How to photograph jewelry indoors

I was on a jewelry-making kick the day before yesterday, and wanted to share what I made. All of these will be for sale on my etsy shop, and a few of them already are.

I've always had difficulty taking photos for selling things. Mostly I run into the problem that I live in a small apartment, with dorm-room-type furniture, and no direct light. This means that I have to take photos either outside or in the middle of the day, when the light is best near the window. It also means that I don't have any nice distressed wood or gleaming white tabletops to set my pieces on. However, I seem to have come across a solution.

I found a length of white muslin in my fabric stash that I ironed to death, and laid out over our (rather ugly) coffee table. That gave me a great neutral background, especially for close-ups. The earrings were difficult to photograph flat, so I borrowed a white ceramic bowl to hang them on. This caused another problem, as the angle that I was shooting at for the earrings included things around my table. Although the short focus made it so that it was all blurry, the dark jumble of colors was confusing and distracting from the jewelry. So I set up a pile of books and other fabrics to drape the muslin over in order to create a backdrop that would block out the rest of my apartment.

I'm really quite pleased with the way they turned out - all soft and bright, and the white background really helps to keep focus on the colors of the pieces. I did have to tweak things a bit on the computer in order to make sure the colors were true to reality, but it wasn't much, and didn't take more than a couple minutes per photo.

Next I will be tackling the outdoor/model shoot...

Spinning Update

I've been doing a lot of spinning recently. The first bit was really uneven and crazy, and also really thick, so I decided to split the roving in half again to get something closer to worsted weight. Also the submerging in hot water and stretching to dry really works well. So I have five skeins done, and three more drying at the minute (the room still smells of sheep, so I'm glad that M says she doesn't mind). 

Of the three that are drying, I have one more of that dark grey, one lighter grey that has really long and frizzy fibers, and one set of a mystery dyed roving. I bought the dyed roving at a yarn store that was going out of business - it's yellow and purple, with a bit of white and dark blue. Also, it's like spinning a cloud, it's that soft! Unfortunately, that seems to make it very difficult to spin evenly, so the first set is a bit lumpy, we'll have to see if it gets better. 

Now for some glamour shots of my yarn...

New drawings

I've been experimenting with a new drawing style. It's something I did a little while in Ireland, when I was exploring Art Nouveau methods, then transferred to some decorations on pottery this past year. Now I've sort of transformed that basic idea, and used it to embellish figures. They're actually really fun to do - I start with a pencil sketch to get the shapes and positions figured out, then go over the outlines with a pen, adding the decorative doodle bits. I'm playing around with how to finish the images - the last three are 'finished' but I don't think they're quite what I'm looking for. 

Learning to spin

While I was in Ireland, I learned some basic spinning techniques from a friend. I did a little spinning on her spindle, and then stopped for a really long time (despite having gotten so excited that I bought lots of roving). A couple months ago, I finally got around to getting my own spindle, but it took me until today to actually do anything with it. I'm really glad I did, though. 

In order to refresh myself, I did some searching online for spinning tutorials. Mostly I really liked this one. It was really helpful, especially her other two videos about prepping the roving, and how to deal with the yarn after you've spun it.

So I sat down and spun about 3/4 of a white wool roving that I purchased from England (while I was in Ireland). The first bit (hanging on the hangers) used about half of the roving, and is currently hanging on the back of my bedroom door, drying to set the twist. My room also smells of sheep.  The second bit I did, still on the spindle, used 1/4 of the wool, and is about half as thick as the first one. I think it's better for me to work thinner, though it's difficult to convince myself I can actually spin something that thin. It's not actually thin, just feels like it - it's probably still about worsted weight or a bit lighter. I can't imagine spinning lace-weight or thread.

Also, I seem to only be able to spin so much yarn on my spindle before I have to remove it and start over, which is a bit of a shame. It just reaches this point where the bundle of spun yarn underneath the whorl is too wide, and the bit that goes up and around the hook won't stay in place when I'm spinning and gets all tangled. I feel like a larger spindle would help this, maybe? But for now I can't spin a terribly long length of yarn in one piece (the first one was about 45 feet, I think?)

Costumes

I thought I'd go ahead and post some of the costumes that I've made already, with some brief explanation. Unfortunately when I was making these, I was not running my blog, and so I didn't take any progress shots.

This was my version of Maria's dress from The Sound of Music - the one in 'Do Re Mi'. The blouse is from a thrift store find of a sleeveless dress. I cannibalized the skirt of the dress to make the cuffed sleeves. The skirt was very simple, just panels gathered into a wide waistband. I *think* the panels were slightly trapezoidal, rather than rectangles, to reduce the bulk at the waist.

Here's the costume with the bodice on - I made it without a strict pattern. I looked at pictures from the movie, trying to pinpoint the seam lines and the shapes of the fabric pieces. From that I made a paper mock-up, and a 'muslin' from an old sheet. The bodice opens at the front, and is held together by a line of small hooks and eyes.

This costume was inspired by Degas' Little Dancer sculpture. 

These two are costumes for the Renaissance Festival. I wish I could remember where I found the instructions for the chemises, but it was a fairly simple rectangle pattern with gathered neckline and wrists. The skirts were made from rectangular panels gathered into a waistband, to create the full-over-the-hips silhouette.

This is a Cleopatra costume. There's a white muslin shift, mostly unshaped, with a sheer white overdress that starts under the bust, with long straps in a v-shape. The shoulder cape opens at the back, and fastens with a button. The pleats were ironed in, and then sewn into the neck piece. The decoration is a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine, with metallic embroidery floss woven in to add color and sparkle.

Line embroidery

Recently I've been missing my time in Ireland a lot. As a way of dealing with that, I decided to go through some of my photos and sketches from that time, and transform them into line drawings that I can embroider. I've been drawing them straight on the fabric with pencil, and then using different colors of embroidery floss to pick out the design lines. I really like the way they end up - somewhat simplistic in form, but really lovely.

The first one is of a ruined church on Innismore, and the second one is actually from England, and the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey.

How to make applique easy

A while back I was talking with someone (I wish I could remember who) and discussing issues of applique embroidery. Knit fabrics can be finicky and don't want to stay in place, but they can be secured with a looser stitch and won't fray at the edges. Woven fabrics stay in place much better while you're working, but you have to be much more meticulous about stitching down the edges, and that can take a *really* long time. So, whoever this brilliant person was suggested that I use fusible interfacing to secure the edges of woven fabrics. Brilliant!

It was actually quite easy, and seemed to work with several different weights and types of fabric. Just take a small piece of fabric (bigger than your design) and a piece of fusible interfacing, iron them together as per product instructions, and then draw on either side and cut out your shapes. 

A note of warning: make sure your piece of interfacing is at least a little *smaller* than your fabric when you're ironing them together, or you'll fuse the overlapping sections of interfacing to your ironing board.... oops!

This thistle design on a plaid flannel is the only one I've sewn on to anything so far, but I really like how it turned out. I used a sort of connected running stitch to secure down the edges, and I really like how it gives a solid line, and doesn't take away too much from the plaid. Often I like to use a blanket stitch on the edge of knit appliques, but that would have been too busy here. The very edges of the flannel did start to fray a bit, but only after I'd sewn them down - the interfacing held everything together. Also, I feel like between the interfacing and the stitching, it's very secure. The bonus is that it took much less time than a satin stitch around all the edges to hold the loose threads in!

Here's just a bit of a sneak preview of what I'm making here - it's a smallish purse. I sewed the bottom edges together without turning them inside, in the hopes that I'd get a bit of a frayed edge to echo the appliques. It will still be getting a shoulder strap, hemmed top, and probably a tab and button closure, in the same flannel plaid.