Month: October 2009

Do me a favour?

We spent most of yesterday putting together the wedding favours.

My parents very kindly made a trip to IKEA for us, to buy the glasses. I set about cutting dozens of squares of dress net and lengths of ribbon, and Paul designed the MOO mini cards that we’ve used as name tags. We bought the sweets locally, from Strange Sweets in the Harris Arcade. Because we bought so many (nine kilos!), Lisa gave us a really good deal!

Once we had all of the bits and pieces ready and waiting, it only took a couple of hours to put them all together. Paul and I put on plastic gloves and divided all the sweets into the glasses. Then Paul held the net squares in place while I tied on the name tags.

Now they’re all boxed up, complete with a table plan, and ready to be taken over to the wedding venue this afternoon.

I think that’s the very last thing that we actually had to make. Now we just have a million other things to organise before the weekend…

how to be happy in business – venn diagram

I keep seeing this venn diagram popping up all over the place. It belongs to Bud Caddell, and accompanies an interesting post on how to be happy in business.

I ventured up into the loft the other day, to dig out some coat hangers to take the skirts and dresses down to Tiger Lilly. This necessitated rummaging through the three enormous laundry bags that contain the remains of my former business, “GothStuff”. (I made Stuff for Goths. It did exactly what it said on the tin!)

GothStuff started winding down in 2005. I’d spend much of that year in and out of hospital with my endometriosis (culminating with my appendix being taken out by mistake!), I’d started re-training as a massage therapist, and I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, so I decided to make some changes.

Since then I’ve done a bit of soap-making, a lot of custom dressmaking, made a bit of jewellery, taken a lot of photographs… but nothing’s been as successful as GothStuff was, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time wondering why. But when I went up into the loft the other day, the reason became obvious.

I simply haven’t put as much commitment into any project since.

Tucked away in the loft I have clothing rails, hangers, display boards, flyers, labels, business cards, price lists (including the one printed on a giant t-shirt!) and catalogues. I started GothStuff at the same time as working a full-time job, and I still managed to put in eight hours’ work a day. Paul very patiently drove me and a car full of clothing all over the country to go to festivals and run market stalls.

Admittedly I’ve continued to have problems with my health over the past few years, but honestly, that’s not a reason for having given up – it’s just an excuse. If I’d been truly committed to any of the projects I’ve tried, I would have worked as hard as I possibly could to try and make it a success. And much as it pains me to say this out loud, I simply haven’t done that. I’ve spent a lot of time hovering around the edges of “what I do well” and “what I can be paid to do”, and the sad truth is that it isn’t good enough.

Time to try harder.

Dresses and skirts for Tiger Lilly

Here you go – these are the eight finished pieces that I’ve made for the Tiger Lilly boutique. I just need to sew in the labels, and then I can take them into town.

Just in case you’re wondering how you might order a circle skirt or a tunic dress for yourself, you can do that here. Bear in mind though that I won’t actually be able to start work on any orders until after I get back from my honeymoon!

Once I get back, I need to put together a fabric chart. That way you can see which fabrics are readily available to order, and which vintage pieces I only have enough of for a single dress or skirt.

I also need to have a big clearout of my fabric stash. (Shocking, I know!) I have loads of pieces that I collected over the years which aren’t suitable for the things that I’m making now, and I need to create a lot more space in my Shed.

For now though, I need to get a move on with some of the pre-wedding preparations – and that includes getting these skirts and dresses out of my Shed and into Tiger Lilly’s shop!

Tulip print circle skirt

Tulip print sircle skirt

Here’s today’s offering – another full circle skirt for Tiger Lilly, this time in a bold cherry print. This one’s a size XL, which covers UK dress sizes 24-28.

I have one more tunic dress to make now, which will also be in this cherry print fabric, and then I can label everything up and take it down to the shop. Hopefully Chloe will sell a few pieces or take a few orders while I’m away, and we can take things from there.

This afternoon I’m taking a break from sewing to go down to a local job fair. I’ve never been to one before, so I don’t quite know what to expect. But anything that might increase my chances of finding a job has got to be worth a look.

Pink spotty circle skirt

Pink spotty circle skirt

This is another skirt for Tiger Lilly in the Harris Arcade, and I think it’s my favourite so far! It’s probably just as well that it’s not my size, otherwise I’d be far too tempted to keep it.

I have one more skirt and another tunic to make, and then I’m going to deliver everything to Tiger Lilly before the middle of next week.

From next Thursday it will all go a little bit quiet for a while – I’m getting married on the 31st, and then I’m off on a nice relaxing honeymoon for the two weeks after that. Expect me to come back with lots and lots of photos to show you!

Oops.

Oops.

This is just one of the reasons why I don’t like using synthetic fabrics. This is a polyester taffeta that I accidentally melted with the iron. The iron wasn’t even too hot – it just stuck to the fabric, and in milliseconds this was the result. Oops.

Now I have two irons that need cleaning. The dressmaking iron has melted taffeta stuck to it, and the household iron has something unspeakable burnt onto the ceramic sole plate. While I’m at it, I might make two new ironing board covers. The one in my sewing Shed is all gummed up with interfacing glue, and the one in the house is terrible – it pops off the board at every available opportunity, making ironing a shirt an exercise in wrestling. No fun.

Once the iron’s clean, I can carry on with the coat that I’m making. Hopefully without melting any more holes in it…

Jewellery making mood.

Purple sunstone necklace

I was in a jewellery making mood today, so I’ve just finished putting together this necklace.

It’s a leather cord, with twenty purple sunstone beads attached – they’re a very dark purple colour with a glitter sparkle when the light catches them. The beads are hung in pairs, so that they hang in bunches and at different heights.

I have plans to make a pink one using rose quartz beads, and I also have a bag full of large tumbled gemstones held in spiral pendants that I plan to hang from organza ribbon.

This morning I added a few spiral pendants to Etsy, although I understand that a UK postal strike is happening next Thursday, so if you’d like one you might want to order it soon!

A Couple of Cupcakes.

Cupcake skirt and tunic dress

In case you’ve been wondering about the sudden flurry of sewing photographs that have been appearing on Flickr and Twitter – I’ve been asked to put together a few things for a local shop.

Tiger Lilly is an independent vintage and retro boutique in Reading’s Harris Arcade. Chloe has a lovely ever-changing collection of vintage clothes from the 40s to the 80s, but a lot of vintage clothing tends only to turn up in smaller sizes. To remedy this, Chloe also stocks a range of complementary vintage-inspired clothing from labels such as Vivien of Holloway and What Katie Did.

I popped in for a browse a couple of weeks ago, and on the spur of the moment asked Chloe whether she’d be interested in seeing some of my skirts. I put a photo gallery together, took some samples in, and Chloe has asked me to produce a small range of circle skirts and tunic dresses for her. We’ll see how they go while I’m away getting married and honeymooned, and then I can get some feedback on my return.

You can see the first few skirts and dresses in their own Flickr set. The tunic dresses will be £40 and the skirts will be £48. Each comes with its own matching sash belt, and the skirts have pockets hidden in the side seams. I’ve drawn up a range of four sizes, each of which will fit a wide range of body shapes. The skirts have an elastic waist, and the loose fitting tunics can be drawn in with the belt.

Chloe’s on a mission to support local designers, so I can only hope that her customers love retro styling and interesting fabric as much as I do!

Baby Camouflage

Camouflage baby dress

This evening I will be mostly rushing around like a lunatic, because I lost track of the time while I was making this fun little dress.

One of my colleagues is starting her maternity leave next week, so I thought it would be nice to make her a little gift for the baby. I didn’t think about it in enough time to knit anything, so this afternoon I drafted a pattern for a little dress.

The top is self lined, and fastens at the shoulders with poppers that are hidden underneath the matching fabric-covered buttons. The skirt is gathered onto the bodice, and trimmed with a little bit of lace.

I have no idea about the relative size of babies, so it’s entirely possible that this dress is absolutely enormous and she won’t grow into it until Christmas. But it would certainly make a very unusual party dress!

Green cord trousers

Vogue 1034

I’m not sure that a pair of olive green cords would have been on my shopping list, but I had the fabric in the Shed, and I wanted to test out Vogue 1034. This time I’ve been able to make a pair of trousers that actually fit me, and with only a minimal amount of adjustment to the pattern.

These jeans are a “today’s fit” design, which means that the measurements are given in actual inches rather than spurious dress sizes. I looked at the body measurements given on the pattern envelope and the garment measurements given on the pattern, and decided to make a size E. For the trial run I left out all of the pockets, and made a very simple pair of trousers.

Once they were ready to try on, Paul very carefully helped me to stick pins in my backside until I had the perfect fit. I graded down to a size D from the waist to the hips, and then made a sway back adjustment. Perfect! Even the length was just right.

The method for making the fly front seemed rather fiddly, and at times the instructions were a little bit difficult to follow. It does make a lovely neat front though, with much less bulk than you might find on other jeans. I’d definitely use this method again.

The order of construction was also different from other trousers that I’ve made, but this allowed for decorative topstitching on more of the seams. I didn’t add any topstitching on these trousers, apart from on the waistband and fly, but I probably will on the next pair.

The waist is much higher than you’d find on most jeans that are in the shops at the moment, and that’s absolutely fine by me. The back of the waist has a deep triangular yoke rather than a normal waistband, and this makes the fit of the centre back much better than on mass-produced jeans as well.

I have several metres of pinstriped cotton velvet, which I think would be absolutely perfect for this pattern. Topstitched in white, with a silver button, I think they’d be really dramatic. They’d also look great in a stretch denim, or maybe a nice wool tweed.

I’m so happy with this pattern that I may never have to buy a pair of trousers again!