Autumn Zebra

The formal (formal dance, prom-type thing) that I made the red dress for was last night, and I haven't heard from the person for whom I made the dress, but my brother is in the same class and said it looked very good and was one of the best dresses there. Out of perhaps up to 100 dresses, that is pretty good :) Hopefully it had no problems.

We just saw this movie " Perfect Creature ". It was the NZ premiere, apparently. It had too much gross stuff like blood and bleeding and injury for me, but otherwise it was cool because a lot of it was filmed in the city in which I live and in a nearby town's heritage Victorian District (a couple of streets) where I have been 4-5 times now. They did some very nice stuff merging real buildings with computer generated stuff. Eg. The building across from my work that I can see out of the window (the old central post office) is about 7 storeys high. In the movie there's the building, and then there's another 30 floors that they've made up. It looks pretty cool. That was kind of amusing because they just bought it to turn it into a hotel - I think it was bought by Hilton - and struggled to get resource consent to add one floor on top :D The movie is vampires, and a bit of steam-punk. Strangely, we only saw two goths at it, which is weird because it is clearly a go

I'm not entirely sure if we're actually past Part 3 or if I just hate my work computer so much that it just seems like it. I was just looking through a list of posts I made on a particular forum, and some of them have been voted '5's. See, you can vote 1 to 5 on a post if you wish, and 1 is bad and 5 is good. A few of mine, about 1 in 7, have got votes, and they are all fives. This one got three votes. I'm so proud. It is in response to whether or not a particular person should get Vista for their computer: Don't do it! don't touch Vista! at least not until it works! About once a day, Explorer.exe crashes. Basic file operations fail. I can't unzip a file directly in to Program Files (or somewhere, I do it once a fortnight and have to unzip it elsewhere and copy it in). It is a slow UI - the expanding, the contracting, why doesn't the thing just open and close the windows? Sure, blank my screen for 5 seconds and then bring up a moronic message for me

The most interesting thing I have found recently has got to be this blog by a bespoke Savile Row tailor - The English Cut . The sad people that you are, I bet you aren't even slightly interested! He talks about the world of bespoke tailoring, what makes a good suit and his own business. For some reason, I think this is the most interesting and amazing entry . Look at that beautiful shoulder seam! I've always been vaguely interested in tailoring and at some point will actually make myself a jacket, but I am currently too scared. It seems so much more difficult than making other things. I also have no idea really how these things are supposed to look or fit. Given that you can buy an absolutely awful, badly made, entirely synthetic jacket from some of the women's clothing shops in town for $300 (even on special), I should be able to make myself both a jacket and trousers out of really nice material (eg. $50/m) and still end up spending less money. The suit is in my head - it

Just a few days after Amazon asked whether I wanted to extend my order for this book until December (ie. it might not ship until the middle of December) - they email and say that they are sending it! They got it! they have it! They are sending it to me! After waiting a few years before actually ordering it I finally did and it has been 3 months until it shipped. The other one I got a while ago ( this one ). It is going to be so cool. The book is filled with amazing things - just look at that picture on the cover! So purple :)

A friend of mine was crazy enough to decide that I should make her her formal dress. ;) It used this Butterick pattern . In many ways it was a pain - it uses annoying slippery satin material (crepe-back satin), the instructions do not necessarily tell you the best way to do it (I followed them because I thought they might be right, but I had to make some adjustments afterwards), I used plastic boning stuff as recommened. I thought the plastic boning - although not suitable for corsets as everyone knows - might be ok for the purpose for which it is intended and recommended - close-fitting strapless tops. It is not, it is pretty terrible. I wouldn't recommend it. Anyway, in the end she liked it, and it was not too awful, but there are many things that I wish were different or better, if only I had known. At some point I may have pictures of her in it, but for now I have pictures on the mannequin. Not all were taken when it was actually finished and aren't in order in that respec

Ok, I'm bored with the hem now, so I am going to post a boring blog entry - because yesterday was Wednesday and the blog schedule is now supposed to be sensible entries on Wednesday and Sunday. I probably won't do more on the hem today because I am sick and have to go to bed early. This is the bustle pad I made ages ago. See how sad and flat looking it is? Now, this is the bustle as it is now! I took the binding off and stuffed it more. Exciting, eh? It is now a lot better and will make more of a difference, so that's good. Yeah I know, the pictures don't say much. But it looks so much different in real life. Now it is all big and puffy... I think I should have stuffed it more to make it even more firm though, but the stuffing was starting to make it curl up and I didn't want it to curl too much. Oh well, I can always do it again if it gets flat again.

I hate sewing hems. I just thought I'd let everyone know that. I especially hate sewing them with silly slippery material like satin.

It has snowed and iced and all that stuff a bit more here. It didn't do any of this last year so that's a bit weird. Both the back and palms of my hands are all dry and munted :(. It's very annoying because the dry skin catches on material and makes me think I am snagging it all the time. Stupid satin stuff anyway. So, this is a singlet that was caught up over another peg overnight and when I unhooked it, it sort of just stayed in shape. The washing wasn't frozen solid, just frozen stiff so you could bend it around into different shapes and have it stay like that, to some extent. But this one was just natural.

People often ask this question, and I don't really have any idea. I'm hoping to remember to keep track of the time it takes to make the next one. The current one took 6 weeks of almost all of my free time however, which is most of the time not used up by working, making and eating dinner, going out for lunch on Saturday and visiting my parents for Sunday lunch. The corset took half of the 6 weeks. After I finished that I spent 1 day of a weekend playing computer games instead :) The chemise and the bustle pad took one evening each (3-4 hours). Stuff to do with hats took one weekend I suppose, because most of it didn't work out and there was a lot of mucking about. So not that long. But I didn't do much else. Theoretically without having to make the underwear again, it would only take 2-3 weeks to make another outfit, but for some reason that doesn't seem very likely. You can get a lot done in an evening of about 3 hours though.

I don't think I ever posted pictures of the whole Victorian dress I made. So here are some, finally had some taken, and with a digital camera so I can get them onto the computer. I imagine that if you click on them you get to see the picture larger. (For information on my making this, click on the tag "Victorian" to get tagged entries.)

Last week, or some other time in the recent past, I made a beret. It is a very simple beret, and I have plans to make more, more complex ones. After making your pattern (a ring shape and an oval) it only takes about 2 hours to make. I made it from instructions on the sempstress site , although you first need to make the basic brim pattern . And then you can make lots and lots of hats (well, at least a couple) as explained on that same site - which is about Elizabethan clothing so except for the beret they are Elizabethan hats. Don't let that stop you though. I, for example, am going to make this tall-crowned hat out of my black-and-red and black-and-whitc chequered material. It should be amusing. This is my material I used. And this is a close-up of the material because it was interesting to look at the photo close-up. This is me. I can't decide if it looks stupid or not. For some reason I had very red cheeks, and it is also hard to take a picture of yourself. I tried to airbr