Painted Shoes.

For health reasons which are far too boring to go into, I am currently selling twenty-one pairs of shoes. I am saving up to buy a pair of custom-fitted orthotic insoles, which basically restricts me to flat, boring, sensible shoes for evermore.

Of course, I am now seeing nothing but fabulous shoes, everywhere I turn! This month's Elle magazine arrived with a "shoes & handbags" supplement. The newest issue of Simply Knitting (where I thought I would be safe!) has a picture of some amazingly-decorated mosaic shoes. And now Hannah has been painting on her shoes.

Hannah also links to more painted shoes and clogs:

Åsa Westlund has a range of beautifully painted high-heeled Swedish clogs. Even if you're not keen on the style, there's no denying that the artwork is absolutely beautiful.

I used to have a little collection of swedish clogs (the flat kind), until an attack of mould in the hideous basement where I was living infiltrated the wooden soles, and rendered them all wet and irreparable. Now, of course, I wish I hadn't looked for pictures of clogs. I miss my patent purple pair (which all my friends kindly referred to as "those sawn-off wellies"), and I didn't know they were now available printed with dinosaurs, cartoons and skulls!

I'm not allowed to wear clogs any more, so clearly I need to be looking at painted shoes instead. Etsy has some beautiful work, from two sellers in particular.

Hippy of Doom has the most beautiful ballet pumps painted with a Hokusai wave design. She also has an adorable pair featuring the tree spirits from Princess Mononoke.

Miss Bunny's hand-painted shoes often have an Alice in Wonderland theme. My absolute favourites were these "Eat Me, Drink Me" shoes, which some lucky buyer must now be wearing with great joy.

Friends keep telling me that I should paint my own shoes, to make my disappointing orthopaedic future a little less dull. (Somebody in the USA has had this idea already!) I have painted Doc Martens, baseball boots and leather jackets in the past, but taking a paintbrush to a pair of extremely expensive shoes seems a bit scary. Mind you, it can't be more intimidating than reproducing an album cover or a photograph on the back of someone else's expensive leather jacket.

Maybe I should grab an old pair of shoes and a paintbrush, and give it a go.

Pop Britannia

Last night I watched Pop Britannia on BBC Four, and my brain has been feeling a little bit wobbly ever since.

I have found a thing that I've been missing for almost fifteen years, and now I need to work out the best way to get it back into my life again.

Watching that programme was like sitting in front of my parents' record collection, and putting on singles at random. I learned to play the clarinet because I was fascinated by Acker Bilk and traditional jazz. My parents had records by Cliff Richard, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde... all sorts of people. In fact this compilation, which I gave to my Mum for Christmas, is pretty representative! A copy is now on my own Wish List.

I've always been a huge Beatles fan, my personal favourite album being Rubber Soul. That's the point at which they changed from being just like all of the other groups of the time, singing mostly songs which other people had written for them, and started releasing records comprised mostly of their own music. But one of the things that I particularly liked about music during the late 1950s and early 1960s was that it was all about the songs. Singers weren't expected to be songwriters - the writing was already done, and you would choose the songs you wanted to sing. (Or more likely, your management would choose them for you.) I would have loved to have been a singer during that period, and I still love singing the songs of that era.

Distressingly, I have none of this music whatsoever in my iTunes, and I don't even have anything on CD, as everything I owned was on cassette, copied from my parents' records before I left home. I do own the Beatles' "1" compilation on CD, but I can't find it! It must be around here somewhere.

I have always been fascinated by the way that the art, music and culture overlapped so much with one another during this period, in a way that I don't think had been seen since the Pre-Raphaelites. However, the Pre-Raphaelites manufactured their own culture in many ways, and what happened in the 1950s seemd to grow organically as a result of a new generation of children growing up after the war, appropriating parts of a very much desired culture seen in American movies and imported music, and creating their own version because they could. I've been leafing through my books on Pop Art, and reading poetry by Brian Patten, Adrian Henri and Roger McGough. I'd really like to see Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery but it's only on for another couple of weeks, so I don't know whether I'll make it.

I've also added more books to my Wish List, from the bibliography of an essay that I wrote in 1993. It's called "Peter Blake and his links between Fine Art and Graphic Design", and it was the culmination of the Art History section of my art foundation course. It's 4,000 words long, and reading it back, even fifteen years later, I'm still quite proud of it. The conclusion's a bit rushed, but I was already well over the allowed word count, so I suppose I thought I'd better stop! The whole thing is hand written, on square sheets of blue paper, with postcards and photocopies of the relevant images glued into place. The pages are bound into a Chinese zig-zag style of book, so theoretically you could unfold the entire thing into one enormously long sheet. I've just started the process of typing it up, so that I have an electronic copy. I'll probably turn it into a web page eventually, if I can source all of the relevant images online.

I sent Paul up into the loft earlier, to find the box containing this essay, and all of my old sketch books from my A-levels and my art foundation course. I've been thinking of getting back into sketching again, but when I looked through those books I discovered that I'd barely done any sketching at all! All of them are filled with little bits of ephemera, cut out and glued in. I like cutting out and glueing in. :)

I have been doing some sketches over the past few weeks, of ideas for new clothes to make from the Bishopston fabrics, which should be arriving in the next couple of weeks. Last night I may have accidentally designed what I hope is going to be the perfect dress - for me, at least. I'm still looking at a number of reproduction 1950s dress patterns, and trying to work out which of them I could adapt to fit me, and whether they would actually be practical to wear every day. For anything I'm going to wear to work, i definitely need to add pockets! I'm thinking that I could make a pair of these capri pants in the black and silver bee brocade though, to be worn with a black polo neck.

I do wish that I'd bought the Swinging Sixties book from the V&A exhibition, although I do have plenty of photographs, which are currently uploading to Flickr.

I know that all of this is vague and rambly, but I enjoyed the programme last night so much that I'm still a bit over-excited!

If you missed Pop Britannia, you can watch it online for a week, and it's repeated tonight/tomorrow morning, at ten past midnight, and again at 02:40.

I don't suppose anybody has any means of recording it for me?

Lies and Statistics...

...well, okay, just statistics.

Today I have redesigned the front page of the Design By Claire website.

Ten days ago I signed up for Google Analytics, so that I could track what kind of activity was happening on my website. It turns out that a fairly large percentage of people were turning up to the home page, seeing the Queen of Hearts dress (Photograph © S L Hodkinson), and going away again.

Given that the Queen of Hearts dress isn't really representative of the work I'm doing these days, I thought that was a very clear indication that it was time for a change!

One thing which is also clear - I'm going to have to publicise the website to a much larger number of people, if I'm ever going to make any sales through the new shop. Most of the people who go to the shop page do click through and look at a number of items while they're there, but nobody's actually bought anything yet.

Next year I want to try and change the balance of my work - taking on fewer custom sewing commissions, and concentrating primarily on the duvet cover skirts and on the Fair Trade cotton, when it arrives from Bishopston Trading. In order for that to happen, I need to be encouraging people to buy directly from the shop, so I'll be selling quite a few more ready-made pieces in the New Year.

I'm currently being inspired by Gudrun Sjoden. I was looking through some of her old printed catalogues the other day, and I particularly like the way that the collections are designed to be mixed and matched and layered together. If I can design some garments which work in that kind of way, and make them from the Bishopston cottons, I'll be very pleased.

Soulemama's fabric hoops

fabric hoops
Originally uploaded by SouleMama

The past couple of days, I have mostly been inspired by Soulemama. She took the idea of the framed fabrics from The Purl Bee, who has a fabulous display of Liberty fabrics in wooden embroidery hoops.

I've been working in the shed for a whole year now and the walls are still bare, even though every other available surface is covered with fabric.

I don't know yet whether I'm going to go for embroidery hoops or old photo frames, but whichever I decide, I'm really looking forward to choosing the different fabrics to go inside them, and making a little display on my wall.

Soulemama also introduced me to Superbuzzy, which has the most amazing selection of novelty-print fabrics.

Later this afternoon I'm going to be placing an order with Superbuzzy, and another with Cia's Palette. Cia also has the most fantastic range of fabrics which simply aren't available in the UK. She's also really helpful, and replies to her emails personally. I like that kind of service, especially when I'm buying from such a long way away.

The fabrics will take a couple of weeks to get here, but as soon as they do I'll be making a little flurry of simple tote bags. Watch this space...

Coats and Dresses...

Today I am mostly being inspired by these patterns:

I love coats and jackets, and I particularly love oversized ones with giant buttons or enormous collars. I'd like to make the green one with the asymmetric collar with one truly GIGANTIC button at the neck. (I probably wouldn't go for Kermit-green though.) I have a particular liking for dolman sleeves, mostly because you don't have to fiddle about getting the sleeve head to fit nicely into the armscye. Also, when you're a person who waves their hands about a lot, you get a good range of arm movement. ;)

The second coat, which is from a 1952 pattern, I love because of the great big pockets, and the oversized style. Think how soft and comfortable this would be in a nice warm fleece. (Yes, I know polyester fleece is hardly a 1952-appropriate fabric, but that sort of thing's never bothered me.) You could make a fabulous evening version in velvet, or in a heavy matte satin, with velvet cuffs and facings. I'd probably go for polar fleece with skulls on, but that's just me...




This first dress is yet another 1950s reproduction pattern. I keep hoping that by some miracle I will actually develop a waist, and then be the right shape to fit into these styles of dress, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. I particularly like the middle version though, with the fuller skirt. If you click through to the front & back illustration, you can see that the fullness is brought in under the bust with lots of darts. I have a theory that it should be possible to let the darts out to fit me without completely ruining the shape of the dress, so I think I might buy this pattern and give it a try. I'd quite like to make it with the bodice in a contrasting colour, although I think this dress might be a good candidate for my flamingo broadcloth.

The second dress I like for the same reason - the shape is made using lots and lots of tucks, and I love the effect that this produces in this gingham! I love the striped section round the waist, and I'd love to give this pattern a go in a smaller gingham, even though that would probably mean making double the number of tucks. I'd probably leave out the lace trim around the bottom though - or I'd apply it on the top of the fabric rather than having a cut-out. Nobody really needs to see my knees, these days!



It's been three weeks since I've had a chance to get out into the Shed and sew, and I really miss it.