Current Sewing Status
You will no doubt be gald to know that the Victorian dress continues to go well. The bodice is progressing nicely, and I have pictures - at home. I was also sort of testing out the skirt and overskirt by just pinning the length of material to see how much I would need and if I will have
enough to do all the ruffles and everything. I have tonnes and tonnes extra. Hopefully next week I will have some stuff written to put up. There are many minor dramas, caused mainly by the fact that I can't be bothered to change anything and would rather just make the wrong thing work and become the right thing. I think this adds interest to the creation process, as the end result can't possibly be like what you planned if you can't be bothered actually making it turn out as the plan does when it is easier to adapt whatever actually seems to be happening at the time. Ummm, yeah...
This is a really terrible photo of a not-very-good drawing of kind of what it might look like. I am doing the smaller one on the left.
I am currently continually trying to decide what style dress I should have for my wedding dress. I know the basic shape, but don't know exactly how it should be created. It is driving me crazy. So I need to look through all the pictures of dresses I can find and choose something and make up how to make it and go with it. So far, the only thing I have really decided with finality is how the material will SOUND. Which, incidentally, is a sound that can only be created by a totally different type of material to what I was previously considering. Probably this different sounding material will be better overall with what I want, but unfortunately it tends to remind me of taffeta (or what might be taffeta or I might be confused), which I haven't seen any that I like the look of in shops around here.
After going through all the dresses I can find, I need to go and look at all the material I can find. Unfortunately, Curtain and Fabric Barn and Spotlight don't really have the stuff I want. Although, if I change the style of dress and go with this new "noise" the type of material I need will be different to what I was looking at before, so perhaps I missed something. The problem is the colour - this bit wants to be copper, but I haven't seen any like that since 2 years ago in Fabric Vision, which has since closed down in Dunedin. The kind of colour I want for this part of the outfit is like that seen on this webpage, on the underskirt.
I have just today found a fantastic shop called "The Stitchery". It is mainly patchwork stuff, in fact almost entirely, but it has a very small selection (less than 2 dozen?) of dress materials in the front windows. These dress materials are fantastic. Chosen pretty much purely for coolness. Generally in the range of $18 - $40 a metre, but all 1.5 metres wide. None suitable for the wedding dress in anyway unfortunately, but I am definitely trying to think of good uses. I don't know if I want to even tell people about this shop in case they buy stuff before me, but it is at 498 Princes Street. In Dunedin for anyone who didn't pick that up before and might be reading this somewhere else. I bought some millenery needles. Not for millenery necessarily, although I intend making a couple of hats in the next month, but because they are quite long, so useful for hand-gathering and running stitch and so on, and I am sewing more stuff by hand so they will be useful :).
Anyway, the point of this talk about fabric shops is that I've pretty much been everywhere that is left around here and haven't found what I want, so I will have to go... to Ann's Fabric Room. I don't know if I should say this on the internet, but I have said it often in private so maybe it is alright. I don't generally think you should ever say things out loud or at all if you would regret it if someone overheard. Anyway, I have always had terrible service there. About 4 times out of 4. This includes: staff talking for ten minutes with friends while I am queueing to buy something, staff seeming disdainful of my questions as if my asking if they have a particular bias binding is somehow insulting to them, staff giving me directions like "over there" and pointing to a corner of the room when I ask where I might find a particular thing, and generally making me feel inferior when I buy things that cost $30 rather than $300, although that might just be paranoia. Also, don't buy staples from there. Stuff like calico, lining, etc, is about 10-20% more expensive. Admittedly these things normally only cost $5/m or whatever, but still. Anyway, they have nice stuff there, and it is all expensive, so they might have some nice thing I am looking for that I would be willing to pay extra for for a wedding dress, but since I need a lot the price will really add up, and of course I am reluctant to go there and have people be rude to me.
One always wonders if one is being over-sensitive when one feels shop staff are rude, but Gary was with me on at least one occasion and agreed with me, and other people I know feel generally uncomfortable there. So it's not just me.
And finally, in my list of current sewing stuffs, about two weekends back I whipped up a black dress to wear for Halloween, when I dress Elegant Gothic Lolita style. Which is not scary or anything, I just wanted to make some stuff. On Monday I will hopefully make the blouse for this outfit, and maybe will eventually get around to taking some pictures. I made the pattern and it had numerous problems and kinda sucks in many ways. Which is a pain because it is like a shortened no sleeve version of part of the wedding outfit. That's why I made the black dress, to test out the general pattern. Pictures later, place useful sites on EGL so you know what I am talking about.
enough to do all the ruffles and everything. I have tonnes and tonnes extra. Hopefully next week I will have some stuff written to put up. There are many minor dramas, caused mainly by the fact that I can't be bothered to change anything and would rather just make the wrong thing work and become the right thing. I think this adds interest to the creation process, as the end result can't possibly be like what you planned if you can't be bothered actually making it turn out as the plan does when it is easier to adapt whatever actually seems to be happening at the time. Ummm, yeah...
This is a really terrible photo of a not-very-good drawing of kind of what it might look like. I am doing the smaller one on the left.
I am currently continually trying to decide what style dress I should have for my wedding dress. I know the basic shape, but don't know exactly how it should be created. It is driving me crazy. So I need to look through all the pictures of dresses I can find and choose something and make up how to make it and go with it. So far, the only thing I have really decided with finality is how the material will SOUND. Which, incidentally, is a sound that can only be created by a totally different type of material to what I was previously considering. Probably this different sounding material will be better overall with what I want, but unfortunately it tends to remind me of taffeta (or what might be taffeta or I might be confused), which I haven't seen any that I like the look of in shops around here.
After going through all the dresses I can find, I need to go and look at all the material I can find. Unfortunately, Curtain and Fabric Barn and Spotlight don't really have the stuff I want. Although, if I change the style of dress and go with this new "noise" the type of material I need will be different to what I was looking at before, so perhaps I missed something. The problem is the colour - this bit wants to be copper, but I haven't seen any like that since 2 years ago in Fabric Vision, which has since closed down in Dunedin. The kind of colour I want for this part of the outfit is like that seen on this webpage, on the underskirt.
I have just today found a fantastic shop called "The Stitchery". It is mainly patchwork stuff, in fact almost entirely, but it has a very small selection (less than 2 dozen?) of dress materials in the front windows. These dress materials are fantastic. Chosen pretty much purely for coolness. Generally in the range of $18 - $40 a metre, but all 1.5 metres wide. None suitable for the wedding dress in anyway unfortunately, but I am definitely trying to think of good uses. I don't know if I want to even tell people about this shop in case they buy stuff before me, but it is at 498 Princes Street. In Dunedin for anyone who didn't pick that up before and might be reading this somewhere else. I bought some millenery needles. Not for millenery necessarily, although I intend making a couple of hats in the next month, but because they are quite long, so useful for hand-gathering and running stitch and so on, and I am sewing more stuff by hand so they will be useful :).
Anyway, the point of this talk about fabric shops is that I've pretty much been everywhere that is left around here and haven't found what I want, so I will have to go... to Ann's Fabric Room. I don't know if I should say this on the internet, but I have said it often in private so maybe it is alright. I don't generally think you should ever say things out loud or at all if you would regret it if someone overheard. Anyway, I have always had terrible service there. About 4 times out of 4. This includes: staff talking for ten minutes with friends while I am queueing to buy something, staff seeming disdainful of my questions as if my asking if they have a particular bias binding is somehow insulting to them, staff giving me directions like "over there" and pointing to a corner of the room when I ask where I might find a particular thing, and generally making me feel inferior when I buy things that cost $30 rather than $300, although that might just be paranoia. Also, don't buy staples from there. Stuff like calico, lining, etc, is about 10-20% more expensive. Admittedly these things normally only cost $5/m or whatever, but still. Anyway, they have nice stuff there, and it is all expensive, so they might have some nice thing I am looking for that I would be willing to pay extra for for a wedding dress, but since I need a lot the price will really add up, and of course I am reluctant to go there and have people be rude to me.
One always wonders if one is being over-sensitive when one feels shop staff are rude, but Gary was with me on at least one occasion and agreed with me, and other people I know feel generally uncomfortable there. So it's not just me.
And finally, in my list of current sewing stuffs, about two weekends back I whipped up a black dress to wear for Halloween, when I dress Elegant Gothic Lolita style. Which is not scary or anything, I just wanted to make some stuff. On Monday I will hopefully make the blouse for this outfit, and maybe will eventually get around to taking some pictures. I made the pattern and it had numerous problems and kinda sucks in many ways. Which is a pain because it is like a shortened no sleeve version of part of the wedding outfit. That's why I made the black dress, to test out the general pattern. Pictures later, place useful sites on EGL so you know what I am talking about.
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