{Now WEAR was I?} Heavy Hutches

one big bag is better than 10 tiny bags, especially when they all fit inside. In this way, i have a little traveling filing cabinet.
xoxo,
madamchino

{ELFKINS and TREELASSIES} Madam Chino Spring 2010

Check out the Recycadelic Show photos from Madam Chino's Recycadelic Spring Fashion Show at the UWM Union Concourse on April 20th in celebration of Earth Week.

Madam Chino uses exclusively recycled fibers for her design work, which included a handdrawn woodgrain screenprint for the ladies and 2ply highcollared bombers for the guys, all accessorized with singlechain crocheted headbandits.





available at:
www.madamchino.etsy.com starting Tuesday April 27th at NOON and
Madam Chino's LOOK NOOK starting Saturday April 24th!

xoxo,
Madam Chino

{PITTER PATTERN}

You {WOOD} too!

this via renaissance books in the mitchell international airport:


and some pansies!

and a mustache man!


xoxo,
madam chino

{DEERLINGS} in BRANCHLERS!

Oh my, deerlings in branchlers!!




i will show you more of this new invention soon... as the show is out!!

xoxo,

madam chino

{DOWELS} untiringly useful

DOWELS are a great and useful multipurpose TOOLS. I will show you...

{DRYING RACKS}

Peg the dowels into book shelves and under objects


Two clothes lines side by side set up the perfect perch for dowel rods!
Use heavier clothes on the peripheral to pull a taut rope or weigh a flat
Clothes pins are also useful as separators if dowels try to run for the center


Sticks rest well in corners, if you have any corners to prop them on it works great on door and window frames.


This dowel makes it easy to screenprint the sleeves of this shirt without it folding over on itself when its wet.

{SCREEN PRINTING LIGHT RIG}
This was constructed with two swinging perches made from dowels slung over a 2x4 that projected into the room over my table. Two more dowels were woven into the the handles of the 500 watt lamp and rested on the perch swings. Disclaimer: Attempt at your own risk and never leave unattended while light is plugged in!



{JUMP RINGS!}
wrap your dowels with wire!


Make jump rings from one wrap, or keyring style double wrapped rings from flimsier stuff.


pretty, useful



xoxo,
madam chino

{BEST WISHES}

xoxo,
madamchino

5th Annual {RECYCADELIC SPRING} Runway Show!

On Tuesday April 20th, 2010
at The UWM Union Concourse
at High Noon

Madam Chino and Friends Presents,
in celebration of Earth Week,
the 5th Annual {Recycadelic Spring} Runway Show
with Live Drummers from De la Buena and King Solomon!

Featuring Madam Chino's Spring Men and Women's Collection
along side the work of the "No-Sweat Sewing" students
in Madam Chino's 5 week course at the UWM Studio Arts and Craft Centre!

Two runs of the show will occur:
First at 12:30pm
Again at 1:00pm

xoxo,
Madam Chino

{HOW TO} Wallpaper

Although my personal blogwall paper is not tessellating because i'm lazaaay, good old m.c. escher knew first what the masterminds will find out soon. When i was a kiddo, i would stare at the wallpaper in my bedroom as i would fall asleep. The overall pattern would emerge but finding where it started and finished was impossible. That game, that game.

Start with an image.


if you like, create a pattern using the image as a stamp. The final image should not touch the edges in any way.

Divide the image in quadrants, and switch them kitty corner: lower left and upper right, lower right and upper left. Then the space around the corners is now in the center! Fill that in with more shapes.

Sooo Simple! Now you can repeat this image forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and....


of course the other way is to take an image and kalideoscope it...it works best here with an image that does touch the edges, like how you spliced the first one, so that they can merge to create a new shape!

But the trick is, for the first block, each new quadrant you must either flip one horizontally, one vertically and one both horizontally and vertically.

Then the new block will touch forever and ever and ever and ever....


For more inspiration check out Julia Rothman's Flickr!
xoxo,
madam chino

{LEATHER BANG} earrings!

Fringe earrings are the hair i didn't have when pixified, curing the phantom limb syndrome my clavicles craved. Originally, i created them out of t-shirt fabric as part of a specimin project for new species of display flora on my "earring tree" and they came in all array of colors.


I've been geeking over fringe lately since i found a ton of leather in SF, but it sort of goes back further to the indoor icicle project at Rochambo, an interior installation fringe awning. I'm also thinking of this awning in brown for the canopy that Owl Eyes and I are doing decorations committee for our summer sales tent.


Recently I created these tassle earrings mentioned a few posts down, the same shape, but with 3 different materials components:

And who doesn't love that little arrow? It's in all the best quilts.

But the point of this post is to present my new LEATHER BANG earrings in assorted colors!

SUPER FRESH! The trick is to use a rotary cutter, and a little wrist flicking.
Plus only the finest quality gold 7mm oval jumprings and brass hooks fully equipt with rubber backs.


xoxo,
madam chino

{now WEAR was I?} dark denim

As a clothing reconstruction artist people call me to unleash loads of old garments onto me. I understand that everything can always be totally awesome, but in the case that i might find one treasure in a bag of trash is worth the effort of going through peoples heaps. I have a 1997 emerald green chevy astro van, so in this effort i provide a service of bringing peoples unwanted things to thriftstores for them, so that I can have first dibbs.

I have a lot of awesome stories about getting some really amazing things, like the 2 vanloads that I got from Ann and Flame when they emptied their antique booth at Riverview, or the entire 18 bags of vintage clothes that i was gifted from Yellow Jacket. Almost all of this was Mint, and I am still wading through this stuff from years and months ago. Besides the claustrophobia that initiated these poor collectors massive perge of totally amazing things, a lot of what I get it is pretty obvious why it went unwanted.

I call my syndrome "velveteen rabbit syndrome" where i feel sorry for inanimate objects and want to make them worthy of human love again. I am currently working on a series of handbags made of the 2 trunks of cut and sorted but completely mismatched denim. Mismatched denim is the most UGLY thing in the world according to Madam Chino. In effort to unify all this denim, i am screenprinting blue quilt shapes on all of it. I also realized that I will never wear anything but Dark Blue Denim. (In addition to black and grey Cheap Mondays, which i continue to buy despite that their zippers constantly break, because they are high hip and square that the top so they don't cause that aweful muffin top)






XOXO,
Madam Chino