Oops

BAM was awesome!   And what'd I do?  I posted hint-pictures of the new outfit I made for myself for court, and promised real pics, and then didn't manage to come home with a single shot of me IN the dress (because I was a dipshit and left my camera sitting at home on the charger instead of taking it to the event. ARGH).  

The only pic of me that happened over the weekend, was this one, as far as I know: 

me in my Caerleon uniform

I finally located the circlet I thought I'd lost and started wearing it this weekend.  New hair, too, not that there's a picture of it, though, because I suck.  I was extremely pleased with my hair at the event, for once.  

Soon as I can get a pic of that new court outfit I'll post it.  :/  

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Another Embroidered Pouch

No, I'm not finished with the first one yet.  Almost.

I just got in a mood.  The same friend from whom I got the navy velveteen I wrote about yesterday sent me home from her de-stash party with a big, blue, Ikea bag FULL of fabric.  In it was a couple of small pieces of royal-blue, uncut/wale-less corduroy (I know, I know, me and my blue "velvet").  I decided to embroider another pouch.

I started it yesterday; here are a few pics of the first stages:

sketching out the design with a watercolor pencil

blocking out the placement of the various elements.
Honest, I didn't lay the erasers and pins all facing outward intentionally,
LOL, that just happened to be the way they landed. 

I started with green - all the leaves.  The finished pouch will be covered
with flowers and stars, with my heraldic pomegranate in the very center. 

More news as the situation develops...

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Hey, Guess What

Monday I finished the last round of sewing-my-ass-off for other people in preparation for the event this weekend, which will be the last one of the season for me, and one of the biggest Ansteorran events of the year, and...

 ...which starts, um...tomorrow...

...I did something completely insane.  Can you guess what it is?

I'll give you a hint: 

I got home from work at 6:00, and ate dinner. 

At 6:30 I started cutting. 

At 1:00AM this morning I had a finished gown.   

All except for the buttons, that is.  Those are a bit of an issue.  I don't have any I can use, and my favorite online button store shut down without warning a couple of months ago.  I can't get buttons for less than full price anymore, and those suckers are expensive, especially when you need anywhere from 14-40 of them per gown!  Payday's tomorrow.  Either I find some that are affordable, I harvest buttons from another dress, or I make cloth buttons and hope they hold.  

Meantime, aside from the possibility that I'll have to buy buttons I can't afford, the rest of the dress was entirely free.  The fabric, a midnight-blue, hi-pile, velvety, brushed denim twill, came from a friend's de-stash party last month.  The gold brocade trim was given to me by another friend who made waaaaay too much for a dress she made for herself.  The red linen and gold jeans thread you can see in some of the pics were from my own stash.  

I have to say, this dress was an exciting adventure in getting to know my new sewing machine better.  There are four different embroidery stitches in this dress, two different seam-edge treatments, and I got to bust out the buttonholer for the first time.  I've never used one; every machine I've ever had has had a buttonhole stitch on it, but not an actual attachment. This one has the giant gizmo that you put the button into.  I have to say, it works fabulously.  It didn't work on this dress, though, because of the trim on the front opening edge, which was in the way - I ended up making the buttonholes freehand, with a tiny, tight zig-zag stitch.  But the test buttonholes blew me away.  In general, this machine routinely blows my mind with how easy it's making my sewing life.  Thank you, new sewing machine! 

And as for the finished dress?  You'll have to see it next week when I bring you pics from the event.  :) 

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Four-Hundredth Verse: Same As the First

Well, I spent the middle of the week sick.  Again.  Food poisoning this time.  Did I break a mirror and forget or something?  Not throw spilled salt over my left shoulder?  SHEESH.  This year can die in a fire.

No, wait - no fires.  *knocks wood*

And now you all think I'm superstitious, lol.

I DO actually have another project-in-progress to show you, not that I have pictures yet.  But soon.

In the meantime, let me share with you some of the fuzzier aspects of my morning routine:

This is how I wake up every morning.   Daisy's very polite, quiet, and gentle;
and she waits for the alarm to go off first.  (Her brother, on the other hand,
has, at this point, been jumping up and down and panting as loud as he can
for like half an hour.  I ignore him).  

Evie (our smartest cat, I say with great sarcasm), gets stuck in the sheers...
again...while trying to get from the windowsill to the nightstand to walk on
my hair, first thing in the morning...

...and then gives up and sits down, to wait for me to help her.  She's an awfully
sweet cat.  Not too bright, though. 

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The Dragonfly Process

Because the first question people ask me when they've seen the new Japanese outfit I made for Takuan (you remember Takuan) is "did you make these?  wait - how did you do that??"  I figured I'd make a blog entry about it, since I've spent all week working on these.

In place of the six lions down the lapels of his jin-baori, as with the yellow and gold Caerleon outfit linked above, I did six mon, the circular embroidered designs (patches, in this case) running down the front of the garment, which bear a form of his SCA device.

All of these images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

I started with a red silk fabric with gold-colored dragonflies already woven into it.  This circle was cut so that it had one fly already in it, to save myself a bit of work.  I ironed a scrap of lightweight interfacing onto the back, and satin-stitched around the design to make it look appliquéd on the way the others will be.

All six of them are done, here.

you can see I've also run a loose zigzag around the edge of the circle, to keep it from unraveling.  This is some seriously unravely fabric.

Sometimes my camera is really badass.

The rest of the flies - all twelve of them - had to be cut from the fabric and ironed onto an interfacing backing...

...  and then cut free of the surrounding fabric, leaving a small border of red around each fly to carry the satin-stitching yet to come...

...which is what's happening here.

I have to say, at this point, that this new sewing machine is CRAZY AWESOME.  It's fast, it's quiet, it's smooth - seriously, these things went together in about twenty minutes apiece, once all the prep was out of the way (interfacing, making the circles, etc.).  On my old machine they took an hour EACH.

Also, I didn't notice until I saw this picture that I'd forgotten to put on the special foot I'm supposed to use when I'm satin-stitching. Oops!

Finally!   Obviously the circle isn't really straight, but I can't trim it just yet.

First I had to clip all the loose threads.  Next was to iron a circle of heavier interfacing onto the back, since, as you can see, the fabric is kinda wibbly.

Before I did that, I should have gone over the front and clipped off all the little hairy fabric bits that stuck out of the satin-stitching, but I can still go back and do that when I straighten out the circles before I put them on the garment.


And what are these going onto?

Well, this, for one thing.  Or rather, something like it.

The set of patches featured here are actually the second set - the ones for this black and red outfit were the first.  the second set went a lot more smoothly, since the first set was the proverbial $4M ashtray (West Wing reference; r&d and experimentation are the hard part.  Now I know what I'm doing).

The black and red outfit was done in August of this year.  It was a bit of a surprise, so I hadn't posted about it yet.  But here you go.  It's basically the same thing as the Caerleon samurai outfit (linked at the beginning of this post), but with sleeves...and...obviously...a different color.  The helmet, armor, and weaponry were all made by Takuan himself.




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It's That Time Again

Braaaaaains.

Me at Bryn Gwlad's annual Zombie Tournament

The Hand-Me-Down Burgundy Burgundian

Because GUESS WHAT!  A friend of mine says to me last  week, "Here, see if there's anything you want in this giant box of fabric and old costumes."  And what do I find there?  THIS! 

oh, and welcome to my kitchen. 

Is that not awesome?  It belonged to another friend, long ago, who gave it to the friend who gave it to me.  The fabric is a    b e a u t i f u l  color, hangs perfectly, is soft and comfy, and, while a bit warm for outdoor wear most of the year here (it's cotton), it'll be fantastic for Winter outdoor events, and lots of events indoors in the air conditioning.  The shape of it is lovely, too:  the skirt and body are voluminous and flowing, while the top fits my shoulders and bust perfectly.  The sleeves are a tiny bit baggy, and, um, a tad longer than I'd like them, hehe.

It needs a bit of work, though, a la Cinderella's makeover of her dated pink gown for the ball.  Those sleeves have to come up, and in.  The crotch of the neckline has some worn stitching and frayed edges that will need to be cleaned up; and that neckline needs a little privacy panel, too.



Some other ideas include: 

Chopping the sleeves and adding an under-sleeve in a complementary fabric.

Purchasing more black faux-fur and trimming the lower hem, or removing it entirely and replacing it with faux fur from a blanket I already have (that I bought for exactly this purpose, thinking of making a houppelande), and trimming the bottom, neck, and sleeves with white fur.

Obviously it'll need a belt of some kind as well.  I'll have to read more about this style.

And of course, there must be headgear.  I already have a simple black band with a pull-ring attached to it that I made for another look several months ago.

The very simplest thing I could do would be to drape a veil over it.  Or I could attempt to whomp up a hat.  By November 18th - the last, and biggest event of the season.  Hm.

And yeah, you don't even know how badly some part of me wants to gut this thing and turn it into a red version of the Mary of Habsburg dress.  But I shall resist!  I want a MoH gown, but I want to do it right, and from scratch.  Not as a reproduction or anything, but, well, not red.  :)

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P.S. - today are my actual birthday.  *confetti and crap*







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We Interrupt This Blog Post For An Important OMFG!!!

Guess what this is?

The Squee 'Heard Round the World

If you guessed that this is me opening a gigantic box which I thought contained fabric and which turned out to be A NEW FREAKING SEWING MACHINE!!!!!  you'd be correct.

Turns out that a friend of mine for whom I do a LOT of SCA work for him and his fighting company, of which I'm a member (yeah, that guy) decided that he'd get me a span-damn-tacular birthday present as a thank-you for sewing for him and for his/our fighting company.   He told me that I'd be receiving a package of fabric in the mail, for just these reasons.  He even told me it would be arriving yesterday.  When I got home and saw the box, I couldn't imagine what could be in something that size - I've ordered some things I'm expecting this week, but nothing this big!  His name was on the outside, so I knew it had to be the fabric, but holy cow, how much fabric could be in a box this size?  And why on earth is there inflatable package cushioning in there for fabric??  Then I saw it.

don't you just want to pet it? 

It's a Singer Curvy (8770).
225 built-in stitches, including 7 buttonholes. Fully adjustable stitch length and width on any stitch. Single- and double-needle capacity. Automatic needle threader. Heavy duty metal frame (but the machine is very light).  Drop-in bobbin.  One-step buttonholer, which also lets you free-sew buttonholes yourself.  Comes with a zipper, blind hem, and satin stitch presser feet in addition to the regular one.  Adjustable feed dogs.  3-way adjustable deck/free-arm platform.  Seam ripper, cleaning brushes, dust cover.

watching it do the Greek key was *mesmerizing*

Here's a little sack-cloth linen sampler of just *18* of the 225 stitches, including me playing around with tension, length, and width as I was getting used to the machine.

This thing sews soooo smoothly.  It's comfortable, slips so easily, sews so quietly, and moves so smoothly that it's almost hypnotic to use (keep in mind that my eighteen year old Singer runs well but rough; and my Brother runs like a shopping cart in a gravel pit).

I didn't just play around with it.  I put it to work on the new Samurai outfit I'm doing for Takuan, on the appliqué around the bottom of the pants.  I'm sorry, Old Singer, but, um, your services are no longer required.

So this is the computer.  The computer.  MY SEWING MACHINE HAS A COMPUTER.  Mkay. Sorry.  There's so much information in the booklet on how to use this thing, and the buttons don't really say anything (aside from the ABC one)...but it's actually very simple to operate.  For example, see the numbers on the LED screen (it's got an LED screen, you guys)?  Skip the first button.  The next two adjust the stitch width up and down, then the last two do the same thing for the length.  There's a stitch selector, and each of the patterns is numbered. There's a dual-needle selector, a mirror-image selector (yes, it will sew any one of those 225 stitches backwards for you), an "eraser" button to delete all settings and start over, and some quick-select buttons across the bottom.   Easy as pie.





As if this thing wasn't awesome enough...

• it has a serging stitch that will - you guessed it - sew and overcast in the same pass, just like a serger machine.  
• it has some embroidery stitches I've seen on Norse and Russian garb used to embellish seams and hem edges, that I had been going to do by hand.  
• It won't do an eyelet all by itself, but two of the seven buttonhole stitches make keyhole buttonholes, the top part of which is basically an eyelet that just needs a wee bit of satin-stitching across one side to close it to a full circle.  So it's a two-step eyelet.  Guess what I don't have to do by hand anymore? 
• it has a hand-stitched stitch that looks like...wait for it...a hand-stitched stitch.  Like this: 

I don't have to do that by hand anymore, either.  O_O

Anyway.  I'll quit gushing now.  LOL.  Yeah, right.  I probably won't shut up about this thing for weeks.  

Happy freaking birthday to me. :)  

Next week. Early present. :)