Sue Bleiweiss

Embellished Jacket

I've been wanting to embellish a denim jacket for a while now.   After trying on dozens and dozens of jackets I finally found one that fit the way I wanted it to so I brought it home and hung it in the studio waiting for some inspiration to strike. 

My first thought was to paint on it and if I had drawing and painting talent like my good friend Terri does then that would have worked however after much practice I have discovere that  my drawing/painting skills are virtually non existent so I had to scratch that idea completely.

So I needed a new plan and then it hit me.  Why not use the same technique I used to make the embellished hat?  So that's what I did.  I made a layered Mistyfuse surface without a base fabric using some of the hand dyed cheesecloth and some very sparkly decorative threads and novelty yarns and then used the surface to embellish the jacket.

The front:

Those very cool buttons are courtesy of another good friend Vicki who sent me a fabulous box of vintage buttons which have become one of the most rummaged through packages in my studio!  These buttons work perfectly with the jacket color and style and they are also on the cuffs of the jacket too.

The back:

I wish I could get a better picture of the jacket, these photos don't really do it justice. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Dreams

A little present that I bought myself from this very talented jewelry maker.

because it's true you should.

Headwear

Did a bit of playing around with Mistyfuse this morning and use it to turn a boring denim baseball hat into something with a little more personality...

(click the photo for a closeup)

The layered surface is made from Mistyfuse, dyed cheesecloth and novelty yarns.  No sewing at all involved with this project.    Not sure how often I'll wear it but I figure it'll give Terri an easy way to spot me in the crowd when we meet up in Houston.

What I've been doing this weekend...(updated old post)

Even though my trip to Houston isn't for a couple of months preparations are already underway.  We've added an additional Make it and Take it class to my schedule so I'll be teaching a mini wrapfolio class on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  Part of the class will be making  layered fiber collage surfaces with Mistyfuse and I wanted to have some dyed cheesecloth available for people to use in their collages so I spent yesterday dyeing up 40 yards (yes 40!) of cheesecloth:

Speaking of hand dyed cheesecloth.   If you're not inclined to dye your own you can purchase it in a rainbow of gorgeous colors at Sunny Bunny Designs.

I've also been busy making up a few samples of the mini wrapfolios to bring with me:

The one on the upper left is dyed Mistyfuse with silver foil, the red/gold one is red and black silk dupioni with joss papers.  The bottom left is some hand dyed cheesecloth, novelty yarn and torn mulberry paper and the one on the right is hand dyed cheesecloth, silver flakes and machine stitching.  This next one is done with cheesecloth, paper flowers, soy silk roving and novelty yarns.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

a couple more wraps

Vicki and I decided to do a trade, one of my wrapfolio's for some goodies from her studio.  So I put together a couple for her to pick from:

and the inside:

Vicki chose the one on the right so it's on it's way to you, I hope you like it!

Wrapfolios

I managed to give away all of the wrapfolios and padfolios that I had in stock so I decided to put some new ones together.  I like to keep a few of these on hand to give as gifts.

First a wrapfolio:

With 2 hand stitched signatures on the inside.  Pages embellished with fused fabric.

and a couple of padfolios:


Both of these hold note pads:

And I've been working on some new boxes - here's one of them:

And open:

Now I just need to fill it with some yummy chocolates...

New construction

There's been a lot of new construction going on in my neighborhood lately.  First the Tea house went up next door:

Which is a store house for ...

And then a little further down the street this place popped up:

Wonder what's being stored in there?

Have a great weekend everybody!

Journal wrap and a new series

I always have a notebook sitting next to my chair in the den so that when an idea strikes I don't have to go looking for a piece of paper to write it down on.  It also helps me to have all my ideas written in one place because often one idea leads to a completely different one and I find it helps me to find a focus when I'm not sure what to work on.  I really like these notebooks because the pages are nice and sturdy and the size is perfect for me.  But good grief could the covers be anymore boring?  So I decided to make a sleeve wrap for mine to jazz it up a bit:

But then of course once the wrap is opened it revealed the same boring black notebook so after a bit of altering, it now looks like this:

Much better!

And here's a prototype for a new series that I'm working on:

This one actually covers a tissue box.  I know it looks pretty boring but this was to work out the dimensions and the construction - I have a whole list of directions to go with this so stay tuned ...

Jewelry holder

Remember the cones I blogged about here?  Well I was playing around in the studio over the weekend and turned one into a jewelry holder:

Don't you just love that hair!

Weaving and a wrapfolio

The latest issue of Handwoven arrived in my mailbox yesterday:

I've got two articles in this issue.  A yoga mat carrier:

A a tote bag made from silk sari yarn along with a padfolio:

They did a wonderful job photographing the projects and laying out the articles.  It's a real priviledge for me to be in this magazine.

And here we have a new wrapfolio:

I'm going to be teaching how to make a mini version of one of these in Houston in a Make and Take class along with how to make the layered surface as well.  As soon as I have the class times confirmed I'll post them.

Have a great weekend everyone!