Skull

The skull that hangs at the entrance to the fascinating Old Operating Theatre Museum by London Bridge.

Eat Your Heart Out 2012 at St Bartholomew's Hospital Pathology Museum

A friend and I went to Eat Your Heart Out this weekend. This pop-up cake shop took place in possibly the only grotesque museum in London that I haven't been too - St Bartholomew's Hospital Pathology Museum. It seems that this museum isn't open to the public, though you can arrange a private viewing and it does host events, usually lectures and seminars.
   

What am I doing with my life? Also, some knitting.

After a month of trying to decide what to do with my life, I think it might be time to start blogging again.

I've been knitting three different things over the last month; here's the first one:

Street art

It's time for the annual Whitecross Street party! My two favourite pieces of this year are posted below; I wanted to take more photographs, but it started raining straight after this.

Photographs of some of the previous year's artworks can be seen here.

Knitting needle case

Several months ago I was given a lot of knitting needles. Unfortunately, they've languished on a windowsill in my living room since then, waiting for me to find somewhere more sensible to keep them. This week I finally tired of knocking them on the floor whenever I opened the blinds and made a case for them. The instructions came from Stitch 'n Bitch, (which has a few sewing patterns alongside the knitting patterns, all for knitting accessories).

What to do?

So, my sister sent me an amazing birthday present, two different versions of an Alexander Henry fabric called "Osteology":

They're so great! But what should I do with them? I need amazing projects for this amazing fabric!

Skull skirt

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had picked up a pattern for a gathered skirt from Sew Over It. This skirt is now finished.

Screen-printing onto handmade paper

I think the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory... Screen-printing onto paper is a bit different to printing onto cloth; it requires a hard, flat surface underneath. My screen-printing tutor also advised that I tape the paper down and put some card on the frame of the screen to create a slight gap between the screen and the paper. The results were pretty good so it looks like it was sound advice.

Skull cushion

Burgundy flock on a thick cotton. I'm really pleased with how this came out.

Shop opening announcement

This is my 100th post and I'm pleased to be able to use it to announce the opening of my shop on Folksy. You can find it at: http://www.folksy.com/shops/birdskullbuttons

I'll be adding more stock to it over the coming weeks. Skeleton prints will feature heavily!

Craftster project: Reconstructed men's shirt

I've been looking around for simpler sewing projects after this disaster and recently found this tutorial on Craftster for turning a men's shirt into a tank top. This turned out to be an excellent beginner project with a straightforward tutorial. My only complaint would be that it isn't quite clear from the tutorial where you should cut to remove the shirt collar.

I picked up this short-sleeved men's shirt from a local charity shop. I chose it because I liked the subtle skull print on it, but with hindsight I should have considered the size and the type of material more carefully. It's 100% cotton, but it's quite stiff and doesn't drape very well. It also turned out to be far too large for me.

If I were doing this again I'd use a medium, or even a small, shirt. This was a large and it's definitely too loose for my taste. It also sits too low and is slightly see-through; I'm wearing a vest underneath it in the picture below.

You can see more from the designer on her blog.

Exhibition, part 2

More pictures from the show, this time of my own work! The fantastic photograph below was taken by Jay Alix, the rest are my own.

Graffiti

Let me start with an update to my previous post - Ai Weiwei was released from prison on 22nd June.

The artists of Leake Street marked the occasion.


There was also another great skull painting there.

Printing: new frames and old screens

As both the Textiles Foundation group and the Advanced Textiles group are currently preparing for their end of year exhibitions, the college has suddenly run short of the frames needed to make printing screens. James kindly made me two brand-new frames using some cheap wood from B&Q, so all of my new screens are now ready for printing.

Ribcage v.2 - expanding foam

I'm currently attempting to make a second ribcage. This still needs to have some rigidity, but it needs to be flexible enough to be opened up and light enough to suspend from the ceiling. Over the last two days I've been experimenting with applying expanding foam to a wire frame.

Back to reality

My ridiculously long Easter holiday has finally come to an end. It was good to be back in college today; I work a lot better with other people around me. And I was given a present!

A tiny skull! Thanks, Tina! We thought it was a rat skull at first, but after looking online I now think it might be a rabbit skull.

Grant Museum of Zoology

Entry: Free

I hadn't heard of the Grant Museum of Zoology until quite recently, when I learnt that it was reopening in March after a period of refurbishment. I went along yesterday, surprised that there was still a collection of skeletons in London that I hadn't seen.

The Grant Museum was founded at University College London in 1827. Last year it closed for an eight month period in order to move to new premises in the university's Rockefeller Building on University Street. Apparently it's “the only remaining university zoological museum in London”, so presumably there used to be more of these amazing places.

I don't think I can rave about it enough after my brief visit. There are hundreds of cabinets and shelves and draws, all stuffed with skeletons and taxidermy and specimens preserved in jars. It's just one big room crammed with tributes to humainty's need to understand and categorise everything. Everywhere there's something to marvel at: owls in bell-jars; a complete quagga skeleton; a jar full of moles.

While I was allowed to take photographs provided I turned the flash off, I did tell the curator that I wasn't going to put them online. Possibly I should have pleaded the case for sharing a couple of them, because it's a shame to not be able to illustrate this post.

Anyway, if you're in London on a weekday afternoon with no money and an enquiring mind then this is somewhere you should definitely make time to visit.

Bone Helm (req. level: 21; req. strength: 25)

Making fake bones

I spent most of my weekend experimenting with different finishes to see what would best recerate the colour and texture of bone, while also covering up joins in the styrofoam. Here's the formula I eventually settled on.

Hat-making

The brief for my current module - conceptual headpieces - was to take my theme for the term and use it to design and make something that could be worn on the head. It was very emphatically not to look like a hat.