Folds Pleats Creases

Ruth Singer pleated cushion

Been meaning to mention Ruth Singer a textile designer and blogger who is living the life I really ought to be living. She ACTUALLY properly makes clothes, reconstructs old clothes, makes bags (ok I make loads, but I never quite finish anything off fully). And she teaches too, she teaches at the V&A among other places! How great is that.

I like her work beacuse we have similar taste in vintage inspiration, and she too has a thing for 'constructed' fabrics. Here's another of her pieces...



I've never really shown you any of my constructed fabric pieces (or much of any of my 'real' work) but it's one of the things I'm really passionate about. At school I remember we did a some of weaving and while everyone else went to great trouble to make their piece smooth and even and perfect, I was doing my best to make it 3D by weaving in hanks of wool, plastic bags, fine thread, paper, rags, grasses and even inserting broken slices of mirror. They never understood where I was coming from but I didn't care and have continued to work like that for (eek) 20yrs. Wow, that's shocking, in fact it's more than 20yrs!

I don't do so much weaving these days (only in mid-winter, so cosy to do in front of a fire and a good film) but I like to bring shape and texture into my sewing, especially my bags. I'm always inspired by the flowing lines of the Scottish land and seascapes, and by different kinds of sky so that often shows in the way I stitch, lots of references to fields and fences, plough lines etc. Here are a couple of things I have to hand for a piccy, sorry none of my good ones are about though I think my penny pouch is somewhere in my April blog?


Cuff detail


Felted lamp detail

And not just fabrics, paper too, I love to work with paper, folding, stitching, pleating, burning, cutting... you get the idea.

Over here is a video clip of how to 'crumple' and here is a napkin I'm in the middle of crumpling, one side is patterned and one side plain white. When I'm done I'll start to stitch into it. I plan to experiment with this in crisp translucent fabric and papers to create lighting...





But some people are better at it than others, I can only imagine the patience required to produce things like these...

Origami tesselation...

By Origami Joel


Found this one, also by Joel Cooper here

Ok folks, that's it for now, my 3 days of cramp have been bloggy bliss but now I have the serious business of a dress to make, and if I fail, the even more serious business of running around Edinburgh in hysteria trying to find something for under £30 that I can wear instead. I'll try and be online again at the weekend.

PS. Janet, yup, I got the 10% thing from Howies but too skint too buy just now, I usually get stuff in their big clearance sales online.