Autumn Zebra

So, like I said last time, I wanted to do couching and stuff as the decoration on the zupan. I looked it up in some of the craft and embroidery magazines I have here, and drew some pics and made some notes. I chose some colours and thicknesses of cord and all that, and then went out and tried to buy what I needed and found that it was mostly unavailable. So I was annoyed and changed a few things and simplified things, and came back with some cord in appropriate colours. Although most of it, except the dark red was quite crappy and mostly all the same. There wasn't a lot of choices. I couldn't get the more complicated elements to work, and didn't have any cord thin enough to do the loops I wanted, and wasn't actually able to get some really interesting thick stuff either to loop over in the first place, and I was wondering if I would have enough time to do everything, as well as whether G would even like it or wear it because, like most men, he mainly wears only undecora

In the weekend, we did many things, and one of those things was shopping. We went and bought Plucky from Kmart. Plucky is an Easter duck. Possibly, since he was the only one at Kmart and there didn't seem to be shelf space for any more, THE Easter Duck. I don't know why they only had one and bothered to advertise it in their mailer, and I don't know why he is an Easter duck, rather than a regular large duck, but I think it probably has something to do with the Easter Duck getting rid of the Easter chicken somehow and taking over the egg laying for itself; no doubt in league with the Easter Bunny, or Rabbit, if you would prefer. Here is Plucky: And here is Plucky again. Plucky is a large duck you will have noticed: Mum thought I had called it "Clucky" but I am actually not quite that weird. Plucky is a good name, both a word on its own (think courage and determination) and also reminiscent of feathers. We also bought me an overnight bag. An expensive overnight bag.

Today I talk about how I made the fastenings for the zupan coat. I wanted to make the fastenings and trim decoration in the style of couching and cord and frogging. So that is how this came about. It is somewhat Polish-ish. Here is the finished picture of the pair so you know what we are talking about. I can't remember what they are called, so they are now the loop and the bobble. First, choose some cord. If you live round here, there are not many choices, and all the choices are cheap and nasty and only have the (gold) coloured thread on the surface and underneath is white. This means that any threads that get pushed aside and any fraying that happens will reveal ugly white which makes mistakes really a lot more obvious. Step 1 Measure your cord. First you'll actually want to play around with it and work out how much you need for the size you want. Bobbles need 2-3 cm (~1") more than loops, depending on the thickness of the cord, how many knots you tie, etc. I think mine

A lot of people aren't going to get some of these.... This totally made me laugh: These could be said about various instruments, just like Irish jokes can be made about any nationality. Why do so many people take an instant dislike to the viola? It saves time. How can you tell when a violist is playing out of tune? The bow is moving. How was the canon invented? Two violists were trying to play the same passage together. Why is a viola solo like a bomb? By the time you hear it, it's too late to do anything about it. Oboe jokes: How do you get an oboist to play A flat? Take the batteries out of his electric tuner. What's the difference between a SCUD missile and a bad oboist? A bad oboist can kill you. Random other ones: There's nothing I like better than the sound of a banjo, unless of course it's the sound of a chicken caught in a vacuum cleaner. What's the least-used sentence in the English language? "Isn't that the banjo player's Porsche?&qu

wpf & wpf Like trying to wrestle an escaping eel into a string bag. No seriously. It is like that. I hate getting things into string bags.

Aha, buttons. Not really that exciting I know. These are for the zupan, like it says in the title, you know? Buttons: I wanted metal buttons with a shank, but the only ones were a bit expensive which would be ok except that they were totally awful and cheap in quality. I probably wouldn't have used them even if they had been really cheap, although I would have bought them. These cost 50c from the op shop for 11. Bonus. Buttons, WITH loops: And there you can see some of the cuffs folded back too. You don't get to see the whole finished outfits until after the wedding, ha ha. The loops are crappy stuff from spotlight, sewn on like that to make the loops. The picture did not work out well, as you can see. Basically all the trims you can get from Spotlight are totally crap. This stuff frays like crazy when you cut it, starting immediately, and although I tried to fold it under at the ends and neaten it up, it is mostly a disaster. You just can't tell in the disaster of a photo.

Here's a link to a post I did in a LiveJournal community about the Victorian corset I made last year, in case you are interested again for some reason. The Link. Here's the best bit of that entry anyway, a new pic.

I can't really remember what I wrote in my previous posts, but here goes anyway. I did material, I did the pattern, I talked about the weirdness of it and Polish words.... So today we shall talk about construction or something. In fact, I think I shall change the title. There. So, I can't really remember much about making it that is interesting, but you know that the pattern was a pain to make and that it has a lining. The main part of the garment - minus the sleeves and collar I mean - was sewn separately in outer and lining fabrics to hide the seams. To make things a bit easier, I didn't sew the sleeves on at this stage, because sleeves can be tricky to sew on and might not end up eased and adjusted the same on the outer and inner layers - because I don't notch the sleeves and arm scye because I don't really understand it so I just put the sleeve in and make it work. So I put the inner and outer layers together and first sewed one of the front opening edges toget

Ha ha - A Skirt - because it is actually a A-Line skirt. So that's not even slightly funny. Which just makes it funnier. I love not-funny funny things, people get so confused, and that to me is funny. So we had to had in our work to date in the pattern-making course in the last class. This included: our basic skirt block our A-line skirt block our pattern made from one of the blocks the notes we took on some ways you can modify the skirt blocks to make more interesting stuff, as well as our little 1/4 size examples of how you actually do that our skirt made from our patten For those who don't know, which I imagine is many people, a block is a like a pattern, but it doesn't have the seam allowances and other useful information like that. It is basically the pattern without seam allowances and punch holes and stuff, and is what you make first, what you make the the pattern from. You can also trace it out and cut it up and stuff to make new blocks or patterns. So the skirt I m

Do you listen to music while cooking? I always used to when cooking because I cooked more complicated and involved foods more often, when I didn't have to go to work too. And this seems to encourage music listening. Now I sometimes do, generally on the days that G comes home late whereas I do not. Then I blare out the music and cook one of the slightly more involved dishes, like the lasagne today which had a layer of butter-fried chicken, mushroom and wine, and another layer of spinach, courgette, eggplant and pasta sauce. So essentially I had to prepare and cook two meals simultaneously and then combine them into one dish with layers of pasta (and cheese on top). Plus, there was an awful lot of it. I tend to listen to music like Marilyn Manson and Disturbed, which amuses me because cooking is so, domestic, and not - whatever that kind of music brings to mind. Sometimes I made it interesting and blared out Dvořák , "From The New World", instead. What I'd like to do is

When I was looking at some .net programming documentation on the web the other day, I got this message on the page: Ok, that's dumb. ;) The formatting seems to be the same in each "English (United States)" phrase, making it slightly less likely it is due to, say, a dual entry in a database. I'm just glad I got to see it in English (United States), and not, for example, Spanish (Spain), English (Spain) or Spanish (United States), but it is a pity it doesn't seem to display in REAL English, English (Real English). :)

Woohoo, lots of post writing I am doing (well, this is the second just now). These are the two materials for the zupan. A dark red wool blend of some type off Trademe. We determined that this colour looked at least somewhat good on G some time ago. Then I tried to find material in that colour that was preferably wool and we couldn't find any anywhere. Not even if we looked at ridiculously expensive stuff. I found one that would do but we weren't really happy about it, and it was a wool crepe so rather light and floppy, so I would have had to interline it to get a good effect. I felt wool was an appropriate authentic material, and I didn't want it to be wussy and thin, as that would not be authentic effect for a country with rather sub-zero winter temperatures. Then I found this on Trademe and bought it and it was great. The lining of course should be linen, which is also hard to find in Dunedin, and I also looked at cotton. I thought maybe a polished cotton would be more l

I think the last time I posted about this was quite a while ago, but I thought I should do some more actual sewing posts. Pattern Last time I talked about the pattern, but I thought I would add a bit more. Here is the pattern: Here is a bit of a glossary: LEWY - left PRAWY - right PRZÓD - front TYŁ - back KOŁNIERZ - collar RĘKAW - sleeve KIESZEŃ - pocket Isn't Polish beautiful? Unless the person you want to make this pattern for is pretty much the correct proportions, if not the correct size, I think it would be easier to simply make a pattern to their measurements in this shape rather than copying and then modifying the pattern. Unless you have made quite a few men's clothes before, because it is a pain. Front Closure The Polish jackets overlap right-over-left, unlike men's jackets from Western Europe (although in Poland now they will wear it Western style, but I mean at the time, they did it Eastern style). Sleeves and Cuffs The sleeve seems to have t

The velvet yesterday wasn't actually my latest purchase, it was just the latest to arrive. The ACTUAL latest purchase, and now the latest arrival, is this velvet stuff, which is backed by that fluffy quilting stuff and then quilted. Here it is: It is actually different colours in different places, it isn't just weird lighting. Although in real life the dark colours are kind of deeper and the light colours are more like dustings of gold and it actually looks very opulent. It is 1.8m of 150cm wide. It cost me $33.50 including postage, because the postage was $8.50. Bizarre, because that other stuff I got yesterday cost $10 postage, which is more money but that was two big rolls in a huge parcel, where as this was a little parcel about half the size of a pillow (an averagely decent kind of pillow, but not a super puffy one.) And the roll of interlining I'm sure I talked about at one stage, that was only $3.50 postage. And here is a close up of the quiltedness. This is a more r

Arrived from Trademe a couple of days ago was this, although this is after I had opened it and then put it back in again. See the big parcel that goes up higher than the door handle? And in it were my two lots of velvet. One is a synthetic dark purple, as shown in this really bad photo. The top part of the photo is the back, but it shows the type of purple that it is, although the lightness/darkness and the actual colour don't show, and I myself have only seen it in indoors light in the evening, so it is probably different in day light too. It is all synthetic-y, but there is lots and lots of purple, which is good and pretty. There is 6m. I bought 3, but because it was tied too tightly then it has got big creases and so she gave me 6m instead - after consulting me of course. Oh yeah, the purple is also a stretch material. The other one is this dark red kind of colour. It looked more brown in the indoor light at the time, but in the photo is more reddish, which I think is more lik

Normally I'd say "arse", but people might get offended. Why I (heart) Vista, Part 2 I'd like to share with you a couple of articles, a few quotes. The first is this one, " User-privilege flaw hits Vista ". The UAC (User Account Control) is enough of a flaw in Vista as it is, so I don't really care about that. The UAC is a terribly annoying "feature" that pops up whenever you are trying to do something to warn you that you need administrator access to do it, AND THEN pops up a SECOND message box asking you, under administrator privileges, if you want to actually do it. I think it is obvious that they only needed ONE dialog box here, not two. To make it really obvious that your computer is doing something serious (installing software for instance, or drag-and-dropping certain shortcuts to your desktop - really serious stuff) then the screen spends a couple of seconds going into ultra-serious grey-mode in order to pop up the second dialog, and the

Today, I discovered another reason why I love Windows Vista, and we shall start our "Why I (heart) Vista" series of blog posts with this little example. I was happily at work, doing the same thing I have done at work using Vista for the last 1-2 weeks. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a message box pops up with a message along the lines of 'An application is trying to send you a message from the desktop.' My options were something like 'view' and 'later'. My response was something like, "ummm, what?" After realising I had no frickin idea what it was talking about, I decided to click view, or ok, or whatever it was. And my screen goes blank! Completely black! I was confused. This is not normal behaviour for a windows computer. Normally they crash, not turn themselves or the monitor off. At first I had thought it was another one of those "Administrator access" situations, where the monitor goes blank for a fraction of a second. But after a f