VEZ.TO

• a piece of patchwork birds can pull worms from •
held on to this scrap for five years, I knew it was too good for the garbage. dangerously validating. hang tight for the whole piece.
#刺し子

six of one // half dozen of the other
my memory has two modes - either razor sharp, like a crack of lightning illuminating full detail in high contrast, or dreamy and nebulous, with details silkily streaming between my fingers like remnants of a snuffed out candle. there are a lot of things pre-pandemic that fall into the latter category, especially when I try to put one memory chronologically after the other. was that last year? and by last year three years ago? was it before or after this or that? does it necessarily matter?

some years ago (?!), I had the chance to take ‘s intro to couture embellishment and tambour beading workshops.  it was a great experience - the class, the venue, the people, all lovely, bright and inspiring! but life felt short of time back then, and eventually those lessons slunk away from the forefront of my mind, falling into that space between the cupboards called "for when I have time."

when I was looking to embellish masks non destructively, I found that time. all the beading on these masks is done on a separate tulle layer with tambour, leaving the three layer mask underneath uncompromised, and unburdened by an untenable fourth layer. as a huge lover of embellishment and textiles I knew it was only natural to want to decorate masks, but as someone who was neck deep in the research from an early stage, I was concerned. the more perforations in a masks layers, whether it be a decorative valve or a satin stitch, the more risk of particles passing through.

when people talk about epiphanies, they usually talk about the lightning moment. but for me, this came together in the second way, watching furls of that long snuffed out excitement making shapes and sense.

but six of one, half dozen of the other - we got there eventually.
     

• love isn't blind, it's a witness // bearing witness to the unbearable •
we are more connected than we have ever been, but are we designed to bear that?

some days, it feels impossible - we are only human, it's one thing to read, or hear, but entirely something else to see so far beyond the reach of our experience.

to make our own eyes all-seeing, and in turn our hearts all-feeling, to think to ourselves "I cannot do it, it is too much." but the heart is a muscle, like any other, and it needs work. through growing pains and salt water, we experience the alchemy of being, of understanding there is nothing "only" about being human.

• fit right // fit tight •
if there is one thing that I am adamant about when it comes to masks, its fit - a good mask fits the your lifestyle, fits your look, but above all fits your face.

that's where the beauty of the pleat comes into play. pleats are not only an aesthetic choice, they allow a mask to expand according to the face it's on, giving you extra breathing room and a tight fit at the cheek (which is most often where masks fail to lay flat).

besides all that, pleats have a special place in my heart, since they always take me back to learning how to make tutus the traditional way - making stacks of quarter inch pleats by hand, with a pin, and scribbled out equations as a roadmap to the final dimensions.

but I know that not everyone feels the same way about pleats as I do - teaching people to sew this style of mask showed me that for many people pleats can be confusing, intimidating even. with the mental toll of everything going on around us it's harder to get through some of these small hurdles. when I was writing the pattern instructions for these masks, I spent a lot of time trying to streamline the process and the language to help cut through our collective brain fog.

and now for the non-sewing inclined, I've done a bit more streamlining - if you want to get your hands on some of these masks, check the link in my bio for the online store. no more emailing, no more DMing back and forth (unless you'd like to work on a custom project or say hi), just click and ship.