Fig Leaf Wars review

@Fig_Leaf_Wars

There were about 20 audience members who were slowly tempted out of the Blue Orange Theatre café in the Jewellery Quarter and into the theatre. On the night of the 2014 Brazilian World Cup Final they were doing pretty well for patrons. Although we were a small group it only increased the closeness between the audience and the man and lady dressed up as a giant penis and a giant vulva. The tagline was:

A human-sized walking Vagina and Penis are going to meet again for the first time. How will the meeting go? Will they meet each other’s expectations? What are they supposed to do and how will they know?

Dick timidly broke out of the shadows and came to chat to the audience about how excited (no pun intended) he was to be free. He’s usually attached to someone, and it was a while before Fanny came on-stage to tell us that they’d been having a fight for thousands of years.

Not only were Fanny (or the Vulva of Venus) and Dick representing individual lady parts and man parts, they were also representing those of everyone in the world. This created an easy bond, and slight uncomfortableness, (which I think we soon got over - through much giggling) with their audience.

Throughout the partly-improvised show the characters demonstrated the trials and tribulations, as well as the pleasures, of being human genitalia. This sincere and welcoming pair gave us a hilarious and open night out. They spoke with the audience about the relationship between genitalia, in the olden days, and wondered aloud why people turn the lights off to have sex. With tunes such as “Sexual Healing” and “Floating through Space” (it might be called that – I’m not really sure!) they took us on a sensitive journey around the most intimate regions of humanity. Fanny showed us how she felt about rape and Dick told us how many rapes go unreported.

Far from being an after-school special this was a very playful yet grown-up, real platform from which to discuss sexuality and how we are all going to afford to get up to Edinburgh to see them again.

Follow this Facebook link for more info: https://www.facebook.com/thefigleafwars/timeline

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I can't find the link to a great Huffpost article about what our brave cast members, Dick and Fanny, get up to when they’re not on-stage! It involves a man in Glasgow attacking Dick (AKA Chris Murray, in costume) and Fanny (AKA Joanne Tremarco, also in costume) saving him! If you find it please post the link!

Blog posted on Wordpress - 17.12. 2014

Blog blog blog blog blog...

Having spent a couple of months blogging now, I've decided that it is so much fun that I want to do as much of it as I can. I'm going out with my Folktales and Gigs in Birmingham Meetup group this week to see some events this week and I can't wait to tell you all about them...

- Bonfire Radicals at the Red Lion Folk Club in Kings Heath (video from YouTube)

- Birmingham Storytelling Cafe at Kitchen Garden Cafe

And well, there's 50 Shades of Grey too. I wasn't too keen on the first 2 pages of the book, but I'm being dragged along :) to see the film this half term so I might as well write about that as well.

PART TWO: Chevron style St. Clement's quilt

It has taken a little while to get this blog up, although I had the pictures up! My diary has been full of exciting projects and ideas that I'm developing this year. 

TRIANGLE ARRANGEMENT

N.B.TAKE A PHOTO OF YOUR TRIANGLE ARRANGEMENT AS A REFERENCE POINT!

Here's a photo of my triangles all arranged - Is what I would say if I had taken such a picture! (see note)

Note: MAKE SURE YOU TAKE A PHOTO OF THE OVERALL QUILT YOU WILL BE MAKING ONCE YOU HAVE ARRANGED THE TRIANGLES!

It is really annoying if, say, you knock the pile of triangles over and can't remember the order - I can testify to this. Although, I did figure out what happened eventually it is an hour of my life I cannot get back!! So, pin a note to say which column it is and if it is top/bottom.

Having laid out all the triangles together to see how they will go together, I pinned them and made sure it was marked where I needed to sew, so that the right yellow/orange triangles were attached to the right part of the orange/yellow triangles. 

Image of most of my triangles nicely pinned in the correct order. 

MAKING SQUARES

Part 1: I pinned each set of 2 triangles together

Part 2: I sewed each set of 2 triangles together, with a double stitch at either end. This makes a square.

N.B. Yay! It's time to iron those brilliant seams!

You've made a square! - now to make rectangles... 

MAKING RECTANGLES

Having checked that the triangles are oriented as I want them I pinned the right-hand, vertical edge (which at the moment is the horizontal top edge). Turn your head left a bit - that's it! This secures my fabric for sewing. 

 

After you've sewn the 2 squares together they become a nice rectangle. 

Note: The thinner fabric (yellow, stripey polycotton) was a bit resistant to my sewing machine whereas the 100% was quite sturdy. I decided, therefore, not to doublestitch the yellow stripey+yellow stripey triangles at the ends because then I could stretch out the stitches where it bunched up a bit. In the end the horizontal sewing will reinforce it, when I sew all the rectangles together so it doesn't matter so much that I didn't double-stitch.

BEFORE YOU DO THE NEXT BIT 

Lay out all your rectangles and double-check the overall design. Are the yellows where they should be?, the orange triangles too?

Go on, iron all those seams as well. You know you want to! It'll all look so flat and perfect once you're done ironing!

SEWING DOWN THE COLUMNS 

You must now match up the vertical seam down the middle of the first top rectangle to the vertical seam of the rectangle below. 

- Pin the 2 top fabric squares together 

- When you do this, pin the 2 right sides (the side you want people to see), together.

- Check that when you flip the rectangles open (to see how great your sewing looks) you get the chevron as it looked in your arrangement - or at least as on the line as you can (check that beautiful picture of all the wonderfully arranged triangles from before!). 

n.b. You may want to tack the seam first to make sure depending on how confident you are.  

Close up of the seams all pinned up and good to go. Hello there seams!

Full view - I pinned all my squares ready to be sewn up. I also pinned
them together so that I didn't knock them all apart by accident! 

Then do the same for the next 5 seams.
If the chevron-matching is up to your standards, continue with the next 4 columns. 

If not, maybe have a little sit down, a cuppa and watch an episode of Supernatural, New Girl or Family Guy - whatever makes you feel happier or better off than the characters in it.
Then go back to your quilting when you are more chilled out and it's not 1 in the morning. (Yes, you guessed it! I sometimes melodramatise sewing)

IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF CHEVRON STYLE ST. CLEMENTS QUILT: 

Our heroine sews together the columns so that they match perfectly. She then cuts the fleece and polyester wadding to the size of the quiltwork, as well as sewing the edges! She may even quilt it depending on how much coffee she has had at that point! Wow!

Plus - I coded that text to be dark green myself ... baby steps!