Just a couple little things

I don't have any major projects right now, which is starting to make me a little antsy, but I do have a few small things I can post about here.  I did mention my New Year's dress, but I haven't posted it yet, and I'm pretty proud of that.

So, first of all, yeah, I totally fit into my high school junior prom dress. I don't care what anyone says, or who gets mad at me about that, I'm damn proud of that. I've worked freaking hard to get myself somewhere where I could be happy with my body and I'll be damned if I let anyone make me feel bad about being proud of that.  When I pulled it out of the box to try it on, I did the math and realized it had been about 14 years since I last wore it. I put it on, had my daughter zip it up, and about cried when I realized not only did it fit, but I even had just a bit of breathing room in it. There are not many people that can wear something they wore 14 years ago when they were a teenager.

Unfortunately, the only pictures I have of me in the dress in high school are not great ones, and due to the fact that it's silver, it's shininess means it didn't photograph well, but here's what I have to give you an idea of what I was working with:

There you are. High school, 16-17 year old me. Man, I remember that prom date. I had such a crush on that boy, and basically ran a whole campaign to get him to take me to prom. I had literally everyone who knew both of us telling him to ask me to prom. God, that's so embarrassing. Protip, past Jessica. If a boy likes you, he'll ask you out. If he doesn't, you just embarrass yourself by forcing the date. I mean, we were friends, but he wasn't interested in anything else. We had a fun time anyways, but uhg. I suppose if your teenage self doesn't embarrass you though you probably did something wrong.

Anyways.

So, once I'd established the dress still fit, I needed a plan. I knew I wanted to remove the sleeves, and shorten the skirt. After trying the dress on I realized the skirt definitely needed to be widened as well to be more flare-y and twirly. I wanted to incorporate the shawl I was wearing as well.

Removing the sleeves was easy, I just used my seam ripper and then tucked the silver fabric under into the lining, which I also folded over, and then just stitched around the armhole. Super simple. Man, those sleeves were so restrictive, I couldn't move my arms hardly at all with them on there. I knew those had to go first thing.

After that, I put it on, marked where my knees were, and then just cut the skirt off right there. God, it felt so wrong to cut into the skirt like that. This dress cost $130, and it was so pretty, it felt like I was going to ruin it.

The dress had princess seams, going all the way up and down the dress, so after cutting it off at the knee, I used my seam ripper and opened up all of the seams from the knee to about where my hip would hit. I then took the piece that I cut off the dress and cut it into seven triangles as wide as I could make them, two for the front seams, two for the side seams, two for the back seams and one for the center back seam where the zipper was, for maximum skirt flare. I carefully pinned and stitched the triangles into each seam that I opened, basically adding godets to each seam to add width to the skirt. I hemmed it up and everything looked great.

I made one further adjustment, I'd intended to wear a petticoat with the dress, but realized that the bottom of the dress had a tulle ruffle to make it a little fluffy. Of course that got cut off with the bottom of the dress and liner, so I took that piece and had to gather it a bit to fit, and then pinned and sewed it to the liner of the dress roughly around my hips to create a built in petticoat. After that all I had to do was serge the raw cut edge of the bottom of the liner and the dress was done. It was really pretty easy.

For accessories to go with the dress, I took the silver shawl and tied it into a big bow and safety pinned it to the back of the dress. I wanted to sew it in, but the place where I wanted to sew it cut off the zipper too high making it too difficult to get into the dress, so I stuck with pinning it.

I bought another pair of those great cheap ballet flats from Walmart (the same ones I used for Princess Peach's shoes) only in grey this time, and covered them in super fine silver glitter (that I am STILL finding all over my house in the strangest places) and then like four or five coats of spray on Polycrylic, in an attempt to trap as much glitter as I could. I was doing a pair of red glitter heels at the same time for a vague future idea, but I'll cover that later when I really launch the other project. I glued a few plastic jewels to the silver shoes for fun and they were good to go.

I made myself a new necklace and new earrings and a pretty dangly hair piece with a bunch of sparkly crystal ball beads I had, and on the day of the party I covered myself in body glitter, did super sparkly makeup and even sprinkled glitter in my hair and hairsprayed it in place. I was all glitter all the time and it was great.

Of course, the pictures don't really capture the sparkles well. But I looked great, and now I have a super awesome fancy party dress that I'm very proud of.

That last picture I'm holding my little brother's light saber replica, cuz the glowy saber was just fun with all the shininess.

The only other thing I've done lately is some minor alterations to some things. I got a few new tshirts from Kohl's lately because they had some really neat nerdy ones, but only in the MEN'S section. (Angry side-eye at Kohl's. Girls have nerdy interests other than Disney, Kohl's.) So I had to run my shirts through my serger really quick so they'd be flattering. I got a Duck Tales shirt, one with the Nintendo 64 logo and one with the Playstation logo, and one with the Punisher skull on it, because I recently finished the Netflix series of The Punisher and kind of fell in love. Those shirts were easy fixes though, I've done that hundreds of times.

The last thing was something I was pretty excited about. So, I went with Stu to visit his parents for Christmas this year, and his mom always takes him shopping for new clothes while he's there and I got to go along this time. At one store while we were waiting for Stu to try stuff on I happened to spot this gorgeous moto/biker style jacked with a burgundy fur collar, and I wanted it so bad. I was hesitant because, let's be real. We all know there was no chance in hell that would fit me, the sleeves would never be long enough. I tried it on anyways, and I was right, but it wasn't disastrously short. Stu's mom offered to buy it for me and I just couldn't resist. I'd always wanted a jacket like that, but I'd always been too afraid to waste money on something that might not work. But after some sales and coupons the jacket only cost her $17, which is a freaking amazing price for a jacket like that, so I didn't feel too bad.

I intended to go buy some black ribbed fabric to add cuffs to the sleeves and the bottom of the jacket, but I actually ended up stumbling across a long sleeved shirt in a thrift store that was made out of exactly the fabric I wanted. So rather than gambling on a fabric store having what I wanted, I just bought the shirt and cut it up. It ended up working perfectly. I got the cuffs in and took in the side seams of the jacket just a bit for a little curvier shape, and was very happy with the result.

The one on the left is as it was originally, on Christmas morning. The right is after I added the cuffs. I realize the differences aren't super visible, but it looks good and I feel great in that jacket. The fur collar of that jacket is removable too, so I can wear it with or without, and I can use the collar to make other collars to change up the look however I want, it's pretty great.

Well, that's all I've done lately. I'm feeling that project itch though, so I've got to come up with something. I'll let you know when I do.

A Copycat Experiment

I shall never buy dresses again. All pictures were taken by my coworker, Will.

Okay, so I love thrift store shopping. Who doesn't, right? Dig through piles of crap and find something awesome for cheap. Well last time I went shopping with Amanda I actually did buy a dress.

Okay, real talk here, guys, I want to be buried in this dress. I have never loved a dress like I love this dress. And you know I love dresses. I mean, first of all, look at it. I'm adorable. It's got the cool purple pattern, it looks like stained glass windows. I refer to it as my stained glass dress. Everything about the cut and the fit just flatters every part of me, no matter how fat or unattractive I feel that day. I always feel adorable in this dress. I never want to take it off. (I'm aware the boots don't match, I was wearing a different outfit that day and the boots were meant to go with that, I changed into this for picture taking purposes. You'll understand in a moment.)

Then a horrible thought occurred to me. What if I stain it? It's a dark dress so small chance of that. But still. What if I tear it? Or wear it out since I want to just wear it forever? I cannot be without this dress, I need the ability to make more. So I decided to try to copy it. I sew fairly well, I think, I can do that. However, I was not willing to take it apart to make a pattern for it because I was not going to risk this dress on my ability to put it back together.

So, basically what I did was I laid this dress on the floor, laid paper over top, and then traced the pieces of the dress by feeling the seams through the paper. It got tricky, especially on the skirt where I could feel the seams of the panels on the other side, which confused me. But I used my tape measure to make sure that the pieces I traced matched up with the pieces of the dress, and managed to come up with a fairly reasonable approximation of the pieces this dress is assembled of. I ended up just freehanding a pattern for the sleeve, because there was just no way to trace that. Luckily I'm familiar with what the shape of a sleeve pattern looks like, and I planned to be working in super stretchy jersey, that would forgive me for small imperfections.  I cut out my fabric, sewed it together and this is what I got:

I'm pretty pleased with it. I made a slight style change on the sleeve, there are slits down the top of the sleeve that are held closed at the top, center, and bottom with some custom fabric covered buttons I made. The intention was for this dress to be more summery than the others. (This is why the brown boots. They still don't look great, but it was February, it's still cold out.) There was a couple of things I learned, first of all, the bottom band on the skirt. On the original dress it's cut curved, like the bottom of a circle skirt. On mine it's just a straight rectangle. It doesn't look bad or anything, it just makes a difference in the way the dress moves. The copycat filled with air in the breeze and would billow outwards. The original didn't hold the air and was more likely to flap like a flag. Again, neither is bad, it's just different. Also I think that the front yoke of my copycat is slightly narrower. Not a big deal. I also learned that the panels that make up the dress vary greatly in length from front to back, which made it necessary to trim and slant the tops a bit. I also need to adjust the width of the tops so that they line up with how big around the yoke is. I had to make these adjustments on the fly as I sewed it together.

 I'm going to make this dress one more time just to try and get it even better than this. The shaping of the panels is very important to make sure the dress sits correctly, although like I said before, the jersey is very forgiving. I recently discovered the idea of making a pattern from an existing garment by covering each piece in painter's tape, then pulling that off and tracing it, so I might try that and make a whole new pattern for my second go round. The panel shaping is so important, and even though I'm thrilled with my copycat, I still think I can do better.

Yeah, I'm a lazy blogger. This isn't news.

So it's been a little while. But I do have somethings to show off.

So, first of all, they put all of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. (Shut up, this is relevant.) Now, I've always liked the show, but I've never seen all of it, so I started marathoning it. And Lorelai and Rory have a great love of classic movies and shows. As a result I started thinking about that time period and how much I've always loved the 50s housewife look. And Audrey Hepburn. Aaaaaaaand we all know how much I love to make dresses. So I decided to make myself a dress in this style:

Not necessarily the laciness, just the cut. They sell dresses in this style on Amazon for like $50-60, and I thought I might just buy it, but then Caleb got me a serger for Christmas. Holy shit, the clever little bastard was so pleased with himself, going on and on for months about how he had no gift ideas for me, he didn't know what he was going to get for me. Sneaky little brat. He was so smug at how happy and excited I was to get it. So anyways, I needed a project to use my new serger on. So I bought these two patterns:

Because that's exactly the look I was going for. So Amanda and I went fabric shopping. She got a sewing machine for Christmas, so she was all excited to sew too. It's kinda awesome to have her to sew with and geek out on new projects with. She bought these patterns too, but after my experience with them, that I'm about to tell you about, she needs some more experience before she tackles these.

So I started with the green dress because that was my original plan. I found this gorgeous slightly stretchy cotton, white, with a beautiful butterfly print. That is an entire sentence of things I don't usually wear, but it was so, so pretty. I just fell in love. I had some issues with the way the bodice fit, so I ended up adding gathers across the seam that goes just under the bust, and I severely disagreed with the way it wanted me to do the back. It has a cool back:

But it waned me to do some weird ass thing with facings when the bodice is already lined, and I didn't understand. So I took out the facing and just lined the bodice with the contrast color. It came out pretty good. I also bought a petticoat, because why wear the big 50s circle skirt if you don't have a petticoat for it? It just seems like a waste. You can't see it in the pics, but it's red. Here's what we got:

I had to so the midriff section in the contrast color because since my fabric had a print it looked weird when the pattern changed direction at the seam.

For the record, I had been drinking some wine by the time these were taken, Amanda told me to pose and I did. I was being silly. I had taken all my sewing stuff to her house and we were sewing together.

Oh, my god, my hair! you haven't seen that yet! A little while ago, Amanda went and had the bottom half of her hair dyed blue, and it looked so cool I decided to copy it, only I went with red. You can sort of see it in the pictures, there are other's where it's clearer. Here's the night I did it: And you'll see it clearer in more pictures I'm about to post.

I'm afraid I have nothing to show for the white cherry dress yet, that sonofabitch is complicated, and has frustrated me to no end. It was actually these two dresses that revealed to me I need a new dressform. Unfortunately Tipsy can no longer stand, and the duct tape has shifted so much she's no longer the same shape as me. I learned this when making the butterfly dress. I'd put it on Tipsy, and think I needed to make all these changes, but then put it on myself and it fit just fine. So the cherry dress is complex and I need to be able to fit it to myself, but I can't use Tipsy. So now that Amanda's sewing, I talked her in to making insulation foam dressforms with me. However, that's a post for another time, they're not done yet. You'll hear about that later. The relevant information is my version of the cherry dress has been put aside due to frustration until the new dressform is done. 

 I did make myself a second dress that got completed though. This one I just stumbled across some navy blue and white polka dotted fabric in Walmart's clearance section and bought shit tons of it because I instantly wanted to make a dress out of it. I used the pattern I used for my yellow Selphie Tilmitt dress, because it fit nicely, and then I just added a circle skirt and a collar.

Why yes, that is a terrible in the mirror selfie. You've seen those from me before. The belt in this picture is wrong, but the dress desperately needs a skinny white belt around the waist, and I don't have one. I will get one on my next thrift store trip though.

For the record, I went full 50s crazy there for a bit. I've studied multiple tutorials on 50s style hair, and have tried a few, and will do more. I learned to do the 50s cat-eye eyeliner, and I now do that every day because I like the way it looks. I bought a bright red lipstick which I've never done before, but is very 50s. And turns out I love wearing bright red lipstick. I also found some cute little Mary Jane style heels at Goodwill that are perfect for the whole look. I also impulsively bought some white lace gloves, and some stockings with the seam up the back. And of course I made myself a proper 50s pearl necklace with matching earrings to complete the outfit. Yeah, I went nuts. But I can now pull off a very thorough 50s look, and I love it.

I also made myself a petticoat, a white one, since I felt like I might not always want to wear a red one under this dress. And I learned that I hate making petticoats. It's cheaper moneywise to make one, but the giant tedious pain in the ass that is making petticoats makes just buying one so worth it. I don't have any pictures of the petticoat by itself, although I probably should. But here's the link to the tutorial I used to make it, so you get the idea:

http://sugardale.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-make-petticoat.html

Okay, next completed project!

I've been seeing these on Pinterest for ages:

And holy shit have I been lusting after it. It's just the most gorgeous, graceful, elegant look. So I finally made up my mind to get some tulle and make it myself. I read half a dozen different tutorials on it, these were my favorites: 

http://mellysews.com/2013/04/tulle-skirt-tutorial.html (for the circle skirt math)

https://bowtiesandbaubles.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/diy-anthropologie-karinska-tulle-skirt/ (for the option to put a zipper in the skirt, even though I ended up not doing that)

http://www.cottonandcurls.com/2012/12/diy-tulle-skirt-tutorial/  (for the elastic waist)

 Basically what I did was cut out a circle skirt of some white jersey I'd had laying around, and pinned it directly to Tipsy's hips. She may not be good for bodice fitting, but her hips can hold up a skirt. However this was complicated by her inability to stand. After that I continued to cut circle skirts out of the tulle making sure to cut the opening just slightly bigger than my hips. I did not want to do a zipper, but I really did not want a super gathered waist, there was going to be enough bulk from all the layers of tulle. With the opening just large enough to slip over my hips, it would need hardly any gathering. So I just continued to cut layer after layer and I put each layer on Tipsy and carefully pinned them together until I liked the way it looked. I ended up with eight layers, more than any other tutorial I read. then I carefully sewed all the layers together, and serged it so it would be nice and neat. I did not want to sew the skirt and elastic right sides together and then fold it under the way you normally sew things together, because of the bulk that would add, so I just put the elastic on top of the fabric and topstitched around. Because I'd cut the opening as small as I could and still fit, I didn't have to manually gather anything, I just stretched the elastic as I sewed. It came out great. The skirt is seven layers of ivory tulle, and then one on top of this golden honey color just to add depth. I really love it.

I like the black waistband because it won't get discolored being up against my skin. Once I was done with this, I was so incredibly happy with it I asked Will to take some pictures for me, and he ended up taking me on almost a full photo shoot around the little business park we work in. He said we took like 100 pictures.

You can really see my hair color in those, I love the way it just pops out. I don't know why my skirt always looks kinda grey in the pictures though, I swear it doesn't look grey in real life.

Anyways, that's all the projects for now. I have more, some not done yet, some not documented yet. I'll get to it eventually. This is what you get for now.

More dresses. I like to make dresses, okay?

So, rather abruptly, roughly around end of August-September, I suddenly had a wild desire for a maxi dress. I don't know why, I've never wanted one before, they never fit properly and were never flattering.  But suddenly I wanted one.  And I thought maybe if I made it I would like it. Guess what? I was right.

These were taken by Will, here at work, which is why they look all fancy.  The off white lacy one isn't one I made, it's just a cool one I bought and Will took a picture of.  The blue one I actually had someone pull over as I was walking through a parking lot to ask me where I got it. The bright stripy one I wore on my birthday.  There's a fourth dress, the one that actually came first, but I don't currently have a good picture of it, so that will have to wait.  Everyone who sees these is always so impressed, but they were so simple.  The burgundy one is just a tube attached to a circle skirt with the big band added to the bottom for length, and the others are just tubes attached to big triangles.  Incredibly simple, no pattern needed, and takes like half an hour to make.  Which is why after the first one I immediately pumped out three more.  The only difficult part is that it takes a shit ton of fabric, so you have to find it cheap or you're gonna spend way more than you want to on it.  I'm super happy with the way they came out though.

Yet another new dress...

Honestly, I just love making summer dresses.  They're surprisingly adorable and easy to make.  And I will wear them, I wear a lot of skirts in the summer time to work because I can't wear my shorts that are my usual summer clothes.  Also I really really really really really really really want it to be summer.  And I really really really really really really really want to go shopping and buy summer clothes which I really really really really really really don't need to do.  So I'm working with what I already have.  This time I'm working from this tutorial: 

http://fashioncuts.i8.com/Sara_Berman_Style_Dress.html

It's an adorable style.  And I have a fairly large amount of this brown and black striped jersey that I got forever ago with the intention of making striped leggings to go with my steampunk stuff, which I've never gotten around to.  I still have plenty left after doing this to do that still.  Here's mine:

hahahhhaaaa... Those are kind of terrible pictures.  I swear it's cute.  I'm very happy with it.  It looks much better on me than it does on Tipsy.  It's not a very exciting color, I wouldn't normally go for that, but it's what I had.  I didn't really follow the tutorial, I mostly just took the dress design as inspiration.  The skirt is your basic circle skirt (with no need to hem cuz yay jersey!)   The band around the ribs is just a strip sewn around the top of the skirt.  I had to gather the skirt a bit cuz I cut the waist in the skirt a bit too big.  But it was an easy fix.  For the top part, I measured the distance underneath my bust from the center of my chest to my side seam.  I added 2 inches to that to account for the overlap.  Then I kind of guessed how high up over my chest I wanted it to go and cut 4 triangles where the bottom width was my first measurement, and the height was the guess I'd made.  I cut 4, because then I could sew two together and then turn them inside out to have nice neat finished edges on the top.  Plus this fabric was just a teensy bit thin, and I worried about it being see through on the chest.  So I made the two triangles, pinned them to the front, overlapping a bit, and sewed them on.  After that was done I realized the back was too far down for me to wear a bra, and I'm just not able to work with the whole no-bra thing.  So I cut a small rectangular strip and sewed it across the back from one triangle to the other.  That covered my bra band perfectly.  I sewed ribbon to the points of the triangles for straps, so I can tie a big pretty bow behind my neck.

I though the color would be a problem for me, but the style turned out so cute that it really doesn't bother me.  Plus I just love circle skirts.  They're so twirly!

In Which I Have a Shit Ton of New Clothes

So, I haven't felt much like posting.  I would be so bad at running a blog for a living.....  Which is why I don't. But I have had a few projects I've been working on.  After working on those infinity dresses- I did get a second one, a solid baby blue one that I haven't taken pictures of- I really wanted to see how much of my fabric stash I could work through.  My tub that holds my fabric is overflowing and I really needed to make some room.  So I got out a pattern for a simple princess seamed dress I'd had for a while, and some magenta stretch satin and went to work.

The godets were optional, but I can't resist adding extra twirl to a skirt. I didn't have enough pink to make the dress solid, so I went with a contrasting color.  Added a black band around the top, a black contrasting zipper, cut off the original sleeves, cuz I hated them, and went with a ribbon halter around the neck.  It's shiny and twirly and fun.  I'm pleased with it.  Before I decided to cut the sleeves off I was really worried it was gonna be a failure.  I REALLY hated the sleeves.  Well, more like straps, it was a sleeveless pattern.  But for some reason the straps made it all wrong.  So I cut the bitches off.  All better!

I also came across a tutorial that I just had to try: http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/dramatic-blouse

It was an easy, not too costumy peasant blouse!  I love the look of it, especially with a corset, and I am always on the lookout for more options to wear my corsets in my every day wardrobe.  So I hit Goodwill.

And of course I can't stop at just one.  They work by themselves, with a corset, a corset belt, or even one of my normal wide belts.  I wish I had some before pics.  They were all XL mens button ups.  I may do one more just so I can have a before shot.  I can't wait for weather to be warm enough to wear them!

And, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that I'm wearing a new corset over the white one.

Just a plain black one.  I had thought to embellish it with some rivets, but I'm so afraid to!  I can make anything simple and basic, but decorating just scares the hell out of me.

As for next projects, I have one busk left, I think I want to make a mesh corset, one specifically meant to go under clothing but will be cooler than a normal one because of the mesh.  Good for summertime.  And I STILL need to narrow the hips on my corset pattern.  I don't understand, the single layer one was perfect, and this one's a bit loose in the hips again.  Sigh.  

Also, this is my next big project: 

I'm so in love with that I don't even have the words to explain.  And since it's got a flat front, I don't need another busk, just boning and grommets, which I have plenty of.  I can't wait for this one.

Is it spring yet?

I'm so bad at waiting for winter to be over.  I just hate it so much. I can deal with it at the beginning, because I'm excited to wear my sweaters and boots, and I love the holidays, but by January there's no good holidays left and I'm tired of my winter clothes.  I just want my shorts and tank tops and flip flops back.  It makes me really want to go shopping for summer clothes.  Which is silly, because I have so many clothes that my closet literally cannot fit any more.  And that's not a superfluous use of the word literally.  I'm not kidding. I've jammed as much as I can in there.

SO.  To keep me from shopping, I decided to do some sewing.  I have recently fallen in love with the infinity dress, the cute little dress that can be styled a million different ways and is apparently stupidly easy to make. Tutorial for the basic thing here: http://www.soyouthinkyourecrafty.com/little-red-infinity-dress-tutorial/ And here it is!

This is actually the third version.  It's not a complicated dress, but I did some experimenting and learned some things.  First of all, I knew I wanted a tube top underneath. (Adding in the tube top is super simple, it's basically just widening the waistband, but the tutorial I looked at for that is here: http://sewlikemymom.com/infinity-dress-with-bandeau-top/) There is no way I can wear something without a bra, and I didn't want to get a special bra so I don't have the band going around my back.  The tube top added in is a simple fit.  I also learned that the tube top should be the same color as the ties, not the skirt. If it's the same color as the skirt you have to be very careful to cover all the different colored fabric  just right with the ties or it looks weird. I have another version of this dress I made that illustrates this issue.  If it's wrapped right it looks fine, but it can be a pain.  For the ties, I cut them about 12" wide and then folded them over and sewed along the long sides and one end, basically making a long tube with one end closed.  I love the light green fabric, you can't tell in the picture, but it's actually sheer. I also know that any stretching on an unfinished edge leads to running and shredding.  The tube sealed up all the raw edges.  I did not finish the hem of the skirt though.  The dark green fabric is just jersey and doesn't have that problem.  The tube top is a layer of the sheer light green over a layer of the dark green.  I thought I might need to put elastic around the top of it to hold it up, but I managed to sew it tight enough to fit.  I have a slight problem with my stitches not wanting to stretch as much as the fabric, even though I did zigzag, so I have to be very careful when I put it on.  I just know I'm going to rip the stitches at some point and I'll have to try something else so I don't keep having that issue.

Anyways, the dress is super fun to wear, circle skirts are so twirly! And the fabric is soft and comfy and drapey.  I also have a theory that since the tube top only goes down to the edge of my ribs, I'd probably be really cute pregnant in this dress.  I was thinking about cutting the skirt a little shorter, but I don't know if I will.  I like it the way it is. Now I just need to go learn different ways to wrap it.

Shut up, I'm hilarious.

AHAHAHAHAHaHaaaaaa.... I'm so clever.

I should be ashamed of myself.



Anyways, the point of my ultra lame reference making is: I rescued the 5th corset!  I'm so glad!  I really didn't want that one to fail since the image of a brown leather underbust with swing hooks is what started me on my steampunk and corset making path.

Here it is:

yeah, I know the plaid pajama pants kinda ruin the effect.  oh well.  It's after midnight and I didn't care enough to change.
Here's an upclose of the fabric so you can see the pattern:

I'm very fond of it.  and now I have a brown corset with cliche swing hook closures.  I don't care if every steampunk corset uses swing hooks, I think they look awesome.

I managed to rescue the front panels from the original corset, although I did have to add a small strip to the edge to have enough fabric for boning channels.  And I saved about half of the back panels with the grommets in them.  I just barely managed to scrape together enough fabric for the rest of it.  I had to redo panels 2, 3, and 4 to correct the fit issue.  I had to resize most of the bones, but that wasn't a big deal.  I found it was nice to have the front and back closures already done as I was assembling it so I could actually try it on and know it was going to fit before it was finished.  I had to use commercial bias tape, since there was barely any scraps of the fabric left, and on the tops of the front panels it's actually only glued down because the bones in front go up too high for me to sew it down.

However, the liner looks great, the inside is very pretty.  My best work yet, considering it's a salvaged failure.

Yay!

Thrift Store Overhaul!

So, I find those blogs that buy nasty thrift store clothes and remake them extremely inspiring, so I decided to try it myself.  I got this suit from Goodwill for $3.  It was a size 16, I think, which is several sizes too big.  The jacket was shapeless and I'm really not sure if the sleeves were supposed to be 3/4 sleeves, or were just really short.  The pants had a gathered elastic waistband and were super baggy.  They looked awful.  The nature of the black suit is such that you can't really see how bad it fit, but it was really awful.  So I took the thing apart.

First, the skirt.  I have lots of practice turning pants into skirts, I've done it half a dozen times this summer, the challenge this time was I wanted to do away with the gathered elastic waist and go to a much smoother pencil shape with a zipper.  So I cut the waistband off, cut the length to where I wanted, took out the crotch seam and stitched it into a skirt shape.  I added a zipper using some techniques I'd picked up from a pair of pants I recently made. (which I really ought to get a picture of, they turned out nice.) I added a lovely smooth waistband that you cant see, you'll just have to trust me that it's much nicer.

The jacket I cut down based on this tutorial here: http://autnott.deviantart.com/art/Up-Cycled-Hobbit-Vest-Tutorial-339969518

The jacket was big enough that it lent itself perfectly for the kind of double breasted look I was going for.  In fact, I may add a second row of buttons, but I'll have to go buy more first.  I had to reshape it to fit, taking in the side seams, and the seams on the back so it would actually fit me, giving the nice curvy shape you see here.  I relearned how to do buttonholes, and bound everything up with bias tape.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it came out.  Much, much sexier.

Also, for the record, it's not plain black, it's got a light blue pinstripe that doesn't show at all in the pictures.

A Steampunk Excursion!

So, I agreed to escort Amanda to Beerfest today.  Since I don't like beer, I make an excellent designated driver for this kind of thing.  And, kind of out of nowhere, Amanda and I decided to dress steampunk for it.

So, I’ve been creative lately. I’ve been playing around with steampunk and have made some things. Me (the tall one) and my sister in law (the shorter one) all dressed up. I altered the black shirt and skirt Amanda’s wearing, made the jewelry and the gloves we’re both wearing. She made her own hair clip. I decorated my hat, and Amanda helped. I also made the skirt I’m wearing, the little belt with the pouches, and, my by far proudest achievement, the corset I’m wearing. Corsets are hard to make but very satisfying. 

I'm very proud of the steampunk things I've made so far. The corset turned out really good, and fits perfectly.  My sewing machine hates me, though.  It did not like that thick fabric.  In reference to my first steampunk post, here's what you see here: 

The hat and sunglasses are from the Amazon set I bought.  I decorated the hat, and Amanda added the chains on the side.  You can't really see them. I'm gonna get a better pic of the hat soon.  The necklace came from my general jewelry supplies.  The corset is the one that used to be a suitcase and a duffle bag.  You've seen the belt and watch already.  And the gloves. Both sets of gloves were made from my pattern.  The skirt is from the curtains I bought from Goodwill, trimmed with the lace I painstakingly picked from the yellow dress.

New finished crochet thing!

So, I don't remember if I mentioned it, but last month we drove to Las Vegas for the Magic the Gathering Grand Prix.  It was a lot of fun, crowded, busy, SO MUCH MAGIC.  But I went 5-4, won more rounds than I lost and that's all I wanted.  Anyways, faced with the prospect of a 12 hour drive with my husband and some of our rowdy Magic friends, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep or concentrate on a book, so I decided it was time to start a new project.  I'd really been wanting a crocheted skirt for summer and it just so happened my grandma had just given me a bunch of cheap crappy red heart yarn.  Red Heart is not my first choice of yarn, but I figured since I had it I should use it.  So I started a new skirt.  And here, about a month later, it's done.

Of course, by the time I got to the end of this, I was so bored I was going crazy.  And I was trying to work on this while obsessing over steampunk stuff, so I really didn't want to be working on this.  I made myself finish it, though, cuz I knew I never would if I didn't do it now.  I'm glad I did, the skirt is cute, and fun to wear.  It flares like a flamenco dancer's skirt when I spin, so I spin constantly like a little girl when I wear it.  I went down a size on the pattern because I was worried about stretch, which turns out was a valid concern.  It's a bit snug getting in to right out of the wash, but after about an hour it fits perfectly.  Oh, and the cheap yarn softened up significantly after a round in the washer with some fabric softener. I'm pretty happy with it, even if I got annoyed there towards the end.  The thing took a crap ton of yarn, too, 7 1/2 skeins!  just for a skirt! geez.