She isn't blogging - oh yes she is!

Too much panto’  making going on to allow time for blogging. 16 costumes to make from scratch, 11 to adapt from existing wardrobe stores, numerous accessories to make - rapier frogs anyone?

New making experiences this year:

Dyeing swan’s feathers ( gathered legally in Hyde Park, at the Serpentine). Dyed using Dye-na-Flow dyes and a foam brush. Not sure how permanent this will be, but as long as the stage roof doesn’t leak, it should be fine.

Sewing leather - who knew this was so straightforward!

and a reason to get out my floral mini-hammer!

Stitching fun:

Bling for the directors to wear at the first Sunday rehearsal

Garters for the adult leads, male and female

Bling for shoes and hats

When the sewing gets busy, even my work computer is used as a surface

Chaos in the sewing room - I always start off saying to myself that I will work in an organised and tidy manner - it never happens.

A set of musketeers

For anyone with an interest in costume, there is a terrific exhibition by and about the costume department at the National Theatre, free and on until the middle of 2020.

Shirtmaking

In an effort to distract myself from the imminent disaster of Brexit, I have returned to shirt making, this time for me. One of the joys of the internet is being able to learn from people that one has never met. After several hours looking at patterns, I decided on The Granville shirt, and having read all of the comments, made the following adjustments:

• shortened the sleeves by 4cm
• Shortened the shoulders by 1cm
• raised the bust dart by 4cm ( wrong decision)
• took a lot of fabric out of the hips, about 20cm all round in the end - this pattern is for very curvy women
• did not add the pockets

I followed many tutorials, and stitched test yokes, collars, many, many collar points, cuffs, sleeve plackets, front plackets,  buttonholes and devoured the content on Off The Cuff, a superb sewing blog.

The results?

Sleeve placket

Back yoke

Inner yoke, and collar stand

Front placket

Finished shirt

The fabric was a beautiful voile from Seasalt. They very generously make many of their fabrics available by the metre, even from current ranges.

I like it, I will wear it, I will make another one - all in all a successful make, even although the pattern matching was rather tricky, and I had to cut three sets of collars before I got the orientation of the colour swatches correct!

Sewing tools

When I volunteered to assist with making costumes for the local pantomime, I thought I would just need my usual sewing kit. For the first costume, that was the case, dress for the female, youth lead, 

However, when the next one was for the king of the rats, I needed to use tools less commonly associated with sewing.

Thank you to Youtube for tips on cutting and sewing long-haired fake fur.

Last stitching of 2016 - and a diversion in to clothes making

A quilt to finish the year with. “ Proper” patchwork made from two worn out shirts,  a discarded calico curtain from a charity shop and backed with a fabric picked up at the bric a brac stall at a quilt show.

No photos of the full quilt as the light is too low today.

I have not made many quilts this year as I have been diverted back to clothes making. My younger son has difficulty finding shirts to fit his narrow shoulders and long, slender frame so I volunteered to make him some. Unlike women’s clothing, there is a little choice in patterns for men’s shirts, but several bloggers use Burda 7045, however I anticipated having to make many pattern adjustments, after reading an account of making it here.

Commercial patterns are not like quilt patterns. They are never perfect and always have to be adapted to an individual  because human bodies are too variable. The instruction sheets frequently do not take account of modern sewing methods and advise cumbersome techniques and outdated interfacings.  There is so much help on the internet to address these commissions and I followed tutorials about shirts from here and here.

The test shirt, with cotton lawn, digitally printed,  bought several years ago from M Rosenberg and Son, went down well. 

Version 2 is now cut out, with a longer armhole, removal of the darts on the front and a collar that extends further in to the open neck of the collar band. 2017 could be the year of the shirt.

Happy stitching everyone.

Weekend in wonderland with Alice

Many years ago, I was a reasonably accomplished dressmaker, and made my own wedding dress.  ( We had a low key wedding.  The stylish orange bucket in the background typified the event: photographs taken by friends and family).

Due to many factors: lack of time with a young family; difficulty in accessing good fabrics; increasing availability of petite sized clothing; problems with fit of commercial patterns; I have not sewn any garments since then.  That is now about to change due to a superb weekend on pattern-cutting with Alice Prier at the beautiful classroom of  Raystitch in Islington.

Alice helped us use the method developed by Anastasia Vouyouka to make a block to our own measurements.  There were 4 of us on the course, all different sizes, and it was like magic to see how accurate the pattern was that emerged from the measurements that we took of each other.  Day 1 focussed on measuring, transferring the measurements to paper, and then cutting out the toile in calico.    An absolute light bulb moment was when Alice went through how to move darts on a bodice to give different effects, while still maintaining good fit.  I have watched videos of this on youtube, read blogs demonstrating this, and read about it in books, but Alice made it very straightforward and simple to understand.

Day 2 was then an exploration of how to use that block to either adapt commercial patterns, or to develop our own patterns.

Alice was an excellent teacher, enthusiastic, amusing and very encouraging.  She brought some garments from her own collection to show us how she had used a standard block to make a customised pattern.

The team at Raystitch looked after us very well, with drinks, lunch and cake provided on both days.  We had a few minutes to browse their lovely collection of fabrics and notions.  A useful tool that we worked with during the weekend, the Prym pattern drafting ruler, is now on my Christmas list.

One of the participants, Jane, impressed us all by wearing her own makes on both days.  Her blog, handmadejane.co.uk, has great detail of her sewing projects. 

If you want to take the plunge in to making you own clothes, I can recommend this course 200%.

( and if you are wondering if I still have the dress?  Not in its original form, but the bustle became an evening wrap, and the roses sometimes appear on a coat lapel when I am feeling dramatic).