Face off

 Today at Fashion Illustration Class at Austin School of Fashion Design, we learned how to draw faces. Once again, I am struck by how mathematical it is when you boil it down, step by step. We started with an oval, quartered it, drew eyes on the half way point, cut that in half, added the nose, cut that in half, added the lips. My picture is on the left, the instructor's in the middle and another student's picture on the right. They are all so different!

The hair is harder to draw than you think.You have to add lines bit by bit and make sure to create shadows. She looks like she could use a bit more hair. 

 Here we added color, blending it with our fingers. Highlighting is created by erasing away color to add a 3-D effect to the hair.

Here is my final version. My instructor told me to make the neck skinnier and shorten her chin. It was super fun doing her eye makeup! Not bad for my first shot. The truth is you can learn anything with a good teacher. I love this school.

Fleece Blanket Part 1

I've decided to make a Black and Red Lake Travis spirit fleece blanket using the technique I learned during my weekend workshop at Alabamachanin.com. I laid the laundered fleece on my ping pong table. Clamps, leftover from my days of working on lowescreativeideas.com, made it easy to gently tug and spread the fabric on the surface. 

I used plain copy paper and blocked out the LT design to make sure the scale would work.

Using my heart shaped chalk liner ( a gift from Martha Pullen), I drew guidelines. Get yourself one - you will love it.

I made my own stencil using poster-board and an exacto knife. The florid L remind me of practicing my name in elementary school! 

Here is the dried paint. Most of it will get cut away to created the textile.

Here is the whole quilt spray painted. Part 2 - the sewing!

One shoe on, one shoe off

Up until now, I have been battling with sketching clothes on my ipad using Sketch book pro. It's a great program, but I found my drawings to be lopsided. Forget drawing the head - and the figure was impossible. It is against my nature to draw such skinny legs and arms!  So, that is why I am so excited! First day of Fashion Illustration Class at Austin School of Fashion Design.  Learning how to draw a fashion croqui is quite interesting. It is very mathematical. For fashion illustration purposes, proportions are important and must be exact. If anything is slightly off, your eye will tend to be distracted and not focus on the clothes. Now, I must practice practice practice. Eventually, my own style will develop. One can only hope! Once we learned how to draw the feet, I couldn't help designing a shoe. I can already see how this is going to be very helpful and fun when drawing my clothes. 

Pant-demonium

ARrrg! The last twenty hours working on my custom pants pattern. After  altering the pattern with adjustments to my second mock up, I made my wearable mock up. The good news? I got pretty good at using the cover-stitch function on my new serger (see picture). The bad news is, this one fits the worst of all three. When I took out the wrinkles below the butt, somehow the pivot made the crotch seam too small. Now, it is like a junior pant barely coming up past my underwear - not the high-waist jean I envisioned. Also, it is now too tight all through the hips. Obviously, I did something wrong when I redrew the crotch. Not sure if this is even salvageable because the pattern has so little seam allowance that it is impossible to add enough here and there. 

(Still had fun despite all the problems. It is the only way to learn!!!)

Kitchen remodel

http://www.hgtvremodels.com/kitchens/a-family-centered-gourmet-kitchen/index.html

I am super excited to see my story published at HGTV's new website, HGTVremodels.com. My background in interior design, construction and writing makes it a great fit for me. I was lucky enough to work with my old Southern Progress buddies, who did an awesome job. Way to go Missie and Brian!