Autumn Zebra

Finished - entry on LJ . Picture for those who don't want to read that.

I made Chinese Lantern decorations. I wrapped cardboard toilet rolls in old wrapping paper that was cool but too crumpled to use to wrap presents then made the outer lantern bit out of coloured cardboard or this other very thick wrapping paper. I think it's better to have the outside patterned, but it needs to be stiffer than just paper. Wire through holes made in the side with a needle is used to hang them on string (I used blue hemp twine) across the opening to the stairs and the hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room. They look really good hung up actually. If you make some, I think a yellowish or reddish paper on the inside is best, to be a bit more "lantern-like".

Posted on my Live Journal for the same reason as last time.... entry here .

I made cream puffs, which are the same recipe as eclairs, just a different shape. To make mutant doom puffs you add food colouring to them, have them end up a weird shape, and probably overcook them slightly even though they cooked for slightly less time than the recipe said. Due to them going a bit brown on the outside, the coloured ones don't show their colour as well as I was imagining, but on the inside they are a nice blue and pink. You can see I tried doing two long ones to make eclairs, but I quickly got bored of that. I shall put cream in them later when Mum comes over with the cream beater, but I'm not sure whether I will have time for chocolate icing.

I have sewn the inner and outer layers of the stays so far, but still need to make bias binding, bind the edges, and sew the eyelets. Also, I might want to hand-sew in a lining. Here's the outer layer. It is wonky because it is hard to get it to look sensible on the mannequin. I think the fabric looks better in the photos than in real life; it is rather poor quality because it is upholstery material, but I like it anyway and in this case it's supposed to look "rougher" as the one I liked in my book seemed itself very roughly made. I didn't think to pattern-match it until I had sewn it and it seems a waste to cut more, so I'll just have to make another one some time with pattern matching. There are a lot of straight lines so it shouldn't be too hard to get it looking a bit better. Since the inner layers are the "strength" layers, the outer layer wouldn't necessarily have to be cut on the grain, if it needed to be mucked around with to match th

I posted this on Live Journal because I also posted it on the corset makers community over there. Link to the Live Journal post. I've since discovered it's fairly wrong, but I think it will still work well enough so I'll make them up anyway (I am about half-way through actually). It won't be too much of an investment of time etc if it doesn't work out that well, as it is machine sewn and doesn't use special materials.

3 little sewing machines, all in a row. The centre one is my good sewing machine, the Bernina 840 which was unfortunately not going properly so the sewing machine man is coming tomorrow, and hopefully he only needs to clean it or something... :( It's good. I hope it gets better. The one on the left is Mum's Globe which I am using instead of the Bernina, and which I borrowed before I got the Bernina. It's pretty good. It's quite heavy - that's how you can tell it's good. If I've got my companies right, then it is actually a copy of a Bernina. The one on the right is my first one and is the worst sewing machine ever, which is why I eventually borrowed Mum's. Not only is it terrible, but you actually feel insulted when you use it. It was the cheapest one available though, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone as unless they are very enthusiastic it will not help them to enjoy or improve at sewing. I use it to do button holes as I don't know h