Threads

Kindle cover

2012-01-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Father Christmas bought me a Kindle. I made it a cover - just improvised out of some bits of fabric, felt and a nice leather button for that masculine touch. Tweed Run, anybody?
I did this by myself - having found the confidence to sew over the last couple of years, thanks to lovely Amy Johnson. It's very liberating and gives me loads of pleasure.
Haven't actually read anything on my Kindle yet though .. but I have downloaded a Michael Ondaatje book, which is a start. Waiting for a train ride now (mainly cos I want to show off the cover how shallow, Jo).

bag lady

2011-08-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

It's a year since my last post here - but I think this photo of my latest creation shows progression in the sewing stakes. Made from a piece of Otterburn Tweed I found in a charity shop, then various bits and pieces for the lining and applique, all reclaimed. I think it's lovely, even though it's not a posh lady's bag. I have never really got on with posh handbags, always felt insufficiently feminine in that way. Never craved a leather bag, like I never craved an engagement ring or a proper wedding dress. Something fundamental lacking there, Colley.
The sewing thing, the pleasure of it, stunning. All down to the fab Amy Johnson who has taught me everything this past year or two. I am reaping what I sew.

yoyos for jojo

2010-08-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

So what has she been up to with those magic fingers? Still covering books - this one embellished with a bit of folded fabric which my ma in law showed me how to do recently. And the yoyos are the new passion so perfect if you have a million bits of material, a monstrous collection of buttons and not much sewing nouse. You can make thousands of them in an evening of pointless pleasure. It kind of makes you tranquil. Must be how heroin feels - just a different use of a needle, I guess.
I have taken my sewing machine to be mended but fear it may be doomed. In which case I would just have to buy another one. This would be my first ever purchase of a sewing machine, as the other two I have are elderly pass ons. If I bought a new one - blimey would that mean I was a real sewist? A bit late in the day, old girl. And is it hand sewing that I like? Slow and repetitive. Instead of whizzing up and down out of control - too much like my real life, pond skater Colley.

Tea cosy

2010-05-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Who said you can't trust a person who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, fails to put it on her head? This one, knitted with a passed on pattern from ma-in-law, is supposed to look like it's got a teacup on its head. I stopped reading the instructions at a crucial point, rebel that I am, so it just looks like a slightly bent over old dear or somebody with a sack on their head. But hell it's my first time! I feel proud and round and stout.

Deranged doilies

2010-04-16T01:52:00.000-07:00

I've been doing more sewing than I've ever done in my life, or maybe since I was 9 or 10 and was obssessed by sewing bits of lace or material onto my clothes. I haven't progressed much skill-wise, but I am really loving it. I made a load of book covers for Christams presents, just with nice pieces of material saved over years, decades even. And now I am experimenting with doilies - another thing I have collected - that lace thing, the intricacy, the HOLES - and sewing them on to random garments like this one. Even wearing them. And now, with the help of lovely Amy, I am attempting a skirt out of a piece of material I bought in a charity shop in Saltburn. Have also been to the Quilt exhibition at the V and A - it's on until July and well worth a visit. Some amazing work there - which doesn't make me think, why bother? you're crap! - which I often get when I read / hear brilliant writing, in terms of my own work. Strange - I just get inspired and ecstatic at the sight of it.

I'm really interested in this. I think it's about expectation and how we judge ourselves, which undoubtedly begins with how we are judged by others. Also the thing about sewing - my generation downgraded it as traditional women's work, stuff we didn't want to do anymore(even though I still got my gran, queen of the treadle, to alter the strange baggy men's trousers I picked up at jumble sales for my chic feminist look). We put it with housework and childcare and we wanted to do other things. Tough to discover in my latter years that earth mother might have been a better option. Ha just kidding! But younger women maybe more able to recognise the creativity in women's work, and not worry if they enjoy doing it.

Mermaids

2009-07-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

My lovely and very talented friend Jill Harbottle has made a beautiful wedding dress from found materials, with the help of a team of elderly people in a day centre. Go and look at it - it's amazing.
Strangely I am also in a mermaid phase only less beautifully - wrote this poem while at the London Poetry School summer course with Jane Draycott.
Still dog rough but here it goes:

Cry me a river

She was working as a mermaid
in a topless bar, down Deptford way.
I watched her buoyant breasts break surface
through the white stream of her hair.
She slipped out of her fish tail
a pearl abandoning an oyster
a sailor’s wet dream.

I took her home, suppressed the urge
to run the bath. Felt her real legs
wrap around me like weeds
believed she would stay,
moored to my delusions.

Today, I’m on the river, taking sounds
plumbing the depths
cold as a fish on a slab.

Mrs Robinson's Dress

2009-05-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

Mrs Robinson’s Dress

Oyster moygashel, silk lined
in palest pink only a pearl
would dare to insert herself

into that world. She projects
her lighthouse beam across
every dollared pageant

of Los Angeles. She’s so tall
in her stilletos she can see
clear across the top of her husband’s

balding head, his thick specs
level with her cone-shaped breasts.
She locks double-lashed eyes

with Benjamin, tender
as a new born rabbit.
He is a snack, a morsel

a between the courses treat.
He’s meat. He cannot speak.
Later, she throws the dress

into the trash. Her maid
retrieves it, gives it closet space
until her oldest son comes out.

His Mrs Robinson act, a revelation
from port to shining port,
gains him access to

the captain’s table, the
first mate’s bed. Until
he jumps ship at Shields

sheds the dress.
His loss, my gain.
So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.

Dressed for the occasion

2009-03-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

So what if you were to make your own shroud? An idea I have discussed with a friend recently - it's not just because I have the flu honest. I started to think about what you might want to wear on this special occasion. Traditionally white of course - the Victorian starched cotton and crisp lace almost virginal but also set against the softening flesh for the final ride an offering for the fire. But surely a white corpse would not look good in white - no contrast? Not immediately anyway. Obviously no polyester or manmade fibres unless you are a burning and even then, no, not ever, too melty and unpleasant. Silk perhaps in a bright colour or set of colours exotic and tropical like a beautiful bird's plumage ready for flight. Or ikat especially the dark japanese types with something orange you have found in a charity shop - with the agnes b necklace or the pearls?

I like the idea of starting work on the garment having it ready, adding to it with buttons and lace and feathers and messages and poems and coins in pockets - so you know it will be there, saving the relatives a problem and also giving you death bed peace of mind and maybe a form of adjustment? After all it was not uncommon once to have your own coffin knocking about the place. Think Clarissa.

quilting

2009-03-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Spent Saturday at a quilting exhibition with my lovely ma-in-law who is an expert craftswoman of nearly 90. She has always found me a dead loss in this department but was patient enough to show me a few tricks of the trade, in spite of not being well. In the old days, I had to suppress my domestic urges in the name of feminism - or believed I had to. She and I felt like women from different planets. Now, I love to watch her beautiful old hands thread a needle and knot the end of the cotton - so elegant. We were almost suffocated by quiltery and by the sighs and moans of women in the throes of acute textile lust. It must be how men feel looking at porn. I bought some Japanese pieces, all dark and moody and some spotty ones for summer. Joan cast a sceptical eye on my purchases, knowing the level of my ability. Ha I will show her! Perhaps. Also looked at a lot of impressive work - I particularly like the old pieces, with all the quilting done by hand. Imagine it would have been done by lots of women - hard to believe you could tackle one of these beasts alone. How lovely, the mixing and matching of scraps to form a thing of beauty - and how practical, warm and cosy on a cold night. Mixing memory and desire.

Old clothes for old ladies?

2009-03-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if there is a time in a woman's life when vintage clothes might start to look like something she bought new and just failed to throw out. Spent yesterday in Brick Lane, and although there are some amazing shops and beautiful clothes, there is also an awful lot of tat. Overpriced tat at that - you don't want to pay thirty quid for a faded old cotton dress that probably cost 9s 11d once upon a time, especially one that is ripped and has suspicious, probably won't vanish out stains on it. There is so much of it too - must be endless warehouses with dodgy dealers climbing over it like Brazilian street kids. I remember the days when jumble sales were full of the most amazing top quality finds - 10p got you a 1930s jacket in hardly worn condition and Victorian nighties were almost given away. In the 70s wearing vintage was a way to assert your individuality - it was a cheap way to look good. Now it isn't cheap and unless you find something really beautiful (see previous post) you can end up looking like everybody else in that old dressing up box way. And this look can only be worn by the under 30s, I think. After that maybe it's time to grow up. I'm saying this but of course nothing will stop me regressing to favourite old dresses and what will make me chuck out my fabulous 1940s suits and coats even though I never wear them? I still like the feel of old material (although I tried on an old cardigan yesterday which felt like a brillo pad so there are exceptions).

Tea in a tea dress

2009-02-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Tea yesterday at the Tyneside Tearooms with lovely Ellie on her 21st birthday - here she is looking radiant in a fifties cotton - the vibrancy of the colours! the photo does not do justice. Something about a shirtwaister: so feminine, the accentuation of the waist then the full skirt. Works best if you have good shoulders, which mademoiselle certainly has, and the primary shades against the white perfect with her dark hair. It reminded me of an exhibition my daughter and I went to at the V and A last year, with beautiful clothes from this era. Even a simple day dress so well made and the quality of the cotton good enough to stand the test of time. Dresses aside, I had a lovely time and the teacakes were excellent (not vintage).

discorporate

2008-11-05T05:46:00.000-08:00

Art / life situation. I am knitting The Queen but am so discorporated that all I have is a set of random limbs and body parts. My attempts to knit the hair are ending in disaster because I don't understand a couple of the instructions. I was doing so well but now I am going to be defeated by the Queen's flick. But in fact I have a cunning plan which involves some blue chenille wool given to me by Angel. Have any of you seen the figures in LittleBigPlanet (new computer game coming to an xbox near you)? The characters appear to be knitted. Ah but there is nothing new under the sun.

Marilyn Shroud from Angel Readman

2008-06-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

One of the nicest presents I got for my birthday this week was this beautiful piece made by Angel Readman - how can she be both an exceptionally talented poet and also a textile artist? I love this cloth - it's so delicate and airy and still manages to convey the power of the Marilyn icon. I love the butterfly cloud and the pearl mole - probably can't see this clearly enough from the image. AR is currently writign a stunning set of poems about MM. I feel so lucky to have a friend who would give me something this beautiful.

Knowing your onions

2008-03-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

I found this tea towel in a second hand shop in downtown Darlo. It's fantastic - the woman bringing the tea and slippers to her man, who is reading his paper whilst his slavey wife attends to him. But look at the secret world in her head - what does it consist of? Of what does she dream? Hats, ladies and gentlemen. Hats. Apparently that's as wild as it gets inside the female head. It reminds me of Gaye Gambol from the Daily Express cartoon when I was a kid. She was always coming home from town with a mountain of hat boxes, whilst George flashed his wallet. Onions, by golly. She'd be better off on her allotment.

Cecil's singlet

2008-03-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

My friend Jill is a brilliant knitter sewer crocheter and all round needle woman. Here she is knitting and standing up at the same time. With an additional easter chick on her shoulder part of a massive set of chicks at an Easter wedding (this is mother in law chick I think) made with the help of old persons from her job. When I am v old I want a lady like Jill to show me how to sew and crochet. Quite looking forward to it. But I bet they make us watch Hollyoaks reruns and listen to Take That.

mourning/morning

2008-02-13T08:37:00.001-08:00

A very lovely friend has lost her husband recently. They really loved each other. I was thinking about mourning clothes and whether or not it was a good idea to do yourself up in black with veils and jet jewellery and a scrap of hair from your loved one pinned to you. A signal to everybody that you are not yourself, you are off somewhere in your head with your pain and your memories.
Last night I dreamed about my friend. We were dressing up with great piles of stuff - I remember pink, voile, lace, delicate frilly stuff, feminine, diaphonous. But I looked terrible in everything I tried on and she didn't want to dress up. The dream ended with us embracing wearing our ordinary clothes. A dream of love and acceptance maybe.
But it also links clothes with identity, especially female identity and I'm very interested in that. The meaning of clothes. When I was little, I collected lace, ribbon, glass buttons and sewed them on to everything - the dolls' clothes, my own clothes. I can't begin to describe the pleasure I took in making a ruffle out of blue lace and sewing it to my pyjamas. Deeply satisfying and thrilling.

2008-01-16T08:49:00.000-08:00

I am in love with wool and knitting needles. The needles have a bad press, what with their connotations of back street abortionists and the ladies of the French Revolution. It always struck me as an odd combination, knitting and guillotines. I mean it's not as though it takes a long time to chop off somebody's head. You wouldn't even get to the end of a row - talking of which, maybe I'll move to Texas so I can knit stuff for people on death row.
I can't knit really but I don't let this stand in my way. If you find lovely yarn you can make anything look nice. This scarf is keeping the poor cold goddess warm and decent. I am so proud of it it's truly pathetic.

guerrilla garments

2008-01-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

Has it ever happened to you that your clothes attack you or gang up on you in some way? They are like rebellious slaves, sick of being dragged on and off you whether they feel like it or not. They have subtle ways to get their own back on you: buttons pinging, zips breaking, or inching their way down to expose less than perfect underwear, seams coming apart. Shoes of course, have a whole set of strategies for causing you pain and embarrassment: laces breaking , heels catching and snapping, turning you into a lopsided being, the backs of your feet rubbed raw so you are an ugly sister, dripping blood as you hobble sadly home.

From the age of five when my skirt button popped and the whole garment dropped to my knees in the playground (oh the scornful laughter) to the incident at the bus stop as a student (last night’s knickers sliding out of a trouser leg), it’s an ongoing. Last week my coat tried to strangle me. It’s a military style khaki coat with epaulettes and everything so probably has a violent streak. I’d had it cleaned and was dashing to a poetry masterclass in Newcastle. Walking up Percy Street I realised there was some kind of creeping thing going on: the coat had moved up to my waist and was tightening around me. Couldn’t work it out. Decided that maybe something in the chemicals of the cleaning process had shrunk the lining and the motion of walking was somehow causing this effect. It was so serious and awful that I dashed into a charity shop and bought another coat for a fiver. This coat – plain, beige, boring – was like the loner people speak of thus: he seemed so ordinary! He kept himself to himself! I put it straight on, stuffed the offending original in a bag and hurried on. After about five minutes, this one had effected a strange sideways movement so that the front buttons were now at the side.and my thighs so constricted I was walking like a woman in a very tight skirt. I had to unbutton it and let it flap behind me derisively.

Sinister. They are both in the cupboard under the stairs, probably plotting a fresh assault. Of course, it could all be down to the size of my arse ..

if only i could sew

2008-01-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

I think if I could sew or paint I wouldn’t write a thing.

I used to draw and paint a lot as a child but school put me off. Sewing was also a nightmare. I never finished my apron in Miss Whittaker’s class, although I made lots of strange garments for my dolls. I always hated to see a naked doll. Their cold plastic limbs made me anxious. Action man has helped me through that and a few other traumas from childhood.

I love material: silk, satin, cotton, wool - any textile you care to name – buttons, bits of lace, ribbon - collect and hoard them in big clumsy trunks like a mad woman, get them out and stroke them like pets. Sometimes I just arrange them on my bed like the old lady at the Bates Motel.

A while ago, I ran a class with two textile artists –Margaret Williams and Cath Walshaw and fell in love with the idea of combining textiles with words – this is still something I’m really interested in. Would love to produce poetry books which looked like this

This is what I did to part of a poem from the new book, called Star gazing.