Get A Wiggle On

I began this garment thinking I could sprint to kinkos, grab a decent copy, cut it out and boom! Have this lovely gown that would only need minor fixing. Ha! Hahaha. No. First of all, it took at least an hour working with a Kinko/Fed Ex working to find what size to blow this up to. THEN they informed me it would be about 22.00. WHAT? And that was just for a portion of the grid, not even the full set itself! I declined, but did pay the few bucks for a slightly bigger version. Then, I went to Walmart and got this grid thingy used mainly for quilts. With my roll of transfer paper and an urn of markers I counted, measured and copied my way to the pattern. Not half bad if I do say so myself. This wasnt even as difficult or as time consuming as one would think. It was kind of enjoyable, in the way that adult coloring books and sudoku are. After getting the basics down I determined to make a mock up in a linen fabric I had and work from there.    Miraculou...

Family Portrait 2017; My Underwear I was going to go all out and use the rare pattern I finally collected to make the stays, pannier, and chemise. I really was. But I sewed two stays from American Duchess' pattern and well, practice makes perfect right? I gotta say, I am so glad I did. Since I haven't tried the rare pattern yet I dont know how it sews up so anything could go wrong. This is the pattern, I do have it but Im just not wanting to go into all that goes into creating the pattern. Maybe later. Anyway, I use a blue on off white pattern slightly loose weave for the fashion fabric, and a thicker poly blue for the inners. Cotton bias tape for edges. When making the nieces' stays I found the thick, strong zip ties were a little too bulky? I mean, it made it quick to sew, but I had to straighten the curled zip ties and the end result is a little overbearing. So I used the slightly smaller 14'' zip ties and the end result is definitely a lot...

The Challenge: January :  Firsts & Lasts  – Create either the first item in a new ensemble, or one last piece to put the final fillip on an outfit. Material: Cotton novelty fabric from Joanns, thrift shop raw linen, plain cotton Pattern:  Simplicity 8162 stays and chemise Year: 1800s  Notions: thread, bias tape, eyelets, zip ties, lace hem tape, lace, ribbon; grosgrain ribbon; How historically accurate is it? Like, linen is fairly accurate, hand sewn 50% of the stays so maybe 20%? The eyelets are definitely not even remotely accurate. Neither is the machine sewing, or the zip ties. Hours to complete: Two weeks, working idly on it while doing other things... maybe 20 hours total? First worn: not yet Total cost:  20 bucks for boning, notions and bias table, thread and fabric from stash.  Firstly, this is what I like to call, my 'working' muslin. I dont like sewing muslins so what I do is sew a version for someone else to give ...

Not to be confused with Thing One, or Thing Three. I have many related things. Thing Two has a caraco type dress, with petticoat. She helped muchly with the sewing of the corset, and the hips, and like many Teenage Things got bored. So now she comes over and play 'dolls' with her beloved Aunt, I.E. She stands there and sighs like a teenager while I pin and unpin dress bits around her. Strangely enough, she loves it, even though she acts like its a chore. I dont quite understand teenagers anymore. Anyway, the caraco has a lining base of American Duchess' OUtlander inspired dresses, size fourteen, which I then embellished on by eyeing Janet Arnolds pattern in Patterns of fashion. I used the figure showing the pet a lair, but closed the back. Not enough fabric to full out go watteau. The fabric itself is a tablecloth, linen/cotton blend, with lines of metallic thread running through it making stripes in varying widths. There is a slightly impressionist imag...

Well, after much debate and mental blocks, I managed this almost done. Partly due to my seamstress block, general boredom and regular project apathy but also because of the color. I know historically there is a huge amount of pastel colored men's suits and more than enough acceptance in the general community for me to dress my son in pale shell pink, but... My son is autistic. If he were in full control of his faculties, I could explain how cruel the world is, and he would understand that loving pink and orange is perfectly normal but people might tease him. As it is, I have to continually have him repeat "Pink is nongendered, its a COLOR" when he tells me kids tell him its a girls color. I didn't want to cause even further issues and confusion and the idea of someone teasing my clueless son both hurts and enrages me. But, after weeks of being dissatisfied with fabric I was looking at I found this at Hobby Lobby and it stuck. Of course this is SUCH a strange, so...