kelsey keefe

i made a dress from string

2011-12-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

I haven't written a single thing since October-- shortly after Boyfriend's birthday-- due to an onset of late-October midterms and the blind rush toward finals.

It happens. I'm graduating! Horray! etc.

I wove seven yards of fabric, dyed it and sewed it into a dress. It happened! It came out fairly well under the circumstances. (Read: I'd never sewn before, done batik or woven at such a length+width+high EPI). All things being equal, it went along without too many problems. For the sake of being precise I'm just going to vomit up information about the project now, okiedokie?

The pattern was Butterick B5605 and it was pretty complicated for someone who had never sewn a single thing before-- like, my previous attempts involved fixing small tears and reattaching buttons. I did not know how to sew in a straight line or how to wind a bobbin.

Initially I planned to do woven shibori, following along with a book by Catharine Ellis but the width of the piece I was weaving (35" at reed) & the overall length (7 yards) meant that all of the knots I was going to need to tie = a bad idea. Ikat, another method I've... well, DONE before...? I didn't feel like I could confidently create a pattern across the entire fabric that I'd be happy with at the end.

So, in a fit of frustration (sometime in November) I dropped $50 on batik supplies and went to town. It went pretty well. A few (stupid) tension issues that were caused by incorrectly rolling on the tencel the first time, but I just rolled all of my yarn onto my cloth beam and retied at the back-- the remaining yardage had no further tension issues.

Blah blah blah THE RESULTS:

naptime forever! I probably won't be weaving my own fabric with intention of sewing it into a dress again anytime soon, but the process was fun! I am mostly excited to resume weaving long rectangles (without cutting them apart...).

Woven Shibori?

2011-10-17T00:55:00.000-04:00

I'm buying Catharine Ellis' book Woven Shibori. Partially because I do not own it and feel like I ought to... partially because Bryan over at his bloggeroo mentioned it and I read the post on google reader (about five minutes ago) and it occurred to me that I ought to own the book.

Another reason is that I am trying to do real shibori and the idea of doing it to six yards of dress fabric is physically painful to me.

WAH.

honey on tap | follow the honey

2011-10-16T00:25:00.000-04:00

Birthday Boy

2011-10-16T00:14:00.002-04:00

Hello non-existant swath of blog readers. I fell off of the internet bandwagon this week- whenever I concentrate on something away from the internets everything else just stops moving. Thats okay though... because today is boyfriend's birthday! A day of days! He is twenty-eight years old! I've scheduled this post instead of publishing it immediately, it should post around 6pm when we're eating dinner/he receives his final gift.

I've decided to stagger them throughout the day. Last year, he had a rough day the day prior and I came over and just swarrrrmed him with things. Well, thats not accurate: last year I gave him three small glass bottles (1" tall), each delivering a clue to the next station. The first was in a 'book box'- its a box disguised as a row of books... and when he opened it some small (3") balloons floated out. At the bottom was the first clue, which pointed to the snack drawer where I'd hidden a glass container filled with home made peanut butter balls. The third pointed toward the bookshelf and amongst the books was a new, 4" tall book with a recess cut into it to house the three little note jars. Oh, and in the third jar there was a note talking about how stellar he is.

Then I gave him real presents. It was a lot, though, since he'd just woken up and was like: brrrrip? oh, im a detective. coffee?

Today is going to follow much of the same pattern, at least as far as... well, small-things go. A while ago I found The World's Smallest Postal Service online, probably via Pinterest. I nearly bought a little box to be mailed to him (I do this a lot. ok.) but decided not to for whatever reason. Then, earlier this month, I found out that the creator of the superfriggingcute WSPS got picked up by Chronicle Books and they now make an excellent little kit complete with stickers to act as wax seals and tiny stamps and news paper and I LOVE SMALL THINGS.

Seriously, those small balloons & tiny glass jars were not a new deal for me.
Everything is cute when it is smaller.
Just look at people and cats. #BABIES

Anyway, throughout the day he'll receive a series of letters- each tiny one being either a cute quip, a piece of trivia about being 28/the number 28, one is about the year he was born, and others just involve the gift associated with the letter. Each has a tiny drawing of a bee on it instead of his name-- I call him Bee/Boyfriend on the regular, its one of those Couple Things.

So, relating to that, I grabbed him a small jar of fresh honey, a little bee post card, and a bee lollypop (iwantit) from Follow the Honey a precious little shop in Cambridge. Without getting too far into it, he'll be getting a pile of little things he'll like/use. My favourite little thing is a small, hand-made wooden top with a ring. Since we're going to dinner with a group at The Top of the Hub, the giftbox has a 'You're the Tops!' note with it. #punny

It should all come together nicely. At the very least, Macy's white/red + the postal service's white/red/blue scheme w/ brown make for a cute little set up. I like when stuff matches.

veggie galaxy & yarn, so much yarn

2011-10-11T18:02:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went into the city to poke around a little. Boyfriend's birthday is this weekend and I've many surprises in order! It is exciting stuff. Aside from the surprises, none of which I can write about until after Saturday, a friend and I went out to lunch with her GentlemanFriend.

Do you like the complete lack of names? Me too.
Although I do really call my boyfriend Boyfriend/Bee. I dunno, nevermind.

We all went to Veggie Galaxy which was fantastic. Their entire menu is vegetarian, most of it is vegan-- all of the desserts are, in any case, and all of the menu items can be made vegan upon request. They've their own in-house vegan cheese. Who even does that? Oh, wonderful people do that. It is essentially a vegetarian diner, and they serve breakfast all day and they've a take-away bakery at the front. I didn't know that breakfast was served all afternoon when I went, otherwise I probably would've devoured something absurd and breakfast related, but as it is I ate a reuben.

It had slices of tofu, red cabbage, swiss cheese and love in it. It was served with potato salad and a little arugula salad. This picture doesn't do it any justice, haha, it was one of those meals where it just looked so pretty that I stared at it while eating the potatoes. Oh, then I devoured it in three bites. I eat very quickly, its embarrassing.

In other exciting news, my yarn arrived! It came in a frighteningly disheveled box, but thats fine because it was so nice to see all of the cones lined up happily!

space shuttle

2011-10-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

Dress-Time & Shibori Time Warp

2011-10-09T17:26:00.000-04:00

So, here is the state of things:

Dyes: Ordered
Yarn: Ordered
Dress-Mock-Up: Reasonably assembled

This is a horrific, headless duplicate of the dress as seen on the pattern package. You should be glad I chose to write 'deep teal' over that hand as my lazy tracing job had it looking like a pterodactyl claw. Whatever the sad, congenital deformity the model has is irrelevant, though, as I've decided to go with an over-all teal color to the dress. I thought about doing an overall ikat pattern, because ikat is so freaking trendy right now, but do you know how that is DONE? I won't get into that right now, I probably will some other day, but I don't think I've the patience or ability to take on a full-blown ikat dress during a four month class... especially when I need to, y'know, pass. Oh, and I need these three credits hit the happy 120 credit requirement in order to graduate. #collegestudentpettyproblems

ANYWAY, I decided to do shibori. I'll be doing dye-washes on Tuesday/Wednesday and pictures will be forthcoming then... I'm just wading into the world of 'real shibori' so I'm a bit tentative.

My previous shibori foray was limited to the quick & dirty woven shibori. That being, where a supplementary weft is used and and tightened across the whole of the woven piece-- the 'rope' of cloth is then painted or dipped into a dye bath. After the dye sets and is washed away, the supplementary weft is removed and the pattern is revealed. You can read more about it around the internet, this page provides some good visuals. Woven Shibori is similar to traditional shibori visually, but since it is done on the loom it has less freedom than the traditional method.

Uh, traditional shibori uses knots, a needle, and sometimes objects and wood-blocks in order to achieve the pattern. It is all done by hand after the fabric is woven. This is the game I'll be playing. I want the dress to have a graphic pattern, something bold and eye-catching. The dress will be given a wash of a quarry/stone blue and then I'll play with the shibori pattern. I'll then over-dye the fabric in a bold teal.

My first shibori attempt was when I took a course on dyeing here at BSU in Summer 2010. It was pretty fantastic: We don't have the studio space to use sinks/tables during the regular semester, so having the student interest at the time to get a summer class to run was a pretty great thing. I wove a series of three shibori scarves, each in varying shades of indigo, and for my first attempt they came out quite well. A pair of them were accepted into the 2011 Student Exhibition at BSU, and one of those was also published within The Bridge, BSU's Art/Literary Journal. The third scarf was never published, it was the lightest in color. I mailed it out as a thank you gift to the woman who sold me my loom. She was a dear thing. ♥

Blah blah blah.

Each scarf was woven using the same white 8/2 cotton warp. I believe the sett was 24, but its been a while. The scarf on the left used the same 8/2 cotton for the weft, the center scarf used a light blue 8/2 tencel, and the darkest scarf used a pale grey 8/2 cotton. The pattern for the shibori was a bronson lace. I love bronson lace.

That center scarf is *so much softer* than the other two that I sort of fell in love with tencel, haha. It made such a difference in that particular scarf that I've been eager to play with it again since.

wheeeeeeeee.

Kodi is a celebrity.

2011-10-06T20:07:00.000-04:00

I'm a horribly obnoxious person.
I've a horribly obnoxious cat.

Today he was featured on pawesome.net!

It features a fascinating biography about how he got his start in life. I'm a bit proud of him. He also has a facebook .

In addition to that, I placed an order for six 1lb cones of 8/2 Tencel today! In Natural, courtesy of WEBS. Isn't that exciting? You bet it is.

The sample above looks ridiculous-- poor quality iPad2 picture aside. It is a mix of three colors in four bands, just plain weave. I'm going to use it to test general dye concentrations before the tencel arrives. I'm no dye pro and I want to get as much shibori testing done before the semester's pace really picks up-- nothing worse than being in the art building for 18 hours straight at the end of December with deadlines looming.

lol, looming.

I'm afraid of biting off more than I can chew & choking to death.

BUT CHECK OUT THAT HEM. CHECK.IT.OUT. A week ago I couldn't sew in a straight line, but LOOK AT ME NOW, FOLKS. Look at me now. We'll ignore the horrible wonky selvedges for the time being, ok? Thanks you're sweet.

KELSEY KEEFE: making quiet things uncharacteristically loud every day.

2011-10-05T11:12:00.000-04:00

Boyfriend took a seeeecret video of me while weaving... I am a very loud little weaver. In any case, though, I am excited to bang this silly thing out so I can dye the fabric.

I used the studio's yarn, though, and we don't have very much cotton that can use a sett of 28EPI, so the warp itself is actually a gradation between white/beige, beige, beige/tan, tan. It's interesting looking, to say the least, haha.

Oh well.

Weavin' the dream folks, just weavin' the dream.

2011-10-05T01:45:00.001-04:00

I'm going to weave a dress.

Well, if everything goes according to plan and it doesn't turn out to be a dismal failure, then sure: I'll weave a dress. Otherwise I'll be mass-producing some very unattractive coin purses for the upcoming holiday season.

I decided a few weeks ago to go with this pattern. It's Retro Butterick B5605. I can't sew. I should mention that right now: I make fabric and cannot sew. I don't know how to really turn on a sewing machine, threading the needle is unnecessarily difficult, and once I manage all of that I have an incredibly hard time sewing in a straight line. I'm in the process of a muslin mock-up of the dress and I've put my chips on sewing having a steep learning curve.

I've been watching a lot of How-To-Sew videos on Youtube make it look a lot easier than it really is. Along those lines, this new found fascination with sewing has left me incredibly impressed with craft bloggers: how do these people quilt? Sew their perfectly coiffed little children charming clothes? Craft bloggers live in some idealized alternate reality where no one has to say "oh no my bobbin smells like burning".

Anyway, I am sure I'll be fine. The dress pattern is just precious and I'm sure that if all else fails I can find a nice old lady to help me.

I'm still in the planning stages as far as colors and junk go: I did order a few Procion Dyes from PRO Chem and will be playing around with Shibori as soon as they arrive and I finish weaving up a sample warp (cotton, 9" wide/28 EPI). I'm sort of playing it by ear for now since the school's studio doesn't have tencel or bamboo at the weights I'm interested in, so I'm just making the most of the cotton while I click aimlessly around WEBS for hours on end. #productive

ok as far as dyes go i only bought three colors because thats all my thirty dollar art student fee could afford me. ... but I'm going to get a few more if these aren't to my liking. Conveniently enough, both PRO Chem & WEBS are in Massachusetts so I don't really need to worry about shipping time. The dyes I chose seem a bit ugly but I figure the different dilutions/mixes will yield something worth looking at. Maybe.

Since its Shibori, too, I'll likely dye the whole fabric a pale teal and then do a more concentrated wash over it afterward.

blah blah blah, I invited boyfriend to watch me weave my sample cloth at school today. I wish I knew why my hand was on that side of the beater when this was taken, haha.

Are you excited?

2011-10-03T19:41:00.000-04:00

Well, hi there. Let's get this party started. I feel a bit obligated to talk all about me-- partially because this is kelseykeefe.net and my name is in the domain, but also because there might be some minuscule chance that we haven't already met. Oh, and also because I am a terrible narcissist, but I try to keep that under wraps.

So! I'm Kelsey. My mom calls me Kelsey Keefe, generally everyone does the full name thing. I don't think people can resist the alliteration. So tempting, so tempting.

I have a very general idea as to what I want to blog about- I'm not a writer, I generally write as I speak and that, in turn, involves a lot of word vomit. I think I registered kelseykeefe.blogspot in 2009-- I'm always registering for things, letting them incubate-- the idea of blogging is super appealing but I would hate to be one of those people who blogs a few times in quick succession, then slowly stops off-- eventually apologizing for never updating... uuugh. I'd be so sad, so sad.

I really like reading blogs though, it is my favourite hobby. So I thought I'd join in. #loveme.

I'm graduating college in December and think I might be inheriting a lot of spare time in addition to the crippling debt, so I might as well pick up a constructive hobby. I initially concentrated in Art History but added on Crafts/Weaving after I realized I had taken it four times... I did an intensive research project in Fall 2010 on Central Asian Ikat (Uzbek), it was historically based and at the end of it I just wanted to scoop out my eyes with some sort of rusted gardening tool. It occurred to me then that a career in museum studies was not up my alley.

I am horribly loud. Seriously, cannot control the volume of my own voice, VERY EXCITED TO MEET YOU HELLO I AM FRIENDLY.
I fell asleep in Harvard's Art Library every single week.
I am clumsy and break things. All of the things. I don't even have nice things anymore because every time I have something nice my heart swells with excitement and I say, "wow, look at this nice thing... I am gonna take such good care of it.." and then I ruin it. I am like a toddler who hasn't learned to "gentle pet" the kitty yet and squeezes its little head off.

I am not sure why I ever thought it was a good idea, but oh well. At least I learned a trade that hasn't been done away with by machi-- oh wait. The industrial revolution was actually a thing and not something we just learned about in grade school.

Anyway, the point is: I'm just gonna weave. Sure, I've a certain amount of debt hanging over my head like a dark cloud, but I don't have anything better to do.

HELLO THERE. WELCOME TO MY HOME. WELCOME.