Poetry & Clothing Project: March

Always fashionably late, it's time for the March 2012 instalment of the Poetry & Clothing project. March 2012 was Month 11 in the project that sees a Zo-made garment made for and sent to my friend Harriet, who in turn riffs a poem based on what she receives.

For those who follow the P&C project (who wouldn't?!), you may remember that February's package was a hefty one including a stripey knit top, cosy mittens AND an underwear set because February is Harriet's birth-month. Plus she always feels a bit down at that time of the year so I wanted to cheer her up with new garments. For March's creation, I needed to take things down again a notch, so created just one piece.

I know that Harriet loves to wear the batwing dress from the September instalment, plus she wants to get some grey pieces into her wardrobe, so I decided to make a garment from the same pattern as my leopard collar batwing top which would incorporate both of those elements as well as a fresh pop of colour to welcome the Spring.

The grey jersey came from a big bag of sample fabric we received from work, and I picked up the contrast yellow print cotton at the first Brighton sewing meet-up and fabric swap back in June 2011. I love how the grey elements of the quilting cotton match the grey marl of the jersey.

So, that was the trailer for the next P&C post's poem. Now onto the main feature from February's clothing package. Stripey top, mittens and underwear, how did Harriet poetically respond to those?:


February


All the symbols in place
The tea, the toast, the stack of cards
The ruffles bed clothes
A smother of rain to say
This is more than a day
(a world on all fours)
Cut to: my face in the dark
blue bicycles on a pair of knickers
the puckered fur of a pair of mittens
Cut to: dear old time, tea stains
on the pillow
Grey light rising onto scrapped stamps
an odd inky street name
a number
the perfect place
that special
despairing grace


LOVE this poem! It encapsulates both the joy and depression that the month of February routinely brings into Harriet's life for the duration.  

 

Poetry & Clothing Project: February

I am being slow to catch up with the garments and poems of the Poetry & Clothing project, what with it being mid-May and I'm only just blogging about February, but as everyone knows, the best things come to those who wait.

February's installment is special: the clothing more personal and plentiful, and the accompanying poem from the previous month a real treat. February is Harriet's birth-month (we are firm believers in the existance of birth-weeks and birth-months, which enable thorough celebration). It is also a bit of a dark time for many. Christmas, New Year and all the associated fun has passed and yet the beauty and revival of Spring are still firmly out of our grasp. So I produced a clutch of goodies to both celebrate and console Harriet this February.

First up was a stripey top (pictured at the top), not without nautical overtones! Made from a thickish knit fabric, possibly some kind of double knit, I played with the direction of stripe for the yoke area on the front and back. I also top-stitched the yoke seam allowance down for comfort. The next item is a pair of recycled jumper mittens (like these) to keep Harriet's hands toasty during the final throws of Winter. The outer layers are made from felted red and leopard printed knitwear, the inside layers are made from a cashmere jumper for pure cosiness. And finally, a vest and pants set. Who doesn't have trouble getting laundry dry during the Winter?! Don't tell me extra undies wouldn't come in useful.

So if all that gratuitous makery wasn't enough for you, check out the poetic response to January's jersey top and wool high-waisted shorts outfit. A distinctly saucy poem for you today, confirming what most of us here already know: the erotic potential of handmade clothing!

January

With such tender precision
this hand moves up my side
each pin point incision
on each soft curve, guides
this almost stranger
(strangeness subsides with time)
inside my wings are in danger
of unsticking colliding with rhyme
and a hand
on a zip
and a slow revealing hip
our lips like wands
make magic with words
go on kissing unheard

Poetry & Clothing Project: January

Now, it cannot have escaped your notice that I'm pretty behind with the documentation of mine and Harriet's Poetry & Clothing project. Perhaps you were fearing the worst and had assumed that it had be derailed in some way. Fear not my friends!!! It is alive and well and I shall endeavour to catch up with the documentation over the next month or so. Onwards to January's garment-based and December's poetry-based delights.

For January, I created Harriet an outfit comprising of a long sleeved jersey top and high-waisted tweed shorts (pictured at the top). Conscious of not creating any wardrobe orphans, I wanted to make sure Harriet had at least one garment that the shorts would look ok with, even if she ultimately chose to never pair these garments together in this way.

The jersey was made using a pattern that I've developed myself. It has seasonally appropriate long sleeves, gathered-head sleeves and a flattering scoop neck. I made it using some black jersey that had been dwelling in my stash for some months that had been very kindly donated to me by Jessica from A Yen for Craft. Sent all the way from San Francisco, apparantly this jersey had been living in her stash for years, so it was lovely to be able to finally turn into a wearable garment.  

The shorts were made from the same pattern as the denim pair from first ever edition of the P&C project back in April 2011. They were made a little smaller after feedback from the denim version, and in a smarter fabric for a different look. I really enjoy making these high-waisted shorts, so I was really pleased that Harriet was so into her first pair and hinted that another wouldn't go amiss!

The greyish-blue wool tweed was so nice to work with, I really pushed myself to create a very clean finish, even adding hanging loops and one of my 'Blatant Self Promotion' clothing labels.

Now for some culture: Harriet's poetic response to her December/Christmas check wooly cape.

December

Where the wings would sprout

in a mustard speckled second

my tail, my fur

wrap around these brittle bones

Oh to be a bird

(that well-worn, waxy wish)

in which

the sun came undone

knotted up the shoulder blades

the humps and bumps

fade

curl up inside

a loosely woven consolation

the kind to keep the wind

at arms length

from a nap in a field

in the cool yellow spring

Poetry & Clothing Project: December

It's been a long time coming, but here is an update from the Poetry & Clothing project. You'd be more than forgiven for forgetting where we had got to! The last installment was November's garment: a remade sweatshirt with spotty Peter Pan collar. Garments for December, January and February have been made and received, but a bad bout of writer's block meant Harriet was unable to reciprocate for a while. Thankfully that has passed and we are back in business so here is December's garment:

A cape, no less!!! It may not be obvious, but I generally try to make Harriet seasonally appropriate garments. And what with it being Christmas, I thought I'd stretch myself to a larger and more involved project that my previous offerings. I used the vintage cape pattern I showed you in my outerwear sewing pattern hoard post. I created my own lining pattern pieces as this sewing pattern made the assumption the owner was so adept at sewing, that separate pieces would be an unnecessary frivolity (they wouldn't).

Look! Fully lined!!! I had to wing it and I'm not entirely sure I nailed the arm opening slits and how they relate to the lining at that point, but it seems to work well enough. The check wool fabric, in case you couldn't guess, came from my place of work, as did the lining. I decided to cut the collar pieces on the bias to alter the direction of the check. Because the check it quite a busy pattern, and because the fabric is so thick, I decided to use chunky poppers as a fastening which would be invisible when worn done-up.

Harriet was able to come and visit us in Brighton in 'one-night-only' fashion over the Christmas break whilst she was back in UK. We had such a great time together with Patty and Michelle, and I so pleased that she donned the cape straight away. Here she is pictured above, grappling with a cash machine!

It's so nice to be able to show you some photos of Harriet, to prove she's not just a figment of my imagination! The brief time we were able to spend together was as inspirational as ever, as we pow-wowed about all our projects and endeavours going forward into the new year and beyond.

Ok, poetry time! Let's hear how Harriet interpretted that remade sweatshirt of hers:

November

Girls in a deli

little red dots

bodies that twist and sprout

still laugh, trip & yell

I don't want to grow up

bright gloom

beyond the light of the classroom

dappled sun on a plastic cup

Who are you, Peter Pan?

red buttons erupt, they burst

laughter burns red & thirst

spilling over into the thought that they can

make that kind of joke

in the shade of a playground oak

Poetry & Clothing Project: November

Alrighty, today I can finally share with you a garment that I made before this whole Poetry & Clothing project had even been invented. The first garment I got to make for myself whilst working at TRAIDremade was this remade sweatshirt with a contrast Peter Pan collar that made back in November 2010. Well, Harriet saw that on this lil' blog of mine and asked me to make her something similar. It took me until the following March to finally get it completed, and then the Spanish postal system managed to lose the damn thing. Thanks for that, Spanish postal system (AKA Correos). I have had many a beef with Correos, but now is not the time or place...

Anyways, I really enjoyed making the sweatshirt for her and it somehow sparked the idea for the P&C project, which I started the following month (April). Eventually, the package conatining the sweatshirt reappeared in the UK by which my sewing-thoughts had already turned to warmer weather garments, so the sweatshirt got put away until the weather got nippier again. Well, in an unprecedented show of sewing-project organisation, I spent much for my sewing time in November making a long list of Christmas gifts. To give me more time for that, I decided November's P&C garment could be the long-lost sweatshirt which Harriet had first desired a whole year before! I really hope she hasn't gone off the idea of it after all that time!

So, in much the same way at my own Peter Pan collar sweatshirt remake, this garment started life as an unwanted mens sweatshirt. I recut the pieces for a closer, cuter, more feminie silhouette with slight gathering at the sleeve head and 3/4 length sleeves. The over-sized collar is made from a scrap of red and white spotty cotton, and the buttons, which IMO look distinctly edible, reflect that pop of colour.

And on to the more interesting half of this exchange: the poetry! Harriet's poem that I am sharing with you today was written in response to October's P&C outfit:

October

We cover our fabrics with leaves, birds, butterflies, strawberries, animal prints and wander around urban jungles in this way, imagining ourselvesto be somehow wild and essential because of it. I follow Gaudi's curves as though they were sculpted under the majestic reign of nature herself. And yet in these reprints there is something luxurious - the way we love to refer to grass and sky as velvet. There is lavishness in simplicity - something strangley opulent and timeless about a collar which bends like the polished wood of a hand-carved pew and at the same time, something shocking about sitting in a church dressed in leopard print. What I love about this church is the way it ridicules austerity. I love the playfulness, the festivity, the way it allows for bawdiness, greed and generosity all at once. And as I sit there, I notice something strange happening. I become camoflage. I slowly morph into something as imperceptible as dust. My skin, such as it is today, is at home here. The black and orange make perfect sense among the huge pacific shells filled with holy water, the purple butterfly wings flung open against the sky and the ghosts sliding in on flakes of dust, settling on slices of glass pineapple. Like me, they are quietly measuring the circumference of light.

Poetry and Clothing Project: October

The P&C project is now over half-way through and the garments I've been making for Harriet have started to reflect a nod to the colder weather. October's clothing side of the bargain comprised of two garments which could potentially be worn together as an outfit. The first is the Peter Pan collar leopard print top pictured above.

This is the first garment I've made for this project since June which actually started out as a different garment, rather than a flat piece of fabric, before I got my hands on it. This stretch fabric leopard print dress (pictured above and below) had a broken zip and had been returned to the famous high street shop that donates a lot of its seconds to the charity I work for. You would be correct in thinking that the fabric of this garment is totally up my street, and I must admit I did consider the possibility of resurrecting it for myself. However, it is a size 10 (and a very small one at that), and my dimensions most certainly aren't. I decided it would be a waste to hack it up just to harvest some fabric to use as contrast panels or something when I could use most of it by transforming it for Harriet instead who is a size or so smaller than me.

I started by carefully harvesting the Peter Pan collar before deconstructing the rest of the dress. Harriet is often smitten by a Peter Pan collar so I definately wanted that to still be the key feature of the final garment. Using a fairly fitted T-shirt block, I then re-cut the rest of the dress into a top by aligning the bottom edge of the pattern pieces with the existing dress hem. This meant the final top could be a bit larger than the tiny dress was initially.

I overlocked the centre back seam closed where the zip had been, then re-cut a back key-hole to allow for getting in and out of the final thing. I reattached the collar and stitched a little hook and eye closure. Bish bash bosh, job done.

The second garment is a full skirt with box pleats and a curved waistband. It is designed to sit snugly on the natural waistline and emphasise that part of the body. The fabric is charcoal suiting with a nice drape and slight stretch. I thought a plain coloured classic fabric like this would make the skirt more versatile for different occassions and easier to match with different tops.

This skirt design (the 'Camille'!) is one I developed for the range at work, and is sometimes available in various fabrics on the website here. I really enjoy making these Camille skirts because they look best when made in medium weight woven fabrics (my favourite to work with) and you can get a nice crisp finish to the garment if you use an iron to press each stage of construction.

I haven't made myself any of these skirts however, because my stupidly high natural waistline means the top of the skirt's waistband is basically touching my boobs! NOT a strong look. But is was a pleasure to make it for Harriet, and I've been informed it fits her perfectly and she's got heaps of wear from it so far. Can't ask for more than that!

So, enough of my garment-based warbling, 'Where's the poetry?! Damn it, that's what we've come here for', I hear you cry. Indeed. Today's poem, if you recall, is in reference to the slinky batwing jersey dress from September's installment if this project. It may interest you to know that Harriet teaches English in an international school in Spain.


September

The goat bells are ringing in a nearby field
one of the children looks up and smiles.
On the wall is a poster of similes
made by a Japanese boy who speaks next to no English.
By each simileis a picture
the last of them reads
It is as rough as a moth's wing
each word carefully unearthed from the dictionary
his face crumpled in disgust as he searches for
a picture of this creature he hates.
He probably still wonders how it is that gh
makes an f sound. I save it for later:
the question of how we defy phonetics -
how foggy and phoney our definitions can be.
The bells continue their ringing
(a vapid, unsatisfactory word)
and mingle with the slippery soft bat wings
against my arm and the side of my back.
Bat wings leave just enough room -
flexible, forgiving.
They hang the way that words ought to hang
brushing the skin gently
twisting the fibres of colour and sense.

Poetry and Clothing Project: September

One of the things I really like about this Poetry and Clothing project, is that it gives me a reason to create garments that aren't necessarily something I'd wear myself. You could say I am fairly limited in what I personally wear: generally I like a retro 50's/60's silhouette, prefer certain colours (navy, red, black, mustard), and have quite a low tolerance to garments without anchors. So making garments for other people, in this case my friend Harriet, is a good excuse for me to bring life to different ideas. It's another way for me to express myself, to have a kind of visual conversation about what I feel.

September's P&C garment is just such a piece. I'm really pleased with this batwing dress. The style is really cool: it's loose and casual yet slinky. The fabric is a jersey, super soft, very fine and ever-so-slightly sheer, so the overall effect is subtley sexy without being revealing. You could also get a fair bit of trans-season wear from it with wool tights and boots when Autumn comes 'a knocking. However, I can't take all the credit for the design: my boss developed a batwing top pattern inspired by an H&M garment she saw. Then I refined it a little and elongated it into a dress version.

As you can see, the fullness of the batwing is gathered into the sleeve sections. The whole thing was stitched together with an overlocker using really fine jersey needles in about 15mins. I then used a normal flatlock machine to turn up the hem and sleeve edges.

I also found a bit of tomato red poly/cotton twill from goodness-knows-when in my stash. I'd been messing around with the pattern that I made my navy capri's from, so thought I'd make Harriet a pair in red. Now, this was always going to be a long shot, making well-fitting trousers for someone who's in another country isn't the easiest task (spoiler alert: they didn't fit, but she's going to find a suitable recipient).

And on to the poetry side of the bargain. This one was written about the top I made and sent in August. Now, apparantly Harriet has recently developed a skin sensitivity to some synthetic fabrics, and unfortunately that includes whatever the hell that fabric is I used for her August top. Around that time, she was host to a French cyclist called Sylvie who was making a stop in Barcelona whilst on her way down to Morocco. After a long time spent cycling around, Sylvie was in need of a bit of freshen up and make over, so Harriet passed on a few garments she could no longer wear, including this top which Sylvie apparantly totally loves. She has promised to take a photo of herself wearing it when she reaches Morocco! It's sad that Harriet lost out on a top she thought was cute, but it's great a happy owner was found. I really love the idea of putting beautiful lovingly made garments out there for inspirational people to enjoy as they push boundaries and have an adventure!


Sylvie (August)

What makes one itch
makes two happy
we spent three days
talking about how two wheels
are better than four
scratching each other's itches.
She was so small
fit into five-year-old clothes.
She left on the 6th September
at seven in the morning
and before she left, we ate
cereal with dried fruits for breakfast.
At 9am I thought of her,
wearing a new top, then
wrapped inside her bivouac tent

And I will count the days that I have lost
against the ones that she will gain
and each time I look insdie
my moth-eaten wardrobe, I will imagine
all those bird-like white shapes
flying over a sea of mint green
and I am certain
that when I see her again
she will have grown


I'm sure it doesn't need to be said, but I LOVE this poem and I love this particular month in the project. It was an unexpected twist, the addition of another garment recipient, one who clearly left her mark. I really hope she does take that photo and sends it to us.

Poetry and Clothing Project: August

Oh lordy, do I have some catching up to do?! Here I am in chilly, rainy October thinking about garments I made for Harriet back in summer. So, to recap, July's installment of the P&C project consisted of a vintage floral linen skirt and the infamous red swing linen swing trousers, the later being the subject of Harriet's most recent poem which I will share with you shortly.

In the meantime, allow me to show you how I kept my side of the bargain for this project a couple of months ago. August's garment started life as a remnant of fabric (pictured above) that I found in a dustbin bag at work heading to be pulped with a load of other scraps of unwanted fabric. It's some sort of synthetic or synthetic/cotton blend but has the feel and handle of light weight cotton. It's mint green with a nice white paintbrush effect printed design, it reminds me pretty hard of some summer dresses my mum made me in the mid-80's. The fabric looked like it had once formed a section of a dress or skirt that had since been shortened or hacked up at some point. Since the previous package contained only 'bottoms', sending Harriet a sweet summer blouse for August seemed like a plan.

No prizes for guessing what pattern I used for this top!!! Yep, that's right, it's good old Simplicity 3835 (can you believe that they are no longer printing that pattern?! It's such a good pattern for beginners). This is probably the ga-zillionth garment I've made straight or adapted from this pattern. It's a great pattern for light weight fabric like this, and pretty economical fabric-wise too.

To make it's basic form a little more interesting, I included a couple of features I've applied in the past when making things from this pattern. At the back I added a cheeky key hole, the edge of which is bound in self-bias binding. On the front I added two tiny pockets using the same tiny pocket pattern I developed for this version.

Now it's time to take a look at the poem Harriet wrote in response to July's package. She wrote this during her epic cycling trip from Toulouse to Venice and around Greece.


July (Red Trousers)

They are reminiscent of my grandmother,
both of them in fact.

The one: high waist and slim legs
The other: the way she walked as she grew older,
in printed polyester and the way such love weighed her down.

I've no use for red trousers right now -
I'm all lycra and sleeveless vests
little drops of sweat drizzling into shiny spokes
new wheels whizzing along ancient roads.

Still, the vague notion of my grandmothers
creeps in from time to time and penetrates
the day with a sense of thread
tying them to me, stitching this experience
to something they perhaps dreamt of -
a pattern of a fantasy filed
on a shelf but never sewn.

Likewise, I sometimes see the red trousers
strolling towards me across rice fields, pines,
wading through fast running streams,
flagging up some future fantasy
so far unfathomable

or caught in the bottomless sky
like a bright scrap of home.


I think it's so lovely that those trousers have triggered memories of distant grandmothers, in lands that are so far in space and time from the grandmothers' realities of life when they were Harriet's age. It reminds me how lucky we are now, or conversely how unlucky they were, to not have the choices open to them that women like Harriet and I have open to us today. The poem reminds me to take those opportunities with both hands. Not just to travel, because that often has its own set of debates attached to it these days, with the approaching reality of Peak Oil (which I am feeling a bit guilty about right now, having just returned from four days in Istanbul. But to make choices about how to live your life in a way that is most authentic to you, not to let time whizz by like the passing scenery.

Poetry and Clothing Project: July

It's high time I created the next installment of the exciting Poetry and Clothing project. As you can tell by the title of this post, the timing of the project has slipped somewhat, but for excellent reason. Harriet, our resident poet, spent a large chunk of the summer cycling solo from Toulouse in France to Venice in Italy before taking a boat to Greece. This adventure, which culminated in an inspirational poetry symposium on a Greek island, took a couple of months in total, before she had to sell her bike and fly back to Barcelona. It sounds like she had an amazing trip and I'm sure I speak for many when I declare myself more than a little jealous! But that's Harriet: she thinks of something she wants to do, and gets it done despite any difficulties, practicalities and hurdles that may threaten to get in the way.

Since her return, she has typed up the most recent poems that form her side of this creative relay, so I'd best get on with sharing the garments I sent her for July.

First up, she received a garment that has already graced this blog: the red linen swing trousers. As you may or may not recall, these trousers, though the result of another lovely collaboration of sorts, just didn't work out for me. The fit and indeed style weren't right for me, so I decided to pass them on to Harriet who I knew would love their 1940s high-waisted stylings and most likely fit them better than I.

One special little detail that I forgot to share with you at the time is the cute domino button. The button that popped off because of my belly!

Harriet is also a tap dancer, and in fact tap dancing is an integral feature of the life of Lola, Harriet's alter-ego. I like to think that these trousers could look awesome when worn during a tapping session! They also fulfill two of Harriet's clothing requirements that she outlined when this project began: plain AND high-waisted.

The other garment I sent her for July was also made from seasonally-appropriate linen fabric. This is a really simple basic A-line skirt made from a vintage 1970s curtain. A pretty standard and uninspiring garment in some senses, but in another it was a relevant and useful training tool. I gave my best mate a sewing lesson in which she made her first ever garment, a lovely A-line skirt made from a cute black and white Eiffel Tower printed cotton. I aimed to touch Vic's skirt project as little as possible, because I really wanted her to get those most out of the lesson, and we all know how easy it can be to just say 'Oh, give it here' when teaching someone something. So my aim was to make the same garment along side as Vic made her's to show her the steps before she did her own. But actually she was really good and honestly didn't need much showing at all. I'll try and get a pic of Vic in her skirt one of these days...

But back to 'Poetry and Clothing'. As you may have noticed, when posting about a month's garments, I include for your pleasure the poem that Harriet wrote for me that was inspired by the previous month's garment/s. June's package consisted of a pale blue striped high-waisted pencil skirt, and a ruffle front detail T-shirt remake. She decided she was going to wear the pieces together to attend the graduation ceremony of this year's leavers from the school where she teaches.


Graduation Day (June 2011)

Playing a part
(a photo on a lawn)
with time sliding along
a thin wire.

Tight-fitting ideals
and memories filed
neatly away in an empty classroom
(one lone magnet holding nothing
but itself to the wall)

Me, straight and curved
(the way a woman looks to a girl)
in an attempt to contain that
red-eyed hope
(no heart to tell how we shrink
and sag with time)

A long-seamed dart
imitates perfect long legs
a perfect shade of pink
and the way the sky changes colour
(nothing to anchor us
but heels in the mud)

The invisible champagne spills
the fireworks scratching at the sky
the insects by the pool
all suggest we are on the cusp of something
(something akin to cliché
but more ruffled and prettier somehow)

A well-measured match

And then, the courage to clash


I really love the ideas and nostalgic snap shots that are woven into this poem. The subtle references to the feel, fit and details of the garments are referenced so cleverly too, IMO.

Poetry and Clothing Project: June

Time for another installment in my year-long 'Poetry and Clothing' project where I make at least one garment a month for my ultra-inspirational friend Harriet. If you wish to have a catch up on the garments so far, take a squizz at April's and May's. I wanted June's package to contain garments which answered more specifically Harriet's requests, I could no longer ignore her plea for a 'narrow plain high waisted skirt (PLEAAAAASE!) any colour'.

The eagle-eyed among may notice a distinct resemblence between this pale blue high waisted skirt, and my own pale blue high waisted skirt. Indeed I used the exact same fabric and exact same pattern, if it ain't broke.... Except I embellished Harriet's with some white buttons instead of a massive anchor to hopefully create a more versatile garment. The back was finished in the same way: with a neat CB slit to make walking in it an option.

But what I did not want to create was a skirt that would become a wardrobe orphan if she had few or no tops to pair it with. So I made a T-shirt refashion that would begin to answer her cry for 'plain but cute things!' that could also be worn with this skirt.

It's a fairly simple semi-fitted slash neck T-shirt made from two old men's large white T-shirts. I cut the front, back and sleeves from one (making sure all those pattern pieces were lined up with the existing garment's hems so I didn't need to finish those myself on the final garment) and harvested the bottom edge to bind the neck hole and large strips for the ruffle detail from the second old T-shirt. The ruffle detail was very easy but a little time consuming to create. I folded the strips in half then created two rows of stitching to form the gathering. Having checked the gathers were even, I positioned the gathered sections evenly on the front and top-stitched them in place.

Here are the June garments together. When Harriet received them, she decided she would wear them at the graduation ceremony of the school she works at. I hope it went well and she felt nice.

Myself, I am the lucky recipient of another poem written by Harriet. This one was inspired by a trip she took to the beach (I'm assuming in Barcelona or nearby) whilst wearing the navy spotty sateen skirt.


A Skirt on the beach (May 2011)


We were polkadots on the sand

clustered up at one end of knowing.

We started out small and,

as the day wore on, we gave weight

to the air, tip-toed across

wet patches like darting atoms. We

found ourselves scattered as

little thougths germinated in

the sandy soil, quiet behind voices.

We gave in to the drip of ice cream

and the whizz of frisby with knickers

hitched up, under the shade of blue trees.


That's right peops, the 'So, Zo...' blog: where art and design meet and mutually inspire!!!

Poetry and Clothing Project: May

Time to update you on the progress of my 'Poetry and Clothing' project in which I'm making at least one garment a month for a year for my inspirational and super-talented friend Harriet. The first installment was in April, and now that May's package is firmly in her mitts, I'm safe to divulge its contents.

Using my latest pattern obsession (which could soon rival Simplicity 3835 for my affections), I made Harriet a Simplicity 2451 in some of the leftover spotty sateen from my Ceylon dress. This curtain-in-a-former-life fabric was the perfect weight for this style, plus it doesn't crease particularly easily so this skirt should hold its shape well when worn all day. It's possibly not quite the basic wardrobe staple she could really do with, but hopefully it is plain enough to match its way into a few outfits.

Along with the skirt travelled a canvas bag I got at a recent etsy networking meetup I went to (which wasn't particularly useful or interesting, but I got to have a natter plus there was free wine).

In response to the package I sent her in April, harriet wrote me a poem, it's so beautiful that it seems a shame for it to only be read by myself. I'm sure she won't mind, want to read it?

April

She was on the right side of light
tucked her edges between nautical stripes.

She found gambling to be
much as the films had promised and

played poker out on deck, with a frosted glass
in one hand and the ocean in the other.

She forgot the sickening tug of the tide,
or that she has hidden somewhere up her sleeve

that loyalty was to love them and leave them
and love them in the creases of here to there.

She wore battered plastic (low tide treasure)
and a well-worn squint (high sun demanded it)

time was elastic out there, throwing buttons
into the swell for good luck

to wash up, stretched and new
on someone else's shore.


I feel so special to have had a poem written for me!

Poetry and Clothing Project: April

In my post last week I introduced my new project, the 'Poetry & Clothing' project, in which I plan to make my lovely friend Harriet at least one garment each month for a year. Thanks to those of you who left a nice comment about it. When I explained to Harriet about the project, I asked her to have a think about any gaps she may have in her wardrobe that I could hopefully help to fill.

Off the top of her head she came up with (in her words):

- plain but cute things!
- narrow plain high waisted skirt (PLEAAAAASE!) any colour
- feminine vintage blouse 40's 50's style or anything you like (ruffles, puffs, whatevs!) totes trust your styling
- round neck t-shirts (striped or plain, long or short sleeved)
- nicely fitted sexy dress (always thinking of that beautiful coral one you made for your cousin's wedding)
- anything and everything high waisted
- absolutely anything with a peter pan collar

So there's my brief. I'll try and tick as many of those criteria as possible before the year is out. It's no secret that I'm pretty committed to trying to live as sustainably as I can (without living in a tepee ;-)). Harriet's definately on the same page as me when it comes to such issues, so even though sending her packages via the post clearly isn't devoid of environmental impact, I will be making all the garments for this project from second hand/unwanted fabric and existing garments. These days, my main source for second hand fabric and garments is the donated stuff we get at work that my boss feels isn't appropriate for our range. The bummer is that very rarely do we receive solid coloured fabric, or at least a colour that doesn't make your feel sick in a quality of fabric that you'd actually like to wear. I'm going to have to dig deep in my stash, think creatively and pray to the gods of donated fabric so I can create Harriet some much needed plain garments.

Anyways, time to 'play catchup' and document what was sent in the first package of this project which was April's. Denim high-waisted shorts! I know for a fact that Harriet has a serious weakness for such things, so I thought that would be a solid place to start.

I used some lovely, soft broken twill denim that I'd had lurking in my stash for years (the other half of which I used for this skirt) and wanted to get busted. The pattern is the high-waisted shorts pattern I developed for work, first shown here. I've since made myself a plain denim pair a while ago also, but haven't got round to blogging them yet (slack!). I had to squeeze the pieces out from the fabric for Harriet's pair, so they didn't end up quite as high-waisted as the original pattern, but I think the end result are more wearable that way.

I was also tempted to add buttons or some sort of tab detail but decided to keep them plain for maximum outfit adaptability! Inside I added one of my little 'Electric Pussycat' labels, which I usually reserve for my bag making escapades, but I had them to hand and I love how much more special garments tend to look with a little label attached.

The second garment that squirrelled itself into April's package is a jersey top that was the result of some lunchtime experimentation. A vague garment idea that had been floating about in my head and I wanted to see how this teal stretchy stuff from my stash behaved when made into a garment. I love the look of the final outcome, but the fit was a bit wierd on my figure, so I thought maybe it would work better for Harriet. If not, no loss, as a recent email has confirmed the denim shorts are a winner and have been worn with braces by both Harriet and Lola (Harriet's 1920's tapdancing alter ego!)!

Introducing: Poetry and Clothing Project

Apparently there’s not enough challenging going on round these parts, as I’ve recently conjured up a new one for myself. The idea for it came very organically, as all the best ones do, and I’m really inspired by it. Let me explain:
I have a friend called Harriet who I have mentioned at least once on this blog (she popped up in my Barcelona story post about how the hell I ended up living there). To break things down, basically we met through the Wardrobe Refashion site in 2007-ish. At the time we were both living in East London so we arranged to meet up after work one day. Harriet turned up to the coffee shop with her massive accordion! I was in the middle of having a ‘should I leave my shitty day job to try and do something more fulfilling at the risk of ruining my CV’ type drama, and she was instantly very receptive and gave some great advice. Harriet was a great person to speak to at that time, because she is a deeply creative individual who allows this to manifest throughout pretty much everything she does. And she does a lot. Anyways, she’d been getting into sewing and makery of a fabric nature, so I told her about the London sewing group I was organising at that time. She came along to a meetup, the same one where we met the wonderful Michelle, if memory serves, and the three of us became great friends and had some lovely get-togthers until Harriet moved to Barcelona a few months later.

There really isn’t time or space to list all the interesting things she’s done, both before and after her move to Spain. Her time-consuming day job (as well as simply the number of hours in a day) prevents her currently from actively participating in every single area that interests her, but she is into poetry, photography, collage, sewing, singing, tap dancing, playing the accordion, eco-building, cooking and who-knows what else. She really lives her life in a totally explorative way, always experimenting and pushing forward. For example, Harriet felt she wasn’t keeping abreast of the news enough, so challenged herself once a week to check out the Guardian newspaper online, and then pick a story from which she would extract the words to create a poem. She blogged it, go and have a squizz! She is also heavily involved in the Barcelona Poetry Brothel, where her alter-ego Lola (a tap dancer from the 1920’s) reads poems in English, Spanish and French. A co-creator of the Poetry Machine, she is also about to be featured in a publication called Barcelona Ink, as well as creating some publications of her own. Phew!

(Harriet and me at my 30th birthday shindig)

As you may imagine, I find her energy and output incredibly inspiring. She’s always been fully behind me with all the things I have undertaken and attempted. So, to keep some of her energy present in my own creating, AND to partly repay her for all her support, AND because she has so many plates spinning at the moment her sewing has been a bit neglected of late, I have pledged to make her at least one garment per month for a year (starting last month in April). Witness the birth of the ‘Poetry & Clothing’ Project (it’s a rubbish name, but a cute logo, no?!). Both of us have stuck to our Wardrobe Refashion pledges, therefore shopping for new clothes isn’t an option for her, so I think she’ll appreciate some ethically produced custom-made threads heading her way. As an expressive person and one hot mamasita, looking good and representing herself through her clothing is as important to Harriet as it is the rest of us. So it is with this in mind, along with our commonly-held values of reusing/recycling over buying new that I go into this new challenging project.

The keen eyed among you might have realised that it is now May, which means that I should have already started this challenge. Indeed I have and I’ll create a separate catch-up post very soon. I’ll keep you updated with my progress as this project and year unfolds.