Autumn Zebra

After deciding that my very badly done sheet mock-up with no boning was going to be ok, I made a nice new pattern incorporating the changes, and added a 1" seam allowance. Here you can see the pattern, without seam allowances, all nicely labeled with "top" and "bottom" and the waistline and which piece connects to which on what side. I made it up in cotton something, canvas maybe, that I had bought specifiacally for this sort of thing, and I bought it in pink so I would remember it was strictly utilitarian purposes because I would never use pink for anything otherwise. I used the seam allowances to make the boning channels, because that was a lot easier than making separate channels and generally sounds like a good idea, since they are there anyway, adding bulk to the whole thing. Here are some pictures of various views on the dress dummy, with uncut lengths of cable tie in place as boning and generally roughly pinned on and so on. You can see come ribbon thro

I'm not sure what to write actually, and didn't take many pictures. I am making a post about how to make an underbust pattern, but I thought I should finish mine first and see if I am really qualified to say such things. I made my first pattern, based on instructions from a site I can no longer find, from memory, because it is really a very simple concept, but I made a major idiotic mistake, probably because I was very hungry and my thinking was very messed up. I did it while nothing was happening in pattern-making class. So, when I realised my idiocy the next day, I made another, which went a lot better and made a lot more sense. Which I will explain later when mine is all finished and good (hopefully). There are three main, simple categories of underbust corset in terms of shape of the top and bottom edges. flat or slightly curved edges curved between bust pointy! They're crappy little drawings, I know. So anyway, the point is I decided to go for number two, forgetting th

In reciprocal test-taking, I took a couple that Aynia found after she looked at "the very negative personality test" that I posted. Apparently, in the Buffy Test , I am: Glorificus You probably have a complicated, multi-faceted personality. Kind of like Glory-Ben-Glorificus. Passionate and driven with a spiritual side that comes out at times, a healthy taste for the finer things in life and a willingness to do what's necessary to achieve your ends. You're assertive and have no problems standing up for yourself. And, push come to shove, you're the closest anyone's ever come to straight-up beating the Slayer and her gang. I've never seen Buffy, so the whole thing is kind of pointless, but oh well. Once again, like all the recent personality tests I've done, I don't necessarily agree with all that. It seems unlikely, having seen a picture of this character, that I am anything like them in any way. What's up with these point

So anyways, onto the makings! Here are my 3 materials; first person to spot the joke, nay, pun, gets.... umm, to be really great. From left to right, outer "fashion" layer, strength layer, lining. Here's the lining by itself, because it is cool. Isn't it cute? I wish it was the outside now, but how wearable is it, really? Ha ha, short entry. But it had pictures.

As part of my set of clothing made in houndstooth and black materials, I am making a corset, as well as a skirt, jacket and trousers. The idea is a kind of corporate-wear collection, like a suit, with the jacket and either trousers or skirt, and the corset will fit in with the outfit. Worn with a white shirt for maximum corporatability. Given that both the corset and skirt will be houndstooth it may be impossible to wear them together without blinding people, but I may make another black skirt as well. Normal business-wear, at least how I perceive it, having never met any woman who has to wear any kind of suit for work, generally consists of a suit jacket and either dress trousers or a skirt, where the skirt is only about knee length - a little longer or shorter or at the knee. Perhaps heels would be worn, perhaps make-up. The whole idea seems to be to make the woman dress like a businessman while still remaining traditionally feminine and looking nice. Looking nice and being tradition

Before the wedding and all that, at Polytech we were drafting basic trouser blocks, and then had to make a design and make a pattern for that, and then we have to make up the pattern, to check it works out ok. It seems a lot of people did something a bit like pajama trousers, or actually did do pajama trousers, whereas all the people I know and talk to did something a bit more complicated. I don't have a drawing of my original idea, which was not terribly interesting, so I shall describe it. Taking the basic trouser block, drop the waistline 2cm (from the actual waist) and put a yoke at the top, removing the darts, with a slightly larger yoke at the back than at the front, and make the trousers wider legged - instead of being shaped, the leg goes straight down from the hips. Here is a boring picture of my pattern: And here is 3 pictures of it made up in a one-way stretch knit synthetic crepe. I bought the material off trademe specifically to make trousers, mostly as there is 6m of

I shall make some comment on it if it makes sense. http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/

An online quiz with a difference!! Find out the worst about your worst personality traits. I got: Brute You are 42% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 57% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant. You are the Brute! You are introverted, arrogant, brutal, and more intuitive than rational. Like a big, dumb animal, you are driven by your emotions more than your reason, and as a result of the fact that you care very little for the feelings of others, you tend to be rather selfish. You also possibly fling your own poo. Because of your selfishness, you also tend to be a bit arrogant, seeing yourself as big or strong or smart or always correct. This makes you a stubborn, irrational, emotion-driven brute. King Kong best represents the gorilla-version of your personality. Emotional, introverted (King Kong was isolated on his own island, after all), brutal, and arrogant (proud to be the largest ape on Earth!), Kong would probably get along very well with you, seeing as how you share many of the same traits. As

Hi peoples! I got a new camera! Actually, WE got a new camera as a wedding gift from Gary's work. But within 5 seconds I had it out of the packet and the battery in and was taking pictures. Then later I put in the memory card, although the camera has a little in-built memory, I'm not sure how to access it. Perhaps I have to take the card out again. So here are some pictures taken with it: The cat Mine and Lisa's wedding flowers Close-ups That's all for now. I think it is bed time, I am still sick. We are going away for 5 days, so no posts. Neh neh.

The wedding and reception went well, as you will be glad to know. Thanks to those who came, and for your gifts too - we seriously didn't expect people to really give as anything, so we got home and looked at them and were like, what the hell?! Thanks to the people who couldn't come who would've if you could. It is a real shame because you are some special people that I would have really liked to have there, you know who you are. And now I am staying up late mucking about on the computer because now I have time and can start doing all the things I wasn't doing when making stuff for the wedding. As a result of my sewing however, one person now wants me to make things for her, and another one of my friends wants me to make her dress for the formal. She says "I know you'll do a good job". Hmmm, sometimes I do a good job, but no one sees about 35% of the stuff i try and make because it is awful or too messed up to finish. And I hate about half of what I make, o

Thanks people for your congratulations, and hope to see some people tomorrow - just an update for anyone around reading now - the ring engraver had a heart attack so the rings had to be sent to Wellington, but we got them back 2 days ago. The ring engraver is apparently still alive, so that is good; the best man missed his plane - he is arriving tonight but his new plane is now delayed by an hour, the groom is at the airport waiting for him; the cat broke one of the cake decorations (we painted little Warhammer 40k figures, awww; they are about 1 1/2" tall) but it is glued back together now; my mother and sister each spent over an hour picking shoes and now they aren't sure they are right. My shoes were picked in 5 minutes off the bargain table, and I'm not sure I am that worried about them; the groom is totally stressed out; the groom and bride are both ill - we went to see a movie today and I had to leave half way through to have a major coughing fit, you know, from all

I have just realised that the order these posts show up is in the order I write them and save them as drafts, rather than the order I actually publish them. This is a bit of a problem because I often write them earlier than I post them. In fact, I have a couple a long time ago that I didn't finish yet that if I posted now would show up months ago and no one would see them. And, currently, as I write this not as you read it, the one I posted a few days ago is first on the list, and not the ones I have posted since, because I wrote them earlier - so then, people come to my blog and see it is the same post first, but really more have been added!! Oh no! This may have happened numerous times, with people missing out on my precious entries :( And it also looks like I posted them all on the same day, whereas really they are across several days, and are supposed to be one a day :| How annoying, I think that is a stupid method they have implemented there. So, make sure you scroll down the

I often think I should have better titles for these, but I either can't think of any, or I feel I should have descriptive ones so people know what they are about. So, the fairy dress, right? The design is a handkerchief hem skirt, coming from under the bust, with gathered material over the bust, and straps of twisted material. The skirt is made by getting squares of material and cutting a circle out of the middle. I used two layers in the different materials, and offset them so that the points hung in opposite places. I tried it on the dressmaker's dummy, and it made it look pregnant with the skirt starting just under the bust, and it looked better if I put the skirt at the waist, and better more if it was a bit below waist, I think. See how this looks kind of nice: And this one looks kind of weird: But it looks better on the person. The bodice section looks nice here though, although in the finished item it is all gathered and so more puffy and less folded in a modern pseudo-m

I don't really have much to say about this dress, at least not in picture form, because I don't have many pictures as it doesn't fit on my dress dummy as it is, and I don't want to resize the dummy, because then I would have to resize it back for me. However, I have a couple of things, such as material. Here, we have some lining material and two different curtain materials, stiffer and more opaque than the veil stuff; less netting and more like material. But kind of sort of plasticy. They didn't have any chiffon stuff at spotlight in the right colours when I went, except for $20/m or something, which would have made her dress cost more than mine as I would have needed at least 4 metres plus lining and zip, etc. I was actually hoping the whole thing would be cancelled due to improper material so I could use it to make light two-layer curtains, as they worked well together, but unfortunately not. I made an under-dress from the lining, which I made in a standard size 1

So, finally we have the veil. Not really that finally though, cos the whole thing didn't take long, and you are getting blog entries within months, if not days, of me actually doing it. It turns out that the whole thing, when finished, looks very Turkish, or something like that. I started with a big piece of sheer curtain material, maybe 2.5 metres long, or maybe it was 3. I hung it over the dress dummy's neck stump so it was only about to the waist at the front and draping on the ground at the back. It looked pretty good, so I curved the corner at the front on one side with a pair of scissors while it was hanging there, then laid it on the ground and cut the other one to match. And we were all done making the veil. I could hem it, but that seems like a lot of hemming of horrible material for that sort of thing, and it will probably end up worse than if I had left it. Of course, then I had to join it to the hat. So I pinned it inside and went to have a look in the mirror, and i

Since I have none of the stuff called buckram to stiffen the crown, the standy up bit, of the hat, I decided to use some of the 500 small cable ties I have instead. I taped to cable ties together at the ends, overlapping a bit, after chopping of the bulky bit, and curved it around inside the crown of the hat at the top, under the excess seam allowance (which I hadn't trimmed yet, although the instructions said to) and sewed down the seam allowance underneath it, securing it in its own little channel around the top of the hat. This stiffened the top and helped to hold it out. This meant you could see the stitching on the outside, but since it held it out better, I thought this might be ok. Then, I sewed the lining together, with a bigger seam allowance to make it smaller than the outside so that it fit in. I don't know how one was supposed to do this bit; I think it related to that remnants thing. I decided to reinforce the bottom edge of the hat with some cable ties too, and to

Today at my work, they had a little morning tea of muffins, and gave me a card and a wedding gift (a fondue set, lol). Isn't that nice? So now everyone knows that my work is a nice work. :) They even made sure I had noticed the rather obvious exchange card ;) Whenever one has to sign one of those cards for someone, the ones that everyone has to sign, and it is all supposed to be a big secret, then you're thinking, they are so gonna know and what retarded thing am I going to write and they're going to think that I really hate them or something. Well, I have no idea when they did the card, and I didn't notice J come in with two large boxes of muffins either. She set it up on the table on the other side of the wall I sit by - it only partially divides the room, I sit by the opening - so I only had to move back half a metre, move right one metre, and then forward half a metre and I would have gone around the wall and be sitting in front of the muffins instead of my monitor,

I didn't understand some of the instructions for my little hat, something about following the general instructions which said, abbreviated, to cut the pattern tissues for remnants and then pin them to the corresponding fabric remnant. And then later it talked about using pattern pieces it hadn't told me I needed in the list it gives you at the start, but which I think related to the remnant bit. So I don't get that bit. and instead of labeling the "remnant" pattern pieces normally, they draw the grainline outside the pattern piece beside it, for instance. Why do that? That's weird. So I'm ignoring that bit and making it up, as is generally necessary with patterns. Still, here is the outer layer, the fashion fabric (the pattern also refers to the outer layer, or fashion fabric, as merely "the fabric". What about the lining, is that not also fabric? No, wait, that is "remnant", I think. Whatever. I think they need to spend a little longer

The wedding is fast approaching, and I have posted very little wedding stuff - because Gary is not supposed to see my stuff or something. Or maybe just not see me wearing it. But people wearing things make the best pictures! But the hat and veil are surely harmless? I want to have a huge veil that goes nearly head-to-toe, or at least head-to-knee, that I can have over my face initially, then back over my head, as veils are supposed to go. It will be shorter in the front though, and I shall try to arrange it such that there is less material in front and more folds of material at the back. It's very nearly time for bed, so I shall have to merely introduce the items in this entry, although I am about a third to half way through making the hat part. I shall explain the ingredients then, as shown here (ingredients and recipes, that's how I think of sewing ventures; cooking, less so): We can see here the pattern of course, which I did not buy for this purpose but merely because Vogue

If an item of clothing doesn't cause some sort of visual impairment, it's not worth wearing. That's not really my new motto, but I like to think of it when I consider making things out of materials like this houndstooth: And look, I even have it in inches. How random. Doesn't it make your eyes go funny? You can see the kind of cool selvedge there too. But I won't just be making one garment out of this, oh no, there is a whole outfit, or set of outfits around this theme! Ok, two items will be made in the houndstooth, and another will have highlights of it, but there are many more items in the greater theme of outfits. But I am trying to write shorter posts oftener, so I will put that in another post. I am starting a new tag about this: houndstooth, although as you will see, another element is "corporate" and another is.... "feminism" perhaps? Or sexism? It is hard to decide. Anyways, this entry has introduced the houndstooth element. p.s. today

In the most recent weekend, we went to the Farmer's Market, as G did not go to training on Saturday morning. The day was fraught with difficulty for the most part, and did not go nice and smoothly and leisurely like the weekend before, but there were still fun bits. We bought absolutely fantastically delicious nectarines that are as big as large peaches, and red-all-the-way-through plums from a girl set up on the platform. I say girl because she seemed young and girl-like, although she was probably not a girl per se. You should look for her if you go there and buy some fruit. Gary made me buy silverbeet, because apparently he likes it. How weird. So I had to ask Mum what to do with it, which was something of a long shot, because I don't think she likes it, or at least very, very seldom cooks it. I got a few turnips, we bought some hotdogs and stuff for breakfast, we had a coffee from the coffee cart, and we got these deep-fried pastry things from some Russian people. I had appl

I think our cat, Slayer, occasionally suffers from hallucinations, as she will sit there and rapidly look from one place to another as if she is watching something, but there is nothing there.... She is also very jumpy and nervous, and will startle often when you come near or if there is any kind of sudden noise. This may sound relatively reasonable, but the same sudden noises or appearances of people will, at the same time, not startle me. She often gets in "pinball" moods, where she will run backwards and forwards through rooms and through the house, generally stopping before she hits things, just bouncing off and obstacle and going back more or less the way she came. Often obstacles like couches and tables will be approached and climbed as if they were merely more flat ground with no loss of speed. Sometimes she will run towards an obstacle and jump and put her feet on it to springboard herself back the way she came, like when you approach the end of a swimming pool, put y

I did this quiz , and this was my result: What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Drama Nerd You sure do love the spotlight and probably have a very out-going and loud personality. Or not. That's just a stereotype, of course. Participation in the theatre is something to be very proud of. Whether you have a great voice for musicals, or astounding skills for dramas/comedies; keep up the good work. We need more entertainment these days that isn't television and video games (not that these things are bad, necessarily.) Science/Math Nerd Literature Nerd Gamer/Computer Nerd Artistic Nerd Musician Social Nerd Anime Nerd What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace I don't know how that (result) happened, how weird. I'm certainly not that personality type and I don't really do drama stuff... Maybe I should do it again. Very odd. There are supposed to be little red lines for all the different types, showing the score, but at least right now, they are no longer showing u

Ha ha, silly title, Dunedin is silly. Last weekend was great. As well as buying Plucky and a giant overnight bag (thanks for your comments about how great Plucky is by the way, I have passed them onto him), we went to "Port Fest". This is what that involved: Oh yeah, baby. A few people sitting around by the asphalt at Port Otago , by the woodchip piles, listening to random people, some absolutely awful and incapable of singing, sing. Or try to. There was a sausage sizzle. There was a Mr Whippy, or whatever the place selling icecreams was. There were some absolutely minimally inspiring displays in an enormous shed about 100 years of frozen meat shipping. However, there was also this: Which is a small section of a straddle carrier . Apparently that is what they are called. I don't know why I didn't actually take a picture of the whole thing while I was there. How silly of me. There was also this: A big ship with 3 cranes. Yay. And then I got to stand around eating a su