Tim’s backpack

12/04/2011 5:06 am \ 17 Comments \

Today; another blast from the past…
When Tim was about eighteen months old and had become a brand new older brother, I made him a backpack, using a pattern from one of those wonderful TopKids magazines (very sadly discontinued).  It is of denim, lined with check cotton, and I appliqued the letters of his name on the pocket using interfaced scraps of the same check cotton, attached on with skinny zig-zag stitch.
He was so cute with it and wore it all the time when I first made it.  He would put it on first thing in the morning and toddle around with it on his back all day, with a few precious toys inside.  
Later it was his kindy bag. 
Then later when he got older it wasn’t cool anymore and didn’t get used for years.  Now it has become an awesomely cool bag once more, and is the one he takes along to uni everyday.
Funny…

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: , ,

Vogue 8333, a wearable muslin

11/04/2011 6:56 am \ 17 Comments \

I have finally finished my muslin of Vogue 8333, a bit late for the RTW jacket sew-along, but meh.  It’s done.  I will wear this thing.  I like it with the sleeves folded up like this, and I like the oversized nacre buttons I found for it.  I think it will be even better after a few more washes, to nicely wrinkle it up and settle in those seams, and I am toying vaguely with the idea of dyeing it… what do you think?
Something I’ve noticed, and you can see it in the picture, the right side lapel has a slight tendency to sit up higher than its roll line, in spite of  (or because of?) the hand-stitched bridles within.  Do you think I should I be worried about this?

I really wanted to make this muslin wearable since wasting fabric, even calico, goes against like just about everything to do with consumerism and using planetary resources that I believe in.  It is finished (sorta ridiculously) to couture standards…  well, I needed to have a go at all the couture techniques that are introduced in this wonderful pattern…
With a few exceptions; I forgo-ed pad-stitching the collar (I figured I’d already practised that one sufficiently pad-stitching the lapels) and just whacked in some iron-on interfacing.  No one will notice that.  I’ve learnt the thing about couture… done properly, no one should be able to tell couture apart from RTW, without taking the whole thing apart.  
Couture is in the inner details.  
The only reason one might notice a difference between the two at a casual glance is of course if one’s hand-stitching is so badly uneven that it stands out on the outer like a sore thumb… but I pride myself on having pretty good hand-stitching if I say so myself.  Another couture exception in this garment is that I machine-stitched the buttonholes.  Will save the hand-finished buttonholes, with properly waxed and pressed silk thread as specified, for the real deal.  Finally, this garment is not underlined, unlike my “real” jacket will be.
Irene warned me that the torso of this pattern ran narrow, and I did check this carefully during the bodice construction bit.  But I am kind of narrow in the torso already, and actually found it to fit me fine.  I might shave a teensy bit off the bust curves but I don’t think very much.  One part I had to drastically adjust was the sleeve cap… here is the jacket with the sleeves as per the pattern set in.

See how horribly poof-y and gathered at the top they are?  Even my youngest son, who is remarkably uninterested in details, and clothing details especially, noticed and kindly pointed it out to me unbidden, in case I hadn’t noticed the hideousness myself already (I had).
I then reduced the height of the sleeve cap by a good 1.5cm in my muslin (as in top photo).  A bit better, no?
However will I need to adjust this detail in my wool/silk jacket? possibly not, since wool has shrink-ability going for it allowing one to shrink the sleeve cap into the armscye, whereas of course calico has absolutely zero shrink-ability.  Leading naturally to one of my pet peeves with the whole muslin charade in the first place, the difference in material properties; also titled “why the only useful muslin is one made in the exact same fabric as your garment” rant that I am not going to go into here, wishing to spare everyone a massive post.

Details:
Jacket; Vogue 8333, calico
Camisole (under, barely seen); Country Road
Skirt; skirt “m” from Unique Clothes Any Way You Like by Natsuko Hiraiwa, linen/cotton mix, details here
Sandals; Micam by Joanne Mercer, from Hobbs shoes (will be so depressed when these die…)

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: , , ,

Customised nails

10/04/2011 9:14 am \ 9 Comments \

What to do, what to do…
I saw this extremely yummy shade of nail varnish in the latest Vogue magazine and felt it was just the thing!  Really wanted to have it…  Tres beautiful, no?

But the blurb described it as a seasonal limited edition Chanel shade (Nouvelle Vague) that has quickly sold out.  Not going to let a little thing like that stop me from wearing this delectable shade on my toes, now.  For a start, the name “Chanel” on the bottle is already going to mean a ridiculous price tag.  Sorry, but I don’t pay more than a few dollars for a bottle of nail varnish… and what’s more it’s so super easy to mix and match your own cheap and colourful nail varnishes to get the colour you want.  It is!  Have you ever tried it?
Sometimes (occasionally) I buy a colour simply because I know it will be a goodie for mixing with others to get new colours.  Such as white.  Not always, I often then get side-tracked and lazy and just wear even the more unusual colours straight as they come out of the bottle, prompting questions such as “why the turquoise nails??” and having to come up with an explanation that doesn’t involve a fancy-dress party…  Fortunately I think Perth is becoming more switched on to exciting new nail colours such as the ones I like.  Whatever, I really wanted this particular shade of heavenly muted duck egg blue for this week… 
So I got a little bit of light blue (Artmatic Lit’l Boy Blue, I’ve had this particular one for about fifteen years) and mixed in just one drop of light yellow (BYS Bright Light, a newie) and got the perfect shade.

This is so easy!  The only thing to look out for when mixing your own is that it dries pretty quick, so use it as soon as it is mixed.  
Voila.  The perfect duck-egg blue, and even better, I didn’t have to pay $50 odd for the designer label…

I have a friend who has a firm saying, “there’s only one thing worse than chipped nail polish on your toes, and that’s no nail polish on your toes” and I couldn’t agree more…

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ,

An un-stylish blogger writes about Vogue 8333

08/04/2011 1:27 pm \ 17 Comments \

I didn’t intend to take a photo of today’s outfit, as it was one that I threw together with no intention of looking stylish or put-together.  Purely randomly chosen things.  And I ended up being perversely happy with it.  You know a day where you have a contrary, grumpy, don’t-give-a-toss attitude to how you look… and end up feeling sassily funky and pleased with your unglamorous, even weird ensemble.  All these items I threw on today are individually items I have felt ambivalent with lately.  I didn’t care what I looked like as I was contemplating a day at home, office-ing, and a little bit of muslin-ing.  Yes, people, I am getting along with my muslin of Vogue 8333 and it is proving a doozy.  Not in a good way.  I’ve read before about the dangers of OD-ing on your pattern during the muslin stage, and I am in near danger of doing just this… I have nearly finished my muslin, on which I am trying out all the couture techniques explained within that are new to me, and then I will take a short break before starting on my “real” jacket.  A short break during which I will do some quick-fix fun stuff, instant gratification stuff.  Vogue 8333 is emphatically NOT an instant gratification project.

Details:
Shirt; Burda 8497, white cotton, details here
Skirt; Vogue 7303, green velveteen, details here
Tights; my own design, details here
Cardigan; Metalicus
Thongs; Mountain Designs

Thank you so much Donna, for giving me this award!

Now, I’m to write 7 things, supposedly about myself, but instead for something different I’m going to write about 7 of the couture techniques I’ve learnt doing the muslin for Vogue 8333, which I expect will be a lot more interesting.

1. Bridles.  You could be forgiven for thinking Vogue have inadvertently branched out into horse-riding advice, but no, this is still within the realms of dress-making.  The bridles are a pieces of tape hand-stitched onto the roll line of the lapels in couture jacket construction; to both stabilise the fold and also help create a soft fold.  Giddy-up!

2. Pad-stitching.  Is where you do long lines of running stitches laid out in a grid, or a cross-hatching arrangement.  The result is fabric that is a bit stiffer, like it’s been quilted.  Well, padded.  Thus the name,  Methinks. When one does this to thick wool fabric with some body one can hide the pad-stitches within the fabric somewhat, making them almost invisible.  When one is trialling pad-stitching on a calico muslin like I did, it looks…. kind of ridiculous.  I don’t care.  I will wear my silly looking pad-stitched muslin with pride whence it is done, you’ll see.

3. Taming, (the seam allowances).  If you think that sounds a wee bit kinky, well, in the immortal words of… somebody, the best is yet to come.  Taming the seam allowances within a corner involves folding the two edges of the corner down firmly and closely to each other, pressing into submission and hand-stitching down.  One does not, I repeat, NOT trim triangles away from the corners to remove bulk.  Oh yes, I tell you, we are throwing old ideas out the window in wild abandon with this project, die-hard corner trimmers….  NOT SO FAST with those scissors!

4. Spanking the corner;  ooh, yes, I kid you not, fellow seamstresses.  And you thought sewing was for squares, dried up earnest individuals with no excitement in their lives… well, little did we know about all that “spanking” going on in those couture workrooms!  The Vogue 8333 instructions recommended something called a “clapper”, not owning one of these intriguing sounding tools I used a wooden spatula instead.

5. Fell-stitching.  Well.  Having not done fell-stitching before I googled it and found a little tutorial.  And discovered that I had been fell-stitching, like, only all my life, believing myself to be slip-stitching.  Who knew?  A subtle little distinction…

6. Hand-finished buttonholes.  Hold your horses, before one steamrolls ahead and starts hand-stitching one’s buttonholes, the instructions specify to first wax, and then press the thread.  Yes, press the thread.  Another first.  Has anyone else out there, and I mean anyone, ever ever pressed their thread before?  Hmmm?  Been using un-pressed thread for your buttonholes?  Faaail…

7. Not necessarily a couture technique, but the instructions recommended that once the collar is turned out, and if you are not ready to sew it to the neckline, in order to keep the roll-line nicely folded and in order pin it to a tailor’s ham and set aside.  I couldn’t resist giving it a little face…

Now to give the award to 7 other stylish bloggers, (and please, there is no obligation whatsoever to do this… if you hate blogger awards then feel free to ignore this and don’t hate me)
Darci, of Darcidoodle-do
Liza Jane, of lizajanesews
Steph, of 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World
Magda, of magdamagda design studio
Patty, of the snug bug
Bernice; of Raindrops and Bellyflops
Denise, of dame design studio

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: , ,

Deep Scarlet socks

07/04/2011 6:53 am \ 7 Comments \

A pair of sockies hasn’t been seen here on the blog for a while, although actually I finished these right at the beginning of March, and then got mired down in the me-made March maelstrom and sort of forgot about them… I know, how could one forget abut twenty hours of knitting, hmmm?  Definitely signs of old age creeping in…
These are knitted using some more of the Morris sock yarn Sam bought for me in Melbourne when he was there on his volleyball tour.  I only have about three balls of this type of yarn left.
The weather is cooling off slightly, yay!  enough that my feet were OK with being encased in socks for a photoshoot.  Hehe, our weather girl announced cheerily last night that as we’re expecting a high of only 24C (75F) we should all dress warmly for today, which made us laugh.  Of course this is not really a cold day at all, but compared to the summer we’ve just had it does feel a bit on the freezing side, hilariously.  Given that only two days ago we had 35C (95F).  And joy, last night it rained, the first rain we’ve had in 67 days.  I was pretty excited to put on a cardigan this morning.  Oh, cardigans, how much I love thee, and have missed thee… and I thoroughly enjoyed walking the dog in the rain this morning.  Truly, no kidding.  Just a little bit of rain has brought a freshness to the air, an environmental sigh of relief if you will.  You can almost hear the gardens cheering.  Even Sienna got excited and sprung along with an extra zing in her step.

Details:
Socks; knitted in Morris Empire Superwash Merino 4ply in Deep Scarlet (col 412) with Beluga (col 430) heels and toes, based on the pattern for Ladies Sockettes in Patons Knitting Book C11, a circa 1960’s publication

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: , ,

Billowy black shirt, with skulls

06/04/2011 5:04 am \ 32 Comments \

I’ve made a new shirt.
But I can’t do any reviews, because this shirt is based on not one pattern, not even two patterns, but three patterns.  A conglomeration of patterns.  The united states of patterns.  You’ve heard of a meeting of the minds?  This is a meeting of the patterns.  A little bit, hopefully the best, taken out of each and the production of a mongrel, but better, (stronger, faster) shirt…
 I knew in my head exactly what I wanted; I wanted a billowy pirate-y type shirt, inspired by the cute little skull buttons I bought in Japan.  The buttons are miniature silver skulls, but each is wearing a tiny little silver crown, so the shirt had to be not just piratical, but kind of majestic at the same time to make it worthy of these completely wonderful buttons.  Don’t you just love these buttons?  You cannot get buttons like this here… I need to go to Japan more often.
The fabric is a thin self-patterned black cotton/synthetic mix that was one of my Christmas presents, bought by me, for my son to give to me for Christmas (hey, we’re practical when it comes to gift giving around here…)
I’m wearing it hanging out over my skirt here, to show it in its full length with the gently curved hemline on show, but most probably I will wear it tucked in a lot of the time too…
I put the technical details of making the shirt below, if anyone is interested.
Oh, the shoes.  These are my highest heels, at 4 1/2″.  They put me at over 6′.  I adore these shoes, and decided I am going to wear them more often, just because.  Of course I didn’t wear them to walk the dog.  But I wore them to do my other daily and office activities.  They are a lot more comfortable than they appear.

Details:
Shirt; Burdastyle 10-2010-102, collar from Burda 8218, sleeves from Burdastyle 05-2010-101, made of black self-patterned cotton mix with skull buttons bought in Japan
Skirt; Vogue 7303, olive corduroy, to see this skirt styled in 6 different way go here
Shoes; Kron by Kron Kron, bought online

The shirt; so it’s probably pretty complicated so you can skip this technical stuff unless you really want to reproduce this for yourself…  like a lot of seamstresses I like to take a little bit from here and a little bit from there, and manipulate the patterns I have to get the look I want..
I saw this lovely graceful classic shirt pattern 102 in Burdastyle magazine 10/2010 (right, top) and liked its loosely elegant body with no body darts or shaping. But I wanted a shawl collar rather than the classic one in the pattern, thus the hunting down and finally locating Burda 8218, the only shawl collared shirt pattern available here in Perth, or so it seemed… and for the sleeves, I wanted something gathered and billowy, but three quarter length, so used the lower part of the bell-shaped gathered sleeve from the dress pattern 101 from Burdastyle 05/2010 (right, lower).  To cut the sleeve cap to fit into the armscye of the shirt pattern, I laid down the sleeve pieces from the shirt pattern 102, to get the sleeve cap part of the sleeve right.  It is a two piece sleeve, but I just laid them together with the stitching lines abutting.  The other sleeve from the dress pattern 101 I laid down on top with the underarm points matching those of the shirt sleeve pattern, and just used this to cut out the arm part of the sleeve with the bellshaped hemline (see below), and I also used the sleeve cuff from the same dress pattern 101.  Except when I had finished the shirt, the sleeves didn’t sit exactly how I envisioned, they sagged a bit low and I really wanted for them to look really billowy and like they were pushed up to the elbow permanently.  So I added an in-sleeve tab on the sleeve seam which pulls the sleeves up to gather just that little more fully and gracefully at just below elbow length and sit up right where I want them.  I only had five of the skull buttons so I had to use different buttons here, these are purply-grey natural shell buttons.
The shawl collar, well, obviously I used the collar pattern pieces from Burda 8218, and cut the shirt front facings, front neckline edge and back neckline edge to match those of this pattern, otherwise the collar wouldn’t have fitted… This only took a little bit of adjustment and it was not difficult at all to match the collar from one shirt pattern to the different body of the other shirt pattern.
Et voila.

(the sleeve at left; the two shirt sleeve pieces underneath were laid together along the stitching line to get the sleeve cap, at left, and the lower edge of the sleeve piece was cut off at the curved hemline of the piece on top)
pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: , , , ,

An early project…

05/04/2011 4:41 am \ 8 Comments \

Once I mentioned here one of the earliest things I made that I still have, a pincushion.  And I thought maybe it deserved a post of its own as it is so funny to me to look at it now!
I made this when I was about seven, a gift for my grandmother.  Each wonky stitch is lovingly and painstakingly hand done by me; two fabric squares joined together with overstitches of different shades and thicknesses of green thread.  The word “PINS” is done in double running stitch, alternating the dashes in pink and green thread.
It is stuffed with a rather scant amount of something that has gone a bit lumpy, probably cotton wool or something like, knowing me and my “make-do” crafting ethic.
When my grandmother passed away I inherited her sewing basket along with everything in it, and I rediscovered this little thing that she had obviously kept and used for the twenty or so years that she had had it.  Granny used it for needles not pins, so I do too now.  The fact that she lovingly preserved and treasured it has imbued it with an extra specially important significance to me. 
What’s the earliest thing you remember making, and do you still have it?

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ,

Fool’s Gold

03/04/2011 10:47 am \ 17 Comments \

Last night we went to an April Fool’s party, dress code: well of course, something to do with “fool”!
So I remembered this skirt that I made about three years ago… guess what I went dressed as?  Oh, yeah, the answer is up there in the title, hehe.
Ironically I originally made the skirt for another dress-up party at the same friends’ house; the theme that time being “glitterati”  I’m so glad I kept it!
It hasn’t been seen here on the blog before.  Obviously I don’t wear it much, hehe.  Not much call for this sort of thing in my everyday life.  
Funny story, the last time I wore it, for the glitterati party, I had to nip out halfway to pick up our daughter from a school event, and it just happened to also be the day of the annual Perth Christmas Pageant, streets lined with people all watching the pageant, hundreds of people, nay thousands of people, or that’s what it felt like.  Naturally Murphy’s law had it that our daughter had to be picked up from the very middle of town, requiring me to park a little further away than I would have ideally liked, and walk the rest of the way to where she was waiting… you get the picture.  There’s me, looking at best like an act, a performer straight from the pageant; at worst a streetwalker who has lost her way and wandered in amongst decent law-abiding families sitting with their small children… embarrassed!  I felt like I was running the gauntlet and yes, I got some very funny looks, and a few wolf whistles, the last not something that happens to me very often any more I can assure you…
The skirt is made using my old favourite, Vogue 7303, out of that cheap stuff that has thin plastic shiny foil circles glued all over it.  Surprisingly easy to sew; those foil thingies are just like thin cellophane and the needle punches through very easily.  I inserted an invisible zip in the left side seam, and hand-sewed the coffee coloured lining all around the inside edges.  The skirt has a big slit up the right hand side, going up to just above knee level, partly so I can actually walk in it, partly just to add another element of something fun and party-ish otherwise it is a pretty ordinary shape.
I wore it with my gold chain belt, worn as a necklace here.
(btw, this is not photoshopped or anything.  The golden glow in my photo is courtesy of the light of the setting sun)

Details:
Skirt; based on the basic shape of Vogue 7303, synthetic gold glittery stuff
Camisole; Country Road
Cardigan; Picnic
Sandals; Sachi, some little shop in Melbourne
Necklace; my own design, tutorial here
Bag; Glomesh, found secondhand
Sunnies; RayBan
Nail varnish; undercoat of One Voice OPI, top coat of Golden Peach, Nailfinity

pinterestmail
Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: ,
Switch to mobile version
↓