My sewing wrap up of 2017

In 2017 I EMBELLISHED a LOT! I made a few things too. Overall I got more done than I thought I had so this is a useful exercise!
I'm not including the denim jacket and stool I wrote about already, or the mending I did after Christmas but that was most satisfying too.

1. Robe for CC 

 I cut this out but Kat my sewing fairy made this up as I was up against it early in the year. Made from Wearing History's rayon with musical notes on it, so beautiful! It has CC on the back. It's good to have a robe to throw on over costumes so as not to reveal too much before the show. Here I am with Penny and Hans before the Clever and Constance show in Feb.

 2. The Wedding!

Our Sarah got married in March I overhauled her imported dress with new lace and beading, after remaking it a lot to tidy it up. It was very pretty! Me on the end in my Liberty sundress. I also overhauled June's dress (Matt the groom's Mum second from left) which was gorgeous. The petite lovely in dove grey is Sarah's Mum, Bronwyn. I love that woman.

3. And now, show stuff!

 OK, this outfit is a purchased jacket and me-made trousers, both embellished with a pink sequin trim, by hand, Big job! Same with the pink purchased corset. I love the trousers and am making some flowy ones in rayon for summer.

 Me left, Debbie right being hilarious. A purchased dress embellished with gold sequin motifs for more stageworthiness.

 My pink kaftan. I am not in love with this to be honest - I feel a little like a Nigerian noble in it. Shiny though!

 More embellished RTW from City Chic. This lovely blue flowing top now has a fancy sequinned and beaded neck feature, and I'm slowly sticking rhinestones onto it. Embellishing can be Agile - delivery a Minimum Viable Product and building on it!

This dress I love so much, after I embellished this one with shiny oranges, I bought another for day wear. Sadly it is so polyester I feel in it like I am wrapped in gladwrap. But I have cut a pattern from it as a basis for an outfit. Not the same - besides the ethics, I don't like aspects of it as much as others.

This is a screen grab from our video playlist as I don't have a photo of it. Little blue 3D butterflies on an embroidered net - each of them carefully brushed with tacky glue and "flittered" (fine glittered). It is much more impressive in reality!

4. Flashback!

That's not everything but it will do. And now for a wee flashback to the past - about 1985 I reckon!

An about 20 year old me in my favourite shirt at the time, naturally known as The Sneeches shirt. I don't remember the lass beside me, but she's wearing a similarly shaped shirt! It was a boxy, drop shouldered style popular at the time and I had several of them in different fabrics. TNTs are not a new concept! I think I wore this until it actually fell apart.

And that's me for now xo

Random Make Friday!

This new gimmick of mine is the perfect excuse to go back and cover projects I didn't do justice to the first time.
A perfect example is The Laurel dress, originally made in 1909 for Lady Maude Warrender, and the inspiration for thousands of costumiers since, thanks to Janet Arnold.

 

Arnold's meticulous pencil drawings were our inspiration.

Leimomi The Dreamstress actually made the dress, I just did the leafwork, which I covered here and here. But I never showed you the outcome, just linked to it. The Dreamstress has a whole fab page of pictures, but here are a few that really show off the detailing, which I filched from the page linked to:

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 This photo shoot is in the old Dominion Museum Building, now a part of Massey University's Wellington Campus. It was the museum of my childhood and I can still remember the smell, the awe inspiring grandeur, the crazy kiwi banisters and the Egyptian Hall. All very old hat by today's museum's standards, but it was a magical place to me.

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Our detailing worked out very delicate, like the original pencil sketches. It was such a surprise to me to see and handle the original at the Museum of London, which is loaded with sparkly gunmetal sequins and is very dark and dramatic.

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 A good close up view of the corded applique,and velvet trim, all couched in metallic embroidery threads. Source

Source

Our version is closer to the original than many around, but what fascinates me is how the inclusion of this one dress in Arnold's Patterns of Fashion book has made it the default inspiration for probably most of the "Titanic era" ballgowns and tea gowns since. It is a testament to her work that her books are the go-to texts for so many historic recreationists and costumiers. I wonder what other dress she may have decided to cover instead? This one was settled in a cosy archive box with a beautiful wedding dress from the same era, for example.
I thoroughly enjoyed developing the techniques to embellish this gown and I hope one day to take on somethig even more challenging to work on in collaboration with another talented seamstress like the divine Dreamstress!

Warm fingers!

Brr it's getting parky down under. My poor hands, or puddies as MrC calls them, have been really feeling the cold. And so my mind has gone to class ideas for making warm mittens. Because that's how I think of things to make and teach!
I decided to go for a lined merino approach, and after faffing around thinking of complex ways to add the thumb in, I just decided to try it flat, like this:

Folded in half, this is the lining. I have big hands and wrists so these would probably swim on someone else! But, I am happy with the basic pattern, as it is easy to draft from the measurements of lower arm, wrist and palm.
I wanted to use the class as an intro to machine embellishment. So, I got stuck in doing a flower, because I love flowers.

These took forever!

A rather pretty but boring little flower. It took FOREVER. I did the outline with perle thread in the bobbin, sewing from the back, but the amount of work it took doesn't give a payoff at all. The in fill is rayon thread, which I like a lot more. I shall have to rethink this in terms of the techniques we will do as adjusting the bobbin tension every time we go from heavy to normal bobbin threads for a whole class of students makes me shudder.
I backed my fabric with a fab knit interfacing, but of course it was stretchy so in this case, not so fab. It worked out OK but not for beginners. I had the stitching area in a 5"/125mm embroidery hoop (working on the opposite side than with hand embroidery) to keep it taut, which helped, but would work much better with a more stable interfacing.
So, after all that, I nearly created mitten moebii trying to bag in the thumb end as well as the top and bottom, and in the end I only bagged in the top edge, zigzagged the thumb edges together, and added a band at the bottom. By now I realised these were not going to be my class sample so they only had to suit me.

And here they are. The flowers needed to be a little further around, but otherwise they are nice and warm, and keep my fingers free. The tops I can fold down or leave up, depending on how much I need my fingers.
So, 5 hours on, this is all I got done. Admittedly I got interrupted a lot, but all in all I need to find a simpler way.
I think we'll go with one layer of boiled wool instead!