Tanit-Isis Sews

April 16, 2013 · 11:14 pm

Oh, yeah…

The best laid plans.

Plaid is a print.

Yeah, that red plaid from yesterday is intended for this little queue jumper. I am weak, and apparently have the attention span of a jellyfish. Also I’m gonna have to do some saving up before I order the rest of my corset supplies.

Anyway, it’s not often that I actually buy fabric based on the envelope suggestions. I’m more of the “oh, I think I’d like a dress, better get three metres,” type of fabric shopper. But I did for this one. I’ve been fantasizing this fabric/pattern combo since Gertie first announced this pattern. But, y’know that little bit where they say “allow extra for matching prints”? Well, it didn’t even occur to me until I was finished tracing out the pattern.

So… Now I’m trying to think of fun things to do with plaid. Bias? Bias side panels? Or just do my best to keep things matching nicely?

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Tagged as Butterick 5882

April 16, 2013 · 7:54 am

Oops

The stash may have gotten a wee bit larger in the last few days. Oops.

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Tagged as fabric

April 13, 2013 · 5:29 pm

Premature Corseting

Butterick 4254

Despite a number of itty bitty things like, oh, not having ANY actual corset supplies (except eyelets, I do have eyelets), guess what I did when Osiris’s best buddy dragged him out of the house today, leaving me alone for HOURS?*) I make a mockup of Butterick 4254. After I deflated the mound of empty boxes that was occupying most of my charming new sewing ~~dungeon~~ space, and got the one machine that I have over here set up. I have traced out View C, which is about as simple as it could get.

Before even starting, though, there were a couple of things I wanted to do. First was shorten the pattern above the waist. I took a 2 cm tuck across all of the pieces. The grainlines on some of them are really weird. Any experienced corset makers reading—should the grain lines go up and down relative to the piece, or relative to the corset overall? Shouldn’t those things be more or less the same thing? I confused. Anyway, for the mockups I went with the grain as drafted.

I read all the reviews on PR. Some (who appeared to be the more serious corset-wearers) found that the pattern lacked compression (i.e. it’s drafted at zero ease, not with negative ease at the waist. So the size 10 (the largest size in my envelope, and a size smaller than I normally make) has a 25″ waist, as drafted. Me being me, this is plenty of compression. I was a little less sure about the bust and hip, but willing to go with it. Several people said they found the corset short, and since I had just shortened it further, I figured I would extend it by a couple of cm all around the back.

I did not make one of my staple adjustments—a swayback adjustment. I did, however, add a bit of extra width at the high back hip.

And I made a mockup. As per the suggestions in Linda Sparks’ “The Basics of Corset Building,” I added a 2″ panel to the back where the lacing will be. Since I haven’t got a busk (see above about having no actual corset supplies), I subtracted the seam allowances and cut the front on the fold.

I’m torn on the whole busk thing. On the one hand, that’s a lot of money and effort and waiting (I would have to order online) for my first corset. On the other hand, I’m aiming for that Victorian corset look and as far as I can tell, they were all about the busks. Anyone with actual historical-fashion expertise (as opposed to my rather lazy google-fu), please correct me if I’m wrong. And yes, I’m aiming for at least superficially historical here. Why? Well, basically my mother’s been involved with a local small museum volunteer type thing for yonks, and there’s a possibility we could maybe develop a “pioneer sewing” program-type component and, well, I’m having visions of everything from treadle-sewing workshops to steampunk picnics when (if) summer ever comes, so yeah, I’m feeling historically oriented with this project. Vaguely, anyway.

Version 1.0

Anyway, about that mockup. Will you ever forgive me for these horrible dirty-bathroom-mirror fitting photos? I may never forgive myself. Especially the back photos, which I took with the reverse camera on the iPhone, which has crappy resolution and no flash. Anyway, so, bust fit seems ok (recall that since the top and bottom of the corset are bound, there’s no seam allowances to fold under there). Waist fit as well—it’s tighter, but it’s supposed to be, right? It’s just below the waist everything goes, um… yikes. Ok, so obviously my hips are not appropriately Victoriany. But the biggest thing, really, is that weird length thing from front to back. The corset, from the illo, is supposed to arc up over the hips, and down in front and back. Well, I have the back bit just fine, but the front? WTF? So, obviously I will be lengthening the bottom of the front. Like, a couple of inches.

Anyway, I took in the loose wobbly bits below the waist, probably a total of about four inches.

And then I stitched down my seam-allowances to make boning channels. Except I have no boning (not even zip ties) to put in them.

Version 1.1

Nonetheless, I think the results are MUCH better (OK, not trying it on with seam allowances out probably looks better, too. It’s just much easier to make the adjustments with seam allowances out.) I think the fit over my hips at the side is spot on. I’m a little more worried about the back—it’s doing its usual sway-back wrinkle, assisted, no doubt, by shoddy pinning. Will the boning smooth it out, though? Or should a corset be “fixing” my little posture problem, anyway? For that matter, how appropriate *is* fitting a corset? I mean, isn’t the point of a period silhouette that it squishes you into ITS shape, not the other way around? Thoughts?

The altered pattern

Anyway, here are my pattern alterations, to the extent that you can see them in the dappled daylight on the kitchen floor. I guess I could’ve moved them to a better spot on the floor, but that would’ve required, y’know, forethought. The red outlines my post-fitting changes, both where I slimmed the hips and my length extension in the front (on the right). I suppose I should really do a second mock up to test that length alteration, but I’d really like to plunge ahead and cut my real fabric. Not that I have proper coutil or anything, either, mind you.

*Just for the record, I love my husband. I love spending time with my husband. I love that he wants to spend lots of time with me. But right now, he’s getting a lot more alone time during the day, while I’m spending my day surrounded by and interacting with people, and while my introvert/extrovert ratio is pretty close to even, the fact that I’ve had NO ALONE TIME EVER for seven or eight months is starting to take a toll and I’m really wishing to just have time to do my things. Like sew.

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Tagged as Butterick 4253, corset making, fitting, in progress

Image

First signs of sewing

… At my new house. Erm, why am I tracing a corset pattern?

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April 8, 2013 · 10:58 pm

April 3, 2013 · 8:02 pm

More neglected bits

Today my husband unearthed another long-untouched half-way costume thing. This one I have even less justification for making than the bellydance costume. Yes, some years ago I made a mediaeval dress. The things that seem appealing when one has PhD candidacy exams to avoid researching…

Hand rolled hem along the neckline.

I don’t do historical costuming, generally. I find it both fascinating and annoying. Especially the obsession with “authenticity.” This drives me nuts mostly because, especially as you get past the last couple hundred years, the information we have about fashion becomes so intensely sketchy. Art, which may or may not be realistic. A few (very, very few) surviving extant pieces. How much variation in style, ways of doing things, might have existed at ANY point, with no surviving indication at all?

And yet, I totally get the obsession with what is actually documented and recorded. And with using authentic methods and materials. I totally get the urge to hand-sew an entire costume. This is not hand-sewn, although the hems are all hand-finished. Get a load of of my hand-worked eyelets. With spiral lacing. I was getting pretty decent at them by the end. Most of them were done while my husband was playing Dragon Age, if I recall correctly.

This was meant to be the under-dress with a surcoat. It’s cut from a zero-waste plan, using all rectangles and triangles, although I wish I’d done the godets in the skirt a little differently. I never did get the surcoat done. (My terminology is also about three years rusty… I did know the proper names for what I was trying to make at one point.)

I kinda wish I had an event to wear it to, but that doesn’t seem terribly likely to happen at the moment.

Front inset.

Sleeves: long and ruchy

There is actually a gusset behind the laces. Somewhere.

I pretty much suck at selfies, but didn’t have the brain-power for proper photos. And we don’t have regular Internet at the new house yet. So phone pics it is.

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April 1, 2013 · 8:54 pm

Half-forgotten, long unfinished

Have you ever noticed how we create stories, even about our own lives? There’s a couple of different stories I tell about how I started “really” sewing. Often, I talk about my desire for a winter coat with sleeves that were long enough, and how I decided, after hunting in vain for years, to make my own. And that’s a true story. But there’s another story about how I started “really” sewing, that is equally true. Or equally fictitious.

I got into bellydance when I was sixteen, and it was a hobby-verging-on-obsession for years. In fact, from the age of eighteen to, oh, around when I started blogging, the vast majority of my sewing (such as it was) was for bellydance costuming. The patterns were simple and often improvised; there was a lot of hand-work and not a lot of technique, if you will.

When we first moved away from my hometown, though, all of a sudden I was no longer part of a performing troupe. For a while I carried on, making costumes just because I wanted to, contenting myself with student classes and the occasional year-end recital. But at a certain point I found myself frustrated. I had nowhere to wear the things I was making, and it was hard to motivate myself to finish them as a result. This was a major motivation for wanting to “really learn to sew.”

This costume comes from around that time. It’s half finished, the main pieces mostly together but lacking the fine details that would make it really stunning. I stumbled upon it today in a box that hasn’t really been opened through my last two moves. The vest comes from the Folkwear “Turkish Dancer” pattern, while the bra is a recovered, storebought one. The blue fabric is a slippery poly velvet I bought at the thrift store yonks ago, and is the single most evil fabric I’ve ever sewn with. Everything you see here was hand-basted before being machine stitched, if the machine was involved at all. Most of the trim was applied by hand. I had visions of seed pearls scattered through the folds of the ruching. We’ll see.

For the moment, it’s getting carefully folded back in its box. I have twenty three other patterns vying for my headspace, after all. 😉 And while we’re (slowly) getting settled in, my sewing stuff is mostly still in my mother-in-law’s basement. I found my dish-drainer today, though. That’s a victory.

(Oh, and these livingroom shots were taken back when I first made it—as much action as this costume has ever seen.)

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Tagged as oldies, too much talk

March 29, 2013 · 6:09 am

Moving day

In a couple of hours, here, I go to pick up the van so we can move our furniture into our new house.

Can I just skip to Sunday, when the worst is over?

I am so looking forward to the reunification of at least the majority of my sewing stuff (especially my serger!) though I will miss using my Stylish sister-in-law’s Janome Memory Craft as my main machine.

Just to celebrate (?) I went through the pattern collection and grabbed the images I most want to make.

There were twenty three that jumped out and screamed MAKE ME, and that’s not even sewing for anyone else, or counting projects I already have traced/fabric picked, or are otherwise under way.

And, of course, no sewing this long weekend, because moving. So I thought I’d share a few of the pictures, so you can share my frustration.

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Tagged as planning, too much talk, whining

March 24, 2013 · 2:50 pm

Fleece Pants, Episode 3 (part II)

Fleece Leggings

Sick of fleece pants yet? Yeah? Too bad. It snowed every day this week, except for the bright sunny days with windchills in the -30s C. This is not what I want from the end of March, peeps.

At the end of Episode 3, I mentioned that Syo wanted fleece leggings. Well, not long after that I made the mistake of taking my children to the fabric store, and Syo managed to persuade me to buy her a metre of wolf-patterned fleece. At full price, no less. Oi. Kid has mad parent-guilting skillz. And very long eyelashes.

Very skinny fleecepants

Attempting to be mindful of the lessons of fleece stretch, I knew I would need to size up a bit for this pair. I went back to my original tracing of Kwik Sew 1670 and undid the tuck I had made in the pattern piece when it became obvious after the first pair that they were way oversized. I added some extra height at the CB, and some extra length along the crotch. And enough extra length in the leg to work for Tyo, probably. And (gulping) I cut them out.

And, well, I should’ve gone up a size. (it has, after all, been almost a year since I traced out this size for Syo, and while she’s not sprouting like a weed the way Tyo is these days, she still is getting bigger.) D’oh. Fortunately for me, Syo is extra-super-determined to wear this pair, and she’s very tolerant of tight. I can’t imagine where she might’ve picked that up from. *whistles*

Rear view

Print mixing to do Oona proud, I tell ya.

Half-ass waistband

Because I didn’t want to lose any height at the waist, I did only a single, very narrow fold-over at the waist elastic. It’s not a lovely finish inside, but it’s plush-back elastic so it’s pretty comfy, anyway, and I’m quite glad I didn’t use up any more height.

Rise

Unlike the purple fleece sweatpants, though, these are a hit. Like a big hit. Like a super-duper-can’t-peel-them-off-her-to-wash hit.

So I have a theory for future tight-fleece-pants-sizing adventures. I hypothesize that zero ease, or at most 10% negative ease, is probably about the max stretch ratio for fleece. So next time, I’m going to pick a size by measuring the thigh of the person who will be wearing them, and then measuring the pattern. Well, at least for fleece leggings, where that would be super simple. I’m still thinking about the yoga pants…

For those of you who are bored stiff of fleece pants, I did steal a few minutes to work on my stalled mail-order dress. I ripped off the yoke and shortened the waist. Everywhere but right at the cf. there are some funny things about this pattern, peeps. But it’s coming, I’m liking it much better. I just need to recut the skirt, but that won’t happen until

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Tagged as finished projects, Fleece Pants, For Syo, Jalie 2920

March 17, 2013 · 7:29 pm

Fleece Pants, Episode 3: Syo

Booyeah

Otherwise known as, “just because I have to be different.”

Although Syo has thoroughly enjoyed her Jalie 3022 shorts, she has no interest in flared yoga-pants, fleece or otherwise. She is a child of the skinny jean era. So I wasn’t planning on making her a pair. But, she has been asking for a pair of old-fashioned sweatpants, to wear to her hip hop dance class, where several moves seem to require tugging on sweatpants.

Simplicity 3714

So instead, I pulled out Simplicity 3714, which sweater I had previously made. This time, I was going for the pants. Although I maintain that the half-bunnyhug is one of the cutest things my children have ever refused to wear. Now, it’s not entirely clear from the photo, but this, too, is a flared pattern. Not as obviously as the yoga pants, of course, but really, wtf was I thinking? Don’t answer that. I was thinking “I’m going to gather the ankle anyway, what does it matter?” and “I can just trim a bit off below the knee. It’ll be fine.”

And they are, I guess.

Simplicity

The fabric is a purple fleece I found at Value Village sometime last winter. Actually, it’s one of two pieces I found of the same fleece, on two separate occasions. Syo immediately laid claim to both, and the larger one is still serving as a blanket on her bed.

I cut the size 8 (which the pattern was conveniently already cut out to, saving me the effort of tracing), and added a bit of length (not that Syo is particularly long-legged), and for my peace of mind added a bit of height to the CB and shaved a bit off at the CF. And I made them up. Not a lot of thought, artifice, or anything. As a stunt, I topstitched both the inseam and outseam, which was really more effort than pants like this deserve.

Grommets for waist tie to come through.

The most complicated thing I did was interface the waistband with a knit interfacing, mostly as a support for grommets for a waistband drawstring. Speaking of which, I need to get a real drawstring, not just some flattened out bias tape. I wonder if I can find purple twill tape?

Fleece sweatpants

They seem to fit the bill, anyway although she pretty much never wears them except to dance class, and I suspect will never wear them for anything else once she’s done.

Next, though, she wants fleece leggings.

Ulp.

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Tagged as finished projects, Fleece Pants, For Syo, Simplicity 3714

March 15, 2013 · 10:02 am

Another Blogiversary

The dress formerly known as Simplicity 3965, alias the Star Wars Dress.

The Star Wars Dress, probably my crowning achievement of the year

My blog is three today! I had totally forgotten. It would’ve been so nice to make a pretty dress, too. I didn’t do anything special like make up a little pattern to share, and since I still can’t seem to manage to mail things (don’t ask about all the Christmas cards still sitting, in stamped envelopes, on my computer desk) I don’t dare even do a regular giveaway. In fact, the only reason you’re getting a post at all is that a) I happen to be off work today, and b) I am bumming around because I have a cold, and c) WordPress sent me a notification via the mobile app reminding me it’s the blog’s birthday.

A lot of things have been intersecting lately that make it harder to blog. At least, harder to blog well. I’ve never had a backlog of projects unblogged the way I do now—at least three or four items, although none are terribly spectacular. Winter, of course, is always a problem in the photography department, and I don’t have a good indoor photo location here. Having the family and old friends around is awesome, but it means we have more stuff to do and people to see than we ever did in Cow Town. My sewing stuff is scattered over three different locations, so when I do get a few minutes here or there, I am often stymied by needing this thing or that. Worst of all, my growing kids are no longer going to bed at 8:00 every night! I depended on that two hours of “me time” to do most of my sewing and blogging. (I don’t have my train commute to read blogs anymore, either, so I am way behind there as well.) Now, by the time they’re in bed it’s pretty much my bedtime. I rarely do any sewing on a weeknight, and if I do get some done on the weekend it’s usually a little bit stolen in the morning before everyone else gets themselves going. And I’m not a natural morning person, either.

This is not a goodbye post, mind you. I’m still a diehard obsessive. I fall asleep thinking about sewing at night. I wake up thinking about it in the morning (if not the middle of the night). My fingers itch with the desire to be making something, or talking or writing about it, pretty much every minute of the day. And there are lots of great things about sewing in my hometown, from meetups to ~~brainwashing~~ mentoring my sisters-in-law, to fun and quirky fabric stores other than Fabricland (even if they are small.) And I’ve been having a tremendous amount of fun doing the digital linework for Cake Patterns—almost as satisfying as making the patterns myself! I’ve mentioned on twitter that we’re moving again at the end of the month—I’m hopeful that I’ll have better photo locations, if nothing else, once that goes down, although the prospect of moving again, even just within town, is exhausting. I should be able to get all (most) of my sewing stuff back together, too!

And on that inspiring note, I think I’ll maybe go have another cup of tea and tidy my little sewing space. The fact that it’s always an insane mess probably doesn’t help my productivity one bit.

Want to cheer me up? Tell me about the most exciting thing in your sewing queue right now! 😀

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Tagged as Blogiversary, not sewing, too much talk, whining