Tag Archives: Own Design

boatin’, campin’, bikin’ and hikin’ stoof

09/08/2017 10:57 pm \ 54 Comments \

We’ve just come back from a holiday in Alaska, USA and British Columbia, Canada; had the most AWESOME-est time of course! but more about that later…  I made a few bits and pieces to fill in some gaps in the “mucking about in the great, but wet n’dirty, outdoors” areas of my wardrobe.  Specifically, I needed some things that were both quick-drying and warm… which means, and I apologise right now to any strict natural-fibrarians reading this  … polyester.   #ohtheshame

Hehe, just kidding, of course polyester has appeared here on my blog before and no doubt will again.  When you are roughing it out camping, and particularly in extreme climates, then unnatural fibres are definitely the go.

I made five new things prior to going on our holiday; a zip up fleece hoodie, a fleece sweater, some shorts for kayaking, a fleece neck warmer and a new sunhat.  I made some other new things too, while we were actually ON our holiday, but I’ll save those for another post!

In the order that I made them…

White fleece sweater

wearing beanie, sweater, hiking pants
location: Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska, USA

Pattern is Burda 09/2010; 121, fabric is 100% polyester fleece from Spotlight.

I’d bought my polyester fleece back in the height of hot hot February during their 40% off all fabrics sale, made it straight away and actually posted it to instagram way back then too, although it didn’t get truly worn until our holiday…

wearing sweater, skirt

Mods; made the sleeves a little longer, and I pinned the side seams out to fit it directly on me so it’s shaped and fitted to my taste.  After the first few days of wearing it I found the turtleneck to be extremely strangliferous.  This is not necessarily a criticism of the pattern, since I’ve always felt strangled by turtlenecks, ever since I was a child; I really should have known this one would be the same too, doh! Fortunately it’s an easy fix.  I simply borrowed a pair of scissors from the owner of the lodge and snip snip!! just chopped the turtleneck-y bit right off!  No hems or seams, well, I was desperate! but hey, fleece doesn’t really need edging anyway and now it’s a funnel neck, and only about a thousand times more comfortable.

I really really LOVE this.

Pink zip-up hoodie

wearing hoodie, white tee, grey tee, black jeans
location: the Khutzeymateen Wilderness Lodge on the Khutzeymateen River, British Columbia, Canada

Pattern is Burda 8042, the same 100% polyester fleece from Spotlight

Mods; in lieu of the patch pockets, I added welt pockets which were absolutely great for shoving my cold hands into… however I thought they gave a rather lumpy and thick look to my stomach region, even when said hands were not shoved into said pockets, and like most women I am not very partial to a lumpy thick look to my stomach region!  But it was awesome to have the pockets?  I dunno.

wearing hoodie, sweater, skirt

I wore this thing so much, like practically every day even though it’s not in all my pictures… and I pretty much hate it now.  It’s not really my colour, I only chose it because I actually had the perfectly coloured open-end zip in my stash already, inherited at some point from one of Mum’s periodic sewing-room clean outs, and I rationalised that the colour would be cheerful and fun.  But now I cannot stand the thought of ever wearing it again.  Can’t quite put my finger on the problem… as well as not suiting me, the colour feels somehow wrong for my personality, and then there was the lumpy stomach pockets thing.  It was a good thing to have though, perfect for camping, beautifully warm and it dried off very quickly.  Maybe I’m just sick of it.  I’m giving it a bit of time out at the top of the wardrobe, and maybe another wet and freezing cold camping trip will crop up again, some time in the future…

Black poly kayaking shorts

wearing hat, tee, shorts, raincoat

Please excuse the lack of an exotic location here … I didn’t realise until we got home that I neglected to get even one photo during our holiday that showed my new shorts !  thus a re-enactment of a holiday outfit and yes I am absolutely freezing  😉

My new shorts are refashioned from out of an old pair of Tim’s work pants, rescued from the refashioning bag… I knew from many years of washing these things how quickly they dry, so thought they would be perfect for the kayaking camp.  And they were absolutely brilliant…!

before, the observant will notice straight away that these have been nibbled at previously; that’s a pocket lining for something or another cut out of the bottom there…

To make them: I kept only the fly front and the button closure intact; unpicked most of the waistband and sliced off basically every single other seam! taking it in at both side seams, the centre back seam, and altering the crotch curve super drastically to fit.  Approximately 7″ is taken out of the waistband overall tapering out to almost no width from the legs so they are nicely flared, just the way I like them.  This also means that the hip pockets have a pretty tiny opening now! but I figured that’s a small price to pay for free new shorts and funnily enough I don’t really find occasion to put  my hands in my pockets while kayaking  😉

I cut down and reattached the waistband, re-positioned the belt loops and created a cuff for the bottom hem of the shorts.  I think they turned out quite cute!  I’d planned to wear these with black leggings for kayaking, but as it turned out the days we kayaked were warm enough so that the leggings were not necessary.

Love these, they were perfectamondo for paddling, and I expect they will be my go-to paddling uniform from now on…

Cherry red neckwarmer

wearing neck warmer, raincoat, skirt, tights
location; the dock in Haines, Alaska, USA

The most basic thing ever, literally a lined cylinder.  The outer is the same 100% fleece from Spotlight, the lining was cut from an old Tshirt from my refashioning bag.  Yes, that thing is still like a bottomless pit of fabric!  It’s a monster, but a pretty fabulous one for someone like me who is always sewing  😉

For my own future reference, the dimensions are:

fleece; 65cm x 29cm

cotton jersey lining; 64cm x 27cm

I made it by stitching the fleece rectangle and lining rectangle together at top and bottom, pinned the seam edges and the fleece edges together, and stitched the side seam leaving a 10cm or so gap in the side edge of the inner lining.  Turned the whole thing right side out through this 10cm gap, then slip-stitched the gap closed to finish.

Like the pink hoodie this simple thing got worn most days, but unlike the pink hoodie I actually still like it!  Just goes to show, ignore “your” colours at your peril!  And it went with EVERYTHING!

wearing neck warmer, striped tee, green tee, skirt, tights, raincoat
location: Haines, Alaska, USA

Olive sunhat

wearing hat, grey tee, shorts, raincoat
location; Hanson Island, British Columbia, Canada

Pattern is Vogue 8844, fabric is olive cotton rip-stop from an online store whose name I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever.  It’s leftover from the fabric I used for my khaki army-style jacket… I bought it in a joint order with my friend and neighbour Megan, and all I can remember is that the postage fee was so horrendously high that maybe I’ve deliberately blocked the store’s name from my memory in post-purchase shock, haha.

I lined the hat with floral rayon, leftovers from my French Navy Forsythe dress, I thought they went quite nicely together! and the crown is stayed with a coffee-coloured cotton braid that is a VERY long term resident in my stash.  Since I would be wearing the hat kayaking, I decided it would be a good idea to add a chin strap; this is an old, orphaned bootlace, snipped in half and stitched in each side underneath the crown stay.  For some reason, I decided to go with an additional method of tightening the hat to my head, and laced a piece of white cotton cord through the crown stay.  Probably not necessary and now it’s a rather over-engineered hat but oh well.  Got it now!

Technically, I didn’t really neeeeed a new sunhat, since I do have my perfectly lovely ivory corduroy sunhat, made a few years ago…. but still I decided a new one was in order.  Partly because I didn’t want my ivory one to get irrevocably dirty while camping, a khaki one would be more colour suitable for out in the dirt of the wilderness.  As it turned out, the weather wasn’t actually warm enough for it until well into our holiday! laugh! the first few weeks or our holiday were mostly wet and very cold and the sunhat languished unworn… squashed sadly and disconsolately in my suitcase *sob*  Then finally the weather turned warmer and we even got a bit of sun and I was like, hurrah, I CAN WEAR MY HAT!!!  and was pretty glad I’d gone to the effort of making it after all.

wearing hat, raincoat
location: Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

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french navy forsythe dress x2 and some tights

08/07/2017 8:47 pm \ 37 Comments \

hello!  I’ve made a couple of new dresses lately… followers of my ootd blog may have seen these pop up over there already.  Remember back in January I made up the free Orla dress pattern designed by Sarah May of French Navy? well Sarah very kindly invited me to be a part of her tester group for her new dress pattern, the Forsythe dress.  That little Orla has been an excellent wardrobe mainstay… my little counter tells me I’ve worn it ten times already since I made it in January, which is pretty good for me!  so I happily accepted.

The Forsythe is a relaxed fit dress with short, cuffed kimono sleeves, a slightly dropped waistline and a gathered skirt with hip yoke pockets, and a back button closure.  However, I have found that that button-back closure is pretty much decorative… the wide neckline and relaxed fit is sufficient enough that I can pull the dress easily over my head without having to undo any buttons.  Win!

I’ve actually made two Forsythes… the floral at top is my second and “real” version of the pattern, and that is me dressed to wear it out out to our recent anniversary dinner, at Cape Lodge in Yallingup.  We’ve been married 29 years! and little chic little floral rayon number paired with black tights, black booties and my chocolate leather jacket was the perfect thing for a special and romantic dinner out.

But maybe I should talk about this one, my first “muslin” version first… I made this one using three pairs of my husband’s old dress trousers, respectively a charcoal wool, charcoal and white cotton/linen pinstripe, and a chocolate/blue cotton pinstripe…  these have been in my refashioning bag so long there was actually an old spider’s nest on one of them!  eeeek! I gave them all a quick brush over the garden and then into the washing machine they went… then it was out with the scissors… snip snip!

This dress was really just a quick run-up of the pattern to test for fit and to see that it worked.  Of course it did! but the trousers fabric was really too stiff for the gathered skirt as in the pattern, so I instead folded the excess fabric into wide pleats in the front.  I quite like this effect because it also suits the formal “dress pants” vibe of the fabric too.

The relaxed fit in crisp fabric gave a rather boxy result for my taste, so I later unpicked and took in the bodice through those handy princess seams in the bodice.  I think the more shaped and fitted streamlined look suits the crisp, stiff fabric better.

I also put  inset strips of the plain charcoal into the princess seams to highlight the seaming… I LOVE how this looks, and the play of different stripes, blocks, lines and crisp angular intersections

I really like this little “trousers” Forsythe dress, however I felt a bit bad though that I had used cruddy old fabric to make up my dress, and hadn’t even done the recommended gathered skirt either, like I hadn’t done a “proper” job. so I quickly nipped out to Spotlight to get some nicer fabric and make my “real” Forsythe.  I thought the gathered skirt was more suited to a very thin and slinky drapey fabric like rayon.  Sarah May is from Cape Town in South Africa, and so as soon as I saw the selvedge of this lovely rayon floral print I knew it was totally perfect!

Plus it’s sooooo pretty!  I actually like this one a lot more than the “trousers” one, hardly surprising really!  I took care when laying out the pattern pieces in order to get a really nice and hopefully, a visually pleasing print placement on the dress.

This version is made up exactly to the pattern, with the proper gathered skirt and all, the only exception is that I put seven buttons on the button band at the back instead of the recommended five.  The only reason for this is that the little packet of perfect brown tortoiseshell buttons I picked up in Spotlight had seven buttons in it and I didn’t want leftovers.

In other news; some other things I’ve made recently.   Four more pairs of black tights, in polyester stretchy stuff from Spotlight.

I made these using my own custom-fit pattern, devised as described here.

I wear black tights a LOT; I wore last years’ well over one hundred times, the heels on some have worn out and so I chopped off the feet and converted them to leggings now.  So I reckon making a few new pairs each year is very worthy use of my time.  And, for everyday wear, my own handmade tights really are so much better than rtw, for two simple reasons.

  1. FIT!   Take a gander at the side-by-side comparison of my own handmade tights to a pair of extra-tall rtw tights on the right.  Yes, those are extra-talls!!  It’s easy to see why I have to nip into the ladies room several times a day to hoink the tights back up…  SO ANNOYING!  After wearing my own tights for a year I’d forgotten that that was even a thing…  I love the sophistication of beautifully sheer seamless legs that you can only get with rtw, and I don’t mind putting up with the disadvantage of the crotch migrating inexorably southwards for the advantage of that on special occasions, but on an ordinary, everyday, day? Nope.

My custom fit tights have fitted feet, and are shaped all the way up my legs.  They might look a little funny, but they were made to fit exclusively ME!

2) and secondly WARMTH.  I make my own handmade tights from opaque black polyester stretch, and they are super warm and comfy compared to even the thickest of thick rtw tights.  Again, for special occasions, being a bit cold is a small price to pay for the beauty of sleek sheer legs, but not for everyday.

Four pairs of handmade tights can feel like a bit of an unexciting production line to make, but ultimately they are the most hardworking and practical things in my wardrobe.

high-tech method for telling the front from the back in the pre-dawn light that usually illuminates my dressing…

Details:

Floral at top and below;
Dress; the Forsythe dress by French Navy, printed rayon
Jacket; Burda 08/2010;113, chocolate pleather, details and my review of this pattern here
Tights; made by me, my tutorial on how to make your own custom fit tights pattern is here
Booties; nylon, from Zomp shoes

Charcoal/chocolate striped version:
Dress; slightly altered French Navy Forsythe dress, made using three pairs of old business trousers
Tights; made by me, my tutorial on how to make your own custom fit tights pattern is here
Shoes; made by me, details here

location: out to dinner l’anniversaire; Yallingup in the south west of Western Australia

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a red wine pinafore

03/07/2017 9:40 pm \ 45 Comments \

I’m wearing a new … thing. Is it a dress? Dungarees? An overall…?  we used to call these pinafores. Or a pinny.  I think it’s pretty cute anyway 🙂

I used to dress my children in corduroy dungarees when they were little, and LOVED seeing them toddle around in them, how sweet they used to look!  So maybe I’m a little nostalgic.  And maybe it could be argued that pinnies are a funny choice for a woman of my age, that they’re more suited to a younger set; but whatever… I’m just just inexplicably into them right now; I don’t always follow a trend but this one I really liked and I just wanted one.  Nowadays I’m just into wearing what I want to, and am caring less and less if it’s what I’m supposed to be wearing.  It’s kinda freeing, to be honest.

I’m trying to remember when the pinafore first crept sneakily into my head and buried itself comfortably there … was it in Japan? or Melbourne?  just the general collective subconscious?  most likely the last one…  can’t remember, but the idea got wedged in somewhere and at some point I started to fantasise about my perfect pinnie.  I could picture it exactly; velvet or velveteen, and deep purple-y/burgundy/red wine colour.  The only problem was that Spotlight had a wine-coloured corduroy, but not velveteen, and I had my heart set on velveteen… not to worry!  I bought the cherry-red velveteen with plans to dye it.  I also bought my copper-coloured buckles and jean buttons from Spotlight.

the original colour, before dyeing…

Now patterns, patterns…  There re actually precious few pinafore patterns out there.  I ended up using the pauline alice turia dungarees pattern,  I’d seen and liked Sue’s turia dungarees, especially the cute trapezoid pocket with flap on the bib, and thought I could alter the pattern to be a dress pretty easily, although I ended up altering every single pattern piece! with one exception; that front bib pocket, that attracted me in the first place!

 

For inspiration; I really liked this pink pinny, and this denim one too… though I preferred the pink one. .  I printed out and taped the bodice bits to the shorts bits, and cut them as one piece, like in the following picture…  you can see in the picture I’ve allowed plenty of room around the pattern pieces for custom-fitting, and I basically draped and pinned it directly on myself to get the final version!  It doesn’t even fit either of my dummies!

The front is cut on the fold as one piece, with a wider bodice and a straightish A-line skirt.  The expanse of fabric on the front is nicely cut up by those three patch pockets.  The back I cut with a similarly shaped A-line skirt, and to have a centre back seam, which I overlocked and then felled to one side; it would have been easy to cut the back on the fold as one piece too, but because I was not having any pockets on the back, I thought it needed the centre seam for some visual interest.

I cut my hip pockets to be about 2cm deeper and wider than the pattern pieces, because I wanted them to be more visually weighty than they appeared on the pattern illustration… and positioned them on the dress in an optimum position for me, which is lower than on the patten.

I also ended up cutting my shoulder straps narrower than the pattern, so as to fit into the buckles that I’d bought from Spotlight. The pattern is not intended to be lined, however because I knew I’d be wearing it with tights all winter I decided to fully line it… the bodice, shoulder straps, and all the pockets are all lined with white/purple striped linen from Tessutis in Melbourne, leftover from a shirt I made for Craig a few years ago.  For the skirt part I unearthed a navy blue polyacetate lining fabric from my stash.  I only had a very small piece of this, and by complete sheer luck it was exactly the right size and depth for my lining.

lining; the bodice and skirt are attached together at waist level and cut in the same A-line shape as the pinafore.

pocket lining

I used black thread throughout, and deep chocolate overlocking thread…  resulting in a mishmash of cherry red velveteen, white/purple lining, blue skirt lining, and black and chocolate threads .. sounds like a bizarro dog’s breakfast of a dress, yes?  Yep!

before dyeing

BUT I knew it’d be alright once it was dyed.  And you know what? I’M SO THRILLED WITH IT!  I used both iDye in Brown and some Blue, and TOOK THE PLUNGE!  eeeeek!!! Dyeing is always a little terrifying, but yeah, I couldn’t be happier with the result, the colour is perfect and EXACTLY what I wanted.  I’ve already worn this two days in the week since I finished it!

Details:

Pinafore; some wild ad-libbing upon the pauline alice Turia dungaree pattern
Tshirt; Closet Case patterns Nettie bodysuit, paprika stretch, details here
Scarf; raspberry cotton jersey, detail here
Navy cardigan; the Miette, a free pattern by Andi Satterlund, all yarn details here
Orange arm warmers; made from an old moth-eaten jumper, details here

location; Eagle Bay, in south western Australia

 

above is how I wore it – in the rain! – on the weekend, and below is how I’m wearing it today… it looks a little more vibrant in the blazing sun!

with self-drafted striped Tshirt, details here, and
my scarlet Miette cardigan, all yarn details here

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more liberty lingerie… and why do I make my own?

30/06/2017 3:52 pm \ 29 Comments \

On the “news” * the other night they had a little segment where Kmart introduced their new range of $5 bras, which is insanely cheap… and all over again I got to thinking about why I make my own in the face of the ever plummeting prices of rtw clothing.    See, a lot of people I know think I’m completely bonkers (source; they tell me)  for making my own when it’s so cheap to buy a perfectly pretty and well-made bra, and without the angst of sourcing all your own bits and pieces and spending the few hours it takes to put it all together.

* “News” in inverted commas… because some of our local news programmes go for a full hour here while at the same time this is a city where basically nothing ever happens.  The world news, or REAL news, is raced through in about ten minutes; local news might be another one or two minutes, tops, and usually is something like “the Mayor in hot water because she tried to claim her wardrobe as a work expense!”; the twenty minute sports section is always lengthily and disproportionately weighted towards Aussie rules football and stats and is highly detailed, let’s not even go there! ; the weather is a brief high point; and the rest of it is thinly disguised ads.  The Kmart bra story definitely fell into the category of thinly disguised ad.

So, summarising into a neat and tidy little list of pros and cons…

CONS

  •  it’s relatively expensive to make your own.  During my year where I added up how much I spent on my totally handmade wardrobe, I discovered that bras and undies were amongst the priciest of things to make yourself.  Sure, you’re only using teeny pieces of fabric and/or lace, but once you include elastics, hook and eyes, rings and sliders, and even the optional underwires, underwire casing and foam paddings… well it adds up pretty quick!
  • it’s fiddly
  • if you buying a rtw bra, you can reject any one that is not completely perfect and just keep trying on different ones until you find The One… when you’re making your own it takes time and maybe even a few less-than-satisfactory bras before you work out the perfect fit for you with any given pattern.
  • it can be difficult if not impossible to find colour-matching bits and pieces.  You can dye your own (more fiddle) or settle for good old boring black, white or beige.  Kind people may give you their old colourful bras from which you can harvest the colourful bits.. however in my experience the hooks and eyes closure at the back which is the very hardest bit to source in different colours is usually the very first bit to look hideously wrenched and worn out, and is not worth saving.

PROS

  • you can be creative… express yoself!!
  •  I feel a lot better about myself and my wardrobe if it is my own labour being poured into it, rather than someone else who is being grossly underpaid for doing so.  Many years ago when I took my Lifetime Pledge in Wardrobe Refashion, I thought long and hard at the time about doing so… and my reason has remained unchanged… I love fashion, I love the artistry and creativity and self-expressiveness of it, but I can only live with myself by taking that ethical stance
  • it’s actually kinda fun
  • it’s fiddly.  Yes, I also claimed this as a “con” but I’m the kinda loon who actually thoroughly enjoys doing detailed and fiddly things.
  • I like that my free time is spent doing something productive and useful… and there’s not much more productive and useful than making your own consumables.  Plus, last but certainly not least:
  • I LOVE sewing with a weird and totally unreasonable passion.  Perhaps that should have been number one on the list.

Well, anyway, there it is, annoyingly inconclusive.  I suppose what I’m saying is that as long as I’m able, I’ll probably continue to make my own, while questioning my own sanity at the same time.  Definitely bonkers.

Oh, and yes, I made a new lingerie set… ta da!

 

Fabric; Liberty cotton Clifton jersey Josephine’s Garden in the Pink colourway …  this is the other piece of liberty cotton jersey that I bought from the Fabric Store in Melbourne during my weekend away there with Mum, Cassie and Tiffany… and now I’ve made up all my Liberty and have NONE LEFT! (sob)  Knicker elastic, and the white cotton jersey used for lining from Spotlight.   The pink ribbon that I used to make the little decorative bows, white rings and sliders, and the bra hook and eye thingie were all from Homecraft Textiles.

Pattern; both bra and the two identical pairs of matching knickers are the Watson by Cloth Habit… with a few variations of my own, namely:

1) the front crotch seam has been eliminated from the knickers, as per usual.

2)  I really like the shape of the Watson bra pattern, however the raw edges showing inside has always been a problem for me… anyway I made this one so the bra cups + front band are fully lined and with NO raw edges showing on the inside.  My method is outlined below.

Stitch the side seams…

then stitch the cup into the cradle curve… taking care to leave free the narrow upper seam allowance of the cup at the centre front

Wrong sides together, stitch the cup lining to the cup/cradle seam allowance, cradle side up so you are stitching along the previous stitching line.  After this, fold out and twist the shell and lining cup pieces so they are right sides together and stitch the upper, inner-front cup seam with a narrow seam allowance. (no picture of this, sorry!)

Pin cradle lining right side to the seam allowance of the existing cup/cradle seam allowance, and stitch together with the shell pieces uppermost, so you are stitching over the previous stitching. Trim and grade seam allowances…

Now, take the cradle lining and twist it round so you can pin the side seam edge to the outside of the bra side seam… i.e. the right side of the cradle lining is up against the wrong side of the bra back piece.  Holding the pinned seam with the shell fabric uppermost, and taking care not to catch any other bits of fabric in with the stitching, stitch along the previous side seam stitching.

Trim and grade seam allowances…

Looking pretty neat and tidy already!

Attach the upper and lower elastics as per usual, and it’s all perfectly clean and neat in there with absolutely no exposed raw edges…  *satisfied sigh*

 

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…getting a Brazilian…

04/06/2017 11:38 am \ 28 Comments \

Olá!

Soooo, I mentioned my brother’s BIG birthday? well to go with it he had a BIG birthday bash! with a Brazilian theme.  I stupidly procrastinated about my costume, ended up going shopping for fabric the day before the party and had to cut n’ sew like a madman to get it done on time. #sewingmachineonfullblast

I’d first googled “Brazilian women” and what came up was nothing but women in bikinis.  NO.  Even if this were the very height of summer… still no.  So then I googled Brazil women’s national costume, and oh yes, that’s more like it!

These lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress for Bahian women, and I thought the white lace and broderie anglaise tops and headscarves and full, brightly coloured skirts so very lovely.  So I set about making something like that…

For simple yet voluminous skirt that you can whip up quickly, you can’t go past a circle skirt… I bought 4m of red polyester taffeta from the $4 table at Spotlight… it is very stiff and very silk dupion like and I knew it would stick out nicely with a good amount of volume.  I cut out my circle skirt and divided the remainder to make a waist sash and a scarf for part of my headgear.  The skirt is a full 2m in diameter, and I thought about making it rush rush rush but nah. I just can’t do that sort of thing, even in a costume.  So it’s got a proper interfaced waistband, and closes with an invisible zip and a press stud in the waistband.  Hehe, while I was making my costume, Tim sent around a snapchat re it being National Doughnut Day, and I was like HA!  I’m fitting right in!  This is MY kind of doughnut!!

Oh, I have a little tip!  I usually hand-slipstich the ends of my invisible zips to the seam allowance with a few quick stitches, but lately I’ve taken to just doing a few quick back-and-forths on the sewing machine.  It’s so much quicker since you’re not having to thread a needle, and actually more stable too.

Speaking of rush rush, I admit I did not hem that giant circle skirt… it’s just overlocked along the edge there!  I figure that if/when I ever decide to wear it “for realz” then I’ll go to the effort and hem it properly.  Probably seems funny that I did the waistband properly when it’s not even “seen” in my costume, whereas the hem, which is fully visible, I didn’t finish properly… but you know, some things are easy to re-do later and some are not.  The waistband is the kind of a thing you’ve got to do it right the first time.

The blouse is made from an old lace curtain that was originally had hanging in an upstairs window… I took it down when we re-did our floors up there and have just never hung it up again! Lazy? the view was too nice? Both really  😉   A bit off one end was sacrificed for my top, hehehe.  I had also bought a length of white cotton/linen for the lining, there’s quite a few bolts of this in Spotlight at the mo’ selling for very cheap; I’ve actually bought quite a lot of it lately, for other projects yet to appear here…

My pattern is very loosely the epaulette top from She Has a Mannish style, cut to flare out more in the body and sleeves…  the lining is cut straighter in the sides.  The shell and lining have separate side seams, but are sewn together at the shoulders and armscye.  I pinned and stitched a square neckline, cut and overlocked the edge, and then stitched a length of white cotton bobbin lace around to edge it, part of a large stash that I’ve had for many, many (many, many) years.  It’s funny, I kind of threw this together just for the costume, but you know what?? I actually love it and will definitely be wearing this again, in real life!
Waist sash:  22cm x 3.8m, I wrapped it twice around my waist and finished off with a giant pouffy bow.  Head scarf:  30cm x 2.4m of white,  21cm x 2.3m of the red;  I’d cut the white wider to be the main colour with the red to be more of an accent, like how the Bahian ladies that had popped up in my google search have their headscarves.  I’d also googled “how to tie a Brazilian head scarf” and found this video which was sooooorta helpful, I kind of based mine off her first example… but my scarf is much much longer and I obviously tied and tucked and folded extra knots in mine so as to be a much higher and more complicated affair… I’d also made two “ropes” of the white and red and twisted them to tie around my headscarf to help keep it in place.

after this photo, I redid my headscarf and I think it was a lot better the second time!  but didn’t have enough time to take another pic 🙁

For footwear, I’d noticed that the ladies tend to wear low, flat, open sandals; very comfortable things like birkenstocks but not anything specific.  I got out a few of my sandals, and Mum voted for my little white sandals, that I made last summer.  I danced the night away in these things, and they’re still holding up great!

So that’s it!  We had a blast… I wish I could show you a picture of my son Tim, who went as Gisele Bündchen in a blonde wig, bikini top, boy leg shorts and full on wings a la Victoria’s Secret.   And clonking boots on his feet.  It was hilarious.  Absolutely he was the belle of the ball!

just use your imagination…

Another funny little moment of the evening’s preparations… Craig used this picture as his costume inspiration… we’d bought red, blue, green and yellow feather boas from Spotlight to customise the black pants and black shirt that he already had in his wardrobe.. we also bought yellow satin for a sash and a yellow velour fedora from Spotlight too…

Well, he’d cut and tied together lengths of the feather boas to make the leg and arm bands… and there was like masses of feather fluff and debris all over the floor.  So he’d got out the vacuum cleaner to do a quick tidy up.  Well, he was vacuuming quite perilously close to the little pile of carefully tied together feather boa bands… and I was literally just about to say “you might want to move those feather things” when FWOOOOOOOP! this quite long string of feather boas just disappeared! right up the vacuum cleaner in a flash!!  Like, literally a split second and they were gone, like a garishly coloured, feathery snake zooming at top speed into a burrow, …  well, Kelly and I burst out laughing and just couldn’t stop, haven’t seen anything so funny in aaaages!  Panic!  Don’t worry, we opened up the vacuum cleaner and rescued the furry beast from its lair, I mean, the feather boa, fortunately none the worse for wear.

SO much fun.  EEEEE, I LOVE costume parties!!

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black leather clogs (shoes)

01/04/2017 4:59 pm \ 47 Comments \

Hello!  I’ve finally finished these black leather clogs; that have been on the go for nearly a whole year now…. eeeeek!!

these soles are the ones on the left; the ones on the right went on to become my teal suede wedges

The last time I went down to visit Mum and Dad: Dad had some pinewood he’d cut himself from a “weed” pine on their block… and he very kindly helped me to shape the blocks on his bandsaw, and have the use of his sander to do some further shaping while I was down there… I’m so lucky that Dad has all the perfect equipment for this!

me making the soles in Dad’s amazing, treasure-chest of a shed; and yes, I made my entire outfit… those red shoes that don’t “go” at all were some of my very earliest oxford shoe-making efforts.  They held together ok for a few weeks, then I made the mistake of walking through very wet grass in them one day, they got completely sodden and, sadly, never recovered from that dreadful, fatal experience  🙁  The silver lining is that that little disaster galvanised me into doing more research and getting more serious about making sturdy, tough shoes that could take the hard knocks.

Once I got home, I sanded down the soles even further, stuck some cork to the bottom and the heels, and applied five coats of satin varnish.  Ohhh, wait, getting ahead of myself…  before that, I’d fancied the idea of a nice deep, chocolate brown wood, I thought it would play off nicely against my chosen black leather.  So I bought some walnut stain and gave them a coat.  They looked um, not good, but I persisted (“maybe they just need MORE of it” famous last words) and did a few more coats.  Then they looked DREADFUL.  A day or so of deep depression later, and I’d regained the energy to set up the sander again and sand it all off.  THEN I did the soling/ varnishing thing to my clean, new soles.  *sigh*  Lesson learned; wood looks better in its natural colour.

Now for the design of the uppers!  I absolutely LOVE my other clogs, and basically wanted something very similar, just in the very useful colour, black.  So, they’re pretty much identical except that these are engineered to the hilt and will certainly last a lifetime.  They are like bullet-proof tanks, the Sherman Tanks of shoes, if you like!  My other clogs have been pretty sturdy too, but I did have to repair/reinforce bits of them during my Year of Handmade which taught me more lessons about what counts when it comes to shoes.  Firstly, that all the strain on a pair of shoes like this is right on the inner nail closest to your ankle.  I lost two nails from that area on my previous clogs that had worked loose without my noticing, and also the fabric even started to rip a tiny bit in that spot   (horrified gasp… NOOOOOOOO!)  so I reinforced the area on both shoes by glueing on a piece of thick canvas underneath the overfoot strap, and then hammering it back down firmly in place with the nail in question dipped briefly in glue first.

But; anyway, back to these shoes!  The uppers are made of thick, strong, upholstery leather.  This was a small piece given to me by my kind neighbour, Megan.  The front bit is lined with chocolate brown synthetic suede, from the Fabric Store, the same stuff I’ve used to line most of my shoes, including my winter boots.  It’s great stuff!  The skinnier, over-foot strap, that really takes the brunt of strain, I’ve lined with black, real suede, cut from the precious small piece that I bought from Bilby Yarns, also used to make these oxford shoes… this suede was tanned in the Fremantle Tannery before it closed down, forever (sob!)  The strap that goes around the back of my ankles is simply wide black elastic.  I found with my other clogs that I rarely can be bothered to undo the snaps to put them on, I tend to just slip the clogs over my feet.  So, I dispensed with all closure and just went the elastic route.  I glued another, further piece of the real black suede under the vulnerable overstrap area, covering and enclosing the edge of the elastic.  Then I punched holes all round each piece, using my Danish hole punches that I bought in Skindhuset, Copenhagen, for the very first time!

and double sewed all round by hand, using chocolate brown upholstery thread.

The final step was to drill holes and nail the uppers down to the soles.

give a girl a power drill…   *

*riff on an equality slogan from the 80’s… “give a girl a spanner”

And they’re done!

I’m so completely over-the-moon happy with these!  I know they’ll be very sturdy and tough enough for anything.

Also, did you notice my “tattoo” in the first pic? that was my lame little April Fool’s Day thing today…. but it’s funny, I did it just for fun but you know what?!? I actually quite like it!  I think if I was to even consider getting a tattoo, which I probably wouldn’t, I’m not really the sort, but thinking in a fantasy sort of a way here; THIS would be my choice.  It’s my cure-all advice to myself for any time I’m feeling a bit down, and written in my own handwriting obviously.  It’s really very very me!

Zoe approves…

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the Zora Queen Rutela

26/03/2017 11:33 am \ 37 Comments \

OK, I’ve done some pretty involved and intensive projects in my time, in fact more often than not, lately! and this one definitely ticks that box too.

Quite a few months ago, Cassie mentioned that she wanted us to go to ComicCon together this year, and furthermore, she had already chosen a good costume for me to make…

source

source

This is Queen Rutela, the queen and elder of the Zora; proud, elegant and graceful aquatic-people who reside in the Zora’s Domain in the Zelda universe.  If you’ve never heard of Zora, it’s ok, that’s perfectly normal because this stuff is the very height of geekiness and so far from the mainstream it’s a little embarrassing …  However! you have now!  She is a rather tragic character;  the story is as follows: Queen Rutela was the wife of the late King Zora and mother to Prince Ralis.  During the events of Twilight Princess, Shadow Beasts invade the Zora village, so Queen immediately sent her son to Hyrule Castle for his own safety and to inform Princess Zelda of what was going on, prompting the invaders to make an example of Queen Rutela by executing her in front of her people.

I liked the idea of going as Queen Rutela for several reasons, partly because she’s a mother so I felt she was age appropriate for me, also her story moved me because it is so sad, she’s so protective of her son and so motherly, it tugged at my heartstrings a bit.  But mostly, well, let’s be honest, because her attire and bearing is just so beautiful and I relished the challenge of giving a good go to making it!  Also, the Zora have always been my favourite species in the Zelda universe  🙂

ANYWAY!  here we go…

Firstly, the dress.  More accurately it’s a 3-piece ensemble, I made an ankle length petticoat/underdress, a skirt, and a long tunic top; all using white polyester stretch stuff (some leftovers, some new, variously from Spotlight, Fabulous Fabrics).  The plain, strapless, ankle-length petticoat is one I made many years ago, so long ago I’ve completely forgotten the pattern I used.  I never thought I’d say that, because I tend to remember patterns FOREVER, but not this time!  The skirt has the other “skirt-y” layers on an elastic waistband, and the tunic top is a drastically modified Nettie bodysuit, basically my go-to Tshirt pattern.  The sleeves are in two parts, a close-fitting “under” sleeve that is wrist length, and the “over”sleeve has a very high sleeve cap and a bell-shaped bottom edge that is gathered and “pouffed” into the under sleeve, then point-stitched in place to get artistic-y folding.  At the shoulder edge, the extra fabric in the sleeve caps is pulled in with three sharp darts; making a jutty-out sort of shoulder cap… that’s a technical term there, btw.

I stitched frilly “gills” to the side underbust area.

Oh! I’m getting ahead of myself… those frills were formed in the following way; I clean-cut the eyes using my rotary cutter, then holding the edge just slightly and evenly stretched out, passed it over a candle flame; which melted the edges just a little and set them in a naturally curly frill.  I took a little bit of practise to get this just right, with the right degree of frill and with minimal scorching!  Fortunately, those bits that looked a bit charred black just crumbled off when I rubbed them between my fingers.

Once I’d made the three parts of the dress, I shrouded Bessie in plastic and newspaper, dressed her, masked off the bits that I wanted to remain white, and sprayed the skirt, then the top utra-carefully and judiciously with poppy red enamel spray paint (Bunnings)

The colour is a little brighter than ideal, I really really wanted a warm, dusky coral pink, but with spray paint you’re unfortunately stuck with whatever is in the VERY limited pre-mixed range…  🙁 /

Spraying was pretty scary, my application isn’t perfect, and there is a blotch on the R shoulder that is a bit heavy and which was pretty devastating for a while, but I had no choice really but to accept what I’d done.   As it turned out I shouldn’t have worried too much because you couldn’t even see the blob once my headpiece was on!

Next, the fin/wings… I cut four-layers in light grey polyester organza, and simply stitched all layers together by skinny zig-zagging around all edges, and slip-stitched it in places to the top of the sleeves.


Next, the jewellery; and this bit was lots of fun!  It’s a long time since I’ve played about with jewellry-making and I really enjoyed it  🙂 I used Super Sculpey modelling clay, jewellery wire and gold metallic acrylic paint (Spotlight) and some really lovely turquoise glass jewels (Fabulous Fabrics), and baked my pendants in the oven before painting them, and stringing them together.  It’s hard to see the exact details of the Queen’s jewels in the short footage of her that there is, and what’s more, the details seem to vary from picture to picture, so I took a little creative license and designed my own, closely inspired by what I knew of the Zora style, and the arrangement that I could see from the footage.

The body-lace fastens at the small of my back; the necklace is supposed to sit out very wide on her shoulders, and I managed to get this look by stitching rings halfway along my shoulder, and the necklace clips onto these, wide on each shoulder.  I also made a “beaten gold” collar/choker from interfaced gold metallic jersey (Spotlight), hand stitched radiating lines over it, and stitched the last pendant to it, then stitched white vinyl “petals” (Clark Rubber) around the lower edge.  This closes by press studs at the back.

Headpiece: it’s simply a long tail in the same polyester stretch, stuffed with Hobby Fill (Spotlight). I inserted fins of fabric-covered cereal-box cardboard into the side seams, and I took the precaution of spray-painting the cardboard ivory first because the polyester is kinda see-through, and stitched it to the rim of a red swimming cap, also catching into the stitching a white plastic face-mask (Spotlight)

Now for the hair!  This took quite a bit of nutting out…. I’d stretched the bathing cap/head-tail/face mask contraption to Mr ‘Ed, my foam head, above.

For the hair I used skinny foam noodle (Clark Rubber) and stitched the top bit of the hair through all layers.  This stuff is pretty bouncy with a mind of its own, but I damn well forced that sucker to be what I wanted it to be with firm and masterful stitching to get the folded part/hair at the centre top. Take that, foam noodle!!  BOW TO MY WILL…

The blonde “coral” hair was easier and actually lots of fun, like being in kindergarten again… I snipped it into lengths, and painted the bits with various mixed shades of pale yellow, shaded with addition of lilac and metallic gold.  I wanted the hair to be in shades because we all know a flat colour just looks fake and, well, flat, any painted thing always looks so much more vibrant and real and rich when it has several different shades in it.  Going to this much effort sounds complicated and maybe even unnecessarily involved, but I whizzed through making the hair, loving every paint stroke.  I strung them on yellow thread and stitched them to the cap through all layers, and painted part of the top layer of hair in the same way.  There is 35m of noodle in this thing… I can hardly believe that myself but yes, really!

One “strand” came off while I was pulling the thing onto my head, aaaaagh NOOOOOO! which was a bit of a worry, obviously! but I had plenty of “hair” and luckily every other bit stayed put.

The final step was to spray-paint the top side of the head-tail with the same poppy-red spray paint.  Scary!! but I was super SUPER careful… On another note, this picture below gave me a laugh! the head looks hideous, the stuff of nightmares!!!  Zoe “looks” terrified but of course she wasn’t… she’s knows what’s real and what’s not.  Even on Saturday morning when I emerged from the bedroom in full costume plus makeup, all the cats just looked at me, maybe a bit quizzically! but they still knew it was me.

Oh, wait… doing the make-up was the final step, of course!  I painted white dots around her brow line, just like in my inspiration pic, and then trimmed away the mask.  Cassie suggested a strip of Hollywood tape on my nose, which helped keep the nose piece firmly in place throughout the day.  Also, with amazing luck, Priceline had a 40% off all makeup sale in the days beforehand so I got some white translucent face-powder and rather horrible bright red rouge-y stuff for the matching poppy-red circles under my eyes and lips.

   

The photo at the top is my first attempt to photoshop myself into a fake background!  pretty good, huh?!  this actually took me aaaaaaages… hehe, #photoshopnoob Well, I felt like Queen Rutela just HAD to appear in Zora’s Domain or it would be, well, you know, just like an unfinished and half-done effort, so I decided I just had to do it!

I didn’t get any photos of me actually at ComicCon in Perth unfortunately; we were just having way too much fun! plus my gloves made it impossible for me to operate my phone!  However about a million people asked to take my picture, which is not as weird as it sounds, it’s just the done thing at ComicCon when you dress up; everyone does it!  Also it was highly gratifying when people recognised my character, totally made my day!!!  Every now and then I would hear a call; “Queen Rutela!!!!!” which was really nice!

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bobblehead

14/03/2017 2:54 pm \ 35 Comments \

Note; apologies for the latent loopiness of this post.  Sombre, serious, meaningful and purposeful sewing and discourse thereof shall recommence in the near future…. or maybe not…

So, recently I was queued up in Spotlight and spotted some mini snowball-like bobble trim.  … bobbles! so playful! sooo cuute!

I just absentmindlessly picked it up, and then I didn’t want to put it down again.  Realised that I really really wanted, nay, needed, bobble trim in my life, like now.

See, I’m in the middle of making a monstrously involved, head-explodingly complicated costume for Comic Con…  well never mind that right now.   I’ve been working on it for what feels like forever but has only been a couple of weeks actually.   #imgonnalookridiculous

It just felt so nice to indulge in making something super quick and easy as a wink, like this.

Anyhoo.  2m of very lightweight gauzy cotton muslin (Spotlight), always handy to have lots of this around, btw!  cut in half down the middle along the grain line.  I folded a skinny 3mm (1/8″) hem under twice around all edges and top-stitched catching the bobble trim underneath at the same time…

Done!!

Details:

Dress; Named patterns Inari tee dress, in red/white sweatshirt fleece, details here
Scarf; lightweight cotton gauze/muslin, edged in bobble trim
Red sandals/thongs; made by me, details here
location; playground at the Scented Gardens; South Perth foreshore

I have a new scarf, weeee!

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