Alice in Shadowland

I do believe Alice would have enjoyed a day in Shadowland as much as she did in Wonderland. Both have a magical ambience and all essence of time is lost.
I have recently started my student placement at Shadowland Theatre with the lovely Anne Barber and Brad Harley. It has been an amazing experience so far and I really feel connected to they work. They basically write and produce alot of their own plays and shows.

I've been helping with the backdrop for their show....

Hansel and Gretel: The Fast Food Version

This Punch and Judy-style, modern interpretation of the classic tale was created in a collaboration between Shadowland artists, young people of the Parkdale neighbourhood and adults from 6 St Joseph House. A 15 minute puppet and mask show to delight all ages with it’s irreverent humour and outrageous characters. 

Lots of doing and using what I love most : design, colour sewing, fabric! just all kinds of goodness.

Also a few other things, I will keep posting as the days go by and things progress.

Have a wander, maybe you will find a show that interests you, maybe you too will be lost in this land of creativity and imagination.

http://www.shadowlandtheatre.ca/

Organza or Plastic?

So I love artist that put some thought into their work and make intricate designs that grab people's attention to more important issues. This is my interpretation at least and I found these pieces to be quite interesting.

 Evian....mmmm love that water haha because really it taste better :P

Love the gallon of water and the Fiji bottles, they look so aunthentic.

 To me, these pieces represent what we see everyday as garbage and waste. I love the idea of the new designs for water bottles like the glass ones, giving the idea of recycling more. What better way to replace plastic than with fabric. These lovely pieces are hand embroidered on organza by Lauren DiCioccio

She does alot of different hand embroidered pieces, quite a handfull of work..take a wander :)

pieceWork

I was in Toronto for the textile show at the Gladstone Hotel and got the chance to see some wonderful work. The pieces are still on display this weekend, so if you're in the area go check it out.

Miriam Grenville: Make your own Money Kits. This cute 'money tree' was on display.

Amanda McCavour

Beautiful display of these hanging delicate pieces, great colour with the lighting and the shadows on the wall were amazing.

 Shuyu Lu "Dream a Little Dream-the monkey and the Moon"
 Screen printing, hand dyed silk organza and cotton thread, hand embroidered.
Such intense amount of embroidery on these tiny pieces. I love the layering of the silk with the prints, gives it great dimention and 3D effects.

Bird Love

Wow so its been ages since I've wander these woods of mine. Oh how I've missed them. I've been quite busy since school started in septemeber, just a few weeks ago I had my first critique....crazy yes because it took us two months to have our first project ready. I will soon post photographs of some of my most recent work . Mean while I decided to catch up on some of new art and found these amazing illustration by Luca Mantovanelli  

Yeah I want an exotic bird doing erotic things to me. The the shape of the bird with the face of the man just look amazing together.

New Place, Old Memories...into the elmwoods

So I have finally left Ovation.....the building I used to live in by Square One Mall. I have move to a new place with old memories. We found an apartment in the building I lived in when I first came to Canada 8 years ago. I lived in the 2 floor now I like in the 18 floor...crazy but the view is wonderful. The building I live in now is on Elm....eerie huh? naw Im not that cool its Elm Drive not Elm Street but anything could happen...

The name of my building I live in now its called Elmwoods which I thought was so appropiate considering everything I name has woods or something related to it haha Im very happy in my new place even if its only for a year since I do plan to move when Im done school. 

Even my room is a bit bigger and the bathroom is also bigger and I have an extra closet to my stuff woo! I guess what they say is true....change didnt kill the cat..curiosity did haha wow Im lame.

Luna de todas las noches Ilumíname esta noche

....Luna lunita lunera Luna llena luna perla.
 Dime si ella es la reina y la dueña de todo mi amor....

This is my Bella Luna, shes my cousins baby but Im just going to say shes my niece because Ill probably love her that much! She so cute I can believe it.

I've been designing baby toys for an online store opening in september called LaVie Orange

Its all organic and handmade baby products and so Ive been busy dyeing fabric and sewing.

Here are some pieces from colors I have made so far...

This is one of the first prototypes I made with some scrap samples also naturally dyed.

This was made with the fabrics shown above.

I still have to work on the proportions a bit and find stuffing thats less lumpy.

So far its been fun :)

TAG!

I have been super busy with a million and one things including packing because I move in like 2 weeks...yikes lots to do. However, I have been trying to craft as many little things that are quick and easy. I now have a few things for my shop and so I decided that I needed tags. 

I know this may seem lazy...and it is considering I have printed some tags before like this one:

I found a printable paper/fabric that is amazing!

I dont even have to iron or anything, I just print directly on the fabric and thats it!

I got it at waltmart for 15$ comes with 6 sheets and I can use my printer at home. No bad eh?

So this is how mine turned out:

It is a bit tricky to print on...my first one moved and so its not straight but Im going to cut them anyways.

Im quite pleased with them :D

Soon I will post pictures of them attached to pretty little things!

Weaved Wonder

I was lurking around etsy and I found these beautiful pieces by Caldidesign 

I just love them. Such a simple weaving technique yet they look so beautiful.

I would totally wear the purple dress to a fancy event ;)

I need a jelly roll or a honey bun!!!

Yes jelly rolls and honey buns sound amazingly delicious, however I am refering to the different bundles of precut fabric sold for quilting.
As a textile student I want to learn everything that remotely involves fabric, sadly not every skill is mastered and you get something like this.....

I dont hate it or anything Im actually warming up to it. This is my first attempt at making a quilt. Its a blanket I made for my niece. I found this tinkerbell fabric that I thought was super cute and since every girl needs purple in their life I choose a purple color theme.

Quilting is HARD! specially if you dont have perfect little cut fabric pieces which do exist in cute little bundles called fat quarters, jelly rolls, and honey buns. Im sure there are others and in different sizes and shapes. I just bought fabric I liked and cut it myself. I mean I cant cut straight if my life depended on it, I dont know what I was thinking but oh well I learnt from this experience.

The back is this organic fleece I found online fairly cheap and very soft!!!

ohh thats right this is my second blanket, I made one for my baby cousin last year but it was just printed fabric with a blanket binding around it.

So I still suck at sewing a binding piece, its tricky! it moves even though I pinned it and its just irritating to do. Any sewing pros have tips on how to do a semi perfect job on the binding?? or a nice alternative for a finished edge? Any tips for begginer quilting...although after this I dont know if I want to do much quilting :(

Thanks!

Happy quilting...well if you like quilting that is :/

Breakfast Fun

So I invited my friend James for breakfast the other day and I told him about some guy I saw on TV who made crepes at disneyland in the shapes of different cartoons. They were so amazingly detailed, I wish I could find pictures but no luck. So we decided to make pancakes and play around with the batter. 

try to figure out what they are haha

Felix de Cat!!! James did this one :)

This was my attempt haha

I could eat pancakes everyday for the rest of my life!

*want a healthy pancake tip?

Use almond or rice milk, both change the taste and work better than soy milk for mixing into different recipes. Add fruits like bananas and blueberries they give a delicious sweet taste without the need for syrup.

Also its the perfect change to add chia or flex seeeds and I also like to add raw cacao nibs for an amazing chocolaty taste, or bee pollen if you like honey.

Enjoy!

If dreams were musical

If sound entered my dreams it would be like this song.

A winter melody she plays....but its summer?

I had forgotten there are actually really good stop motion videos out there. I really love this video....great song as well, enjoy! Her morning elegance

Sleeping Beauty

This was my final creation for the year. I love the how it turned out and I will definitely work this way for many projects to come. All the fabrics were dyed using only natural dyes. I experimented with rusted objects as my printing source and I loved it. A lot of machine embroidery. This book focused mostly on transparency and layering. I like that it has a lot of texture as well.  

The imagery for this book was inspired by the song 'PET' by Perfect Circle.

In the beginning

Some samples I made while working on my book.

In another lifetime...

Ive always admired instrumental music.
The Cello is an instrument that I love. Maybe I will learn to play it someday.





This is Brake Of Reality playing 'Circles'
Enjoy!

A Moose in the Woods...

This is a little post I shall dedicate to my wonderful long time friend Muse Mohammed. 
Born in Canada April first, this man is no fool, he knows how to handle his equipment ;)
A talented closet photographer...and I say this because he only does it on the side. He is currently studying some international political thing (I can never remember since he changes the name of his program all the time O_o) at the University of Ottawa.
With both Chilean and Somalian running in his blood, he brings a multicultural aspect to many of his photos and living in Canada just makes it so much easier baby!


Yay he is coming back for this whole summer...(he missed me too much haha...no really he probably did ;D)


So heres to you Muse! (a toast was called for of course) Love ya! I look forward to taking advantage of your photography skills...since mine clearly should stay in the closet :D

Some good oldies :}

I decided that I needed pictures of my old work and recent work. During the summer I dont have access to studio equipment and those beautiful expensive cameras that make things seem magical, so I asked my friend Muse who is a wiz with technology to go into the woods with me and photograph my stuff.

This is from first year Textiles. We finally got to used the super huge screens to print yardage. This is a sea themed printed on cotton using dyes and polychromatic techniques to get the nice multi-tone effect. I do plan to make bed sheets with it so I can pretend I'm sleeping on sand at a nice beach with warm weather! 

I love the way this picture turned out. Except it does not do ANY justice to my piece :/

I put alot of detail work into this piece and unfortunately is not something a camera shows very nice. It looks better in real life. Hand painted and screen printing with dyes on organic cotton. The red little figures are pomegranates and hearts. My inspiration was comparing the pomegranate seeds to blood cell flow in the heart. It also relates to the "you are what you eat" phrase with a pomegranate being fed to a silhouette to replace an empty heart. I used metallic rainbow thread to embellish the tree...yes people metallic rainbow thread...it is as magical as it sounds. I also did some hand embroidery and beading  on some small areas.

This was the first piece I worked on this year. It was inspired by some textile pieces from the Textile Museum of Canada. I screen printed with dyes on different fabrics and patched them together on a larger piece. I also used machine embroidery, applique and foiling for more texture and detail. Again this is one of those pieces that look better up close where you can see the detailed bits that make it so beautiful. This piece was displayed at the Museum for some time. I was quite proud.

Free People!

So 'Free People' has these changing room videos that I enjoy very much. (its only because I enjoy going in stores and trying on things!!!) 


pretty little things and great music :D

Bagteria Cells

Took me a while, I should have posted this before since its an old project but here it is! This is for a project I did for my dye and print class. We had to make a series of three bags.

"Based on microscopic biological imagery, Katherine’s bags can be worn anywhere on the body, self-attached by magnets.  They function both as a discrete pocket and as a jewelry-like adornment, suggesting organic growth and form." 

This is how my teacher described it and I thought it was perfect!

These three beautiful ladies are modeling my three designs.

I thought it would be cute to see them on guys as well and I found three guys wearing plaid shirts. Dont they look amazing!

They have an industrial red felt base, handmade felt on top with applique pieces and lots of both machine and hand embroidery. They have a small pocket at the back and attach to anywhere with magnets. I was inspired by microscopic picture of different bacteria. Thus the name of the series 'Bagteria Cells' 

Just some close ups of the texture and patterns in my bags/pockets.

hope you enjoyed them!