waist length, and length from the waist to the hip lengths.
5.  
6. To draw the neckline, if you're not sure what kind you want, lay out a few different kinds of T-shirts with different necklines to see which you like with the pattern of the fabric/shape of the dress. I was thinking about a typical T-shirt circle-ish neckline, but decided to do a boat neck instead.
7. Put on the dress so far to see how far down you'd like to cut the hem. Make sure it's even at the bottom by laying it down on a flat surface again and using a straight-edge.
8. Pin the hem, then sew.
9. Time for arm holes! They should be cut already- continue the seam from the waist to the shoulder, with the same seam allowance. But don't sew where you want the arm holes to be. Then, fold the seam allowance in (wrong side to wrong side), pin, and sew. Repeat on other arm hole.
10. Cut all the extra threads, and you're finished! Now go celebrate the greatest day in 100 years because it's 11/11/11- even better if you're reading this at 11:11!

Fierce.

You know what's confusing? String theory. Go look it up. Maybe you'll be a little less confused about it than I am.

So two months ago was STRUT VI. It was pretty wonderful. There are so many cool people who do insane things from headpieces to lumberjacks (you know, since it's still Vermont we need some plaid...) and newspaper. Then there was the cross country season (which was wonderful), so now here are some pictures of the show.

Fabric just ordered from MOOD!

Draping is a lot harder than I thought. This shirt took probably took me two weeks to sew because I really did not understand it. But it DOES work out in the end, so if you ever want to try making a cowl/drape something, just be patient. Like on Project Runway season 4, Rami Kashou took like what seemed forever to drape his garments, but when he finished they looked beautiful. Much better than this shirt. Go watch Project Runway Season 2 right now. You will love it or your money back. Just kidding. That's what infomercials tell you.

Pinning

 

                

 

This is how the jacket was initially going to look. Which do you like better?

 

 

Thanks so much Cynthea Spa for such fierce hair and makeup. Just look at that death stare.

Egg Tempera

Okay, so I haven't exactly followed up on my "one post a week" plan. At all. But I was very busy last week... working at Kate Donnelly's ART CAMP! WOOHOO! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures this time, but last week's camp was all about painting. And we even made our own tempera paint out of eggs! It's super easy to make, and you can get really pretty colors that create a shine once dry. You just can't be too squeamish.
EGG TEMPERA PAINT (for about 1/2 cup of paint, but that may not be an accurate measurement at all. It's enough for more than one small painting.):

1. Separate two eggs- make sure to take the outer membrane of the yolk off. To do this, hold the yolk over the bowl in one hand, and pinch the membrane/skin with the other hand's index finger and thumb. The yolk should start to seep out, and then you can hold it with just your two fingers until all of the yolk is in the bowl. In the meantime, you can use the other halves of the eggs to make a couple egg white omelets or a souffle.
2. Add as much water as there is yolk into the bowl.
3. Add two drops (use an eyedropper) of vinegar to the bowl.
4. Mix.
5. Now time for the pigment! You can use pigment from a store, or try to find your own things to use! Whatever you add should be crushed up very finely, like charcoal to make black paint. We also tried out paprika and cloves. Don't add just one pigment to the paint: separate the egg mixture on a palate so you can add as many different pigments as you'd like. We used these plastic deviled egg carriers for storage:

This kind of tempera paint is more like pretty water color paint with the water already added, not that gloopy stuff that you used in elementary school.

'Nude Dragons'

I didn't realize that they're usually clad.
Yesterday my mom, dad, and I went to the Shelburne Museum to see the paper and fashion exhibits. Both were  amazing. In the "Paperwork in 3D" exhibit, there's a huge variety of artwork ranging from silhouettes cut out of black paper to extremely realistic papier-mâché sculptures of people and a tree. The fashion exhibit is mostly runway clothing, but there is a section of the exhibit that displays the skirts of dresses designed by Fashion Institute of Technology students to go with bodices from... centuries ago. There's an article about the FIT "complete the look" challenge in Seven Days.

The winning dress in the FIT challenge

So I brought my sketchbook along.
Sketchbooks are like journals. It's always good to have one around, especially if you're planning on going to a museum or any other place where you can sit down and really appreciate whatever is there, because those places are the most inspirational. However, since mine is like a journal, I don't particularly like other people looking at it. I asked my dad to hold it for a moment while walking toward the gun show (yep, they even have a gun show at Shelburne Museum. Except that we went into the wrong building. The Beach Lodge is filled with taxidermy. Staring at stuffed dead animals staring at me is not really my favorite.The gun show is in the building next to the Beach Lodge, the Beach Gallery.) and then realized that he might want to look at the sketches. It's not like there's anything to hide, but I grabbed it back anyway. He responded with "I'm not going to look, you can draw nude dragons or whatever else you want in there." He mentioned some other weird things to draw, too, but I forget what they were.

A dragon from a pop-up book in the paper exhibit

Lately I've noticed how ridiculous fashion is. It's not like you see squirrels running around in skinny jeans and shirts. Or dragons. But so far, I've never even seen a dragon. So I have no more to say about that. I still think clothing can be beautiful and everything, but it's really inconvenient. Thinking about that, everything humans do is ridiculous. We're just a weird species of [mostly] hairless mammals that strive for power and status. Probably if we didn't start hunting other animals and wearing their skins we would be harrier, and then wouldn't even have to wear clothing. That is what I was thinking coming out of the fashion exhibit.
Now into the gun show. There are a lot of different types of guns. There was a whole wall displaying "concealed guns". So that's one use for clothing. Some of the guns were probably 2 feet long. So everything was starting to make more sense. Big 'ridiculous' coats were useful, they were made for protection.
Fashion is an art. But it's a very functional art. (Obviously to keep warm and clothing with pockets to hold things, but also definition in society.) Fashion helps define different cultures, and one's self. Fashion statements lead to a lot of debate, like all the news about raising genderless children. People get so caught up in whether or not it's acceptable for a man or boy to wear a dress. From the 1920s to 1940s, pink was considered a stronger color (being a shade of red), suited for men. Blue was considered daintier, for women. Then all of a sudden it just switched. Now it's much more rare to see men in pink. Although women seem to get away with wearing whatever men wear. It'll be interesting to see when the men/women clothing boundaries don't exist. If that ever happens.
Whew. This is an incredibly long post. Since it's summer now, I have a lot of nothing time, so I'll try to post at least once a week until September. They probably won't be this long.

Stripes

First of all, sorry this is so much later than  it should be, and that the posting is so inconsistent.
Second of all: Eyes are the best. They really are fantastic. They're the only one of your five senses that you can turn off, then on again. (Because you can close your eyes, and then the only thing you can see is the inside of your eyelids. You can put your hands over your ears to try and block out sound, but in doing that, you still hear some things- just muffled. Since you can still see something, light is still being let in through your eyelids. BUT if they didn't let any light in at all, then your eyes truly would be turning off with each blink.) Geeky topic? Yes. But whatever, it's way too cool to ignore. When you see with your eyes, you see a bunch of light. And I think you are seeing the reflection of whatever plants would see if they could see. [Color/light is still kind of a gray area for me, but hopefully I'll get to learn more about it...] Anyway, light creates a lot of illusions that don't really make sense.
There was an article in the New York Times Style Magazine about stripes a few weekends ago. [For a while, they weren't publishing the Style Magazine, and it was really sad, because every week I checked, but it was never there. Now, they come every two weeks in the New York Times.] This seemed to be a fitting article for me, because my wardrobe basically consists of jeans, graphic tees, and lots and lots of stripes.

“Stripes cause illusory jazzy motion, which nobody really understands.”
Maybe this weird visual illusion has to do with your blind spots. In each eye, there's a spot in your pupil where the nucleus is located (called the blind spot). The blind spot is about 8 moons big, according to Scientific American. Even though such a big part of your vision is being blocked out, the rest of your eye covers up what you can't see using the colors and shapes around the blind spot. (But if you want to test it, draw a dot on a plain [white or colored] piece of paper, close your right eye, and look slightly to the right of the dot with your left eye. The dot should disappear.) So it seems like your eye gets confused whenever they see stripes, because their blind spot blocks out a big part, so the rest of the eye doesn't know which color it should cover up this gaping hole (made by the blind spot) with.

But that's just one theory. Who knows if it's right or not.
This summer I'd like to work more with black and white prints for the next STRUT. Black and white have a kind of "illusory jazzy motion" too when paired together [in prints especially]. But I have no idea why. So if anyone reading has any ideas, feel free to comment!

Jumpsuits [in NEW YORK CITY]

A trip to NYC for the weekend was supposed to be my 13th birthday gift, but it didn't really work out. I got the swine flu the day before we were supposed to leave. Then later, my grandpa got sick, so I wasn't sure if we'd get to go. But everyone's better now! This past weekend has definitely been one of the best ever.
We (my mother, grandmother, aunt, and I) mostly focused on the fashion part of the trip.

The first day (on Saturday) we went to an exhibit at the Museum at FIT. It was part of the fashion and textile history gallery, called His & Hers. There I realized how fashionable jumpsuits can be. Before, it always seemed that they were just kinda goofy, but there was a long black one that was beautifully draped, it looked so elegant. Even the polka-dotted one that was shorter and more casual looked nice.
While we were shopping the next day and looking into store windows, I saw so many more jumpsuits on display- some looked pretty ridiculous, but others were definitely wearable. The thing is, the only person I've seen wearing a jumpsuit on the street is Sachi. (And she can pull off just about anything!)
So how come more people don't wear them?

Mochi Adventures

Well, after three attempts, I'd say my grandmother, mom, and I made some pretty good mochi. The first came out in a solid block- oops, not one POUND of glutenous rice flour, one CUP. Well, we didn't make that mistake the second time, but... 7 minutes in the microwave was a bit much. That was definitely the worst. The dough started bubbling and burning- when it finally cooled down, the blob of goo was solid as a rock, stuck to the bottom of the pan. The first two experiments were a new recipe- the supposedly easier and faster choice. Although they were faster, we must take into account that we never really FINISHED that recipe. Finally, my grandmother decided to use her own recipe that she always uses when making mochi. Hmmm... Why didn't we think of that before? Oh, well. This time, we used the rice cooker to cook the dough to the perfect consistency. The finished product was a ton of little pink mochis filled with peanut butter- and they were really good, too!

 If you'd like to make some withOUT having to go through two bags of rice flower before making something edible, here's the recipe (although it does require a rice cooker):

Mochi
3 cups water
2 cups sugar
16 ounces (one pound) glutinous rice flour (sweet)
Peanut butter/ice cream/nutella/any other filling you would want to try
If you want the mochi colored- food dye

Place sugar in removable bowl of rice cooker. Add 3 cups of water. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add rice flour and stir. (Add food dye, if desired.) Add 2 rice bowl measuring cups worth of water to rice cooker. Turn on rice cooker.
Set a timer for 10 minutes.
Once ten minutes is up, stir the mixture, but don't turn off the rice cooker!
Put the cover back on.
Let it cook until done (until the lever on the rice cooker goes up.)
Put corn starch on a clean surface or baking sheet, like putting flour down for making pizza.
Move the dough onto the corn starch, and flatten it out so it is about 3/4 inch thick. Use a spoon to cut off little bits (about an inch wide- enough to put something inside and fold over) and flatten them out into little patties. Put the filling inside. (If you've ever made dumplings, this will make more sense.) Roll the dough into a ball, keeping the filling in the middle. You may need to keep your hands corn starch-y because the dough is very sticky. Once you've used up all of the dough, enjoy!