Brocade dress

This one started with a vintage dress pattern I got from an old woman Haynes Lane Collector's Market - a great place to go if you like sifting through dusty and precarious piles of old toys, records and haberdashery. It looks very classically 60s, but I have a feeling it might be later because it was with another pattern in the same size and a similar style that was dated 1972- the 60s had a bit of a long acid comedown fashion-wise.

I'd had some brocade fabric I was keen to get used up - it was a bargain bin thing I'd bought ages ago. Laying out the pattern pieces it quickly became apparent I didn't have enough fabric, so I had to improvise and use another tiny remnant for the yoke. Together, the colours looked a bit suburban sofaish, so they fell victim to my dyeing obsession.

Even with the extra fabric, I had to be a bit devious to squeak the pattern pieces out of only 1x1.5 metres, cutting into seam allowances and changing the shape a bit - there were only the tiniest of scraps left at the end, and there was no way I could match up the pattern along the seams. As though things weren't complicated enough, as I was sewing I noticed a horrible bleached bit down the middle.

It looked worse in real life, and I despaired for a bit and put the project away - but after a while I reconciled myself to it and carefully painted the colour back in with more fabric dye.I didn't mind the finished dress, but it needed something, so I braved embroidery for the first time in a long while, working with two strands of copper metallic thread that tangled constantly to do the outlines, then filling them in with the real stuff. I did it mostly on the bus, enabling me to experience all the possible variations of "My Grandma used to embroider/sew/crochet/do things with string" type conversations in terms of ages, technical knowledge and creepiness levels. 

I'm really pleased with how my first attempt at an invisible zip at the back came out, so will try and get a pic of that too at some point.

Fairies

There were two slightly sad looking fairy/eighteenth century style pantomine dresses lurking in Antoinette's. The bodices were mostly plain, but someone had haphazardly brushed them with paint V shapes and what looked like hot glue stains. My design had to incorporate the existing stains and colours, so I turned the lines into angled stems and leaves in acrylic paint, with some metallic details - trying my best to bring the bodice together with the much lighter colour of the skirt and sleeves.

I have a theory that these might have been for a 1950s production of A Midsummer's Night dream. If so, this is Mustard Seed....

Peaseblossom was similar, in pink - but minutes after I'd sewed the last bead on, an A-level photography student came in to hire her for a photoshoot. Hopefully she'll make good on her promise to send the pictures.

Decemberists Castaways and Cutouts cake

 My last cake for Liam was the cover of Mastodon's Leviathan - so much fun to do, wish I had pictures. This is another watery album art-based one, but not quite as good because it doesn't have a giant whaley shipwreck, although having the ghosts is something.

The icing round the edge is meant to be like waves, and the sponge inside is marbled blue - as were my hands/kitchen by the end. This is legitimately the best action shot I've ever taken.

Hobbit Cake

Its overly narrative cake time! This is another painted one, based on the scene in the hobbit where Bilbo, Gandalf and the dwarves are set upon by goblins. They escape by climbing trees, which the goblins set fire to, singing the gruesome song I've put on the cake - in excerpted form. Tolkien's songs are generally a bit wordy for decorative applications. Luckily, Gandalf is able to negotiate an eagle rescue.

Its sad that the photo's so blurry - I forgot my camera - as there's a lot of detail that isn't coming across. Most of it was painted in a sneaky corner of Pret A Manger in my lunchbreak, with the benign interference of two Glaswegian lawyers.

This was a ridiculous amount of painting, all started by seeing a vintage dress I loved in Lassco in Borough, which was a fatal combination of too expensive and wrong size. It had little grapes on it, which the seller kindly let me take pictures of. It is by no means symmetrical, despite long intervals obsessing and measuring, but hopefully if I always stand at a slight angle no one will notice.

I already had a black dress I never wore which was a similar style, although without the full skirt, so initially tried just to copy the grapes - but then my maximalist aesthetic took over and I couldn't stop painting, and then of course the hem looked lonely... I used almost an entire pot of gold fabric paint on this one, mixing it with acrylics to tint it as I went. When I have time I'll sew some beads or jewels on to match the original.

Work in Progress

I'm having real problems with resin at the moment - it hasn't been curing properly, maybe because of the weather, maybe because my resin and catalyst have been open too long. So I'm ordering a new brand online - Ice Resin - which will hopefully be better, but am thinking of selling some pop-up cards in the meantime. This one has my characteristic obsession with layers, which are separated by concertina folds at each side, which you can see in the second picture. This needs a bit of tidying up, then its off to the copy shop. The layers will look crisper on the copies, as this one is warped from paint, but its still going to be a challenge getting some properly 3D looking photos.

This may look complicated, but its nothing compared to the next card I'm plotting...

Tom's birthday cake this year wasn't actually the first Super Mario themed one I've done, but it was the first one with a kind of abstract vertical narrative; the bottom scene is fat Mario surrounded by takeaway boxes and pizza etc, and the top one is thin Mario, planting a flag with his target weight on it onto a conquered of mountain of unhealthy foods.

It didn't actually need as much explaining as I'd feared - most of my icing jobs should come with footnotes anyway. Making the meringues under stress/in company was not the wisest move but they are the first ones I've made that don't look like small astronomical objects, so that's nice. Inside it was all sponge and jam, and got eaten despite being part of a cavalcade of cakes.