Agathe Sorlet Research

I came across Agathe Sorlet's work when I was in London over summer, as it just so happened that the week we had booked to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play was also London Design Week. With not much time before our train home, we headed towards the Spitalfields and Shoreditch areas to simply explore. I loved the areas and came across so many creative shops and cafes, and spotted a sign for a gallery selling prints. I couldn't tell you the name of it for the life of me, but it had some lovely work, one of them being Agathe Sorlet.

Not being much of an illustrator myself,  I always appreciate people who can make their drawings look great! Sorlet's are bright and fun, celebrating the female body and real relationships in a humorous and quirky way. I love her use of colour and especially the use of negative space, with colours merging into each other. She is just another illustrator I have added to my list of 'Prints I want to buy when I'm an actual grown up with my own house to hang them in'...

Check out her fun style on her website and instagram @agathesorlet.

Maricor/Maricar Research

I realise I've been a bit AWOL on the blog of late, but with my dissertation first draft handed in and a day of rest under my belt before I go full steam into my design brief projects, I thought I'd add a bit of my favourite research from my first brief of third year.

As you have probably seen on my online pages, over summer I took it upon myself to start to learn how to embroider. So, naturally, when a 'Celebrate Craft' brief came up as an option for our first brief I decided to celebrate embroidery! I am looking into 'craftivism' and how females can use embroidery for the greater good. With this, I wanted to embroider a book of a craftivist manifesto and so started researching typography. It was then I came across the amazing Maricor/Maricar.

When I decided I wanted to learn embroidery, the first thing my parents said was 'why', and I didn't really have an answer other than I wanted to. Maricor/Maricar prove that it doesn't just have to be a hobby or a craft with little other purpose than to look pretty on your wall. Their hand sewn lettering and illustration is used for commercial use, in publishing, advertising, and animation, for example. 

Maricor/Maricar give another dimension to a craft that is stereotyped as one for old people. They use fun, modern typography that would attract any youngster, with bright colours and quirky typefaces. At first glance, you wouldn't even be able to tell they are sewn, but when you realise how much detail has gone into them to make them look that way is when you really start to appreciate the work. For example, the 'Don't Worry It's All Fucked' piece is double sided, with the 'It's All Fucked' type sewn into the stitches of the foreground so that you can't tell it is double sided from the front, adding another dimension. There is also the image below, which at first glance looks like it is a paint splatter, however it is all created with cotton and silk thread onto fabric. 

Maricor/Maricar have shown me that learning to embroider over summer wasn't a waste of time, and that I could actually use it in the future to create fun and impressive works of art with a needle and thread. 

You can buy digital patterns from their Etsy store here.

Be sure to visit Maricor/Maricar website to check out their collection of amazing sewn designs.

More Embroidery and Birthday Cards..

I thought I'd do a quick post showing some more crafty projects I did before uni started. For my sisters birthday, I attempted another piece of embroidery work - a geometric elephant!

I got the geometric image of an elephant from Pinterest and printed it out, tracing it onto my fabric using a water soluble pen. I started with a pale pink outline, filling in each triangle with different colours and patterns. I put it in a box frame (mine is from Wilkos) to display it, finishing the edges with a buttonhole stitch.

I also made use of my Paper Lovers Book from Kikki.k to make her birthday card. It was a really quick make, with all of the bits easily popped out of the book and stuck together using glue. I chose an A.A.Milne quote as we both loved Winnie the Pooh as children, so thought it was quite relevant as well as sweet!

Exploring Amsterdam

Another travel post, can you tell I don't want to be back at uni? I'm reminiscing my fab summer! This time it's about my few days away in Amsterdam in June.

 I loved the city, although it was a crazy place of two halves. How can a place so architecturally beautiful and full of culture also be home to the red light district? We spent an evening in the upstairs of Black Tiger Bar in a weird shock and amazement of what was going on around us. Guys actually go in those doors? The prostitute museum, Red Light Secrets, answered a lot of questions for me. It was interesting yet upsetting that so many girls go through this. But also, they probably hate people like me! Two girls wandering around staring at them - no business there! It was a place I needed to see whilst being there, but felt leery and is definitely not my favourite part of the city. There is such a beautiful, artistic and historical background to the city, but this is just part of it's crazy appeal. 

It was our first visit to Amsterdam, we had to be complete tourists and go to the Heineken Experience on the only rainy day. It was actually a lot better than I'd expected, not being a lager drinker myself. I found my self happily finishing off 3 free Heinekens and even buying more in a bar in Leidesplein afterwards! 

Another big tourist spot we had to hit was Museumplein (or Museum Square). It is what it says on the tin really, most of the museums in Amsterdam were in this square. We visited Bols Cocktail Museum - this was smaller than expected and is a self guided tour, so wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped, however the cocktail at the end was lovely! We also had a very artistic Friday night at the Van Gogh Museum. A cheeky wine beforehand (we didn't realise you weren't allowed to walk around with it..) made for a lovely start to an interesting museum. The statue in the middle of the water in Museumplein represents the ear that Van Gogh chopped off and sent to a prostitute! I'd love to go back and visit the Stedelijik and Rijksmuesum too, as well as the Anne Frank Museum that you have to book online months in advance!

I had a lovely few days, and I think the best bits were wandering round and exploring. Our apartment was well positioned, just behind Dam Square, meaning we had easy access to explore the Red Light District as well as the opposite way which had lots of lovely shops and cafes. Another highlight was a trip down the canal on a boat tour. It was great to see Amsterdam from its famous water, being one with the house boats and random swimmers, while learning bits about this new place. I actually surprised myself in how much I liked this city and would like to go again. Now I've done the stereotypical touristy stuff, I have an idea of other areas I'd like to explore. Better get saving up!

Exploring the New Forest

In August I spent a very lovely week down in the New Forest exploring, and would definitely go back. I took hundreds of photographs as it was so pretty - I had difficulty narrowing it down to fit into one blog post! I thought I would give a round up of all of the places I got to whilst down there. Looking back makes me really not want to leave summer behind and start a hard third year at university!

A long walk around the forest, followed by a tasty Sunday dinner in the Drift Inn.

 A busy day, we managed to visit Calshot beach, Bolderwood Deer Enclosure, as well as

Brockenhurst village!

A walk around Southampton port, followed by steak and movie night at West Quay.

 A walk down to Marchwood Industrial Estate, followed by a pint in the White Horse.

A walk around quiet village Hythe and it's marina.

A day trip to Bournemouth! This was probably my favourite day. Chips with a view, mini golf, a walk along the beach, one too many gins and fireworks on the beach. 

A very windy walk along the pebbles to Hythe Castle (with views of the Isle of Wight), followed by ice cream at crabbing spot Mudeford. 

Check out my Instagram (@louisegyles) for more pics of this gorgeous part of England. 

My Tie-Dye Cushion Cover

 So, for starters, this cushion cover didn't turn out at all how I'd expected it to, but I guess that is the beauty of tie-dying! I decided to give it a go after binge watching Channel 4's programme 'Craft-It-Yourself'. Each episode a team of 3 take the task of decorating a room using items they have handcrafted, using many different techniques. Some of them are harder to do yourself, for example a 4 poster bed from trees cut down yourself. However, the crafty makes by Clemency Green are usually a lot more accessible - like tie-dying! I would recommend the show, it definitely got me out of my mope and into a creative and productive mood!

I thought I would give a 10-step-guide to how I created my tie-dye cushion cover. The instructions here are based on the Dylon hand dye I used - make sure you check out the instructions on the back of the pack if you use anything other than this! Its easy to do and looks really effective. I want to go on to make a whole bed full of cushions!

1) Soak your fabric in warm, clean water. The fabric takes up the dye best if it is wet!

2) Twist up your fabric and tie it together with your rubber bands or string. This is the crucial part, and I would recommend testing different ways of scrunching to see what your favourite result is before you dye your cushion (something I realised AFTER I dyed my cushion..) I rolled mine as though wringing out the water. However, you can tie it up any way you like and if you want a surprise, go for it!

3) Fill your bowl with about 6 litres of clean, warm water and add about 250g of salt.

4) In a different bowl, mix your dye with 500ml of warm water. Stir to dissolve, and make sure you wear rubber gloves to avoid blue hands!

5) Pour the dissolved dye into the salty water mix carefully.

6) Take your tied up fabric and dunk it into your bowl. Stir it continuously for 15 minutes, as it will keep floating to the top!

7) Leave the fabric in the dye mix for 45 mins, stirring at regular intervals.

8) Take the fabric out and rinse in cold water. Untie all of the rubber bands/string, and then rinse in warm water until it runs completely clear. I then put mine in the washing machine on its own for my own sense of security.. I didn't want to end up with a blue face, or a smelly pillow!

9) Hang the fabric until fully dry, and fill with cushion filling! There you have it, your own handmade tie-dye cushion!

10) I used a small spare piece of cotton to test out other ways of twisting the fabric. Stupidly, I did this after I'd dyed the pillow and ended up liking this tester better.. However, I sewed up the frayed edges and am going to turn it into a piece of wall art instead! This one was done by simply tying the corners of the fabric in knots - no string needed!

Embroidery and Birthday Cards

August is a busy month for me with both my mum and dads birthday falling in it. As I am off uni and have plenty of time on my hands, I thought I would document the birthday cards I made for them.

My Dad's birthday card is shown above. He is a keen golfer, as you can hopefully tell. I used lots of layers and textures, starting by printing paint onto the brown card with hessian. This was followed by a layer of screwed up tissue paper, a layer of hessian fabric with splodges of green paint, and a white golf ball with white paint texture. I printed the checked flags out and glued them around cocktail sticks to give a 3D card with a natural colour palette.

So, again due the fact that I am off uni and was missing being creative, Pinterest inspired me to learn how to embroider. I have only done the two shown on this post so far, and so am very much still a beginner. I have tried to learn some different stitches, and bought a brilliant Mollie Makes book to help inspire my designs and to refer back to when I forget how to stitch.. I have used my own drawings, tracing the designs onto fabric using a water soluble pen so that when I am finished stitching, the pen lines come straight off!

The following design for my mum's birthday card is inspired by a Pinterest post, but drawn by me. There are a lot of improvements I would make to it, but for a beginner to finish in 3 days I couldn't expect perfection! For example, you have probably noticed you can hardly read 'mum', and so I wish I'd have used a blue colour instead.

I have realised I quite like the way type looks in embroidery, and am constantly finding new exciting ideas on Pinterest. Now to keep designing new templates and practise my stitching!