Busy year.

Jewellery work

I've been learning to dance ATS® belly dance. As a queer-gender person, I'm not overly fond of the coin bras, so I'd been thinking about another way to 'bling up' the choli. My mind had been mulling over it for probably a year or so; before I saw Kae's choli decos. I have done jewellery work off-and-on since I was a child. I come back to it at various intervals as another of my creative expressions. So when I saw one of Kae's choli decos worn by Jesse, at a dance residential, I thought 'I could do something like that'. When I saw Jesse's choli deco, I had no idea about Kae's choli decos.

Anyway, fast forward a few months. I had a Hafla we were performing at; I created this 24hrs or so before the performance. I wanted to come up with my own idea and my own method of execution, so while Kae's choli deco is an inspiration, I tried to go my own way, so I wouldn't be plagiarising her work.

I had all these chains, bits and bobs and decided, it's time to start using them. I did the performance without the two coins on the front. The back is a little too heavy for the front, even with the big circle piece, so I added the two coins to add a little more weight to the front. I've danced in classes whilst wearing it, it's still too heavy in the back, so I may end up removing the long kuchi piece and replacing it with something else. Overall, I'm very pleased with my creation.

Oh, and people are telling me I should create more of these, I might, if I can get more chain... that's my difficulty, is finding different costume jewellery chains in 2m lengths that don't look tacky or excessively cheap. I'll make more of these choli chains, if people want to supply me little bits and bobs to decorate their choli chains. My supply of objects is limited. The little gilet silver poppy seed heads are one of those limited items; I don't have anymore of them. If someone has kuchi bits and bobs they want repurposed, I'll try to use those in a design. I still have several of the tiny Chinese luck/felicity tokens, so those are an option I can use in other choli chain designs.

Again, I would find my own way to do these, I will not copy Kae's designs.

Choli Chain Front

Choli Chain Back

I might replace the current kuchi piece on the back with this:

Lapis and silver asyk pendant

Sewing

I've also done some sewing; in the past week, I've started on two pairs of pantaloons and I've finished one pair. I realise I need to tweak some of my process for the pantaloons as well, so the second pair is 'on hold' until I have more thinking done.

Olive crepe back satin pantaloons

I used the official FCBD® Folkwear® pattern as my guide/direction for making the 'loons, with a few of my ideas. Tuesday night, I finished the olive 'loons and got to dance in class with them. No serious issues, though they're quite long and drape over my feet; I need to open the waistband and remove about 5-10cm from the elastic, as the waistband is looser than I thought. I'm otherwise satisfied with my first pair of handmade 'loons.

Second pair of 'loons in progress

Close up of the wrong side of the 'loon fabric; it's very shiny and slippery.

I'm very much looking forward to finishing the second pair of 'loons, I rather like the pattern printed on the fabric. I think instead of gathering to the waistband this time, I'm going to try pleating. This crepe satin is as thin, or thinner, than the olive green fabric. Like the olive fabric, it frays like mad. I'm so glad I have the overlocker to control the raw edges. I may have to curve the bottom half of the legs, as trying to cram 45" wide fabric around a 7" ankle is difficult.

Hair Gardens

Right now is the season to get hair flowers from the shops such as Claire's. It's late Spring/early Summer here, so there is a huge assortment of colours and flower-types.

Flower hoard from Claire's.

I was overjoyed to see large sunflower and daisy hair flowers; a year or three or more ago, I bought two small sunflower clips. I did buy another two small ones, as well as the larger ones. I went back and bought more hair flowers, so now I should be set for the next several years of dancing. "Hair gardens" are typical of ATS® costuming.

Dancing in a park.

This is me, dancing for a photo shoot. Banjara skirt atop two 25yd tiered skirts; and a black velvet and lace choli. I have some vintage tassels tied to my plain black headband. I did the shoot before I made the choli chain.

Bobbin Lace 

I did say it's been a busy year. The lace butterfly is the 2013-2014 Easter class project. My tallies are still ropy -.-

Butterfly in bobbin lace.

I'll try to update/blog a little more frequently. I'm mostly writing and focusing on lace, dance, lace, dance... oh and I just started learning British Sign Language.

The other books

The other two books I picked up at the Essex Lace Fair are on torchon lace ('for girls in India to make') and decorative knotting. I didn't realise when I purchased the book that the torchon lace pattern book was from India or for instructing the girls of India with, but I find it amusing.

Why?

Because the previous day was the Thameside Lacemakers lace day and the speaker for the event discussed lace, but also spent a fair few minutes about an English woman missionary who went to India to do missionary work and start a school there teaching lace to help orphan and impoverished girls learn a vocation (this was in the early 1800s). And according to the publication date in my book, was still going in 1909.

The decorative knotting is, just to be different, a brand new publication. I think I got it because I wanted to find a supplier for fine nylon braided cord... oh and the pictures and instructions for a dragonfly pin also had something to do with it, heh.

Found some treasures at the Essex Lace Fair

Oh I found some wonderful books at the Essex Lace Fair! I am so very glad I attended this event. I discovered that Bead Fairs also exist here in Britain. *happy dance*

Anyway, on to the books, the vintage books. It will be quite a task to 'translate' these vintage crochet books into modern terms, oh and diagram them as well, so that it would be useful to those in the USA and the rest of the planet, should they want it. The instructions are written in an archaic form of British crochet terms, figuring out what the 'plain stitch' is amongst all the rest of the very wordy instructions will be fun. Still, the items photographed in these books are very pretty and could be converted to for use in today's world.

I've included a sample of the instructions and a plate from one of the books. They incorporate needle lace in their crochet patterns and also include braids amongst the crochet. One braid that instantly caught my eye was the 'Bigoudis braid'. The crochet patterns using implementing this braid are quite beautiful. I know we believe our lives to be so rushed and hurried, that we use fat yarns and don't have time to make things beautiful and comforting, but it would be a wonderful event if we could slow down and create (and use) such lovely objects once more.