Autumn Zebra

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

The other day I had an urge to make chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately our internet was down at work and I couldn't go online to look for recipes. Luckily it came back up just before home time, and my sister brought me a couple of recipes and a veritable essay on the making of chocolate chip biscuits that she found on the internet. I used one of the recipes I found, but I am going to try the ones she found sometime soon. I found my recipe here. It was very easy to make, and quick, and very yummy. The recipe theoretically makes 18, but I made 12. They were largish. Even two people at work who got one thought they were good (as far as I'm aware). At the supermarket they only had dark chocolate chips and milk chocolate buttons, so I used a mixture of the two and it has massive chocolate buttons in it and it is yummy. I thought it might not mix and stay together properly but it was fine.

Even though the bodice is nearly finished, and I only have to sew on the buttons and make some button holes or something and sew the darts, I really can't be bothered doing either of those things. Probably because those things seem to make a small difference - like only changing what it looks like by a few small buttons - but they seem like they would take ages or are just too annoying to bother with. Also because there is lots of describing to do and various pictures I have to work out the point of, I haven't written anything about it either. So I am going to have to write about other stuff instead. Like how I made a bustle pad that pretty much sucks, but maybe it is alright after all, and it only took an evening, or maybe two (but not like two whole evenings since I also made dinner and whatever else in it, so not ages ). Anyway, first I examined the pictures found on this page, Mode Historique - Bustle Era Underwear . and decided on several things, like that it looked like i