Autumn Zebra

Yay, today (or now-abouts) is the summer solstice, or, I guess, in the northern hemisphere it is the winter solstice. In Dunedin today the weather is cold and raining. It has hailed and it looked as if it would snow. But not so much now. Outside this morning, at about 0830, my fingers were freezing with that sharp cold in the air that makes me think of glaciers and Antarctica - an icy cold one would call it then. Generally, this seems similar to what those having the winter solstice now might be experiencing. The winter solstice is also known as Yule, in English culture, and although it gets a bit weird with all the different cultures mashed together in the generic Pagan year, the summer solstice mightbe Litha, or simply Mid-Summer, according to my sources. This is clearly ridiculous as it is not summery at all. Seldom is it even warm in December the last few years, generally reserving any good weather for January and February, but the last 2-3 years at least there have also been hot d...

Introduction Todays entry is an article of clothing I made a wee while ago. This is my pink skirt with fairies and butterflies on it. It is very simple, and not a masterful feat of engineering or anything. When I made this skirt, everyone was confused. It seems they could not understand the skirt, because it was pink with fairies and butterflies on it. Probably because I hate pink, and also girly things. Onto the explanation then in the "Inspiration" section. Inspiration and Idea When shopping for other material in Spotlight, I accidentally noticed this material. I thought it was funny, because I hate pink and girly things. To me that makes perfect sense and it would be clearly highly amusing to wear a skirt made of this material, especially since it was probably designed for 6 year old girls. The intended age limit for the material was further evidenced by the fact that it was only 112cm wide, and material designed to be used exclusively for items for small children are neve...

The letter I received today that I just mentioned was dated 11 days ago. What with all this talk of first-in-first-served, I might have liked it earlier. It only had to travel 2km... (at a completely uninformed guess).

Today I received my letter I was waiting for from the Otago Polytech ! Unfortunately it has this to say: "The returned enrolments will be processed in the order that they are received and it is only on receipt of your enrolment that your place on the programme/course is secured." In fact, it says that in bold type . And then it talks about wait lists and such. I feel this contradicts nastily with their first uplifting paragraph: "Thank you for your application to the Certificate in Fashion Studies. I am pleased to offer you a place on this programme which commences....." And, of course, there is that other letter I received that said that I had a place also. Presumably this all means I "have a place (on the list)". Plus, preference is given to those who wish to enrol full-time. :( Applicants are accepted based on order of receipt of this form, but I presume that, since the previous letter said the next letter would be sent by the end of November, I am a bi...

Washing my new possibly-silk material So yesterday I washed the Thai silk that I bought on trademe and after work I hung it out to dry. By the time I had finished hanging out the 5-6 pieces, the first ones were nearly dry. Since I thought this was absurd I left them out there for another hour or two anyway. At which point they were definitely completely absolutely dry. (Are any of those words spelt right? Are they supposed to have 'e's? I can never remember.) Another good thing is that they no longer smelt of turpentine. I think that's the liquid that goes with that smell. I find it hard to remember what object associates with what smell. Anyway, I have no idea why they were smelling of what might be turpentine, but they did when I got them out of the washing machine. And so did my hands, presumably from the water from the material on my hands. It was really weird, and it did not smell like that when dry, either before or after washing. If anyone knows why my material migh...

So, this update is not about sewing, but about me. Although, all sewing entries are also generally about me too. And I think it might actually be a bit about sewing anyway. I am currently waiting for more information about my polytech course to arrive, and it might not for days at least, and I might die of expectant waiting by then. I mean, waiting expectantly, not while expecting, of course. Those words, the ones beginning with 'e' back there, have ceased to carry any meaning after I started thinking about them too much, rather like when you say or see a word too many times and it starts to look or sound funny, now I can't work out if the sentence makes sense or not. Anyway, divergence over. I have been waiting, eagerly and expectantly, and if nothing happens on it's own I have to make the excitement by simply talking about it. I enrolled a little while back, for the Certificate in Fashion Studies, as I mentioned. And they said they were full up! But they would contact...

Current fashion Cherries and polka dots people, cherries and polka dots. And, since dresses are in, cherries and polka dots - on dresses! Polka dots (or is it polka-dots?) and petticoats As stated in a previous post, my current clothing obsession often reflects what is actually in fashion, which is handy. I also have long-term obsessions that are either unrelated or are a long-term fashion undercurrent. Like corset (inspired) tops. So I am interested in polka dots and cherries currently. I think they are also in fashion. Someone told me yesterday that they were. I saw some black material with white polka dots the other day when I was looking for black material to make a petticoat, and decided I should get that instead and make a petticoat that can also be an outer skirt. It was even only a little extra, about $1/m, than the plain cottons I was considering. This is a "current project" that is as yet unstarted. This petticoat would be a three tiered skirt, with the top tier fit...

Final Item I have no head or feet. Inspiration, Design, Planning See a previous post a few posts ago. Draft No draft... Sewing then? Yes! There WAS sewing! First I started with the middle section of the dress as I would need to attach both the top and bottom parts onto this. I measured around my waist and bust, which is where the bottom and top edges of the middle section would go. So, adding seam allowance for the join on one side and overlap to button on the other side, I made the two pieces as much around as my bust. Using the dress dummy and my waist measurement and trying it on myself, I worked out where the two front darts should go and how much they should take in. So these are two darts taking in material at the waist and going up to the bust. I worked out maybe how much skirt I would need to go around me and gather a bit while still leaving enough material to do the top section. Normally I would probably want as much gather as I can get - the more is more attitude - but in thi...

The dress. Blurry face because I wanted to see if I could do that in photo-shop. Ha-ha. Ok, so it isn't really that orange, but sort of. Using this material - this is a picture of it with the light falling on it, although it can look better than this also. It ranges from a kind of dull brown to this colour, and if it falls in certain ways looks orange and in others, black. Hmm, that picture is kind of big, but we will try and live with it ok? This is also the same material and dress I posted about a couple of days ago and have been waiting to get pictures of and so on. Design Well, it was tough. This is a sort of test-run for my wedding dress, one part of my wedding outfit. I was having all sorts of trouble working out how I wanted to do the skirt, although I had worked out I wanted a fitted top with a square neck and little puff-top sleeves. For some reason. I wanted the skirt to be smooth over the hips, I think. That was part of the problem - I didn't really know what I want...

I took pictures of my new dress that I made last weekend, but didn't have time to sort them and crop them yet because I waws making... something else. Maybe one day I will have pictures of that too. Problem is, the sewing is more fun than the writing and the cropping of the pictures. Anyway, today I got a parcel. It is some large hatboxes for the purpose of storage from Ezibuy . Ezibuy is great (if you live in NZ), you can order online and for an example of turnaround, read as follows: I ordered on Friday online and got email confirming order. On Monday I got an email confirming payment of order and that they were packing it and so on. On Tuesday I got an email saying they were posting it now. On Wednesday morning it was on my doorstep! Excellent. When you order on their website you also get instant feedback as to whether your choices are even still available, and whether they have it in the colour and size combination you want. Otherwise you have to wait for the packing slip to te...

I was hoping to do the Certificate in Fashion Studies at the Otago Polytech next year, but today when I enrolled I found out that the course is already full! But maybe some people will drop out.... I was going to enroll about 2 weeks ago, but had to find my birth certificate and find out my NZQA hook-on number somehow. Then, a couple of days ago I found out that I can just ASK the polytech to tell me my number, and that if it is still "active" (whatever that means, but it was) then I don't need the birth certificate either! Damn, cos if they had put on the guide to enrolment that I could just ask them for that number then I would have already known all that 2 or 3 weeks ago and I would be in or further up the waiting list at any rate. Hopefully, since I want to do it part-time, they will let me do it anyway as I will only be in two classes in the first half of next year, so if there are two classes that are not full or something.... It is only 6 months long normally, so ...

Since I haven't written anything for a week, I feel that I should write something, but I don't really feel like writing. I was going to put up pictures of the dress I made mostly in the weekend, but the digital camera ran out of batteries so I couldn't take them. I haven't finished the sheet dress yet, but I did a little over the last few days. Currently I am mainly thinking about Christmas and birthday presents to buy and make, and I obviously can't post about them here, because the intendd recipients might read about it! I have been to all of the small number of fabric stores in Dunedin several times looking for material to make my wedding dress and other wedding clothes stuff out of (not white or any related colour) and no one has what I want. I want copper-coloured material. I cannot find any, but I saw some once over a year ago, so I know it exists in this universe. This material, from which I made my dress in the weekend, is a good sort of copper-orange-brown ...

I wanted to write about my planning and making of various dresses and things so that people who are wanting to make something but are too scared can see that all you have to do is just do it, do some stuff, make it up, and you can come up with something reasonable, even without a pattern, even if you can't draw yourself a nice picture of it, and even if you just sort of toss the material over something and move it around a bit to try out some ideas that don't actually look anything like what you are doing. So, I think I mentioned that I bought a whole heap of second-hand sheets to make crazy dresses out of. The sheets have now been washed, and last night I had to start on the first one. I also had to make a couple of banana cakes. This sad state of affairs, of being required to cook and sew a sheet dress, came about when I got home with my brand new 4 metres of fantastic great material, drafted the sleeve pattern (the rest drafted the day before - upon which I found that I didn...

Following today's earlier post, I can confirm that there are many dresses in the windows of the shops in town, although many non-dresses too. Since I have never paid any attention to this style of dress before, I cannot say whether there are now more than usual for this time of the year. Maybe I shall get to sew one of mine soon, although I just need to finish (and, in fact, start) an entirely different type of dress first. That one is dark purple and "sand", that last colour different in your imagination depending on the sand you are used to. I have no idea what colour the sand is around here, but in the case of this material I mean a light-brown kind of cream-yellow. I think.

I believe the fashion for this season to be dresses. Old-fashioned type dresses, as in dresses that you were every day as CLOTHES, rather than as an effort to dress up. Dresses like those you might see on A Dress A Day . The reason why I think this must be the current fashion is because both my sister and I have decided that we want to wear pretty, printed, approximately knee-length dresses. She bought one off Trade-Me just days' ago, and it is very pretty (and, I think, simple to make one like it...) and I have been somewhat obssessed with dresses for the last few months, culminating in me buying 4 second-hand printed sheets last week. Much cheaper than simply buying material, I can make dresses out of them. I got out my dress patterns from the late 70's that I got off Mum. But I haven't made anything yet because I am too busy with all the other things I have to do! So, like usual, although I have guaged the coming fashions, I think correctly, I may not have time to take ...

Listening to: Metallica- Whiskey, Fuel, Memory Remains Since there are so many pictures today, I have made them small. Click to see them bigger. Hopefully it all makes sense. Testing First I got my length of material and tested out the basic idea for the skirt. The plan was just to drape the skirt on the form and cut the pieces, rather than, say use the petticoat pattern again, modified a bit to be closer fitting. (I mention this because the final skirt pieces, eventually, ended up being the same as the petticoat pattern, albeit closer fitting....). Picture of material pinned on to the form in the basic idea, roughly pleated at the back. You can see in this picture that there should be a front piece, ending at the front-side where the waist-band dips in; a side piece going from that vertical line where the front piece would end to where the pleats start, curving from the waist out towards the back and then down; a back piece, probably mostly a rectangle. What I decided at the time was ...

Another quickly made item in my Victorian era outfit was the chemise. It is probably not really historically accurate at all, but was designed in my usual method of thinking for these things. I looked at some pictures, couldn't really find pictures from the correct few years, found some general descriptions, made something up, simplified things, had various disasters, made some more stuff up and finished it. The bits I knew: chemise should be relatively short (knee to mid-calf?) no sleeves square or round neckline (maybe v-neck but this was only specifically talked about for later years) lace is common decoration generally closely fitted because bodices became more fitted and slim at this time So these basic, general elements were preserved in my version. Then I just had to make it up. I used my general torso pattern, drafted from the instructions in my pattern making book, intending to keep the vertical darts at the waist, but removing the one in the shoulder at the back. Actually...

Today I would like to say "Hi" to all the people who have been to my site. Hi guys! That's assuming you ever come back here to read this. Special hi to the people from Iran, Columbia and Peru. Those are some pretty interesting, random places. I mean, what brought you here? Can you read English or was it an accident? Special hi also to the person from Norway who I think was the first person I don't know who looked at the blog. Unless I know someone in Norway? Not forgetting those people in the USA. Interesting how initially it was only people from the coasts, and now the hits are slowly creeping in towards the centre of the country. One of you guys might actually be from Canada, not the US, but I can't tell on the little map because it is right on the border. Around the lakes it seems from the map I found. That's cool. I mean, the massive lakes that you can't see all the way across by any stretch of the imagination. That sounds cool, I have always wanted to...

Click on the link to go to the "A Dress A Day" blog site. There, did you click? This blog is great, and has tonnes of entries. Maybe even one every day, or at least mostly. The person's tastes seem to fall mainly on the 40's and 50's maybe (I don't know, whatever), and that kind of feminine style of dress in interesting prints and colours. I am not, myself, actually particularly interested in dresses, particularly not this style of dresses, nor do I in fact like most of the dresses and fabrics she provides pictures of. In most cases I think them somewhat boring, and at other times, even ugly. However, even if you are not interested in the same stuff she is interested in, you should definitely look at the site if you are at least vaguely interested in the meta concepts - fashion, dresses, clothes, fabric, retro/vintage, cultural influence of and on clothing. One reason this site is interesting even if you aren't always interested in the content per se is t...

Last night I decided to take a break from the Victorian dress sewing and try and make my Victorian hat. The hat was going to be the last thing I did as it is not as essential as, say, having a skirt. So far it is very weird. I spent about 3 hours on it last night, including planning (sort of), measuring (kinda) and cutting and sewing and considering. (A lot of time is taken up in most sewing projects with "considering"; this is where you look at the item and possible do the same experimental things several times over without actually making any progress, probably not even with ones thoughts on the subject). First, look at this picture that I got from somewhere that came out of a magazine. See, the hat is very small. The hat-thing I should say. I do not know how to actually make a hat, nor have I made one before. In fact, the two are kind of related. If I had made hats before I would know how, and if I knew how I'm sure I would have made some. I once looked at a hat making...