My experiments in tailoring

A vacation to my hometown during Dec2012-Jan2013 proved productive, thanks to Sr.Preethi of Lourde Tailoring Institute. She taught me the art of tailoring, particularly churidars and blouses. With that knowledge and a new Poonam double machine, back in Bangalore, I began experimenting with other dresses. Initially I started converting my old churidar tops into sleeveless shirts for my toddler. Since stitching them for him meant lesser fabric and lesser time, I considered beginning with these as a very good learning experience. Once I’d stitched close to a dozen of them, I moved to this style of jubba. Onam was nearing and I wanted him to have a mommy-made Onakodi :) The first few jubbas were of the type where you put it over the head. Since that was not much of a success, I decided to try the front open types. They looked good; the only problem though was getting him to let me try it on! He was totally adamant about not trying them and thus I kept repeating the same mistake in each of these. The mistake – the armpit measurement and sleeve width had to be a little loose. :( Anyways, I did force the golden one on him for his auntie’s wedding :) Pity him, he was just waiting to get out of it, kept telling “Amme kai novunnu...ooru ooru”(translation: “my hand is hurting, remove remove”)! Paavam :( Hmmm, there’s always a next time. I’ve already bagged a few orders from my jeeju and father-in-law! Thank you for encouraging me :D

For my Sis

My sister’s birthday this year was special, why? Because it was her first birthday after I’d attended the TTP workshop! I had to be creative this time rather than give her a greeting card.

The shilpkar and canvas board art I did at the workshop had not come out as good as expected. So I took this as a chance to try it again. I thought about the background, the images, the content and the border designs for a long time before coming up with this. The final product depicts an interesting time-pass that I and my sister shared during our growing-up days. That was the time when we were crazy about Shahrukh Khan movies and loved DDLJ, KKHH and the like. We used to buy audio cassettes (CDs were not popular then) of all movies, by heart the lyrics given in the booklet and sing along while playing those in my sister’s favourite music player. Oh, such fun we’ve had! So, in my gift, the girl on the left is my sister, the one on the right is me, both of us holding the booklet, and loud music being played on the top-right music player. Interesting isn’t it? :) but I still need to give it some back-end support, since it only leans against some support. Nevertheless , it now leans proudly against my sister’s cubicle desk. She loved it :D

Hobby Ideas TTP Workshop

I recently attended this 3-day Teacher Training Programme conducted by Hobby Ideas, and am extremely glad that I scored an A+ in the project submission :)

This workshop covered basics of drawing, paper quilling, punch craft, stamping, working with crackle medium and shilpkar among various other techniques. We were given simple home-works that included practising various strokes using liner brush, making a mehendi design on paper, fabric painting a few designs given, quilling on paper bag and envelopes and so on.  Though the term “homework” did put me into a little pressure, since I had to take care of an active toddler, do my cooking and other chores at home too, it was extremely enjoyable at the end. Thanks to Leena, Meenakshi and of course Hobby Ideas for giving us this opportunity to take our talents and interests to the next level. It truly was a welcome break for me after being at home for 2.5yrs! :)

The next few blog articles below will cover my projects done during this 3-day workshop.

Tribal Art

Once back home from the workshop, I showed off my creations to my husband and this was his remark about this tribal art,” This is extraordinary!” :) Hmmm...maybe. Had it cracked properly, I would have agreed with him.

This was our session on working with crackle medium and shilpkar. Our tutor gave us clear instructions on how to work with the crackle medium.

• Use big flat brush for this project
• Do not use water
• 1^st coat of paint is the one that shows through the cracks
• Then apply crackle medium, wait for it to be tacky (not too dry, not too wet)
• Apply 2^nd coat of contrasting paint making sure not to paint on the same area twice (lest the paint should get removed) and maintain the direction of strokes

I did get all of them in my head, but was a little too creative! She’d specifically asked us to paint the 2^nd coat with acrylic colours and I used acrylic pearl colours instead! Thought I could give an extra shine to my work. But little did I know that the effect wouldn’t come out well when pearl colours are used. Since it didn’t come out well like what the other’s got, she suggested doing an additional coat of crackle medium on top and another coat of brown when tacky. This is the end result. You can still slightly make out the cracks.

Making the tribal face with shilpkar was easy since I’d already done a frame with m-seal. The technique was the same. The face did come out well with all jewellery and details done, but I kept cribbing about how I’d ruined the background :( I’ve anyways bought all necessary items to try this out again. Hope I get it right the next time..