Silver – Hopefully Creative

Silver Leaf

Little silver leaf bracelet.

[I forgot to hit publish on this one, this was finished before the third project]

The second project in the jewelry course (check out my first ring!), was to make something with a fair amount of soldering. The examples I got were a link bracelet or necklace. Since I still don’t wear much jewelry, I didn’t necessarily want to acquire a lot of silver for a necklace that wouldn’t see much wear. So I opted for a bracelet.

After a bit of heavy Pinteresting, I settled on a leaf design, inspired by this pin and this pin. I made an example link in copper wire to see if it was possible and then measured how big I wanted it to be. I had to size down the design a little because my wrist is quite thin and I wanted to have five links. Then came the endless period of stretching a bar of silver to a much longer and thinner wire. It was a very interesting process that involved annealing (heating up and cooling down), lots of manual turning of cranks and pulling through tiny holes, but I ended up with enough wire to make my links.

After I had the links, I made some little loops to connect the links together. All was soldered and I only melted one bit a little, something that a little sanding can make much less obvious. Once it was all connected, I had to think off a closure method and settled on an elongated pin that could pull through the loop on the last link. It works quite well so far. Some more sanding and polishing and then it was ready for wear.

I like the jingling it does, but it will probably not see much wear.

Silver Bass

A silver and mixed metal bass guitar earring.

After finishing the Silver Elephant in the pre-final class of the year, I had to think of a quick project that I could do in 1+2.5 hours. Luckily, when I was trying to decide on the elephant, I’d also found a pin of a somewhat abstract bass guitar that really struck my fancy. My mother plays bass guitar and wears earrings so I figured I might try to make a bass guitar earring for funsies.

Silver earring shaped like an almost abstract bass guitar with two strings.

Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper with a silver earring shaped like a bass guitar

To make it, I flattened a piece of silver in that first hour and did the shaping and finishing in the final class. The plan was to bend it into shape, then solder the one pointy bit, drill holes for strings and finish it with sanding and polishing. I knew that it wasn’t going to hold the correct amount of strings for a bass, so I just drilled two holes in top and bottom. At home, I found some metal wire, made those strings and attached the earring hook. It turned out pretty well and so far, she’s enjoying it.

Silver Elephant

Silver elephant for a necklace.

The aim of the third project in my jewelry course was to do more soldering to get more faith in that. I had to think of something that I wanted to make and in the days preceding that class, I started looking around for inspiration. My one party trick is that I can fold an origami elephant from almost any piece of paper, for example a receipt. I’ve also got one of those elephants on my desk, and I thought, why not immortalize this in silver?!

Silver elephant next to a piece of paper with the original plan.

So I looked for a line drawing to base my elephant on. In the end, I combined two different pins (one and two) and set out to make an simplified elephant. I used square wire and made the different shapes by filing sections away in the corners, bending those and then soldering those joints. The order of operations was purple first, then blue then green. Attach those three together. Make the orange and attach it. Make the brown and attach it. Put the red on and attach a longer bit of lavender and saw that to length. The end of the trunk was almost completely filled in, so I used a drill and my saw to make the hole a bit more obvious.

Order of the silver sections added to the Silver elephant

Lastly, I added a little loop to the back so I could hang him on something. I didn’t want him to be high shine, so I kept the front and back slightly matt, but polished the outside edges to a shine. I found a spang (I don’t know the translation, but it’s a round cord for the neck) in my stash that fit perfectly and would put him at a nice height on my chest. My instructor was very proud that the final product looked so close to the plan and of the finishing and soldering that I’d done. I’m also happy with it and hope to wear it sometime.

Waves Ring

Making a shiny wave ring.

I’ve been taking a jewelry making course for the past couple of months. It’s been fun and I’ve been severely challenged in the patience department. The first classes were about reading measuring tools, how to saw, what soldering entails and how much sanding is going to be required for any project. Then we got started on our first item.

For the first project, we needed to make a ring composed of a simple inner ring and an outer ring with some sort of decoration it. Since I never wear rings, I didn’t want to make a giant thing, but it needed some size in order to get a decoration in it. What I settled on is making a short-ish inner ring, and then make an even shorter outer ring with a flat bottom edge and a wavy top edge. Once I managed the sawing of the outer ring, I also decided to drill some holes and saw some lines for more wave action.

Then there was some amount of sanding and polishing before soldering the two rings together. There’s one line decoration that came out great, and two that were partially filled in during the soldering process – can’t be perfect when you’re still learning. On to so many sessions of filing, sanding and polishing the thing to a high sheen. I learned about something that translates to ‘skin spots’, which is apparently copper coming out on the surface of the silver and looks like a dirty spot. I managed to get them all out in the end though. I have still not managed to wear it for a full day and I’m not sure that I ever will, but the process and the people in the class make it very enjoyable.

Striped Overalls

Silver snap detailed mash-up overalls with grey stripes

I got some interesting grey striped stretchy fabric from one of the fabric markets this summer. It seemed really fun to make overalls/dungarees with it. I’ve been dreaming of having some overalls that have the same top details as the Cat Dungaree Dress. Since that dress was supposed to be dungaree pants before I made terrible fabric choices…

Striped overalls with silver snap details, front

Striped overalls with silver snap details, side view

I tweaked the pants pattern I used for the previous corduroy dungarees and pants to make this thing. The main changes were to add some length to the bottom again, and to eliminate the dart in the front. So I redrew the pocket pieces to take those in by a few centimeters. I added pockets to the back, and made the back darts work, in contrast to the Dark pants. I grabbed the cat dress pattern and just directly copied the top onto the fabric.

Striped overalls with silver snap details, close up of side and pockets

I made some stupid mistakes that meant that a waistband wouldn’t work, so I just slapped the front and back bib straight on. I don’t trust zippers 100%, so I added an additional closure with a snap to the side seams. It also looks fun, so I’m happy with this choice. With the cat dress, I’ve found that the top strap is helpful to hang things on, like a bag with my yarn if I’m knitting. So it’s both another design detail and useful. I still have some of the fabric remaining and the plan is to make a blouse, similar to some I purchased eons ago from H&M.

Ps. if your screen does weird things with the stripes, The whole thing looks like the side detail image, there are no psychedelic blobs.

Dye Fun!

Some more dye experiments – olive does weird things..

I recently got to spend a lovely afternoon with a colleague, playing with dye and bleach and trying some new things.

Detail of one skein of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles on a black shale background

We mostly used Alpaca 4 ply yarn, and dye in three shades of blue (brilliant, royal and sky), periwinkle and gunmetal grey.

One skein of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

Turns out that if you put too much blue in, the variation gets lost. To get some variation back, we put some bleach over it, but it didn’t do all that much. Maybe my bleach was too old or it just doesn’t work. We decided to tried again with only brilliant blue, the periwinkle and some gunmetal speckles. A much more defined result.

One ball of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

One ball of upcycled quarter round dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

As a contrast to the blues with periwinkle, we also did a silver grey one. It’s always amazing to see how you end up with clear water after dumping in a bunch of dye.

One hank of alpaca yarn dyed silver gray hanging

One skein of alpaca yarn dyed silver gray

For some variety, we dumped some dye labeled ‘olive’ in the pan, and added two skeins of kid silk, and one alpaca 4ply. The yarn turned entirely green first before becoming orange-ish? It was as if it entirely split; super interesting to watch and I should’ve time-lapsed it, somehow.

Two hanks of kid silk lace yarn and one hank of alpaca yarn dyed olive hanging

Two hanks of kid silk lace yarn dyed olive hanging

One of the blue ones and the olive yarn stayed in my house while the rest went home with my colleague. It was a good afternoon and I do really love experimenting!

1880’s Corset

I made a start on a dream costume with an 1880s corset

A while time ago, I found THE outfit that I need in my life to fulfil my newly developed ultimate Victorian Librarian fantasies.

Walking Suit – ca. 1889, House of Worth, Accession Number: 2009.300.73a, b from the Met Museum

Of course I’ve since been scouring the internet for fabrics like this. Cut velvet dotted stuff for the skirt and jacket, and lace for the blouse and sleeve cuffs. I’ve not been able to find anything that’s remotely similar and in my price range for either. I did find one fabric at Mood that seems possibly close for the cut velvet but it’s in the United States (i.e. shipping is exorbitant) and it wasn’t there in any nice colours. For the lace, I haven’t even figured out what I’m supposed to use as a search to get what I’m after. So the only thing I’ve got going in that area is RSI from scrolling through Etsy stores. If you’ve got any suggestions, please let me know!

The difference boning makes, left with boning and right without

However, since old-timey outfits should start from the foundations outwards, I have made some progress in this project. I made the corset. The pattern I planned to use is a corded late 1880’s spoon busk corset from Norah Waugh’s Corsets and Crinolines. I had it all drawn out, copying and enlarging and generally faffing about. Then I discovered that Ralph Pink has a number of the corsets in the book available as free patterns, with seam allowances and everything. So I quickly printed that out, made a mock-up and decided to add some width, between 0.5 and 0.7 cm, to each panel, and cut a bit off the bottom.

It was constructed using a single layer red and silver (?) on black coutil with boning channels made of some vague synthetic fabric that was reinforced with interfacing. I used exactly 0.5 m of the coutil and basically have none left. Especially since I was also taking care to mirror the panels exactly, such that the corset is symmetrical. Next, the cording was sewn to the front two panels. Then I put the project on hold for months because I was scared to continue. During Eurovision I got myself to cut the boning channels and iron them to size. Then I waited a few more weeks before finally stitching them down, cutting and installing the boning and grommets and binding the edges.

It’s not perfect. The bottom edge sticks out too much in front. I had to unpick some of the boning channels because they were to narrow for the boning to fit through. The cording is close but not exact. It’s just a tad bigger than I thought it would be. All mostly nit-picky things. I think it would certainly improve from doing some more seasoning (i.e. wearing). However, I’m still pretty proud of myself for actually finishing the thing, especially after the amount of procrastination I’ve been doing on it. The one thing that is still missing is flossing, but with 14 bones per side, I’m not sure I’m up for that yet.

Christmas Ornament

Yes, I am aware of the fact that it is August, I haven’t skipped four months in my head. What I am aware of, though, is that fact that making things takes time. If you want to have a nice Christmas tree full of hand-made ornaments, it’s better to start in time right!

So what did I make? I knit a ball, in a yarn that varies between light silver and black, that’s why the colours aren’t even in the pictures. It’s supposed to be put in the tree, but it’s a little overly large I’m afraid. It’s bigger than my hand..

So for the next one I’m going to adapt the pattern to make it a little (lot) smaller. You’re supposed to knit it on 4 needles, but I’m incapable of doing that. I also don’t have four small needles anyway. So I decided to use a needle for knitting in the round, and this worked just as well. Started with 12 stitches in provisional cast on and in the middle it was 64 stitches, knit on 4.5mm needles. The next one will be more black, as that’s where the yarn’s at now.

Tag: Silver