Wall mounted shelving installed = a clean work table!
The only thing left is to install mounts to hang the litho roller from the bottom of the shelving, and then this area will be all set for printing. For now, a load of fabric is being cut and stacked, ready to be printed for new bandannas, cowls, and a few surprises.
Next up in studio improvements we will move to the right of the window where the third and final wall needs to be scraped, patched, and painted, and a new shelving unit built and installed. Once that’s done there will be space in this room to finally bring the letterpress up from the basement, and the printing will resume in earnest.
(cross-posted here from my personal weblog)
Here is another project abandoned around 1998 or so, recently rediscovered.
It’s an embroidered panel designed for a small book cover, for a book roughly 8 by 10 centimetres (3 by 4 inches). Somewhere in the attic is the book it was intended for, probably about 6 signatures of 3 folios each, sewn on linen cords, rounded and backed and trimmed, with endpapers sewn in and board covers laced on, naked and waiting.
The cover’s design is based on 16th century embroidered bindings such as those found at this link. The vertical floral motif in the centre is designed to run down the spine, and the horizontal gold bands will line up with the ridges formed on the book’s spine by the tapes the signatures are sewn onto.
Like every abandoned project in the history of forever, this one was entered into with loads of enthusiasm and worked away at like gangbusters for a good while. And like every abandoned project, the fun parts (outlines, filling in the tiny sections of colour!) went quickly but the promise of a beautiful finished object shone more dimly, from further away, once the tedious background-filling was practically all that was left. Add to that a growing disappointment with the low contrast of chosen colours and this pretty thing was doomed.
Will it ever get finished? Hard to say. The base fabric isn’t nice enough to just leave unstitched, but the dark blue is deadening. It should be picked out and replaced with red, or pale blue, or pink. But the thought of picking out embroidery stitches from a 15-year-old dead project isn’t an enticing one. The book would probably have to be remade as well, since after 15 years in a box who knows if the covers are even on straight anymore.
For now, this little panel is out of its tin work-box and pinned up onto a corkboard in the studio, where it can act as a reminder of every creative failure ever. Also, because it’s pretty to look at.
A lot has been going on around the Levigator Press studio, although it hasn’t been very photogenic. While the long term plan is to renovate our currently unfinished attic into a new studio, it’s a ways down on the home improvements list and so, in the meantime, it’s time to get the spare bedroom, into which the studio has been crammed, into shape. Since there’s no space to empty out the whole room, it’s been a drawn-out game of moving furniture, painting, building, moving furniture, repeat.
First order of business: the studio table was about fifteen centimetres (six inches) too low for comfortable printing, so I built a set of risers to lift it up. The wall behind it was patched and painted a nice crisp white (you can see the hideous mauve the room used to be at the left of the image below, and at the bottom of the window). At the same time, I’ve been slowly removing the same mauve paint off the original window trim and baseboards. That’s a long term project we’ll chip away at over time, since it’s nonessential. Here is the table up on its risers:
And now the flat paper storage shelf fits beneath it, freeing up enough floor space to eventually bring the letterpress up from the basement.
The wall to the left has now been patched and painted as well, and the sewing machines have moved over to the wall opposite the work table. This afternoon we’re building a wall mounted shelving unit to fit in the space above the work table, to hold inks, printmaking equipment, bookbinding tools and supplies, and the studio books and manuals. Next after that is a wall mounted hanging rack for the litho roller, and then I’ll finally be able to get back to printing even if the rest of the space is still a shambles!
Here are a few poorly-lit photos from backstage to tide you over until I get my hands on the runway photos a friend shot for me. The models looked so pretty in the Levigator Press dresses, leggings and scarves. As always in my work, of course, horror vacui abounds. See for yourself:
I’m especially tickled by the long dress on the left, which is a near exact reproduction in cut to a dress I made (in black cotton) in the early 90s and wore through that entire decade until it quite literally shredded off my body. I asked the model, Ashley, to wear the 14-hole Dr Martens with it just to give it that exact same silhouette as my beloved ’90s dress. This version combines fabric printed from woodblocks overtop of an existing print with vintage embroidered textiles (in the bodice and patch pocket).
The two other dresses with the same combination of vintage embroidery and overprinted fabric have a more 1970s style, with a bodice that softly gathers into a shaped midriff band. You can’t see it in this photo, but the short green dress has a swallow on it with the word “Love” in embroidered script. Sweet.
Here’s a better look at the cut of the turquoise and orange dresses in the centre, from when I first developed the pattern over a year ago:
This is before the pockets went on, which match up with the pattern so perfectly that you can’t even see them in the modeled photo. The turquoise dress has pockets of the original (not overprinted) fabric so they stand out a bit more.
Here’s one more shot of some of the models lining up for our scene:
The leggings-and-giant-scarf look was balanced with an identical one in turquoise, not seen here. The leggings have worked out quite well; both I and one of the other designers wore them the night of the show and they were extremely comfortable to work in and also looked amazing, of course. I’m just waiting for a chance to do a photo shoot to get these up in the shop. That red pair is already sold but there are plenty more, all one of a kind and all very pretty.
Here’s a peek at a few of the leggings prints:
Here is something that Peter and I have been working on for the past couple of weeks: Surprise Party in the Snow. It’s the drawings that I make in my little notebook while sitting in bars or in my Spanish class, using ball point pens, highlighter markers, and gel pens, all cleaned up and made into a single panel web comic. It’ll be updated intermittently, at least once a week, for as long as bars and Spanish class keep yielding up good overheard phrases. Don’t expect jokes, or narrative, or even accurate Spanish (I’m still learning!).
Enjoy! clicky-click –> Surprise Party in the Snow
Coming soon. . .
Made during my recent visit to the Pixie Fashions studio.
Since the images we tested out were scanned from ink drawings on paper, they’re a little bit messy for the embroidery machine software to render cleanly. But now that I have a better idea of how it all works, I can plan some new drawings specifically for this project. My mind is brimming over with the possibilities of machine embroidering my drawings onto skirts and dresses.
During a visit to the Pixie Fashions studio over the weekend, we tested out some of my drawings with the big embroidery machine. Here is the machine adding black linework to an image of a disembodied bird head with tentacles, holding a sword and breathing fire:
The drawings will need some tweaking to make them more appropriate for embroidery, but the test results looked pretty amazing. Watch for some exciting collaborations between Levigator Press and Pixie Fashions soon!
The first design in a new line of screenprinted bandannas, featuring artwork created exclusively for Levigator Press by our talented illustrator friend Mary MacVoy (see more of Mary’s work here: marymacvoy.com). We debuted the line at the Roller Derby Association of Canada Eastern Regional tournament last weekend, with great success. Stay tuned for these lovelies to appear in our Etsy shop just as soon as we manage to take the mannequin out for some beauty shots.
Yesterday I made a post on my personal weblog detailing the process of a recently completed project, converting an old letterpress type tray into a wall-mounted display for jewellery. You can check it out at this link: Letterpress Tray Jewellery Display
