Titanic Tea Dress with Lisa Posting for Robin

Robin has been without computer while I've been without sewing machine.  She sent me a couple of phone pics of her progress and I'm posting them for her.  I have pictures of her bodice but they are both poor quality, and show a bit of skin that she might prefer not to share.  So, with that, here is her basted together tea dress in it's poorly lit iPhone glory!
And here is MY hat!  pinned to the hat form, curled, warped and partly decapitated.  The crown was too tall for my cranium.
Now that I've posted this, she can pile on with her comments of woe about fitting this pattern.  Because she really, really doesn't like it.  She is a stickler for fit.  I am delighted by baggy loose stuff.  This is why I need her.  BTW, that's a $3 wall decoration not a 'real' hat.  Robin is working miracles.

I got to a point on this bodice where I just gave up. I cannot make it stop bunching in strange places.  Yes, I know it is kimono-style sleeves and that there should be some pit-ease but this thing bunches above the bust, at your clavicles, any- and every- where it pleases and no amount of futzing is going to fix it.  This is the Whack-A-Mole of bodices whereby, if you fix one thing, another pops up wrong. This is after two muslins, one if which fit fine until I cut it out of fashion fabric.
You can't see it in the photo, but the layers are all wrong, too.  The bodice is just basted to the bottom layers. This thing looks like a Mother-of-the-Bride dress, and a bad one at that.  I'm just hoping that a lovely, creative sash and a killer hat will keep people from looking at this horrid costume for too long. 

I'm loving making Lisa's hat, though.  At least the straw is cooperating. I made that curl with a lint brush and some steam.  Whoo hoo! I'm using the hat block my boyfriend got me for Christmas, taking a perfectly round hat-head hole and making it something a real person could wear. Maybe I should stick to millinery. 

Creeping Progress on Tea Dress - L

OK...this is a really crappy picture and the full length picture keeps disappearing in cyberspace.  But this is where I'm going.  The bodice is sewn together.  Mostly.  The side seams are sewn together.  Everything else is draped and pinned.  I needed to do this because I'm losing momentum.  I can't get any of the layers to hang evenly so I can't sew anything together.
Well, I suppose I could sew in the net sleeves.
Tonight I will try to baste the underlayer to the bodice and then baste each outer layer over it.  THAT should allow me to get close to even.  And when I say 'un-even' I am NOT talking about a quarter or half inch.  I've got 4 - 6 inches of crazy.
Please wish me luck.

This picture is even worse quality, but I finally got it to move from my phone to my computer.  You can see that the top layer is so very far from even that...well... it's really bad.


I mad a TON of progress last night.  I got the top and bottom hand basted together and everything is hanging nicely.  I got the lace 'over' sleeve sewn to the front.  The net 'under' sleeve is sewn in.  Tonight I plan to baste the chiffon and lace over layers into place and baste the center seam line on the top.  There are so many layers and they are each a different size!  I'm basically sewing them into place by hand so I can machine sew them all together.  I even got a hem pinned!  
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  And it's TEA!

Titanic Dress - Beading by hand - L

I'm still without my sewing machine so I'm trying to stay busy with hand work.  This weekend I tackled the center front panel for my Titanic Dress.  I was planning to do a lace mash-up but Robin called dibs on it first.  And her center panel is really pretty.  Then I decided I would do some beading.  I wanted to do it in the first place but thought lace would be a whole lot easier.  My thought was 100% correct.  And poor Rob...she was inundated with text messages all weekend.  'How does this look?'  'This way or that way?'  I'm nothing if not a bit insecure in my choices.

This is what I ended up with but my original sketch was a bit different.  I was aiming for a sort of Parisian Metro Art Nouveau  look.  I cribbed the image from some wallpaper prints from the period that I saw online.

I used tiny silver grey glass tubes, dark grey squares and mini ivory pearls.

Hand beading is a pain in the neck, back and fingers.  I drew the pattern on the back of the lining.  I added two pieces of chiffon (to boost the color) and basted the outside edge.  Then I basted the pattern in matching thread to give me something to follow.  Unfortunately I can't draw symmetrically.  So I ended up sewing on beads in the general area that I'd basted.  Afterward I removed basting stitches that showed.
Before I started beading, I added a layer of netting.  I liked the look of the netting over the chiffon (it wasn't structurally necessary).  Also, I hadn't decided HOW I was going to bead the design.  I tried to lay the beads on the design but they kept rolling off.  Pinning was a little better but not much.  Mostly I would bead a little then send it to Robin for approval.  I sometimes can't trust my judgement on stuff like this.  My personal taste is very bare and spartan of decoration so none of this feels natural to me.

First off, the glass tubes didn't all fit over my smallest needle.  Some did.  They were not at all the same length.  This made it difficult to make curves and make the pattern symmetrical.  Also, I might have thrown some of the beads in frustration when six in a row wouldn't go over the needle.  The pearls were easy.  The grey squares were not symmetrical and didn't want to lie flat on one side.  It was bewildering.  I expected that to be the easiest part.  Anyway, I slogged though it, bead by annoying bead.

Here are some of the sample pictures I sent to Robin.  It's done now.  Like many things I'm trying for the first time, I'm glad I did it, and I learned a lot.  Not sure when I'll want to do that much work again.  Also, it didn't take much to make that little center front panel quite heavy.  I hope it hangs nicely.  WHEN I can sew it in, WHEN I have a sewing machine.  Sigh.

They mate for life - L

Since my sewing machine is in the shop, I've been working on peripheral stuff.  Things like handwork for the pending renaissance dress, flea furs for both of us, renaissance buttons, and cutting and hemming chiffon. All need to be done by hand.  It's sort of odd to be shifting projects from moment to moment, but I'm getting used to it, and making some progress.  It's become glaringly obvious that Robin and I each have different talents so we are starting to parse some things to the 'expert'.  She is doing all the blackwork embroidery on her machine.  I don't have the ability or the patience to do that.  She is doing hats.  I have some sort of aversion to it.  I am doing renaissance buttons, flea furs, and research on new techniques like hand rolled chiffon hems.  (ugh).  She doesn't have the urge to make papier mache weasel heads...though I can't understand why not...??
Here is a matched pair of headless weasel bodies, including their gilded paws.  More pictures below.

What follows is a string of pictures including my first ever hand rolled hem.  The second edge was smoother.  Clearly this is a learned skill.  We'd heard that chiffon was a bitch to work with.  We heard true.  Ultimately, I found myself singing:
'I Fought Chiffon and Chiffon Won''

This edge is a center front panel.  I had planned to do the bottom hem, but I can't do it until I get it level.  Possibly in the next century?

Also, 4 different renaissance button samples.  Since Robin is doing my blackwork, I said I would make buttons for both her and her beau.  Lucky for me he has chosen one of the easiest to make because it turns out to take a lot longer than I'd anticipated and makes my fingers cramp and he needs 36 buttons!!!   I'm already rethinking my personal choice.

Finally, I tried paper clay for the first time.
Regular clay make the 'heads' for the flea furs too heavy.  
I spread the goop over heavy paper cones and made little 'lumps' with wire toenails for paws.

Then I cut some of Robin's faux fur into creature bits.
I decided to make them have a little character.  Then I had to make little legs.  Once I had sewn on the legs and added a little stuffing to create shaping, I gilded the paw pieces and glued them into the legs.  While I was sewing I was baking the paper clay at very low heat to speed the drying.
The heads will need to be sanded quite a bit and then gilded.  I will glue some fake jewels into the eye sockets and for general decoration.  Here they are!

February Sunday Sewing Bee or Finessing the Fitting - L&R

Lisa and I have scheduled a sewing day once a month for this year.  So far, we are sticking to it because we have so many projects going and so much fitting to do. Normally, we have two machines going, but I'm taking Lisa's in to the shop (the dealer is closer to me) and my other machine was set up for embroidery, so we made do with one. We turned the dining room into a factory and set to.




 First up, we worked on our Titanic Tea Dress muslins.  The pattern is from Sense and Sensibility and looks easy on the surface, but fitting the bodice is NOT easy. The front and back are all of a piece so adjustments often come with some unexpected side effects elsewhere. For mine, I tried to increase bust and lengthen it, but the way I did it gave me too much material under the kimono sleeve. We ended up using the original muslin with no FBA and adding length to the bottom, the easiest solution for me.

Lisa, in attempting to have enough material for her full bust, cut a size too large for her shoulders, but had a great fit for the FBA.  Instead of recutting, we glued fabric on to the muslin to get a shoulder line that wouldn't fall off her VERY small shoulders.  This is the beginning of the Franken-bodice.

My problem was that I had to add a lot of room for bust coverage plus length in the torso.  I ended up adding too much in the bust area so after angling the bust line and not having success, I removed a chunk of length and added it UNDER the bust.  You can see the glue lines and the vast difference this fitting made.  
Now we are ready to cut in to the fashion materiel - but not today.  Today is for fitting.
Actually we had cutting the fabric on our list of 'to do' but we just didn't have time.  We don't need each other's help to cut.  But we do solve problems together much better than alone.  L.

Material and pattern pieces adorned every surface. We had bolts of muslin and scraps, our Titanic fabrics, the Frock Coat Lisa is making for her S.O., a 1940's muslin, a Ren Corset and Lisa's 1912 lace-insertion slip (needed button holes and my machine is the resident button hole master.

Rob plays with fabric.

I made 12 buttonholes, sewed on 12 buttons.  I sewed together enough of the frock coat to be able to fit the shoulders and back-side seams.  I fit my Titanic bodice (about 6 times with cutting and gluing between each fitting) and then cut a final version.  And I did a first 'look' at a renaissance corset (see below). L.

Ugh!  I cut this out according to the measurements listed on the envelope and this muslin is just... big. Lisa keeps reminding me that envelope information is only a suggestion.


I love the intricacies of the draping but the only place to alter is on the sides and in the back.  Lisa gave me deeper back darts and took the sides in about 4 inches total. We wondered why it looked so dumpy and Lisa was considering even fitting alterations when we had an epiphany - We hadn't accounted for shoulder pads!!! Argghhh!

Now, I have pretty "strait across' shoulders, but this design, without shoulder pads, makes me look slope-shouldered. Below you'll see a shot of the pattern envelope and the solution.

Notice how the fit changes on the left (to viewer) side once the
wadded-up T-shirt stands in for a shoulder pad? It gave the shoulders
much needed form.  I'm still not the same shape as the fashion
rendering, but it makes the dress less dumpy on me. Hopefully,
the polka dots of the fashion fabric will fool the eye around the tummy area even more than the draping!

We also fit a muslin for Lisa's Renaissance corset and decided that she needed to cut a size 6 back and try to mate it to the existing size 20 front - those dang narrow shoulders actually are part of a very narrow back!  We redrew the offending back pieces.  Once Lisa gets the muslin pieces somewhere in the correct size territory, she'll cut out a new muslin of canvass or something that won't stretch to test the final fit before using fashion fabric.  In the meantime, I've decided to make "fitting lacings" where you have lacing grommets on a twill tape that can be stitched to whatever corset you are trying to fit.  I think we can both use this and it beats the heck out of trying to guess where it'll end up.
I'm just going to take a second to whine.  I really have the oddest shape.  It is really hard to fit.  Even when I was very thin, I couldn't find clothes that fit.  Now that I'm heavy, it's insane.  My weight is not evenly distributed.  But to end on a positive note, I am forced to learn a lot about modifying patterns.

All in all, a most productive day after which we were, again, both exhausted.

How Many White Things Can You Cut Out In 2 Days? - R

There are no pictures for this post because everything I did this weekend was done in white muslin or white material:
Traced pattern, then cut and marked 1940's dress muslin
Cut out white brocade and lining for a man's formal vest and bow tie,
Traced and cut out man's doublet muslin
Sewed a bit on a white muslin farthingale
Machine embroidered the cuffs, ruffles and collars of a man's white muslin Elizabethan shirt.  Have finally learned how to line those suckers up properly.
Did machine black work embroidery on a white muslin smock yoke for me (not at all successful and will probably have to scrap it and start over)
And, finally, made a pattern from an existing dress for my sister (that project is about 10 years in the waiting, but I finally had the skills and materials to do it right).

Waiting in the wings is the white muslin bodice for the Titanic Tea Dress that Lisa will fit to me this weekend, a white muslin Victorian chemise that is almost finished and some other project in a bag that I just didn't bother to look at.

So what do you do when you are sick of white muslin?  Go online the next day and by some colorful fabric for which you will need to make...you guessed it....a white muslin!

Princess Slip - Nightgown is done - L

Here's the lace detail on the finished challenge pattern that I reworked.  FOUR kinds of lace.  And when I say finished, I actually mean finished except for buttons and buttonholes.  I think my machine needs help.  Can't get buttonhole attachment to work.
This was primarily a mental exercise.  Once I figured out how to make this work for my body it was just a sort of a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of long seams.  I posted last week about all the measuring and mental gymnastics of changing a pattern for a short and slender woman into something for a tall and substantial woman to actually wear.  And it worked!  I added the sleeve caps as a visual way to balance my hips.

Here's the whole thing.  Pleating is a pain.  Pintucks are a pain.  I think I have it out of my system for a long while.  And really, only the center front insertion lace offers a possibility of embarrassing the offspring.  The part I ended up liking the best was deciding to use bias binding around the armhole.  I looks tidy and solved a multitude of small problems.  Here is a close up of the bias binding. I did it by hand since I felt I would suffer more trying to machine sew it in all the tight spots.  Actually, I did one of them riding in a car on the way to see my daughters new flat.

Now I'm starting the frock coat.  Actually I'm blogging in an effort to avoid the frock coat.  It's cut out and marked.  Now I have to do the welt pocket.    And YES!  I finished another pair of socks!!!