Summer Fun

I'm joining up with some blogging friends, sharing my list of things I'd like to accomplish this summer.
Following are incriminating photos of what could be called my clutter crime scene:

Repair Mountain (aka Sewing Mountain)
There are actually several of these in various rooms.

Resale Rendezvous with The Shrine barely visible

The Clutter Magnet Coffee Table

See? Clear evidence that a blogger's home is not always beautifully staged!
(Well, is mine ever? Do I care?)

Weekly Goals:
Sew and/or repair at least one garment.
List at least one garment on Poshmark
and one on Trendlistr [if I can ever get back into the site, that is].
Upload new art to Redbubble.

Summer Goals:
Get taxes done.
DeClutter the living room (again).
Get sewing machine repaired.

Linking up this week with
Shelbee's On the Edge of the Week

plus:

Do you have any sort of "To Do" list for Summer?
Link and tell!

An InLinkz Link-up

A Shoe Is Born #otisshoeworkshop

I MADE MY OWN SHOES!!!!!!! (In case you hadn't heard).

The right shoe is still on the last. The left one is more or less finished. 

I took an amazing week-long shoemaking workshop with Chris Francis at Otis, through the auspices of the Continuing Ed department. [Thank you CE, for underwriting my participation].
Seven of us worked 9-5, Mon-Fri, and 8-11 Sat and all made at least one shoe.
I'll post more about some of the amazing women that participated in subsequent posts --
this one is all about the process!

I'll show you some highlights -- get comfortable, kick your feet up, shoemaking has a lot of steps (harhar).
[I'll keep the images small, for easier scrolling. You can click on an image to see it bigger].

Day One: measuring

the last is first

foot tracing and measuring

comparing the tracing to the last, marking areas to extend

Day 2: Midsole

creating midsoles from scratch
leather is sandwiched between layers of a paper product called redboard

phase 1 of midsole nailed to last

adding steel shanks

adding more redboard to bottom of midsole

 Day Three: uppers - designing, patterns, painting

last covered with masking tape, design worked out

masking tape carefully peeled off last

truing up paper pattern

cutting the uppers from raw vegetan cowhide

folding the topline

stitched dart shapes back of heel

paint it RED!

adding leopard pattern

cutting pigskin liner

Day Four: sewing upper, lasting

attaching upper to liner at topline

covering the edges of midsole with vintage Thai silk

ready to begin lasting

first nails

oops, heel dart not in center. oh well.

prep for gluing in toe box

the pair is lasted

Day Five: heels, soles

prep for gluing upper to midsole and adding cork

next the nails will be replaced with tacks, which stay in the shoe

bottom is smoothed with sander and dremmel

we used plastic heels

plastic covered with pigskin, then dyed black

heel glued, it stands!

[Chris didn't want us sharing his method of making the soles.]

here, I'm waiting for glue to dry to stick the sole to the heel

I wrote a secret message inside the right sole

Day Six: delasting, insole, done

lining trimmed from topline
ready to delast!

tada!

after sinking screws into the heel and nailing in tap, the insole pattern is refined
I didn't catch what kind of leather we cut the insole from
I painted mine purple

it's a shoe!

Did you have any idea that all this went into the making of a shoe?

Linking up with
Patti's Visible Monday
Shelbee's On the Edge of the Week
Catherine's #SaturdayShareLinkup
Rena's Fine-Whatever
Cherie's Shoe and Tell

Fluevog Fever

April was a busy month.
Aside from the two day jobs (teaching 3 classes and 3 days of making print designs),
Enid and I created 30 new prints of Fluevog Shoes for two blog challenges.
See them all over on my Pattern Recognition blog and read about the challenges here.

Here are some. #fluevogpattern will take you to the collection on Instagram.

I also did another A-Z with images from my #dailytruck art series on my WordPress site.
[Yes, I'm trying to learn WordPress. It's not as hard as I thought.]
That was mostly pre-scheduled, so it was fairly easy. I even have enough extra images to do the same theme next year, if I so desire. Or will I finally be sick of trucks by then? I keep seeing their butts on the commute, that won't stop anytime soon.

Here is the ever-so-elusive X. I didn't see this one until 4/11/17.

Anyway. Back to the shoes.
Every May 15, there is a big celebration at Fluevog stores with giveaways and deep discounts.
I went for the first time last year, and it was really fun.
This year I'm going to meet up with Wookie's human, who is driving up from San Diego county.

A Fluevog print dress is necessary!

I have this on order and even put in an extra $10 for expedited shipping so that I could also wear it to the Otis Fashion Show pre-show activities. There will be photos.

Redbubble happens to be having another one of their flash sales today -- 20% off everything until 11:59 PDT. Here's the link to my shop (it's hard navigating to specific products -- leave me a comment if you need help finding something). The sale code is IWANT20
*I get a small commission from sales. Thanks for your support!

Linking up with Patti's Visible Monday
Shelbee's On the Edge of the Week
Catherine's #SaturdayShareLinkUp (thanks again Catherine for turning me on to Redbubble!)

Taking a Bad Group Selfie, Take Two

Yes, it takes at least two to make a bad group selfie, and Silvana and I have been practicing.

The Poppy Reserve debacle you've seen.

Here are our other outings around LA's west side from the past week.
At the Getty:

[photo by Silvana]

Things got a bit blurry at McCabes, where we saw Thee Holy Brothers and Evie Sands:

Here we are yesterday, eating our very unfancy Easter lunch at Zankou:

Then we went to the Fowler Museum at UCLA, to see the exhibition of African Textiles.

Perhaps we became drunk on pattern joy...

The Fowler has an inner courtyard with a fountain. We cavorted.

Posing is hard, people!

Better, but terrible quality photo from the point and shoot. Its day of retirement looms.

Silvana wanted us with the fountain.

Lovely. But no fountain. [photo by Silvana]

There it is! [photo by Silvana]

I saved you the best/worst for last:

I call it "Fountain and Foreheads" [photo by Silvana]

I had so much fun with Silvana. She leaves returns home to Australia later this week.

I hope to see her again (IRL) soon!

Linking up with Patti's Visible Monday
Catherine's #saturdaysharelinkup