glamor fly

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While Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, I rarely dress up. I’ve been averse to putting a lot of time and resources into something that won’t get worn very often, and I hate to wear a half-hearted costume. Lately, though, my attitude towards sewing is shifting away from everyday basics, which I can find secondhand, and more towards the grand visions, and this year, for the first time since I was 12, I sewed my Halloween costume from scratch.

I had the idea a couple of Halloweens ago for a glamorous, cocktail-dress-wearing fly. It rattled around in my head for about two years, and when I realized it wasn’t going away, I decided to make it happen. I am pretty sure the idea originally sprouted from the thought of arranging my hair into some sort of fly-eye bouffant, but I’ve had a haircut or three since then, and I’m not sure I would have been able to make it work even if my hair was still long. So I was going to have to make my own headpiece. I toyed with the idea of a single round fascinator with sequins and feathers, but gave it up as too abstract and settled on actual eyes, which I created by sticking over a thousand individual red sequins onto a halved styrofoam ball with pins. This was a tedious task that took many, many episodes of Battlestar Galactica to complete, and I had to stop partway through to order more sequins and pins. When the two halves were done, I hot-glued them onto a cheap headband, after which they promptly fell off during my first party and I had to re-glue them even more firmly before Halloween itself.

The wings are made of sheer, sparkly netting cut off of a child’s costume from Goodwill, with black embroidery to suggest a wing pattern, and basted onto the back of the dress. Initially I had intended on making, and in fact did make, wings out of wire and cellophane based on online tutorials. After wrestlings with spray adhesive and multiple layers of cellophane on a breezy day, the wings turned out to be less snappy and more cumbersome than I had hoped, and so I came up with the fabric ones instead. I still have the wire ones and I daresay they will be suitable for a different costume someday, so it’s not a complete loss, or perhaps I’m just in denial.

Crucial to my vision was a blue/green iridescent wiggle dress, the color of one of those big blue/green flies. I didn’t want to spring for nice fabric since it’s expensive, but I didn’t want to spend actual money on polyester taffeta, so I searched the thrift stores for old prom dresses, which frequently come in this exact color, and lo and behold, I found what I was looking for for a mere three dollars. Turns out though, this fabric is cheap and old, which makes for a dress which doesn’t have much more than two wears in it before the seams start to give way.

The pattern is Butterick 5814, a Patterns by Gertie wiggle dress with a boned bodice and many, many pleats. Not a dress to attempt to sew in only a day in between work and trapeze class, but after I was invited to a party four days before my original costume deadline, that’s what I did… and somehow, miraculously, did complete it, down to ripping out the bones on the bus to class after they were found to poke me in the waist and provide no support to the bust whatsoever. Seeing as I had a limited amount of time, I didn’t spend much of it diagnosing the fit issues and so I’ll have to start over from scratch if I make this dress again. And I really do like the dress! Obviously wiggly cocktail dresses are not a huge staple of my wardrobe, but next time I need one I may very well turn to this pattern. I had imagined that this dress would do double duty as costume dress and cocktail dress, but between the comically low neckline and the lack of seam finishes on the inside, I think it will remain specific to this costume until it falls apart.

(A note on dress fit: Since the bodice was no longer boned, I had to wear a bra underneath, with the straps pinned to the sleeves. It turned out to be a good choice as the neckline was so low as to be almost non-functional, although whether this is due to a lack of boning or because the dress is designed for a smaller bust than mine is another unanswered question.)

In general I feel that this costume is sloppy and I can think of a million things that I would like to re-do, or wish I had done differently, to the point where I would practically have to start over from scratch to get it where I want it. But! I am still really really pleased and proud and excited by it, because it feels like such an accomplishment to have gotten a costume out of my head and onto my body, and because I had to do things that were out of my comfort zone–like wire wings and headpieces–and muddle through somehow. It’s nice to have a costume in my wardrobe, you know, just in case I get invited to a last minute costume party. And I feel inspired to try more things just for fun, instead of feeling like all my projects should serve a purpose. It feels creative, and even if it’s silly and sloppy, it feels kind of like art.

(A note on photos: I wore this dress to two different parties, but it turns out that trying to get decent costume photos in night-time lighting is put near impossible, so one day in November I got all done up, put on my winged eyeliner and everything…and proceeded to take a dozen photos in front of a blindingly white wall in the sunshine. So, oops. But eyeliner is hard and I haven’t been able to motivate myself to re-shoot the look. So here we are.)

lily/anna separates

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Two years ago, I stitched up a By Hand London Anna in paisley Liberty. I loved that dress dearly and wore it hard for over a year, but last winter it developed a rip above the bust. I’d like to blame my impressive circus muscles, but it was more likely caused by poor posture and subtle fit issues that put too much strain on the bottom of the armscye. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t about to give up on such a beloved dress and so I stuck it on my “to-fix” shelf for a few months. It needed a new bodice, but I couldn’t use the Anna bodice again unless I was prepared to tackle the fit to prevent further rips. Eventually I decided to use the bodice of the Colette Lily, which I got on extreme sale and hadn’t yet made up. I, like pretty much everyone else, have struggled with the fit of Colette bodices/sleeves, but the Lily is delightfully sleeveless.

The muslin fit quite well out of the envelope (graded from 6 at bust to 4 at waist to 10 at hip), though I had to pinch out a bit from the side seams in the bodice. The skirt is great and I will make it up in the future–I love the pockets–but unfortunately is probably not very bike-friendly.

I stitched the bodice onto the skirt, but I wasn’t loving it. The simplicity of the a-line skirt seemed at odds with the little flap on the bodice, but without the flap it was a bit boring. So I made a last-minute design change. Separates! I cut the new bodice off the skirt and added a circular peplum, and trimmed down the top of the skirt until I could wiggle it over my head, then added an elastic waist. A regular waistband would have been preferable, but I didn’t want to deal with a zipper and didn’t have enough fabric to make a waistband piece anyway. It turns out, I love the elastic waist. It stays put better than a woven one, and since it’s only barely gathered around my waist, it’s not bulky underneath sweaters or shirts.

I love my separates, which make a cute outfit together and can be styled apart as well! They feel unique and a little bit avant-garde in my fairly traditional wardrobe. An added bonus is that the bodice will still be wearable with other high-waisted skirts after this skirt inevitably wears out, having a whole year more of wear in it.

I tried to have a little bit of fun with my self-timer phone-camera photoshoot, and pulled out 20,000 Years of Fashion to use as a prop, but it turned out to be so big it obscured a lot of the dress and I had to go propless for the rest of my photos. I’m trying to get comfortable enough in front of a camera that I can at least take pictures of myself without feeling awkward, and then maybe I can graduate up to asking other people to take pictures of me.

twenties lawn party

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I have always loved to dress up. I relish any excuse for a costume, and almost as much as I love to wear it, I love to create it. The opportunities feel few and far between in my workaday life, so when my friend mentioned a weekend-long, 1920s-themed lawn party on a grand country estate, I was ecstatic!

My plans started out extravagant: I would need two complete ensembles (one for each day), to say nothing of period correct undergarments, and of course a three-piece suit for Ryan.

In the end our grand weekend excursion shrank to a single day trip, and I had to make certain concessions to practicality, but I think our outfits turned out rather smart regardless!

I wore a thrifted slip, thrifted nude heels, a one-hour dress that I whipped up in a mere four and a half hours, and a thrifted hat that I unsuccessfully tried to reshape as a cloche and trimmed with bias tape to match my dress. I had been pretty unsatisfied with the one-hour dress, which I felt was too twee and boxy. But! I loved wearing it! There are definitely things I would change, construction-wise, but I was pleasantly surprised by how put-together and confident I managed to feel in such a rectangular garment.

Ryan wore a thrifted suit–a real stroke of luck! I was just putting in the zipper on a pair of grey linen trousers for him, we had thrifted a gray vest, and had resigned ourselves to no jacket, but a last-minute trip to the thrift store turned up a wool three-piece suit in this lovely vintage-looking brown color. The suit itself probably dates from the 70s to judge by the cut, but passed quite well with the rest of the ensemble. I let out the pants and stitched in buttons for the suspenders, but otherwise the whole outfit was assembled by Ryan so I can’t really take credit there.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of pockets and a dying phone battery, I got almost no pictures of this event. Fortunately, our friend took this one of us that more than makes up for it.

The estate the party took place at was on the ocean, and absolutely stunning. I will definitely be back next year for the party, and hopefully before then too for some wandering!

may

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Spring has finally arrived–the sun sets later and later, the days are warmer, and the rain and sunshine have made the grey city lush and green. Lilacs are blooming everywhere.

Yesterday I gathered a bag of dandelion heads, painstakingly pulled the leaves and stem off, and set the petals to steep in vodka. In a few weeks I’ll strain it, add sugar, and have a dandelion liqueur. When I left the house this morning, there were even more dandelions than yesterday. I’d like to pick some more and repeat the process sometime in the next couple of weeks before they all go to seed. I want to make dandelion wine eventually, but I have to start easy if I want to get anything done at all. Wine takes research, and possibly specialized equipment. All I had to buy for this project was a bottle of vodka.

autumn

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I’ve been living in Boston for over three months now. Fall is well and truly here, and it really is pretty in New England, if you can make it through the summer. Fall has always been my favorite season anyway; there’s no real pressure to do much of anything besides eat soup and go for walks. I’m still walking to work every day, and plan to continue doing so until the first blizzard. Every day I go over the Charles and it’s been quite pleasant watching the change of the sky and the foliage.

I’m afraid there’s not much sewing going on around here these days, besides curtains. I vowed not to let myself start a new project until I’d figured out my sleeve fitting issues, but it’s nearly impossible without a friend to analyze back fit, so the whole process is stagnating. But there is a lot of cooking! I am making acorn flour and preserved lemons, and I finally got my hands on some sourdough starter so I have been experimenting with that! There’s a certain amount of math involved and of course I struggle there, but it turns out the hardest part is time management–when to take it out of the fridge, when to feed it, how long to let it rise. On my first batch I went with a 1-2-3 formula, where 1 is the starter weight, 2 is the water, and 3 the flour. Then it was too wet, so I had to add more flour, and I ended up accidentally making four loaves!

In other news, there’s not much other news. I started my first Boston aerials class yesterday, and it’s very exciting to be back at it. I have lost some strength, but not nearly as much as I’d expected.

Other autumn highlights: going to a Renaissance Faire on a cold and rainy day, a brief jaunt to New York City back in September, playing board games as often as possible, and daydreaming about getting a cat. Also planning the costumes that I’d like to sew, eventually (rat queen, Rococo princess, a whole line of glamorous insects at a cocktail party). In the meantime, perhaps I should get started on my Yuletide present sewing…

shift

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This summer, I dreamed of shift dresses. Big 60s florals, bell sleeves, mini hems! The actual 60s patterns in my stash had been purchased without a true sense of my own measurements, so I turned to the Sewaholic Alma to satisfy my shift dress fantasies, extending the hem to a suitably mini-dress length. I cut according to my full bust measurement instead of trying to fiddle around with FBAs and guessing at cup sizes, and it fit surprisingly well out of the envelope–except for the sleeves, which I quickly dispensed with in the name of 90-degree days. My first version was sewn up in a bold, blue-and-white, surreal floral, but the fit needed tweaking (more fullness at the hips, less at the waist) and the color didn’t feel “me,” so I gave that dress to a friend and shifted my vision from mod to hipster.

This dress then, is my second shot at the shift dress style and it’s been a huge hit. Simple and versatile in a navy swiss dot, I can wear it with sandals and pendant necklaces in the heat, and cardigans and oxfords when it’s gray and drizzly. In fact, it’s been in such heavy rotation this summer that it’s already starting to fade around the seams and across the bust where my purse strap rubbed against wet fabric in a summer storm. I’m not sure how much longer it will last, but I do know I will my making another version when it finally does give out!

The pattern is the Sewaholic Alma, but I grafted on the sleeves of the Anna dress and mashed the necklines together for something a little broader and shallower than the Alma. Obviously the hem has been lengthened considerably (I can’t remember how much), but I tried to keep the lovely curved shape of the shirt hem. I omitted the zipper, as it slips over my head easily, french seamed the insides, and bound the neckline and sleeves in my Liberty bias-tape. The whole process from start to finish couldn’t have taken more than a few hours–as close as it gets to instant gratification!

boston

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Nearly two months ago, I packed up all (well, most of) my worldly goods, bid farewell to my beloved lush green PNW, and got on an train going just about as far as it possibly could go without ending up in the ocean. And here I am.

a little home sewing

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I almost never do any sort of home dec sewing. Partly it’s boring, just cutting rectangles and sewing straight lines, and partly a little bit of me feels that it’s a waste of time and fabric. Who knows if the curtains will fit the windows in the next house, and couldn’t this yardage be clothes instead?

But yesterday afternoon, casting around for something creative to do in the few hours before work, I noticed the grubby, boring throw pillows in the corner of the couch and decided to do something about them at last.

I had a raw silk sack dress that I had stopped wearing because I don’t particularly like sack dresses and the neckline didn’t agree with my shoulders, and had been saving especially for pillows, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it to make pillowcases for both of the old pillows, so I had to hunt through the stash for something complimentary. Doing only half of each pillowcase in the striped silk meant I had enough to make a third pillowcase for an uncovered pillow form I had lying around. There are still some scraps of the dress which will eventually become gorgeous bias tape.

I should have put zippers in, but I didn’t feel like it, so I just handstitched the fourth side of each pillow closed, which means I’ll have to unpick and sew them back on when I wash them. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.

This was actually a very satisfying project. Fast, easy, and I’m really pleased with the finished product. They feel much cozier than the old pillows (being half corduroy!), and a lot more grown-up. I’m happy that the fabric previously languishing unworn in my closet finally gets to be on display!

anna in liberty

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Well! It’s been a long time since I dusted off this old blog. As long as it’s been (9 months!), it’s been just as long since I sewed something that wasn’t theatrical in nature. I’ve sewn dresses, vintage swimsuits, and biblical robes galore for at least three plays. I’ve altered countless pairs of trousers, I’ve taken dresses apart only to re-sew them, and I’ve torn beautiful tomato red wool to shreds with sandpaper. But, with the exception of an ill-fated tweed miniskirt that ended up several inches too large in the waist, I haven’t sewn a thing that’s meant to be worn in real life since Ryan shipped off to Morocco with a new shirt sometime around the first week of January.

Until now! We had a long stretch of house-sitting in which my sewing machines languished unused, my Kenmore gave out, I purchased a new one, and I discovered that all my machines were broken!–until I realized that I’d simply been threading my Featherweight from the wrong direction.

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So finally, I have a dress, and it’s destined to be a hit, I think. How could one go wrong with a TNT pattern and paisley Liberty?

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The fabric was given to me sometime last summer by my then-housemate’s mother, though why anyone would get rid of paisley Liberty I can’t think. I can’t find any information about the print, except that if I wanted, I could buy sneakers to match my dress.

With a fabric this precious I wanted to make sure it was really the right garment. After wearing my turquoise Anna for most of the weekend at Pickathon, I knew I needed another. I had hopes of finishing it for my birthday, but a month later is not so bad! It is a perfect late summer dress, being cool enough for hot days, but the colors will go with nearly all my winter clothes and with layers I can wear it right through to next summer.

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The pattern is By Hand London Anna, of course. I’ve made it twice before and wear the other versions a lot in their respective seasons. I like the simplicity and the shape and have to do very few alterations to the pattern as I cut it. For this version, I shortened the pleats by 1/2″ to make a little more room for my bust and it is just about perfect now.

Grisly Details:

The insides are all french seamed, except for the back seam which is bias-bound in self-bias tape (catching the edges of the zipper tape for a super neat finish!). I used the same bias tape to finish the neck and arm holes. Neck, arm holes, hem, and zipper are all topstitched, but the pattern is busy enough that it’s barely noticeable, and I have greater confidence in its durability than if I had hand sewn them. The pattern in my size used a little over 3 yards of 33″ wide fabric. I could have got it out of less if the print wasn’t directional, but I still about 50″ left, enough for little bits of lining/bias tape.

So that’s that! I am back on the bandwagon, I hope! I have plans for my next two projects, both skirts. I got rid of a lot of my clothes in a panic while moving, so I am trying to slowly rebuild a grown-up and cohesive wardrobe. Here’s to layering season!

ashland, v.2

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This dress was the labor of more or less an entire semester, plugged away at in bits and pieces for a couple of months. It’s been finished for a couple of months, and I wear it often, but I only now have got around to taking pictures. It’s even harder than usual in winter, as the light goes so quickly.

I wanted to make a comfortable, simple dress that could be worn with layers and boots for winter. My ideal winter silhouette is a short, a-line dress with long or three-quarter sleeves, ideally cuffed. I love sweater dresses but I can’t seem to find good sweater-knit fabric anywhere, so woven it is.

The pattern is the Sew Liberated Ashland, which I initially was not too keen on, but I wear my other version fairly regularly, so I guess I’ve been won over. The fabric is an extra-long twin bedsheet, but I’m pretty sure it’s sateen. It’s 100% cotton, anyway.

I sewed the same size as before, size 2, D cup, and my only real issue came with adding the sleeves. When I finished the dress I couldn’t put it on! I could barely wriggle my arms into the sleeves and couldn’t raise them at all. I did an upper arm adjustment to add an inch, but I could add more. One thing I’ve also noticed is that the bodice ends about half an inch above the underwire of my bra, so I could probably safely size up to a 4. The shoulders seem about right though.

I don’t have any pictures of the guts, as they’re not really much to look at, but they’re sturdy. I used a combination of lining, handsewing, bias binding, and zig zag (now that I finally got my zigzag machine to work! I have to warm it up with a hairdryer before use). I’ve washed the dress a couple of times and it’s holding up well.

This dress is more or less exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s simple, pretty comfortable, and goes well with a variety of tights, scarves, and sweaters. I never feel like I’m lacking the right shoes or coat or accessories to make an outfit with the dress, which makes it the sort of easy-to-wear piece I want more of in my wardrobe.