The Creative Maze: Costume-making for Film

Hello again, and welcome back to the Creative Maze.  Today’s post concerns costume-making, as a certain member of my family wants to work in the film industry when she’s older, and has asked me to make some costumes for a film she wants to shoot in Scotland later this year.  I thought it might be interesting to document the progress, and, hopefully, they’ll turn out alright!

Sewing has always been part of my life.  My mum made dresses for me when I was a little girl, and knitted cardigans and jumpers too, and I wanted to have a go and be able to make wonderful things like she did.  Mum taught me early on how to use her sewing machine.  Sewing was just something we did, and I loved it.  In fact, I don’t remember not sewing –  I recall patching small pieces of fabric together, and trying to make little dresses for my dolls when I was quite young.  It’s great that these sorts of skills are having such a huge resurgence at the moment, and I’m particularly enjoying the second series of The Great British Sewing Bee currently showing on the BBC.  I think it’s so important to be able to divert from the digital in the modern world, don't you?  Anyway, I digress, so back to the costumes...

ARTS & CULTURE: Spring-time and accessing art.

Hello, and welcome.  Today, I’m writing to you from London, and it feels like Spring has finally ‘sprung’.  This week we’ve had long periods of beautiful sunshine and everyone seems to be celebrating the fact that it has finally stopped raining!  Everything outside looks renewed and refreshed; the trees are covered in blossom, daffodils are bobbing their cheerful, bright yellow heads about and there are countless buds and shoots bursting out all over.  It makes you want to go out and enjoy it; perhaps sketch or paint what you see...  There’s a sense of seeing things anew in Spring, don’t you think?  I guess it’s because light and shade are now more clearly defined and the shapes of the living things around us change as they grow.  We’re aware at this time of year of growth and life, and the riot of colour that rings out from various spring-flowering bulbs and blossom.  So light and warmth bring life and enjoyment, which leads me (finally!) to the point of today’s post.