Thursday 25 June 2009

THING 2 ..... June 26th ( slightly cheating)

Right, I have to admit, this 'thing' was made a few weeks ago, but I think it deserves to go on here, and as I'm going away this week, I wont be making anything this week, I shall be galavanting.
Ok so it used to be a drab wrap around skirt , the colour of faded poo...or should I say ' biscuit"?
I got it off ebay and wore it for a whole winter till I became sick of brown based outfits.
And I had this old Red or Dead denim jacket, with an amazing 'rainbow trout' effect where the weave technique of the indigo denim on the outside made the cotton all shiny and electric blue on the inside .. clever eh!. it had long past its days of being my fave denim jacket, but had some interesting detailing, like the buttons and the concertina foldy bits.. This jacket was crying out for its next reincarnation into something else funky for ages... and as I think that poo brown ( or biscuit brown ) and electric blue contrast really well together, this remix project had to happen. It took me a whole afternoon to decide how to chop up the jacket and rearrange it onto the skirt base, but in the end I think it works quite well - all assymetrical n' that!
I dont know what Wayne Hemingway would say about it.

Monday 22 June 2009

THING 1 .... June 21st 2009

My mum gave me her old denim skirt to make a summer dress for the minx, so on the longest night of the year, and when the minx was asleep, I set to work - it was done by total guess work and guerilla measuring techniques ( sizing it up against a t shirt that fits her, and guessing the length!) The flowers are cut from an old pair of jeans that dont fit her any more but had cute applique on them, and she insisted on pockets which I had to add the next day. Luckily all the beading and seaming and hems and sparkly flowers were there already on the original denim skirt so all i had to do was sew up the two sides and remember to leave holes for arms. And the natural fraying of denim around the pockets and arm holes and neck / tie ups, will look cool as the dress ages and gets washed, so it will look better the more raggedy it becomes ( thats my excuse for not being a seamstress anyway!)

INTRODUCING...

I'm Madame Deux Chats... artist..DJ..stuff-maker..mother of small child..various other unpigeonholeable titles...and when people ask me "what do you do then?"  its so hard to answer that when you have umpteen random answers. I often wish I had only one or two answers to keep things simple..like "oh I count pigeons for a living ,Monday to Friday, and in my spare time I just listen to rare Swiss Jazz and drink tea",  but that aint how I roll :-)
Anyway , to illustrate some of the 'things' that I find myself doing , but mostly to keep my creative mind ticking over, I have set myself a project to make one 'thing' each week for a year - I'm not specifying what genre of 'things' I shall make, but I shall definitely upload each of my weekly 'things' onto here, so by next June I should have 52 of them. Hurrah!

I shall also write a bit about how and why I made each particular 'thing'.

and you can tell me what you think..if you like.

and the next time someone asks me " so what do you do? " I will just direct them to this site and say " this and that and some of the other" 

I hope you enjoy my weekly posts

Merci beaucoup!

Madame Deux Chats