Lovely, Petal.

On Friday afternoon, I texted this photo to my mother and sister with the caption: it was only when the blouse was almost finished that she realised the effect was more 'human flower' than 'total fox'. Seconds later my mother replied with the words: Lovely, Petal. Quite. Sometimes, it's only at the final hurdle that you are able to spot what's blisteringly wrong with a pattern that you're experimenting with. I drafted this collar as three pieces - two small scallops at the front, overlapping one large curve. It was only on the final fitting that I noticed that because of where my shoulders visually intersect the larger curve, what it actually appears to be is a collar made of evenly spaced flower petals with my head appearing from amongst them like a grinning human capitulum*. Damn.

But actually, the visual effect of it was so amusing that it was almost worth it and I am smiling like a loon in this photo as I was taking it especially to text over to my family. But now I'm sharing it with you here...although I wasn't aware I would at the time...if I was I may have removed my daughter's pink dressing gown (which makes this photo appear as though it's been deliberately taken in sympathetic colours to my blog header) and wiped the bathroom mirror of the splatters of toothpaste that my little boy likes to spread liberally about.

Happily, mistakes are less painful when you had the good foresight to buy up the entire bolt of fabric due to it being on sale at £3.49 a metre - it has such a good drape and is so plain that I thought it would be perfect for using as toile fabric as I draft different patterns...which hopefully may result in a few wearable muslins. The photo above is actually in full colour, but for some reason the fabric looks grey instead of blue. However, in trying to boost the colour in Picasa back to it's original blue this morning I noticed that there are two brand new tabs in the settings: they are gimmicky tabs, rather than genuinely useful additions, but I momentarily forgot all about trying to make my fabric blue again as I was having too much fun transforming myself first by pressing the 'cinemascope' button, then topping up with some '1960s' and finally adding a sepia wash. There are also some old favourite lens that I've come to love through using Hipstamatic on my iPhone, such as Holga. You'll notice that in the photo below, I don't look nearly quite so loopy due to some of my petals having been decapitated by the black cinema strips...if only it were fixed so easily in real life.

I know that many people have been devastated by the impending disappearance of Picnik, but I've always loved Picasa for editing photos - it has all the basic functions, such as cropping and the ability to play around with highlights, shadow and tone. And it's completely free...it amazes me what's free on the internet. You can find Picasa here, where you can download it straight onto your computer to use off or online. Have fun (and yes, I do think that the first thing you should do is transform yourself into a 1960s starlet...perhaps we could start up a Flickr gallery for sharing the results). My fabric never was properly transformed...as I discovered the 'cross-processing' button and decided I liked it better like that way.

I am now off to redraft a more suitable collar. I am hoping this one will be serene, elegant and make me feel as though I own a fragment of the wardrobes of Olivia Palermo or Alexa Chung . I know, that's a lot to ask of a collar. I could be some time.

Florence x

* I learnt while writing this post that the yellow centre to a daisy is called a capitulum.