I joined a Sew-Along!

My true passion is to hunt down, repair, and revive old clothing, but every once in a while I like to make a garment from scratch. For camraderie, inspiration, and disipline's sake, I joined this group at the wonderful Male Pattern Boldness blog. (click on pic to take you to the sew-along page)

Through the magic of the internet a whole bunch of sewing enthusiasts get together online and construct a casual man's shirt together. (Or did I mean a man's casual shirt?)
Anyway, here's my pattern and fabric:

It's going to be a lightweight short-sleeved shirt, made from a pair of x-tra large linen gaucho pants I picked up in a thrift. Yummy mixed stripes.
In the interest of not boring my blog readers (all both of you) I'll be posting all the fascinating details of my journey on my flickr page, where the Male Pattern Boldness Group page is. Should be fun.

I've already said "phooey" to the construction of a muslin practice piece (mistakes, ME?), and started cutting out my pattern today.

the mad men windows

   Last week, in anticipation of the Mad Men season premier, I hunkered down and put a little extra effort in the shop windows.  (Generally speaking, I dread dressing the windows;  I rarely have any good creative ideas to speak of, and I have to worry about the clothing getting ruined by the sun---so I have to change them often.)

For the 5th Street window I painted a big Don Draper silhouette onto a roll of paper,
                               
 cut it out, ironed it (it got rumply from the paint),  and taped it to the inside of the glass.  (I supposed I could have just painted the silhouette directly on the glass but I was in improvisation mode...)

                              

For the Diamond Street window I made a giant stencil--

Drawn freehand  (woopsie on that right leg--)

                             

Cut out

                            

 spray-painted onto a white sheet,

and hung on a rod.

                              

It was worth the extra effort -- more window compliments are rolling in than ever before (including props on my favorite local blog),

and all I have to do for the next several weeks is rotate some fun mid-60s dresses on the dress forms.   

I'm guessing I won't have to answer one of the many questions I am getting tired of ... "Have you seen that show Mad Men?"

Thistle Stencil Project

I've had this wonderful old Arts & Crafts era curtain panel hanging in my one dining room window for the last several years, but sunlight had faded it to the point of near invisibility. The design was a stylized vertical leaf and thistle border, and I decided the only way to salvage it was to reprint the entire thing using stencils.

Stencils get a bad rap 'cause they're always designed in queer apples and hearts and teddy bear motifs.   In this case I just traced and cut the existing elements of my panel and then stippled away for two days (and that's mostly drying time in between courses).

It was all just an experiment for the most part---I used cheap craft paint and already had the acetate sheets and stippling brushes lying around.  (The most important thing is having sharp exacto blades for cutting out the design).
Below I am using a tiny stippling brush to color in the thistle flower seeds.

Here is the finished product:

I really love this motif.  I know I did a little bit of a wham-bam-thankyou-mam job on it, but I'm still happy with the results. It had been so faded for so long- that hanging 

it back up felt like seeing an old friend again.

revamped dress form project

You know those crappy vintage adjustable dress forms that turn up at yard sales and flea markets and you just can't stop yourself from buying them even though you know they're basically pieces of rusty wobbly shit that never do any garment justice?

Well I was about to throw one of mine through the window the other day when I had a pretty decent idea.  I took it completely apart, ripped out all the bent rusty guts that never worked anyway, (marking each piece as I did so), ripped off the glued-on knit covering (Big Mess!), and then duct taped the whole thing (14 pieces in all) back together again.

They're made of a paper pulp material, nice and light, so I decided to paper mache' the whole things in 3 layers, to secure it well.  This is the second layer, 

 

done with grocery store circulars, and this is the final layer,

 done in 1926 Albany newspaper (that a friend found under the linoleum he tore up in his old house up the street)

Here it is with a coat of varnish:

It is hollow and can still be modified with a stand, but I like its nice small size, great for counter top display of items like jewelry, scarves, and belts.  It's fun to look at too, since it is also essentially a 3-D collage.

make it work

How to turn a stale $10 sale-rack dress back into a $35 sure- seller:

Ruby Slippers in Five Minutes

One pair High Heels
One paint brush
One bottle red glitter
Tacky Glue that dries clear
Newspaper work surface (reuse glitter that doesn't stick)

(Touch up will be necessary at each wearing, as I am doing today...)

More than You want to know about the Cleo Costume

but I'm putting it out there anyway

Halloween isn't officially over until I've crammed my costume into the costume closet and blogged about it.

In the 6 weeks leading up to Halloween this year, this scrappy little blog received over 3500 hits, from people checking out my Barbie and Morticia Addams costumes. People definitely appreciate the effort of a homemade costume, judging from my image-google ranking. (One woman even called the shop and pleaded with me to rent the Barbie costume to her -just name any rediculous price! --I declined).

For my Cleopatra costume, I did some image-googling myself, and made an inspiration file, from which I created a sketch that incorporated all my favorite elements : A headress, a collar, simple straight skirt and sash, and meshy cape.

This did not involved any dressmaking or fancy skills. I simply pulled together a bunch of parts that all fit together into a bigger picture. Ultimately, this costume is just a combination of circles, rectangles and triangles dressed up in gold, with some dollar-store spiders, snakes, and rubber cockroaches thrown in.

90% of the materials were recycled, (big thank you to Carol Lavender at The Second Show Thrift Shop for the shower curtain and mesh!)

The first thing I tackled was the headress, built from a vintage nurse's cap I found in my own archive of tattered junk.

Painted it gold



And then just kept adding adding adding.

using gold trims and hand-cut craft materials.



The collar was a disk, made from the shower curtain and reenforced with interfacing,

and attached to a cheap second hand snaky choker necklace, then adorned with

cake decorating leaves, plastic fan parts, and the cockroaches.

Anything that wasn't already gold was spray-painted gold.

The cummberbund is a rectangle of shower curtain fabric


rouched and gathered party-popper style, with a zipper added.

And underneath the cummerbund is a thrift store slip that has a rectangle of gold hanging from the front and back, basted on.



(all parts, including skirt, are jazzed up with hot-glued details. Here, more trim and painted doilies)

Then a tie-shaped sash is attached to the cummerbund, using hooks and eyes, Jazzed up with Egyptian symbols cut out from leftover scraps.

The deco shaped mesh cape was adorned with gold x-mas beading (also from Carol) and attached to arm bangles (paper lanterns) with hooks and eyes:



I sacrificed last year's Morticia wig so I wouldn't have to buy a new one.

Here's Gretchen chopping it off during the "dress rehearsal":


And here's the lovely portrait she painted that day:


which I have to admit looks way more elegant than the actual finished product:

But I had a blast nevertheless.

Fun to make,

Fun to wear!:

(photo by Walter Hill)

The dress that spawned/My new obsession

It took like a year, but this super-tiny, silk cocktail dress finally sold yesterday.

Kind of a Cinderella story; no one could fit into it.

But everyone was just ga-ga about the yummy lavender-gray color, which was a complete accident/experiment with an already-used blue dye bath.

Now I've got a big cardboard box in my house labelled "To Dye", where all the dingy, faded, blemished, unsellable ugly ducklings go for re-hab.


Under my kitchen sink, I maintain a healthy supply of RIT dye.


This week's dye bath was "cocoa brown".

An assortment of nylon, linen, silk, and cotton items. You can see in this clothesline pic how the dye effects each fabric differently, which is part of the fun of dyeing clothes. (er...cue Forest Gump chocolate quote here.? )
Some things came out plumby here, some came out chocolaty. Either way, easily my favorite batch yet.


Last week's bath was navy blue. The rayon, silk organza, and linen here all took the dye very differently here too.

Caroline snatched up the 1940s lace/linen blouse before I could even hang it in the store.

This next batch was done in what I call a "ghost bath". That's when I use the dye bath a second time, just to see what happens. The green patio umbrella you see in the background was dyed in the same bath as the hanging clothes, but in the first bath. Big difference.

But I actually preferred the oatmeal color of the ghost bath over the green of the umbrella.

This batch here was done in wine a few months back.

Before and after of a linen dress in that bath:

(I liked it better in white, but the applique colors had bled and it looked terrible).

Anyway-- now I'm just rambling on, and I've got to get to work and open up.

Before I go, some random tips::

Pick garments that are otherwise unwearable, so you've got nothing to lose/ruin.
No shortcuts, Follow the directions on the package.

Get a huge pot, unless you're only dyeing one thing.
Do it on the stove, and stir often, if not constantly.(I would never put dye in my washing machine, but maybe that's just me.)

Get heavy duty rubber gloves. Wear a smock or clothes you can trash, you may splash the dye on yourself.

Rinse really well, and then wash any dyed garments separately by hand anyway.
Try the ghost bath out-- you never know what unusual but fabulous muted colors may come about.