Recycling and learning

Below is a fancy shirt I was given by a lady that owned a very chique boutique at the time we were living in the Netherlands. The shirt had not been sold and since she knew of my interest in all kind of textiles, she asked if I could use it for the materials. Now I can imagine you don't want to wear something so heavily worked with sequins, but of course it became one of my hidden treasures that I kept on my shelves for over five years.

Lately I have been diving into all kind of things Indian (from yoga to food and everything in between) and these glimmers certainly play a role in that: time to recycle!

the shirt in all its glimmer glory

it is heavy!

I only took off a small part one of the sleeves' sequins and

this amount will probably serve me for a long time ahead. Anybody interested? You understand I can't simply throw them away...

I am a fan of Mary Hettmansperger's metal jewelry and like to browse the pictures of this book every now and then. Now, to start another passion would be crazy with all I already have and want, but by recycling the above shirt I got inspired to transform a little piece of the glittery fabric into this pendant.
It is chique for the evening and really a troublefree piece of jewelry, no need to rob me for this one...

On to the learning part:
- I found an excellent workshop on the web to learn making brushes for Photoshop. Brushes, you know, the swirls and the flowers you can see on many magazin covers and other pictures. This workshop was very clear and easy to follow, and I made a personal motive that you can see in the corners of my present blog header. It is an old motive from the Carib Indians that lived on the neighbouring islands.

- and then there were these: shisha's (mirrorwork)
Many of us remember them from the flower-powerperiod (I guess), but they can be seen in Indian embroidery like pillows and bags. I was visiting 'I'd rather be in India', Tiggy Rawlings' blog and she showed a few rope birds that she had made. It was there and then that I discovered that these tiny mirrors are called shisha's and of course then the googling led me to another workshop: making mirrorwork.

this is what I made until today and you can see the progress when you click the image

As this new extension fits in my already existing textile passion, I will give it some time to incorporate it into my work. Though my new sewing machine can make a lot of beautiful embroidery stitches, I think it can't beat the handwork.
That was last week: a week of making collages, of recycling and learning, of brushes and shisha's
I am so grateful for all this learning material that people put on the web, thank you, thank you!

See what this week will bring!