Autumn Zebra

A more recent craft, although from February 2017. I have a singlet I really like that I bought probably over 10 years ago and it is getting a bit faded and stuff now, so I decided to make a pattern off it and make my own. I have had trouble finding any in the right type of fabric anyway. I just traced round the existing one and added seam allowances where necessary. Both of these are from the same pattern. The black one is merino, and worked really well. Its a kind of rib knit. It stretches around you, then fits snugly. The camo-bug one is not very stretchy and is too small. I think its a type of non-stretchy jersey or something. The black one is bound with a strip of it's own fabric, with raw edges and a zig zag stitch. The camo-bug one is folded over to the inside and sewn down, for some reason.

So, I don't know what it's like in your country, but here the fashion is (still) tunic kind of tops over tights. This appears to be a significant change in the every-day wear of most people, so it's quite interesting. I made a new tunic top top/dress for my work wardrobe. The colours I have chosen for work are blue, dark red, purple and grey, and I was limited in what knit fabrics I already had in large enough pieces in the right colour. This is what I made, the second or third thing I have made of a knit/stretch fabric. The decoration is sewn on by hand. Imagine the colours are actually blue and red in this photo. The binding worked really well around the arm and neck, so I might make a t-shirt or something out of the same fabric. Since the fabric doesn't fray, the binding edge is not folded under on the inside of the garment. This makes it some-what easier to sew with kind of annoying fabrics like this, and also reduces the bulk by one layer - if you fold under both e...

When I did the draping class in the fashion design certificate, we obviously had to drape a dress for the assignment. In a way it wasn't much of a class. She just got us to copy a dress she brought in, draping it on a mannequin and basically we just made it up while she supervised. Then she gave as an assignment. Theoretically the brief was a quote (from Vionnet?) about how a dress is beautiful because it is well-cut. This didn't seem like much of a brief to me. Like, it didn't really inspire anything or send my mind off on any ideas... I created a slightly more restricting framework than the one given as it's generally a lot easier to create something within restrictions than within a completely open space (i.e. the frameword given was basically that it had to flatter the body and be well-cut. Not only was this both very open and a completely obvious and expected goal of making clothing anyway, as a beginning draper, I figured we would be lucky if my dress was human-sh...

So, I bought the full set of 18 Golden Hands books. They're craft and sewing magazines that have been collated into books I think, and are copyrighted 1968-1972 or thereabouts. I had got volumes 8 and 9 and decided to get more so that I could make the clothes and stuff, and if I was going to get a few more I might as well get them all. The have sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery and lots of "lace arts" - tatting, needle lace, bobbin lace, macrame - basically anything using a long piece of fibre and twisting it up into pretty patterns. They have pretty good instructions for things, as well as free-er, less hand-holding sections where they more just provide inspiration. I thought I'd go through all the sewing and some of the other clothes and make myself a wardrobe of outfits 60's-70's style. Of course, it is mainly the fabrics that make these things appropriate for those decades, otherwise they're pretty classic styles. Compared to modern sewing instruct...

This here is my favourite dress, generally referred to as the orange dress. It is based on a drawing of a Victorian chemise, and this is where the neckline comes from in particular, but the ruffle I added myself. A chemise of the time would be white linen or cotton most likely. I like to wear it over some kind of top and some tights, and is more-or-less my ideal outfit as I have discovered I don't really like trousers that much., but this still keeps you warm. I am making some stays and had wanted to finish them to wear to Gwri's work dinner, but we had thought the dinner was on Saturday and when we discovered it was really on Friday I didn't have enough time. But on Thursday evening I had enough time to modify the pattern for the orange dress and make this new dress, all in 3.5 hours. I shortened the orange dress, widened the straps, shortened the upper back, widened the skirt very slightly and added a different kind of ruffle - the ruffle is actually twice as long at the...

This is part one of a two part post, but unlike other series of posts, this one might actually get past the first one, because the item in question is nearly finished, and I like it even if everyone else will probably think it's ridiculous. Currently, I am using the word "smock" to designate any garments of a particular basic type. One of the very common forms that clothing has taken, through time and in various parts of the world, is this "smock". For the basic pattern, the front and back are made of rectangles (with a shoulder seam or one continuous piece of fabric), obviously with some kind of hole for the head, triangular pieces are added at the sides to widen it, and rectangular pieces for sleeves. Underarm gussets may or may not be added, and additional triangles might be added to the centre front and centre back to widen it further. Variations can be made by having tapered sleeves, or sleeves that start rectangle and change to tapering around the elbow. T...

I don't know why I call this the Russian Steppe Dress, I just do. I don't think it has anything to do with Russians or anything. I made it a while ago. I got the linen off trademe, and it had a nice weight to it, somewhat heavy, and has a nice natural colour, with the embroidery and black band along one edge, and it seemed peasanty, and the heavy nature of the linen made me think of wearing it in somewhat colder places. I had to do a dirndl type skirt (rectangle made into cylinder and gathered at the top, although I pleated it) in order to have the hem of the skirt straight so as to use the border as it was. I used the length of the fabric for the skirt, cutting it lengthwise to use some for the sleeves and bodice. I made my own block for a dartless bodice. I obviously wanted to get the whole dress out of the same fabric, but was designing the dress after getting the fabric and although I thought I could fit it all on, it didn't quite fit and so the back is a different line...

Since Christmas was about 6 months ago now, I thought maybe I should get round to posting something about it. I made lots of presents for people. I made my brother a hoodie, but like everything I make it turned out way too big; it was supposed to be over-sized, but it ended up huge. I haven't seen him wear it :( I pretty much copied the pattern from one of G's hoodies, just took the measurements and made the pattern. We made a zip-front hoodie in the industrial sewing class I made, so I know the general idea how to make one, and I copied the little triangle of ribbing from the commercial one - I quite like that feature, it adds stretch at the neck so you don't damage that section messing with the hood etc. I'm pretty sure I used tape on the shoulder seams, and maybe the hood-neck seam, to stop stretching . How to use tape on shoulder seams: get some non-stretchy woven tape and cut to correct shoulder seam length. Pin it to/lay it on (as per your normal sewing practise) ...

Part 1 of this skirt is here . I actually finished this ages ago but didn't post it. This is the kind of skirt that strangers comment on. Since it doesn't look that awesome in the photos, I assume it looks a lot better when it's on, probably when moving. The orange fabric is quite thin and light, so it doesn't end up weighing too much. People, adults and children, seem to find it worrying that it drags on the ground when I go down stairs or slopes, but I mainly only mind when I'm trying to go up and I keep stepping on it, and it's hard to hold up because even if you hold it up in one or two places, there is still enough skirt to get in the way down by one's feet. Finished skirt, with one side tucked into waist-band: Both sides held up: Small details - the skirt is hemmed by sewing a strip of fabric onto the hem-edge, folding it to the back and sewing it down and then sewing a wiggly line around too, for decoration and to hold the strip in place and...

I made this last year, it was going to be part of a Halloween costume of this character in a book I was reading, but I never did the rest of the costume. The shape of the robe is from a 14th century (I think) item of clothing. This is the fabric, and essentially the pattern. It is cut on the fold, just one piece of fabric. The fabric is linen, and was white with the green embroidery, but I dyed it. The headhole and neckline is done like so: the shape sewn below is sewn onto the outside along the lines marked on it, then cut inside the lines and folded to the inside and sewn down. The hem of the "sleeves" is done by sewing a strip of fabric on the right-side, then folding to the inside and sewing it down. I sewed (by hand) a shape of a kind of lacy wool fabric over the shoulders, for decoration, because wool is awesome, and to make the shoulders water resistant to a light shower (the water drops would sit on the surface). The character was a forest dweller of a fantasy past, s...

I'm making a 91 piece (minus the waist and hem binding fabric) skirt. It's primarily triangle pieces of scrap fabric, with the biggest pieces in an orange fabric I got several metres of very cheaply. I've just done the first 3 seams, yay! Here are the remaining pieces of these sizes.... And the rest of the pieces... Not pictured are the large orange pieces - which are kind of the base of the skirt, and would make an 8-gore skirt if just sewn together without the other pieces, which I guess are essentially pieced godets? The idea is based on a dress from Northern Pakistan in the "Dress in Detail from Around the World" book (p. 166) which has 524 pieces in the skirt, apparently, and seems to be all one colour, not multiple. See part 2 here .

I am making a dress to wear to Gwri's work dinner on Friday (as I write this it is Monday, in case you read this some other time). It is based on a drawing of a dinner dress from 1908, in a book that I got from the library but I've forgotten what it's called. I don't think I shall show you the picture until the end, ha ha ha. I have so far spent nearly 20 hours on the pattern and mockup, including 1 hour writing out instructions for myself to follow so I put it together right, but not counting probably nearly as many hours again just thinking about how to pattern it and put it together, but that thinking time is normally done whilst doing something else, like lieing in bed hoping to go to sleep sometime soon (putting dresses together in your head isn't conducive to going to sleep, but otherwise I get bored). Here's a random picture of part of the mockup. (The dress itself will have 2 sleeves.) I didn't take any other pictures of the process. The pattern has ...

I might start writing various diary-like entries about depressing stuff, and other stuff, for a while... So I decided two weeks ago to make Dad a nightcap for "receiving visitors in the evening" (lol) and for when he is in hospital [ :-( ]. On the day when we didn't know what was wrong yet and he'd gone to the hospital to find out, I picked some seeds off a tree, the type that turn into "helicopters" to show him, because this is the sort of thing I do. Before they go brown and fall off the tree as helicopters, they are green and joined together - two wings or blades instead of a single one. I'd post pictures but I want to see if I've got any of mine at home (but I lost my camera/it was stolen and I think I hadn't got the photos off yet). Anyway, I got them to show him and gave him the best one. The point of this is that I decided to embroider these and the leaves of the same tree on the night cap. I used the shape of the one on this page on the ...

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

Same story - copied from my LiveJournal post I don't think I actually said in the previous post (although at least a couple of people realised without my making it explicit) that I am making something for everyday wear, not SCA, etc. The reasons for this are that although there is an SCA here, I am not part of it, and I'm not really into group kind of activities of any kind (although I am considering it) and I'd like to be able to wear regularly what I put all this effort into, and I just want to make these historical clothes, to see what they are like, and how they are made, and then to wear them because I am bored of modern clothes. Plus, I find it amusing to have strangers compliment me on clothes based on those worn 500 years ago. There are fitting issues, as we have observed, although I do intend to wear this sometimes over my kirtle (although it also fits poorly, being a first try) and sometimes over modern clothing, so there is a bit of a problem there, regarding sty...

This is the first of three entries about my making a fitted english gown from the book the tudor tailor (3 entries because I don't want to type it all out all at once). I've already made it but have not typed much this month due to RSI so I have lots of stuff back logged! (Did you know everything I want to do aggravates the RSI? That in itself is aggravating.) Hopefully this makes enough sense, I posted it already to a sewing community, who will mostly know what I am talking about. So anyway, the "fitted English gown" is kind of like a cross between a coat and a dress, with a fitted bodice with a kind of built-up neckline, a flared skirt and either puffy sleeves or those with an extended cap. I am doing long sleeves. It's a mixture of hand and machine sewing, a mixture of 16th century techniques and modern/those I made up. It is non-authentic materials - ?olive? cotton drill lining because I had 10m just lying around, as you do, and it was a good colour I thought....