#which means lots of crochet time but not so much on the sewn pattern

[muffinlance]

Crochet isopuppy is beginning to take shape!

Next up: legs and back shell. Not sure I'll keep this body shape in the final draft, but it works fine as a filler while I figure the proportions on the rest out.

I'm adding pattern variations for colored tips on the ears/legs/tail, so people can give their pups a bit of customization.

[handmadehazefromtheheart]

An Engaged Update

I’ve been waiting for a moment of calm so I could wrap up the HH’s goings-ons in a narratively satisfying blog post. Things haven’t really calmed for me, though, so this one will have a lot of loose threads.

Since my last big update, I have arranged a functioning Linktree for convenience, and I updated my website with a new landing page and ToS. Plans to start paying for my own domain are still up in the air.

As I’ve said on social media, the shop itself is closed because I’ve moved back to Germany, and I need to sort some things out. In the meantime, I’ve been working diligently on preparing for a more permanent reopening!

Just the other day, I decided to redesign the logo.

I wanted to connect the H’s and make them flippable. As you can see, I also decided to — not exactly rename Handmade Hearts, but I made the logo with the German “Herz,” which means “heart” (pronounced like if the “ear” in “hearts” sounded like “air”). It felt appropriate. I’m going to see about registering my business with the German government once I have my long term residence permit that allows me to work. Once I have all the legal stuff sorted, I will be opening up again on the newly launched Artisans Cooperative markeplace.

I already have my own page on the marketplace, and I’ve even bought in as a member-owner. The price to share in co-operative ownership is anything between $1,000 on the spot and $10 combined with essentially working for the Coop in my own time over the next year. Can you guess what option I chose? (Hint: I’m not exactly employed at the moment.)

Before I joined the Artisans Coop, I was and still am involved with the Indie Sellers Guild. I run their official Tumblr and help to verify new members. Current projects we’ve got going on there include:

Pressuring Etsy to let up on its harmful business practices

Working with U.S. legislators to pass a bill to crack down on resell scams

Developing a program to accredit online marketplaces using university-funded research

I should note, my joining the Artisans Cooperative won’t mean that I’m leaving Ko-Fi. My page there is very useful for one-off donations, and I might someday use it for monthly donations à la Patreon. I might cross-post listings for reach, too. Details… are still a bit loose.

Hold on, monthly donations? For what?

I’m glad you asked! For full access to my patterns — and probably discounts to other things. I’ve been doing a lot of work to write and test my original crochet patterns. So far, I’ve had one pattern fully tested and uploaded, with plans for much, much more.

Germany, co-ops, guilds, patterns… It’s a lot going on. Here’s a paragraph to breathe. I hope you’ll stick with me to the end of the post. Please remember, while I have the support of my partner and community, I am just one body and brain. (And I’m working with not entirely abled versons of each.) If it seems as though things should be happening faster or more efficiently, do keep that in mind.

I haven’t even discussed my inventory yet.

Since the beginning, I’ve been contemplating and recontemplating what I wanted to sell. I knew from the start that I wanted to design it all myself; that’s what makes experimenting and pattern-writing so important. Now, I’m close to a solid decision, and I love to make animal plushies and embroidery art.

While working on the aforementioned legal stuff, I’ve been building an inventory of original animal plushies (some of them cat toys), bags, fidget balls, bracelets, hats, and scarves. All of it is crocheted, though I’d like to expand into knitted and sewn items in the future. I am working on multiple amigurumi cat designs, and a songbird design. There will also be further work and testing on the snake pattern –– and it’s not just the shapes; no, I’ve developed designs for tapestry crochet that are yet to be redrafted into something testable.

I don’t have much of anything embroidered in my inventory yet. I’ve been commissioned once for some art, and I’m content for now to keep it at commissions.

Embroidery wasn’t even on my radar when I first decided to make Handmade Herz, but I have fallen in love with it. I’m currently putting some practice into portrait embroidery, which may end up becoming a staple of HH if all goes well.

A lot of loose threads we’re weaving… and I don’t even know how to weave.

You may be wondering about the title of this blog post, “An Engaged Update.” I thought it was a little bit punny, or it might be if I’ve managed to make this engaging.

I am engaged!

I have been, technically, for some time, but now it’s on a legal level. I’ll be getting married in late November. The original plan was to get married in summer, so I went ahead a few months ago and made my partner a “wedding” dress just in time for the July pride parade in our city.

This dress was the most ambitious project I have ever taken on, if only because it is a wearable of that many stitches. I was so afraid of getting it wrong! But it turned out beautiful and comfortable, and a proof of concept for my ability to make wearables this big. Someday, I hope to include original clothing designs in my inventory.

Thanks for reading to the end. I will try to write more frequent blog posts, hopefully with more narrow themes. I’ve still yet to be a vendor at a craft market, partly because of everything going on and partly because I’m very nervous. I will be writing something up about my experience when it finally happens.

Stay strong.

[regallibellbright]

[ID: Five pictures of a crocheted amigurumi doll of Namine from Kingdom Hearts. The first shows her full body. The second shows a closeup of her face, while the third and fourth show embroidered and crocheted four-pointed stars on the straps of her sandals. The fifth shows her sitting on a bookcase next to matching dolls of Lea and Xion, in their outfits from the ending sequence of Kingdom Hearts 3. End ID]

All right, I like doing full writeups, so even though I detailed a lot of how I made Namine already, I wanted to put it all in one place and include some detail shots I took. I'd decided back at the start of this project somewhere between February 2019 and summer 2020 that I wanted to make a doll of Namine as part of the set, which is why my standard tag is "Twilight Town Amigurumi" instead of something ice cream-related. I didn't think too much about when I would do her - Roxas's difficulty intimidated me, so he'd be towards the end, Xion I knew would be first because she's my absolute favorite (by which I mean, I made her IMMEDIATELY after we finished 3 and planned the rest after,) and Isa would go last because I don't have as strong feelings about him, but Lea and Namine were both sort of nebulous timing-wise.* Well, I ended up doing Lea second, and then I got tendonitis for the next two years and couldn't crochet nearly as much as I had before. But I wanted and fully intended to get back to this project eventually. And finally, last year, the time felt right. Semi-technical details under the cut!

* Sorry to Hayner, Pence, and Olette, but I only have so much space and these dolls take MONTHS to make since I'm doing their patterns from scratch, so I have to feel REALLY strongly about a character or their design to commit to it. Honestly I'm probably going to do some other stuff between Roxas and Isa just for variety.

I completely understand the desire for Namine to have a new outfit that's not a very simple sundress which she's been wearing since 2004, but also, this was very fortunate to me specifically, getting back into the swing of things. Her design is so simple that I could get used to making things again and then decide to get more complex as I went - her sandals, for example, were originally flat, before deciding midway through that no, heels would be doable, and I wanted the challenge. I completed one version of her hair entirely before getting a better idea that I wanted to test out before trying on Roxas and his VERY nice yarn. I knew going in that they'd be the hardest parts - the only question with her dress was how I'd attach it, really - so I let myself do a lot more experimenting as I felt up to it.

Both of those also include a LOT of sewing. For her sandals, for example, the sole of the shoe is actually the base of her foot, with a color change after the first few rounds done in back loops only. Once the legs were done, I added a border around the front loops to cover that they're all one piece, and that ended up being my attachment point for the three straps, each of which had its own yarn ends to weave in at the end. Plus two more for the heel, attached via the same method and surface crochet. And THEN, finally, you get to the stars. The crocheted pair were made with a very small hook and embroidery floss, and then the same embroidery floss was used to make the embroidered stars on the straps.

Her hair's made up of something like eight different sections sewn overtop a circular yellow "cap" sewn to her head. Each of the long sections (the one behind her back and the one over her shoulder) is its own distinct piece, and then the three central strands of her bangs are another, but virtually everything else is a separate piece from the others. It was a lot of work to make and even more to assemble, but I'm glad I did - it looks fantastic, with much more depth and messiness than it would have as a single piece, and I'm going to be using the same strategy for Roxas's spikes not too far down the line. Good to know it works. Also, in the process I picked up half-treble and treble crochet firmly.

I'd noticed some oddities when I was making her body and legs with how many rounds things were taking relative to the old notes I'd taken on the first two dolls, and the shape of Namine's shoulders in particular, but I figured it was a side effect of me taking VERY makeshift notes on Xion (as I hadn't planned on setting the project aside for two years and had only vaguely planned on making other dolls at all) and Lea's proportions being a bit taller and thinner. It wasn't until I tried to make ears, followed the pattern exactly, and realized they didn't look right that I realized what had happened - I'd been making Namine on a 4 mm hook, when the past two dolls were made on a 3.5, and this difference in gauge changed the size and shaping by extension. This made for a little trouble with the dress - what I'd planned for a more rounded body was trickier with the teardrop-shaped body I had. Fortunately, this proved to be a fairly easy adjustment in the end. Were I not telling people on the internet, no one would know that that dress gets wider a few rows in, and then widens again towards the bottom.

The dress is also where one of the coolest ideas I had paid off, and where the only real idea I had for detailing didn't quite work. I'd vaguely been hoping I could do picots to add further scalloping to the shell stitches at the bottom, which didn't work at the scale I was doing given it would be my first time trying picot. In the end, looking at it, it wouldn't have gotten me the proper shape, either, so I skipped that one.

On the other hand, I'd had a couple ideas from the start about how simple that dress is, and wondered if I couldn't attach the main part AFTER I'd sewn her arms on, and then use the straps so I wouldn't have to sew the dress to her. (For those reading a "how the sausage gets made" post who don't crochet, most amigurumi - the others included - have the clothes on the body attached before attaching the arms and any sleeves overtop, rather than having to account for armholes and the like.) What I ended up doing wasn't QUITE the same, but it was very close - I essentially sewed it partway so I could get her into it, since the top is narrower than the lower portion of her body, then sewed her in the rest of the way and the width difference kept the dress on. Then I made the first strap over her shoulder the same way I had for the sandals, crocheted across her back because the back of her dress is higher in-game than the front (look this thing's so simple that even the seam placement is a detail,) and did the same process with the other.

This took an oddly large amount of trial and error, but it was late when I realized I could be done if I could get the straps tonight, and things like "how many stitches will it take to go from the front of her body to her back" are always a little bit guesswork. In short, despite being a simple-loooking design, there's a surprising amount of work that went into this particular doll. But I'm happy with the end result, and realized the scaling issue just in time to account for it in her arm length and ears - while she's still a bit larger than Xion and Lea on the whole, it's not so noticeable that's unintentional.

As is standard for this group, she has a wire skeleton in her legs, arms, and up and down the back of her torso, in an attempt to make her head a bit less floppy with that hair weighing down a pretty flimsy neck. In the end, that's reasonably successful, and she can sit up with her arms pushed back same as the others without being propped up further. (Their heads are just the nature of the beast, especially with hair like that.) She also has eyebrows, though they're hard to see under the bangs, made of two shades of light yellow embroidery floss to approximate her hair color. It looks good, for all that it's a minor detail that doesn't photograph well.

In all, I'm super happy with how she did. Going to finish my first knitting project (I'm currently trying to figure out purl stitch) before moving on to the one they've all been waiting for for quite some time.

The good news is, changing my phone background today for reference material, I officially feel I have Ideas for how I'm going to do Roxas. I'm still going to be nervous doing some of the detailing - it's going to be tricky ensuring those checkerboard patterns show up at the scale I'll be working at - but while he's going to be a VERY intensive project, I now feel pretty ready to take him on. SOON.

[professorpski]

What Is Timeless Fashion? Not Place Mat Jackets

Once you have looked over a long stretch of fashion history, you realize that the cut and detail of what is offered is not timeless, but shifts regularly, sometimes a wee bit, sometimes wildly. Like fashion history, Simplicity Timeless Fashions from 1981 is more of a jumble than the title indicates. Which probably means they realized at some point they did not really have a lot of timeless fashion to offer.

True, the first section on “timeless designs” which gives us an owl appliqué on the grounds that “clever craft touches” are “always in style.” Hmmmm? Along with a tote bag with a sailboat appliqué, a vest with a floral appliqué and a skirt trimmed in patchwork. Yes, those are traditional needlework efforts, but I can’t imagine many people today thinking, “I need this NOW.”

At that point, the title of the this booklet is abandoned and the rest of the sections show us what is not timeless: dress-up items to make, tweaking of ready-to wear garments, sweaters, “little pieces” like necklaces, and more. In fact, much of this stuff made me think Simplicity viewed their ideal reader as a  very young woman with few skills and limited patience as well as limited funds. 

So, items for dressing up mean either fusing or wearing a vest. So there is a purse made out of ribbons fused to interfacing or a sad excuse for a camisole, see above, a gathered rectangle with fused fabric flowers sewn to it. Or velvet appliqués on a vest or machine embroidery on a vest. Vests abound. All the vests are unfitted and without closures.

As is the “inventive fashion” of sewing 4 quilted place mats together and calling it a “warm and cozy jacket” which you can wear with your reversible napkin purse. At this point, I was laughing imagining some poor woman turning up for dinner in her place mat vest only to realize that her hostess was using the same kind of place mats on the table. And then someone wipes their hands on her purse, and it is all downhill from there. 

The only clothing I thought had survived the test of time was featured in the smallest photo, the Leaf Cardigan, perhaps because I like almost all leaf motifs in knitted garments. Though the bulky yarn sweater with cabling which appears on the cover and the simply, bulky yarn crochet hat are styles often seen today as well. Does this say something about the nature of knitting patterns and knitting? Or only that people really do want to stay warm whether during the energy crisis of the ‘70s or the winters of today?

[xxleondraxx]

Evfra de Tershaav (Rofjinn Observation)

Evfra's rofjinn is two different colors.

Did I get your attention? Good. Now for the post.

So I'm going to be camping in the next week or so and I want to make sure I have something to do in my free time. It isn't just for fun camping, it's for work. I'm not paying for a hotel.

Anyways, I wanted to make sure I had something to do after work while I was at the campsite. For a while now I've had the an idea to crochet Evfra's rofjinn. So I went to a few craft stores looking at yarn, trying to find a color that was close to his actual rofjinn, which means I had a picture of him up and I was zoomed in on his rofjinn so I could hold the yarn up to the picture and compare colors.

First thing I noticed was the seams in his rofjinn. Just the one on either side of his shoulder. I thought that was an awesome detail and it made me reevaluate how I was going to crochet my own rofjinn.

Unfortunately the yarn I had selected didn't have enough skeins in the same dye lot for me to be able to make it, and I didn't want to go with my second choice yarn. For those of you that don't know what a dye lot is, a lot of yarn is dyed in numbered lots. Any yarn of that color and brand with that same lot number will be the same color and pattern. However, you could get a yarn that looks the exact same color, but if it's a different dye lot then you'll be able to see the very slight color difference once it's crocheted together with the other yarn. To be safe, I wanted to get 3 large skeins, all in the same dye lot, so I could be sure that I would have enough. But the color I wanted I could only find 2 skeins of the same lot.

So I went a couple other places hoping to find another yarn of a close color and didn't find anything. It was looking like I might have to give up on the idea when I looked close at his rofjinn again. It was then I saw another seem where two pieces of fabric would be sewn together to make the front side and the back side.

The back side, which would be the underside of the rofjinn or the side that faces inward toward Evfra's body, is an entirely different color than the regular blue we're used to seeing.

Don't believe me? Look at this picture. Follow the seem on the shoulder down to where the blue of his rofjinn meets the black of his shoulder. You can see another seem and the underside of the rofjinn is a much darker teal than the front. And it isn't just a shadow. From any angle you look at him, where those two seems meet one color is lighter and one color is darker. Plus it has it's own shading and lighting.

You may have to zoom in a little to see it clearly, but there it is. His rofjinn is two different colors. And this isn’t the only picture I looked at. I looked at around ten others to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things and in every one where you can see that seem, you can see that the under layer is a different color.

Good news is this means I only need half the light blue I thought I needed so I bought the yarn, both the lighter and darker, and intend on working on this rofjinn in a week or so when I’m camping.

Addendum: Actually, I think that darker blue is ribbing: A thin piece of fabric sewn in between the seems for a color accent. Whatever. I’m still crocheting it two colors because it’s that or don’t make it at all with the yarn I have.

[chekatpromotions-blog]

An Interview with an Artist-Dawn Boyer, Ph.D. by Candace M.

1. What is your name?

Dawn D.  Boyer, Ph.D.

2. Are you married?  If so, how long have you been married?

Yes, I am married to a wonderful man, James (Jim) M. Stallings.  We met April 2nd, 2005, and have just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this last January 6th, 2017.  

3. Do you have children and if so how many?

 I have one biological daughter and two step-daughters, and one fur-baby cat.

4. When did you first become interested in drawing?

 When I was five years old, I started scribbling with a pencil and piece of paper (my mom put that sketch in my baby book). Since then I have not stopped drawing, creating, painting, sketching, sewing, weaving, constructing all forms and types of creative fine art.

5. How did your first beginning drawing propel you to continue with your artwork?

 I am a ‘Type A’ workaholic (my husband calls me “Robot”).  I cannot be still, so my hands must be continuously engaged in something; whether I am drawing, tearing and folding paper for my mixed media paper artwork baskets, or 3-D constructions, crocheting Afghans for family, or sketching and then inking pen-and-ink drawings of historic buildings and old barns, I cannot sit still, so my hands must be continuously engaged in something. I am also a writer and have been journaling my life for 48 years.  

6. What type of training have you had in the art field?

 I have a formal degree – a Bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design and Illustrative Art from Radford University in Radford, VA (1985).  I can’t say I learned much about the ‘fine art’ process from this degree; most of the creative art I do now is self-taught.

7. What was the best part of your art education?

 I liked the idea of creating graphic design, but my heart and passion were more into creative fine arts.  At the time I received my degree, the art community was still using ‘press-on lettering,’ and I missed the computer-generated design training I wished I could have achieved today (PhotoShop, etc.).  I did appreciate the multiple drawing classes I had in the program.  I thoroughly disliked the art history classes where we were required to memorize artwork, artist’s, period styles, and dates.

8. Have you attended school for any other types of training and if so, what was it for?

I have not.  I do watch YouTube videos and just started the ‘how-to’ series on Lynda.com (free subscription with a professional paid level on LinkedIn) on how to use the Adobe Creative Cloud (PhotoShop, InDesign, Illustrator) and hope to at least get through that series in the next year.

9. What type of art design most interests you?

I am more interested in taking art types and methodologies (versus design styles) and trying to create and discover more creative ways of using those.  For instance, there are paper crafting methods of Origami, Bubble-Gum Wrapper chain making, football folding, weaving, and quilling, where I use all these methods to create three-dimensional artwork such as weaving the paper chains to create baskets, or using the woven paper strips and ‘footballs’ (those triangular pieces of paper one folded in high school to pass notes or ‘play football’ in the cafeteria when one was bored).  Using these folded paper forms, I create Owls, Peacocks, lizards, wolves, and buffalos in art pieces that build up from the two-dimensional paper to a 3-D form that imitates the real-life form of the creature I am illustrating.

 ++++++++

Dawn, I would love to see your work that you do sometime. This just seems really interesting.

https://www.behance.net/DawnBoyer

https://www.pinterest.com/dawnboyer/dawns-art-projects/

https://www.facebook.com/pg/DawnBoyerArtist/photos/

See embedded pictures at the end of this document for more of the 3-d Type of art pieces

++++++++

10. What have been your most proud moments in your art achievements?

I am proud of the series of books I have drawn and published.  I self-publish, and have branded myself as the originator and illustrator of the Fairy Houses and Fairy Doors (series).  I just published my 134th book last week – the newest topic for this coloring book was Fantastic Flora and Fauna – with illustrations of animals in settings full of flowers and/or woodland scenes.

11. Tell me something about your unique style of art that is different from other artists?

I don’t like sticking with one type of artwork. I get bored relatively quickly then move on to another type of artwork, as the mood hits me. What is funny – while I have illustrated over 40 coloring books – I ‘suck’ at coloring myself.  My artistic forte is drawing pen-and-ink (black line) illustrations.  

My favorite topic to draw on is historic architecture from the restored district of Colonial Williamsburg, in Williamsburg, VA. My parents started taking the family to visit there 54 years ago, and I have been visiting no less than once a year since.  What I recently figured out is that all those pen-and-ink illustrations of the architecture I have been creating for years could make a fantastic coloring book for adults, so created one book of my drawings. I am now working on several other books of gray scale coloring books of the same topic.  My second favorite drawing topic is old barns in a state of decay or collapsing old homes or grist mills.  Those seem to have an untold story that creates character into the drawings I create.  

 Dawn, I have to agree with you about old places. They do have a story to tell, and many books have been written that involve these old buildings.

I spent about two years figuring out how to weave the bubble-gum chain wrappers into woven baskets.  First I had to figure out how to create the chains from something other than gum wrappers (to keep my teeth cavity free), so I discovered magazine pages make awesome and pretty durable folding pieces.

I have sewn over 40 quilts in my lifetime and used to sew all my own clothing before my daughter was born.  I have probably crocheted over 100 afghans – I visit the thrift shops regularly for inexpensive yarn packages, sort the colors into groups, then crochet simple squares with single- and double-crochet stitch.

I have painted murals on walls and painted eggs (blown-out) with nail polish to create beautiful Christmas tree ornaments. I love upcycling furniture, also.  I will take a solid wood piece of thrift store or a curb-side rescue and strip the finish, then re-stain it in patterns, swirls, or creative ways (not paint, wood stain only), to create some amazing pieces. ��Sometimes I will use stain to ‘paint’ a picture – I painted to two wolves howling at the moon on top of the inexpensive wine & glass stand I purchased for $10.  

12.  Can you relate something humorous to your adventures in the art world? Please share that with us.

When I first started my formal art degree at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Art Foundation program, they had ‘life study drawing classes’ which, as a naïve 18-year old, I had no idea what that meant. I walked into class first day, put up my easel, got my paper ready, charcoal stick out, then looked around the corner of the easel to see a naked man posing in the middle of the room.  In my astonishment, I immediately blurted out, “Is he NAKED?  Talk about embarrassing!

13. What is the something you would like to see changed in the art world?

I would like to see art galleries stop charging the artists so MUCH to display and sell the artist’s work.  While I perfectly understand that the gallery has to make a profit and has overhead expenses, also, instituting a 45-55% commission on the art work means the artist has to jack up their price by 100% or more to get what they originally want to make as revenue on the art piece. This makes it expensive for the common man to find quality art work they can afford in galleries.  

I do love that social media and the Internet has changed the game for selling artwork – I constantly build a presence for each of my illustrations in my coloring books by posting Works in Progress (WIP) and get my fans excited and ramped up to purchase the book when it is released.  I see other coloring book artists doing the same.  

14. I am sure you have had many challenges in your life, what has been your greatest challenge and how did you get through it?

 I have several challenges I have had to overcome and I am working on overcoming:

I have always wanted a dedicated art studio with lots of space to work on large pieces of art work and several projects at once.  I established one in the den of my last house, then we promptly put it up for sale, and I had to pack everything. When we moved to the current house, I spent thousands on getting the garage fixed up for an official art studio, then we found out we had to sell this house and move again, so essentially, my ‘art studio’ became a small light table bumped up against the hearth in my living room (about six square fee).  I am now back to juggling my drawing surfaces on my lap while sitting on the sofa and finding a space at a small table.  When I permanently move in with my mom, I will be working on creating a full-scale art studio in her sun-room.

15. Where do you see your art taking you in the future?

I cannot wait to reach what my husband and I call, Phase III, which is (after kids grow up and get out on their own) where he and I will start being more creative with art projects, home building (retirement house and 40 acres), and to be able to afford more art tools (like a plasma cutting CNC machine that cuts metals, or a wood routing machine one can program designs into so as to cut huge wooden planks).  

16. How many books do you have published?  How many adult coloring books?

 I have published at least 134 books in total, 114 are on Amazon now, and of those at least 40 ‘Big Kids Coloring Books’ (series name).  Interested readers who want to see the listing of most of my published books on Amazon can find the listing at my author’s page: https://www.amazon.com/author/dawnboyer

17. What is a good quote that you find has helped you through many situations in your life?

 My father had two quips I have always sworn by: 

He would ask my sister and I: “What’s the most important thing?”

And we would always answer: “Family.”

Then he would ask us: “Why?”

And we would answer: “Because they will never let you down.”

When I got stressed about something – money, boyfriends, work, etc. …

Dad would ask: “Well, what’s the worst that could happen about this issue?” I would answer: (with all the worst case scenarios)

Then he would ask: “Can you die from it?” I would answer; “Of course not!”

Then he would respond, “Then it’s not a problem.”

18. I see that you have interviewed other artists.  Is this your first time being interviewed?

This is my second time being interviewed as an artist.  It’s quite flattering to think that someone ‘out there’ is interested in my way of thinking or art style or artwork. I am usually ferociously private about the methods and manners in which I create my artwork – I don’t like sharing anything with others until it’s finished.  Over the last four years, I have learned to adapt to being ‘social’ about my artwork, and overcome someone physically looking over my shoulder (husband) while I work, but also to share works-in-progress (WIP) as I draw, and have even started asking my fans what they would like to see in my illustrations (e.g., cats, dragons, hippos, tarsier monkeys).  I am adding my coloring street team’s cats in my current illustrations as they share their photos of their fur-babies in poses I can use in my next coloring book.

19. What types of artists have you interviewed?

One artist was a ‘beach’ artist originally from Hawaii who focused on waves, and tropical motifs; another artist was a clay sculptress who created huge clay creatures for the garden and welded metal tools and everyday utensils with other found objects to create small, humorous pieces; and the third creates large, hauntingly beautiful pictures of women, using pan pastels as a medium.

20. Where was your most favorite place to interview an artist?

The interviews with these artists were conducted via email by sending them the interview questions, allowing them to be able to answer the questions at their own convenience in their own home or studio on their schedule.

21. Where can your books and PDFs be found?

My paperback books can be purchased from my author’s page listing:

https://www.amazon.com/author/dawnboyer

I also sell Fine Art Prints of some of my pen and ink illustrations at Fine Art America: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/dawn-boyer.html

I sell page packs of my coloring books on Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/DawnDBoyer

22. Do you have any advice that you would give an aspiring artist just starting out in the adult coloring world?

For gosh sakes – the best advice I can provide is to BRAND yourself and do NOT ignore marketing, branding, and advertising methods – which most artists totally suck at. 

Use social media to post your works in progress to build interest – and not just one platform. If you don't have accounts yet for the following: Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, Behance and Fine Art America, LinkedIn for networking with other artists and PayPal to accept payments; create them, figure them out, and use them.  ASK others how they use them, and don’t be an idiot and use them ONLY for advertising. You must create a ‘relationship’ with your fans and followers. Provide interesting tidbits to your posts and followers versus constantly blasting them with ‘buy my art’ ads.

23. If you could go anywhere and color, where would that be?

It’s more a mindset ‘place’ I want to visit versus a physical place.  My absolute favorite place to be is sitting at a comfortable table with loads of arm and elbow space, with all my necessary media within arms-reach, and be ‘in the mood’ to do my artwork.  A NetFlix movie or series would be playing on a TV screen in front of me, where I can look up occasionally to see what is happening on the screen. If my husband is in the room, also, that’s a bonus (he would likely be working on his computer on homework or website building).  

3-D Owl, Lizard, Peacock, and Seahorse all created from recycled magazine pages and using paper-folding techniques.

Folded paper sculpture in the works

My current ‘art studio’ created from an old sewing machine table with a LED light plugged into space with a clear Plexiglass cover to use as a light table and drawing table.

My $10 wine rack, with the two wolves barking at the moon.

[luckyfibers-blog]

Recipe for a Boxy Shmata Sweater

When I worked at a yarn shop, it was not uncommon for me to buy more yarn in a given week than I sold, and I sold a lot of yarn. This proved to be an untenable work model since the employees at that shop are not paid for the hours they work.

One of the last purchases I made with my forty-percent discount was not one, but two bags of tonal linen/viscose/cotton from Classic Elite. I thought I would be able to whip up a couple of flowy tunics on my knitting machine, but alas, that was not the case. After several valiant attempts, I crumpled up my grey failure and stuffed it away next to the untouched bag of teal until further notice.

Further notice came about three months ago when the mess found its way to the top of my WIP pile for what had to be the fifty-eighth time. Tired of finding it time and again, I resolved to knit a simple top just to move the yarn from its spot in my studio to the shelf in my closet pronto.

I wanted to pick a stitch that would complement the drapey fibers in the yarn, and half-linen stitch was the first to come to mind. Linen and half-linen patterns combine knit and slipped stitches, creating fabrics that behave differently from other knitted textiles. They are strong and durable like woven linen material, and they don't have the same multi-directional stretch as stockinette, garter, or other knit/purl combinations do, which can be good or bad.

I figured I wouldn’t need much stretch because I was going for an oversize garment with a fit akin to Shar-pei skin...

...but I noticed a dearth of patterns for tops that used linen or half-linen stitch. Many print and online resources list all of the attributes of these stitches, but only recommend it for bags and outerwear. When I posed a question about creating patterns with half-linen stitch in a knit designer’s group on Facebook, nobody responded.

And so, my decision was made. This would be a quick, satisfying project that would do triple-duty:

clear space in my stash

fill a gap in my wardrobe

answer my questions about why people don't make more sweaters in linen or half-linen stitch.

Shmata Progress

I doubled my yarn and made steady progress on the first piece, but I started to worry that that even with a whole bag of the grey skeins, I would not have enough yarn for the gigantic, droopy shmata I hoped to cozy up in by the time Old Goat and I left for Belize. That was when the idea struck me to incorporate the teal and double down on my stashdown.

But when vacation time was upon us, I still had no shmata to schlep. Then, winter happened, and for several weeks, all I could knit was my brow as I stared at the unfinished project and fell asleep each night.

And, of course, then came the holidays: good cheer, good friends, good food, and — good gravy!—good knitty news. In the final moments of 2016, I got a burst of creative juice that ended with my Boxy Shmata Sweater on the blocking mats by the end of New Year's Day.

Today, with a bit of tender cajoling, I was able to convince Rhonda, beloved mother to my infamous “nephew” of Great Horned Hat fame, to model it for us!

I practically had to wrestle the sweater off of her thanks to its soft, comfy fit and feel, so if you're wondering how to make one of these simple, boat neck, wear-it-frontsies-or-backsies tops for yourself, here's the recipe.

Recipe for a Boxy Shmata Sweater

Knit two rectangles of equal size in half-linen stitch (or any stitch). Mine were each twenty-five inches wide because I wanted my sweater to hang loose. Remember: this is a shmata. It doesn't need to be precise. Slip the first stitch and knit the last stitch of every row to give you a clean edge to seam with later. You know you're done when the top edge of the rectangle is at your shoulder and the bottom edge is where you want it to be. I chose mid-thigh.

***Note: Since I doubled my yarn, it ended up taking more than 2700 yards (and about a zillion dollars worth) of yarn. This was the only drawback to knitting this sweater, so choose your yarn wisely. I recommed a DK or sport weight linen blend. Also, since I was doubling the yarn and incorporating two different colors, I decided to fade them together by knitting several inches with one grey strand and one teal strand before going from full-grey to full-teal.***

Starting at each edge, seam the top edges of your rectangles using mattress stitch, three-needle bind-off, crochet, or any other preferred method. Leave enough space open in the middle for your head.

***Note: I chose to leave the stitches at the tops of my rectangles live so I could do a three-needle bind-off. Starting at one edge, I did the three-needle bind-off for about eight inches (one shoulder). Next, I continued binding off, but only on one rectangle (front or back) for nine inches. Then, starting at the other edge, I did the three-needle bind-off for about eight inches (the other shoulder) and continued binding off on the other rectangle for nine inches. I used the loop from my last bind-off stitch to begin the single-crochet neckline edging.***

Single crochet around your neckline for a smooth, even finish.

Seam the side edges. I left a few inches unseamed at the bottom and stopped seaming about 9½” from the shoulder seam to create my armholes.

Forget about short-rows or any other fancy shaping techniques: the boxiness of this top means the shoulders are dropped anyway, so just pick up your stitches evenly around the armhole using the lovely slipped-stitch edging you created on your rectangles. Decrease gradually according to the size of your arms. Bind off, but do not break the yarn. You can use the loop of the last stitch to start your single-crochet edging once you are done seaming your sleeve.

***Note: I chose a three-quarter sleeve and calculated that I needed to decrease by sixteen stitches over the course of about twelve inches. This worked out to a one-stitch decrease at each edge (just after the slipped stitch and just before the knit stitch) every eight rows six times, and then every six rows twice.

Seam your sleeves.

***Note: Knowing that I would need to seam my sleeve, I left a really, really, really long tail when I joined my yarn to pick up and knit the stitches around the armhole. I will do almost anything to avoid weaving in extra ends.***

Use the loop of your last bind-off stitch to start your single-crochet edging.

Weave in your ends, block this baddie, and enjoy!

***Note: You may be thinking, “I'm not blocking this thing!” but I assure you that it fits and feels ten times better after blocking. Rhonda even said it felt like it had been pressed although it hadn't.***

***Note: You may be thinking, “This sounds hard! I can't possibly make a sweater!” but you're wrong: this is two shapeless rectangles sewn together with a flap knitted on each side. Piece of cake.

In fact, give it a try and reach out if you have any questions, comments, or success to report. You can reach me here, on the Lucky Fiber Designs Page (and click Like while you’re there!), on Twitter (and don’t forget to follow!), Instagram (follow, follow, follow!), Pinterest, Ravelry, or by email…or the old-fashioned way: Lucky Fiber Designs P.O. Box 4 Candler, NC 28715.

[erikaalamode]

Previously on The Death Dress…

Poor unsuspecting Erika thought dyeing her dress would be easy. Little did she know that dyeing would feel a whole lot like dying…

 Destruction! Mayhem! Panic! The dress… it backed up sewers, reversed street signs, and stole everyone’s left shoe!

 Finally, our worn and haggard hero conquered the dyeing process, though the dress did not escape unscathed. The dye looks uneven in areas and it’s splotchy where sap got into the fabric, but it was done… The battle was won. All was well.

 Sort of… the dress wouldn’t have been ready for SDCC, and it, as all powerful objects forged in the heart of Mount Doom to take control over all humanity, passed into myth (otherwise known as the sewing room closet). But we had not seen the last of this dress!

*Insert dramatic theme song here*

Two years after my friend and I survived San Diego Comic Con, I got a crazy idea to make an Ursula cosplay and enter it in the D23 Expo’s Mousequerade. I am completely, utterly, hopelessly obsessed with Disney—a fact I probably should have warned my roommate about before we moved in together—and I was having a Little Mermaid moment (but when am I not having a Little Mermaid moment?), and I thought, oh what fun it’ll be to make a giant octopus dress!

Turns out, this project was actual fun. Not the ‘this will be fun, oh just kidding, I’m actually only laughing so I’m not crying’ fun of the Padmé dress, but genuine, ‘I can’t sleep because I’m having too much fun’ fun.

That whole experience really ignited a passion for sewing that I’d never really had before. I’d sewn dresses (complete with frustrated crying and some colorful words for the sewing machine) and I’d made little pillows and things in the past, but never something that made me this incredibly happy.

I’m a political science, human rights, and psychology student, so I spend a lot of time working in my own headspace, the grand results of which are usually papers. There was something so amazing—euphoric, even—in creating a crazy, impossible costume with tentacles that wiggle around me when I walk. I made a tangible object so vastly different than what I’m used to producing. And I felt like Ursula, fabulous, powerful, bold, and I loved it.

Essentially, I got addicted to sewing and particularly to making cosplays of amazing characters, and I needed my next fix. My parents came to visit me for my birthday, and they brought me my sewing machine with some projects that I could work on. One of those projects turned out to be all the Padmé supplies that we had stored away and largely forgotten about in the past two years.  I made a corset, some dresses, and spent time fiddling with my Ursula wig, but I didn’t really bother with the Padmé dress.

A couple months later, I heard back from D23 that I had been accepted as a finalist for the Mousequerade, and my mom and I decided to make a mother-daughter trip out of the expo and go for the whole event. That meant three days of cosplays. I had Ursula for one day, and an Edna Mode Halloween costume my mom had made for me in my senior year of high school, but that meant I needed one more cosplay.

Side note: I tried to convince my mom to cosplay with me, but she was too hesitant—I’m still working on it.

Anyway, D23 was the perfect opportunity to revive the Padmé dress. Two years was sufficient (barely) to recover from the emotional toll that dyeing the dress had taken, and I was ready to take another shot at her.

Here’s how that went!

First, I needed to see if the dress even fit anymore. Having spent two years gorging myself on baguettes, cheese, champagne, croissants, and chocolate macarons while living in France, I didn’t exactly have high hopes about what was about to happen when I put that dress on.

Miraculously, the dress was actually a bit large in several places.  This was great news. I don’t typically think a whole lot about my weight—my dad’s motto in life has always been, “Live to eat, don’t eat to live,” and I learned something valuable about food over form from that.

However, in the case of this dress, I just about squealed (that’s a lie, I’ve never been one for the squeal-y thing; I tried it one Christmas and it really didn’t feel like me and frankly, it just made us all pretty uncomfortable—but I was super happy about the dress).

If I had outgrown the dress, that would mean I’d have to scrap it. There was absolutely no space in any of the seams to open it up, and you can bet there was no way I was going to dye another one. The fact that it was a bit large gave me some leeway to take it in at certain points so it would fit whatever shape I am today.

I probably should have adjusted the outer dress and the under dress separately, but I was feeling both lazy and ambitious, so I sewed the lining into the shell around the top edge. When I got to the halter, I used a long strip of leftover fabric, folded in half, as a strap. I attached it to one side of the dress between the shell and the lining, and left the other side loose so I could attach some snap closures at a later time.

With the hook, but there is still gapping at the side

There was some gapping at my sides where the scoop back transitioned into the halter top. Had I stuck with the original design of the pattern I used, straps would have held this in place, but Padmé’s too cool for straps so I had to figure out how to channel my inner Tim Gunn and make it work.

I added a hook and eye closure about an inch above the base of the scoop at my lower back to close the scoop a little tighter and hold the sides in. This fixed the gapping to the degree that I was no longer worried about accidentally flashing someone if I leaned forward, because as bold as cosplay might make me feel, that’s not the quite the show we’re aiming for.

The gathers at the halte

I wanted to take it in just a bit more to be safe, so I gathered the neckline of the halter top to bring the sides in closer to my body and add a little more tension to the top edge of the dress. I danced around in the dress for a little while, aggressively serenading my roommate with Broadway show tunes, and the dress held up, so it looked like everything was secure.

One thing that did not change was my height; I’ve only been growing in one direction since middle school, and that direction is definitely not up. But this was great because it meant the dress was still the right length, and it left me about an inch to do the hem.

I rolled the hem over twice and ironed it flat to make it easier to sew. Then, I hand-stitched this using a thread that matched the purple dye so I could hide the stitches. The under dress hem was rolled and ironed and then hemmed by machine because it’s hidden and didn’t need to look as pretty.

With that done, I could move on to the outer drape-cape-dress-poncho?-flowy-thingy (the technically correct term, yes). I had done the draping years ago, so I knew what it could look like, but I was a little fuzzy on the details. However, general confusion is my default state of being, so I proceeded as usual with a trial-and-error, make-it-up-as-we-go sort of strategy.

First, I did up the back seam of the cape (let’s just call it a cape—it’s probably more of a poncho, but that word gives me serious 3rd grade flashbacks to purple crochet, and that war is best left alone for now).

Because I don’t have a serger in New York, I was worried about the chiffon fraying if I left the edges raw. In light of that, I decided to do the back in a French seam, which would hide the raw edges and also give me a reinforced section to stitch my gathers into the back of the cape.

Next, I found the center front of the cape, and hand stitched the ribbon to the halter neckline of the dress and down each side until I reached the darts at the bust. The stitches didn’t really have to be hidden because the large necklace that Padmé wears would cover the neck anyway, but I wanted it to be pretty so I went with hand stitching.

I draped everything back on me and pinned the dress and cape in place so I could mark the ribbons to put snaps for my upper arms and wrists. I found the center between where the snaps would go and marked this as well. While I had it all draped on, I put a rubber band to make the purple tail in the front as well. I took a break to play around it in, because cosplay should be fun and I like pretty things and twirly things and colorful things—I really like this dress.

When I finally got back to work, I drew a straight chalk line on the chiffon between the center point on the upper arm to the center point on the wrist. Then, I stitched across this line using a long stitch length on my machine.

I gathered this down to the length of my arm, leaving a bit of room for flexibility, then tied off the threads to hold it in place. At this point, the cape looked a lot like super colorful wings, so I amused myself with that for a while before moving on.

When the novelty of my fancy wings finally wore off, I used my machine to do a running stitch up the back of the cape, from the top of the purple to the base of the scoop back where the yellow ribbons ended. I used a long stitch length so I could gather this and tie off the threads on the under side of the chiffon.

In retrospect, I should have reinforced this with hand stitching, because while I was floating around in it at D23, my mom accidentally stepped on the hem (see, this is why I should have trimmed it shorter, but we all know how that went) and the gathers burst open. We had a little emergency sewing kit so once we got inside we could fix it easily enough, but when I got back, I redid it by machine and then stitched through the seam allowance twice to reinforce it. That said, I was on a roll (and a severe time crunch) and I really wanted to get it done.

The original

The quick fix

The reinforced redo

Now I could add the snaps! I sewed two to each upper arm and two to each wrist to hold the wide ribbon edge closed. I also sewed two to the back, at the base of the scoop to the yellow ribbon, and on either side of the hook and eye on the dress to attach the cape once I was in the dress.

You’d never believe it—I hardly could, but the dress was done! I swooped around my apartment in it for a while and yelled some Star Wars quotes at some unsuspecting friends who came by, they were confused and probably a little scared, and it was all great fun.

All I had left to do was make the accessories, which at this point felt a bit like the last half of Return of the King: unnecessary because the story is technically already done, but you still have to watch it because it isn’t actually done until you do. But that is for next time, because I’m still busy dancing in my Padmé dress.

Padmé’s Lake Dress, Part 3 Previously on The Death Dress… Poor unsuspecting Erika thought dyeing her dress would be easy. Little did she know that dyeing would feel a whole lot like…