lou-weaver....

This week I've been busy setting up my loom to start weaving my 6 technical samples (3 x single plain cloth with extra warp figuring & 3 x plain double cloth). We've covered all the theory in class and now the exciting part of putting it into practice has begun. One of my favourite things about weaving is all the kit.....

i love tools and dream of having my own little workshop or shed - as well as a studio of course!

I won't bore you with all the technical details but basically the pegs are hammered securely into the lag chain (following the 'knots and crosses' design you can see on the point paper) and these determine which shafts lift and when......the shafts lift certain warp threads which allow different weave structures/ patterns to be created. The motif I've chosen to create is at the top of the point paper.

here you can see the physical manifestation of procrastination in the form of pegs....

...and after weaving like a demon for the past few days here is my first completed sample...

....and a felted experiment.

I love how the motif disappears on the dark striped sections and appears more clearly in the light sections in the felted sample - felting is really exciting as you never really know how its going to turn out. I'm really pleased with the result as I took a lot of care to get the cloth even and error free.....one down only five to go!!

a little paper tree

A simple thankyou card mum commisioned me to make inspired by the autumn colours on a recent trip up north...

stunning!

re-weaving

After reading my sister Sarah Elizabeth's blog post a few weeks ago and watching the 'story of stuff' videos she linked to I've been thinking more and more about where stuff comes from and have been making a real effort to recycle old stuff instead of buying new. I'm a bit of a hoarder as it is (much to my parent's exasperation) collecting everything from wine corks to old jumpers that I've had in my mind to reuse in that magical utopia of 'someday' so I've certainly no shortage of materials.

As a designer in training I realised that I have the potential to use my creativity to promote sustainability by using recycled or upcycled materials in my work. This semester I'm designing a woven interior fabric with trees being my initial point of research. Here are a few pages from my sketchbook.....

I began pulling apart an old pair of jeans and a scrap of fabric (bought from the Borders scrap store) thread by thread and re-wove the wiggly little threads onto a tiny basic loom which I made from cardboard and cotton yarn. This created a lovely irregular effect but the lengths of yarn were just a little too short to create anything very big so I called in the boys.....

Ronnie & Kev from Hawick Upholstery Services very kindly let me raid their workshop for off-cuts and scraps, of which they have plenty, for these gorgeous fabrics. I particularly like the honeycomb weave and think it would lend itself to my theme perfectly. I then set about weaving a little circle with the new yarns on another small handmade loom which has turned out beautifully....

The plan is to incorporate this technique in my basic weave structure for my interiors fabric adding a contrasting texture as well as creating little circles and shapes like this one to add on as embellishment.

....in the spirit of sustainability my Jones knitting machine kindly donated to me by the lovely Katherine through Freegle and the Jones sewing machine rescued from the dump!

a new skill

Last week I visited the Borders Textile Towerhouse in Hawick to view a small exhibition by Rosemary Eribe - a successful local knitwear designer who designs and produces a range of beautiful hand knitted garments and accessories. I especially love her use of colour in these fairisle scarfs.

Whilst I was there I was invited to attend a beginners crochet class being held at the Towerhouse that afternoon. Now I have tried crochet before but have never got past the frustration stage and so decided a proper class might remedy this.

The class was run by Helen, a lovely local lady, who says her granny taught her to crochet and knit before she even went to school! We began by learning a brief history of the craft - apparently Queen Victoria learned to crochet around the time of the Irish potato famine where the women were selling their crochet to make ends meet. Crochet was often looked down upon as being a crude imitation of lace however Queen Victoria played a key role in its popularization amongst the wealthy English aristocracy and in doing so helped the Irish cause. Most interesting!

So after getting to grips with some of the basic stitches (and a few cups of tea later) we all became a bit adventurous to the extent that we each managed to produce an actual completed flower corsage which you can see below.

A special mention to the lovely Eileen for giving me the amazing button from one of her old cardigans! Thank you - its the perfect colour! I've decided to give the corsage to Px's granny for her 80th birthday this weekend - as she is of Irish decent, and will no doubt be an expert crochet-er, I hope she doesn't spot too many mistakes in it!

I really enjoyed the crochet class, there was a really nice atmosphere and I'm glad to have fully completed my first little crochet project!

click click click

I've been taking some nice pics of jewellery for inisonline over the past week and I think they mostly turned out ok but I've been feeling a bit frustrated as my photography skills are not quite up to scratch and I can't bring myself to buy a book or trawl through the internet for decent tutorials...so.... rather than taking my usual approach of - 'i'll do something about it someotherday' I decided to take action......

Craig Mcbeth is the wonderful man who photographed Sarah Elizabeth's wedding in August and we were all blown away by the beautiful and unique shots he took so I emailed him and asked if he might like to give me a few starter lessons and amazingly he said yes and now he's coming over to give me a lesson on Sunday! I'm so excited and glad that I bit the bullet and actually did something rather than just 'someotherdaying' it! I'll be sure to post about my lesson next week!

*!FREE GIVEAWAY!* antiqued heart necklace

...in celebration of the launch of the brand new inisonline blog we are giving away this beautiful big metal light antiqued heart necklace to one lucky new reader....

simply follow this link to find out how to enter.....

one spectacular summer

I'm feeling a bit guilty as I've done so little blogging of late but only as I've had the most spectacularly busy summer with....

photos by Craig McBeth

....my beautiful sister's and cousin's weddings....

....my eldest sister and family visiting from Australia....

...a holiday on a boat...

...and falling in love with Scotland again on a trip to Assynt...

...so you see I've barely had time to concentrate on my own bits and pieces...

....and that's not to mention my work.....

...I've started a blog and facebook page for inis the fashion boutique I'm working for and have been working hard to get it going and am loving every minute of it! It's a great challenge and I thrive on finding inspiration from the clothes and accessories instore and turning it all into an attractive and hopefully interesting post. Please have a look and let me know what you all think!

thank you

L x

RADish

Who knew one could find art dans le supermarché??? More pics from le grande voyage soon....

Finished Fashion Fabrics!

Still waiting on results coming in..............

My brief was to produce a shaped front panel for a garment designed with a style icon in mind. I designed a 70s inspired playsuit for indie/folk singer Jenny Lewis, encorporating frills, bib, smocking and lace, and of course my favourite colour of yarn.......... .................please click to enlarge images - they're much more interesting close up!

today I am mostly....

....photoshop-chopping, cycling to the shops, eating hula hoops and drinking coffee, not doing chores, listening to Cloud Control and looking forward to going to the mighty Sandy Bell's with my wee bro and Px before heading to the Edinburgh College of Art degree show. Hurrah for Thursdays!

Things you might not know about me No.4

You may not know that I am a country girl at heart.

I've really been blessed with an idyllic upbringing on my dad's sheep farm in the Scottish Borders along with my two amazing big sisters and coolest little brother. After a few stints in the city and overseas I now find myself, through circumstance, living back at home and actually wondering where else I could possibly live that would bring me an equaled sense of belonging and content.

Here's a picture of the view from dad's 'office' where I helped him mark lambs over the weekend.

Mrs Scott's Wonderful Sewing Box (and other treasures)

A few weeks ago my friend Gina very kindly asked me if I could make use of a sewing box, knitting needles and yarns which had belonged to her granny who sadly passed away a wee while ago. Of course I jumped at the chance and said yes I'd love to give them a home and called round to collect them. Well, what a delightful pile of goodies I did receive! A bin liner full of yarns, a carrier bag of knitting needles and this lovely little box of treats! And buttons! Hundreds and hundreds of lovely buttons! I cannot wait to have a really good rummage through, organise it all and start crafting with all these lovingly collected materials.

Receiving this wonderful gift has made me realise what a personal thing a sewing box can be, with a lifetime of work and skill unravelling inside. Although I don't think I ever really met Mrs Scott I feel honoured to have inherited a little piece of her life and thank Gina and her mum for sharing this with me.x

I love love my job!

I've had a pretty exhausting and varied week at work making changes to the website, stock taking, photographing and even modeling! However without a doubt my favourite task was making up and sending out my first ever newsletter. As I've only recently started using Photoshop this was a great achievement for me and now i'm feeling super inspired and can't wait to get started on the next one! I really hope its a success....in fact why don't you sign up here!

(credit to Px for his amazing photography skills!x)

I've also fallen a little bit in love with this white Hobbs dress and am desperately trying to justify buying it for my holidays! What do you think?

Stringy things!

Remember a little while ago I started hand spinning some yarn for class? Well this is the final result! My inspiration was 'dry stane dykes' and I used a variety of materials to capture the essence of these beautiful structures in the form of crafted, hand-spun and machine spun yarns.

At the end I had loads of test yarns left over which I decided to knit into a little patchwork rock cosy to display how the yarns might look when knitted up - it was so fun!

I'm pretty happy with the result and am dreaming of making these yarns into some beautiful jewelry like this by Heather Goldberg, oh so pretty!

Zing - M.I.A

Sad news. Poor little Zing has been lost in the post - somewhere between Scotland and Australia. Have you seen him? I hope he's ok, its been weeks since we last saw him. I'm hoping he met a nice lady cat on the plane and stopped off for a romantic tour of South East Asia, or maybe a nice little girl or boy found him and took him home to hug and squeeze forever. If you see him please tell him we love him and miss him very much and to hurry home.

Things you might not know about me No.3...... and a birthday treat

You may not know that I love tea. You probably also don't know that I have a particularly special favourite type of tea. Have you ever tried Jan de Vries Dutch Herbal Tea? You should try it - its magnificent.

These are some ingredients: peppermint leaves, rosehips, strawberry leaves, juniper berries, sage leaves, golden rod herb(?!), birch leaves, lavender flowers, passion flower herbs and many many more deliciously chopped up tiny wee pieces of plants! WoW! Now I'm not really a herbal tea fanatic - I'm more of a coffee kinda girl but this tea has converted me - I've been raving about it for weeks - and Px loves it too so I've been buying it in bulk!

The other day I tried to make my own dandelion tea from the over grown mass on Px's lawn. I picked off all the little yellow heads and boiled them up. The result was surprisingly palatable (helped along with a spoonful of sugar!). I used the heads but I understand the leaves are good too when dried out. I'd like to try making some strawberry leaf tea this summer, I bet its super tasty.

This is my special little Spode tea cup and a pretty little bag of cookies my friend Marianne baked for me last month for my birthday. Lucky Loulou! They were so tasty with big chunks of dark and white chocolate mixed through. Thank you Marianne!

A New Creative Space

I've recently been in the very fortunate position of having a huge room at my parents house (actually my wee brother's old room) where I can spread out all of my arting and materials and do my work in. However, my mum is reclaiming the space as another spare room is needed for the guests coming to my sister's wedding in August. I've had this in the back of my mind for the past year so have never fully organised the room and haven't spent much time making it into a nice homey workspace knowing I'd be moving out anyway. So here's a little glimpse of my room as it is - its not pretty and I'm not particularly proud of it but its done the job......

SO....fortunately we live in a big old farm house and have a little playroom 'up-the-backstairs' where we spent countless hours as children playing dress-up, Sylvanian Families and listening to LW Radio Atlantic 252 (remember that?)! I love this wee room and have always dreamt of converting it into my studio and now its finally happening!

HOWEVER, this room is also a shambles with decades of the junk, treasures, toys & memories of a family of six accumulating and never really being tackled....until now. This is the 'playroom' as it is.....

Up the backstairs.....

Look at my lovely view of the woods!

Narnia is a crumbling wall.

Needless to say I've got my work cut out for me! I'm waiting for the plasterer to come and fix my walls before I can paint then start moving in! Watch this creative space!