Red Emperor, or Catch of the Day

15/05/2011 7:31 am \ 43 Comments \

The theme for this year’s Amanda Young Foundation Ball was “Nautical, but Nice”  
(If you have time, click on the link and view the information video on meningococcal disease.  Having this knowledge could save a life…)
As usual I had about a zillion ideas for a dress.  Was so so sorely tempted to make a completely brand new gown.  In fact originally I had every intention of making a whole new ballgown for this event.  This was a very enticing thought, there’s nothing I like more than delving into the glamour of the eveningwear section of the fabric store…  but I confess not an very eco friendly option really (sigh)  After much enjoyable fantasising about such nautical fabulousness as mermaid-like dresses or dresses looking like a breaking ocean wave (I had visions of a turquoise sheath, with a frothy white lower skirt section to represent the surf), eventually I directed my thoughts to my collection of evening gowns already sitting in my wardrobe, and working with something I already had.  Last year’s gown had possibilities; this is what it looked like last year…
I decided to re-work this gown and be a Red Emperor, as in, the fish…hehe.  In the end, of course, the gown was almost completely re-constructed and is pretty much a new dress.  
I removed the red velvet bodice and silk midriff section, and made a new red silk skirt to go over the old lining/petticoat with its attached grand silk flounce around the bottom.  Then re-attached the midriff and bodice.  I thought this would be OK, but unfortunately the red velvet just looked wrong on top of the dress, otherwise composed entirely of red silk. So I unpicked that off of the midriff section and away from the zip, un-picked and kept the red velvet ribbon shoulder straps to re-use, and made a new bodice, out of the pieces of red silk left over from cutting out the new skirt.  
All the un-picking and re-sewing together of seams took ages, about five days.  All the skirt sections are hand-hemmed, and I estimated there is between five and six metres of hem altogether in this dress.  (Later edit; I just measured, 8.5m!)  Luckily, I already done the lower skirt and petticoat last year….!
The new parts are: the wrap-over upper skirt and the bodice.  The old, re-used parts of the dress are: the lining/petticoat with the lower silk flounce, the midriff section, the velvet ribbon shoulder straps, and the invisible zip.  Yes, I re-used the ZIP!  I think I’m most proud of that part of the whole she-bang, silly as it sounds. 
If you look really closely enough, under a strong light, you can see that the lower flounce and the midriff section are a different shade of red than the upper skirt and the bodice…  from floor up the fabrics sections are old, new, old, new but meh.  I think they are close enough to be good enough.  Also the different shades are divided up over the dress, so it still looks OK.
So when I had finally finished, I had a kinda new red dress that I am completely thrilled with, even more than last year’s version I think!
But even though it was “red” and sort of “royal”, fitting in with my plan to be a Red Emperor, it didn’t scream “nautical” by any stretch of the imagination.  So I gathered a few fishy accessories; the fishing net to be my stole, and I also bought a few lures and a bit of fishing cord from the fishing store to make some jewellery.
So sufficiently nautical, yes?
And when I came out to show the children my costume and asked them what they thought I was, Sam immediately said, “the catch of the day?”  
And I wondered if that was a better title than my Red Emperor idea…

Details:
Dress; based on Butterick 4657, petticoat and lower skirt of my own design.  Originally looked like this, and my other dress using this same pattern here
Gloves; Vogue 7949, red jersey knit, my review of this pattern here
Stole; fishing net
Jewellery; made by me from fishing lures…
Shoes; Raymond Castle.  These are my oldest shoes, I’ve had them since I was about 19…! 😀

a side view…

a back view…
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Introducing Mum…

14/05/2011 8:43 am \ 35 Comments \

I will say straight out this amazingly beautiful ensemble is not made by me but by my Mum here.  I had to put a picture of it here, because I couldn’t resist; Mum will never ever get herself a blog and this outfit is too creative, clever, immaculately made and finished, and lovely in itself not to share.
My parents have been staying with us recently, and when Mum came downstairs one morning in this ensemble on her way to attend Grandparent’s Day with my Dad and Sam, I literally stopped in my tracks.  Then raced to get my camera, simultaneously begging Mum to let me post her outfit on the blog.  She graciously agreed.
(Of course I would not be human if a little bit of me thought it might not be a good idea, posting Mum’s creations here on the blog.  After all, they will just serve to highlight how my skills are but 1% of Mum’s.  But let’s not be petty now…)
The jacket:  Mum bought these tweed fabrics, sold as small patches or “salesman’s samples” from a shop called Peppertree in NSW which she visited as part of the Australian Sewing Guild convention last year.  She pieced the different sized pieces together in an attractive random patchwork pattern… and anyone who has attempted patchworking will know that randomly shaped rectangular and square patches are not easily put together.  There are also one or two patches harvested from my Dad’s old tweed sports coat that has finally bitten the dust after many years of good service (a Re-fashion!).  The pattern for the jacket is a Vogue pattern by Donna Karan, (pattern number to be provided when Mum looks it up and tells me)  Please note the perfectly constructed welt buttonhole, made from tweed too.  And I have to especially point out, see the piece of mustard/dark green houndstooth-y looking fabric, on the right, or buttonhole opening side of the front, just under and by the lapel?  Mum knitted that bit in fair isle, to tone in with the other tweeds.  On a seamstress’ note, she wanted it mentioned that the knitted section required extra underlining and stabilising, as of course knitted fabric is not as sturdy as woven tweed.  
The jacket is fully lined in dark grey acetate lining.
Mum made the skirt too, from charcoal jersey knit.  I think she might have made the pattern for that herself.
Thank you Mum, for this bar-setting self-sewn moment!
Later edit: Jacket: Vogue 8605, shortened; Skirt: Vogue 2911

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Me-Made June; a new challenge

12/05/2011 7:05 am \ 15 Comments \

I’ve signed to take part again in Zoe’s seasonal challenge, this time to be called Me-Made June 11.

I, Carolyn of “Handmade by Carolyn”, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June ’11. I endeavour to wear as much handmade as possible each day for the duration of June 2011′

And I’m not going to be so hard on myself this time; I will not (sternly shaking my finger at my always-makes-things-too-hard-for-myself self) make too much of an effort to not-repeat.  Just maybe a small, teensy-tiny effort, to stave off boredom.  Hehe…
And since June is newly winter for us southern hemisphere dwellers I may have to pop on a few RTW thermals or Tshirts once in a while for a bit of extra warmth!  I may need to, I may not.  We’ll have to see how we go with that one.
See, here’s the dilemma, the same ol’ dilemma.  I have a collection of perfectly serviceable Tshirts and cardigans.  I like challenging myself to wear all me-made, but I still have to make use of the garments I’ve got, right?  Otherwise, I am just being wasteful of my current resources, er wardrobe.  It’s silly for me to go out and, source, say, black stretch fabric to make myself useful black Tshirts and cardigans, when I have some RTW ones already.  So, yeah…
And yesterday, with all the new technological lessons being introduced into my sad, old brain such as a) how to film myself, talking all by myself and b) learning how to upload a video onto YouTube (they didn’t teach this in school in my day), it slipped my mind that I had taken an outfit photo on our walk that morning.  So there it is, what I was wearing yesterday.  In the vlog too.  I’m just putting it in here, just because.  The weather has been such that one has to start the morning with a cardigan, but before one has got more than 100m on one’s walk one needs to take it off.  And then one needs it again as the sun drops below the yard-arm (there’s that random saying again, what does that even mean?)
And sewing-wise, I will just hint that I have been sewing up a veritable storm lately!  I have lots of newly constructed stuff to show, with which I’m extremely pleased… but I’m waiting for the right moment.  You’ll see soon.  Promise.

Details:
Dress; Vogue 1152, cotton chambray, details and a review of this pattern here
Scarf; re-fashioned from an old Tshirt, tutorial here
Cardigan; Country Road found secondhand, and dyed yellow by me here
Sandals; Anna, from Marie-Claire shoes

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My Voice!

11/05/2011 12:38 pm \ 32 Comments \

Inspired by Tanit-Isis I have added my bit to the dialect and accent vlog that has been going around a bit over the last few months? (or longer??)
While of course this has nothing to do with my usual sewing or fashion-y stuff I really enjoyed viewing other people’s vlogs, devoting some time to tracking back links and viewing a whole lot of them last night.  It’s addictive!  So I decided to do my own.  It’s nice to have a real voice, not to mention a real accent in your mind which can add a whole new dimension when reading static written words!

The list of words is:
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theatre, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Spitting Image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pyjamas, Caught
And (face-slap) the word “Probably” is supposed to be in there also, but in my stage-fright and nervousness I forgot to read that one!  Woops!
Plus I added a few bonus words for fun:
About, Aluminium, Apricot, Schedule, News

And the questions are:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly, carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

I hope you enjoy this, in spite of the fact that apparently I look a bit self-conscious according to the family… nerves!  Also I’d like to point out that I said “…a series of questions”, not as it sounded “…. serious questions”, which would be a bit silly, no?
I hope to see some more of these out in blogland, please send me your link if you choose to do one of these yourself.  It would be fun to compare all our various manners of speaking, and I would love to see some other accents joining in here!
Some others I’ve seen:
Louise
Steph
Franca

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Cathedral window cushion

10/05/2011 3:15 am \ 11 Comments \

This is a cushion cover I made for my mother a few years ago. Actually more than a few. I think it was for a mother’s day … oh btw, Happy Mother’s Day for last Sunday to all you yummy mummies out there! I’m sorry I didn’t manage to blog this cushion cover for that day as I intended, but I’ve been having a few problems with Blogger… (grrr)

When my Granny had to move to a home, and after we had finished cleaning out my grandparents’ house we had a big pile of things to find new homes for; many really beautiful things that found instant homes in the children’s and grandchildren’s homes, some things for charity, and some things that were too personal and beautiful to toss out, but really had no useful purpose for anyone…. one of those items was a beautiful paisley silk tie once belonging to my grandfather. Mum gave it to me, saying something like “here, you could use this lovely fabric for something or other if you like”.
Obviously I wasn’t going to toss it out but equally obviously you can’t just drape a tie over your couch as an ornament. But I still felt like it was important and needed to live on somehow. Bit of background applies here; my grandfather used to own and run a highly respected menswear store in London,  and later here in Perth, so he always wore the most beautifully tailored suits and shirts. So to me this wasn’t just an old tie really, but much more; a symbol of intrinsically who my grandfather was, a representation of his life and his trade.
Now, a tie has only a very small amount of fabric in it. Not enough for anything much. I thought about what to do with it quite a lot, before deciding to be brave enough to cut it up…
And I made a cushion cover for Mum to have, so she could still have the fabric there to look at as a little memento of Grandpa about the house. I took this picture of it in Mum and Dad’s house the last time I was there.
So this is a patchwork design known as Cathedral Window; used to showcase small pieces of really beautiful fabric like this. The backing fabric is calico. The design is interesting, because you end up needing like three or four metres of calico for one little cushion cover, and just mere scraps for the “showcased” fabric. You cut huge squares of the calico and fold them in an intricate origami style design, down into much smaller squares in which is sewn the little pieces of beautiful fabric.  I remember having to be quite clever to cut the tie strategically to get sufficiently large squares for the cushion.  It measures 50x50cm, and has a cream coloured dress zip on the back for a cushion insert.  The top is completely hand-sewn.

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Girl-y, with a bit of white

06/05/2011 11:36 am \ 21 Comments \

Like yesterday…. but super-creatively (hehe) substituting white accessories for black.
I wore this to the Alumni High Tea up at the college today.  A lovely afternoon of tea, tiny sandwiches and miniature cakes and lots of catching up with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a while.  
The only just slightly funny thing was the flute of champagne on entry.  You always get presented with one upon entry at things now.  What’s with that?!  There’s something incredibly decadent and naughty about a glass of champagne in the afternoon, no?  When I attend a tea I really expect tea, not booze.  Nonetheless everyone at our table enjoyed the champagne too….  😉
Now, tell me what you think… taking photos in Perth can be really challenging at times because the sunlight is soooo bright here.  Forcing the amateur DIY photographer like me to seek out shady spots as much as possible…  Apart from cropping which I always do I don’t normally alter my photos a lot.  I once blurred out a person in the background, and once a stray bra-strap, but usually the photo is as is.  Sometimes I reduce the exposure, because of the aforementioned brightness factor.  Today I tried experimenting with the contrast to get a sort of washed out antique-y look.  My children like the original (above), I thought the altered one below looked more interesting as well as showed off the outfit better which I think should be the point… which photo do you prefer?  I would love to have photoshop to play with, but I don’t want to present a false picture of my work or myself…  Opinions?
Do you prefer arty, or true-to-life?

Details:
Dress; adapted from Vogue 8555, printed cotton, bodice of my own design details here, and a review of the pattern here
Cardigan; Picnic
Necklace; Diva
Sandals; Franco Burrone, from David Jones

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Girl-y, with a bit of black

05/05/2011 10:04 am \ 12 Comments \

My sister in law S’s birthday today, so I took her out for afternoon tea; cake and a chin-wag.  Girly stuff. We would have liked to squeeze in a bit of shopping too, but we both had had a jam-full day… hopefully next time.
So far I’ve just worn this very girly pink lace dress with light soft neutrals for spring and summer, and I wanted to see how it stood up to being mixed with darks, for the cooler months.  I think it works OK with charcoal and black, what do you think?  I think the trick to mixing a powder-pink very delicate spider-webby lace like this with strong darks is to keep the touches of charcoal/black equally as light, delicate and feminine as possible, because a dress like this could easily be overwhelmed by strong colours.  So I picked my strappiest black sandals, a very light and little charcoal cardigan, and my necklace of graduated polished iron-ore balls, a noir twist on the more traditional ladylike pearls.

And for Perth readers, Janet very kindly left me a note yesterday to say that Pattern Magic 1 and 2 in English are available at Subiaco Books.  Thank you so much for your comment, Janet!  
I will add that I have also seen the English version in Dymocks in Melbourne, so maybe they are in the odd Dymocks store elsewhere too…   It made me smile to have a look through it, as I have only the Japanese version myself.  All those mysterious and very intriguing Japanese notes and instructions dotted everywhere throughout the book, which seemed to promise in the artistry of the script all the secrets of sculptural pattern manipulation and Japanese couture that I felt if only I could divine their meaning I would gain some sort of sartorial enlightenment and rise up to a new higher plane of sewing mastery…  Well naturally upon reading the English version I was highly disappointed to find out actually translated to things like “back”, “dart”, “fold” and “cut 2” and so on and so forth.  Absolutely no earth shattering to be had…  Laugh!  
But seriously I still recommend this series to the serious seamstress.  The garments are not all conventionally wearable, but that is not the point.  I think of them as like sewing textbooks, akin to a musician practising scales to improve technique.   Working through the Pattern Magic books is sure to increase your pattern manipulation and adaption skills, as well as understanding the ways in which interesting sculptural details can be incorporated into a garment.
Also thank you to everyone who has left a link to the pattern for Pippa Middleton’s bridesmaids dress.    

Details:
Dress; modified Simplicity 3745, pink lace and pink border lace, sewing details of dress and petticoat together here
Petticoat (underneath); Burda 8071, pink silk satin
Cardigan; Country Road
Sandals; Micam by Joanne Mercer, from Hobbs shoes
Necklace; iron ore orbs, souvenir from Egypt
Bag; Louis Vuitton
Nail varnish; Blackest Black, Revlon

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Red leggings

04/05/2011 4:46 am \ 14 Comments \

Something new, a quick fix project and nothing very exciting, but practical…. the evenings are getting that little bit cooler and when the sun dips below the yard-arm (whatever that means, really) my legs need some coverage.  Hehe, since two days ago I posted our current temperatures no doubt hardier Canadian and New Zealand people are going to get a laugh out of that one, but I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to the cold.  I really feel the cold.  Even our mild Perth winters are often too cold for me.  Yah, I know, pathetic, right?
So I made some leggings, using the pattern I made custom fit to myself, here.  It’s pretty easy to make your own leggings, the only challenge being to get decent fabric.  The usual challenge.  The fabric I used is the last bit of red jersey I had left, after I made my gloves, here.  It isn’t very good for leggings, having not very much stretch … but they will do for as long as they last.  Hopefully the colour will go some way to cheering me up on a cold grey winter’s day, although one of those seems ridiculously unlikely right now I expect we will get some. 
The backpack is not my daily handbag … I have let this backpack appear in a few other photos before; I use it to carry my camera, tripod and shoes along in if I want to take a photo when I take my dog walkies in the morning.  It really belongs to Sam, but I borrow it sort-of temporarily on a permanently on-going basis for a few mornings a week, if that makes any sense.  It’s the perfect size to fit in the aforementioned goodies.  Compare this compact light little thing to the backpacks we carried on our hike last week, below!

Details:
Top and cardigan; Metalicus
Skirt; Vogue 7303, olive green corduroy, styled in 6 different ways here
Leggings; own design, red cotton jersey, tutorial on how to make your own here
Backpack; souvenir from Santa Fe
Shoes; Perrini, had forever

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