Vogue 1202 – the skirt

Vogue 1202 - skirt

I thought I might persevere with Vogue 1202, so I started to cut out the pattern for the skirt.

And then I realised that there is no space in my house large enough to lay out the pattern. And that if the giant pattern piece has to be laid on the fabric sideways, the stretch in my chosen fabric is in fact going the wrong way.

Never mind.

I’ll find something else to do with three metres of wet-look lycra, I’m sure.

Butterick 4731, perhaps.

Vogue 1202

Vogue 1202

This is Vogue 1202, a designer Donna Karan pattern. I’ve had it in my stash for about a year. I kept unfolding it, looking at the size of the pattern pieces, folding it up and putting it away again. The piece above is the front, and it measures 140cm wide by 160cm long. Which is much larger than my cutting table.

I folded away my cutting table and made enough space on the floor to cut out the pattern. But before I did that I had to use my psychic powers to figure out which size to cut out. Obviously the size of the bust doesn’t matter at all in a draped pattern like this one. But the waist does matter, and the finished waist measurement isn’t given anywhere. Yes, there are measurements on the pattern envelope. But anyone who’s been sewing for more than five minutes understands that those are nothing more than a guideline at best.

Vogue 1202

I plucked a number out of thin air and made a size 12, which turned out to be at least two sizes too small. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to find this out until the top was finished and I could try it on. Thankfully the fabric is stretchy, and once I’ve managed to wriggle the stupid thing over my shoulders it does (just about) fit around my waist.

You can see the lovely draped effect around the waist, which is sadly lost on me. I’m so short-waisted that the main body of the top simply folds right over it and covers it up. The sleeves aren’t as long as they look, by the way. They’re very narrow, so they fit very close to your lower arm and then the upper sleeve billows over them. This works something like a straitjacket, ensuring that you can’t move your arms despite the voluminous nature of the top.

Vogue 1202

Here’s the back, which is the main reason I wanted to make this top in the first place. I have a selection of brightly-coloured vests and t-shirts that I think would look great underneath. (I also have a sparkly-backed bra, if I’m feeling particularly adventurous.) You’re supposed to sew nine tiny snap fasteners to the back of the very high neck, but I think I’m going to go with four big ones.

I was hoping to feel very glamorous and sexy in my new designer Donna Karan top. Then I tried it on, and realised that it looks as though I’ve been to the hairdresser’s and forgotten to take the cape off. Oh dear.

I wouldn’t recommend this pattern for anybody who wasn’t very long-waisted, or willing to take a gamble on what size they needed to cut out. I’m sure Donna Karan’s very clever, and I’m sure this top would look great on the right person… unfortunately that person isn’t me. In fact, I’ve already scrunched up the pattern pieces and thrown them away so that I don’t try and make it again in a different fabric, in the hope that it might somehow magically fit differently a second time.

Somewhere in the stash I have some fabric that I’d earmarked to make the matching skirt. Given that the skirt pattern doesn’t come with any finished measurements either, and has a very similar construction, I’m not entirely certain that’s going to be a good idea.

MERL: Bread and Butter

Hand made bread

Look, I made bread! Normally I’d use the breadmaker. This time I was volunteering at the Museum of English Rural Life, where I was helping to teach small children (and their parents) how to make their own bread and butter.

We used the bread recipe from the flour packet, which you can find here. We weighed out all of the ingredients in advance, so all the kids had to do was mix the dough and then knead like mad!

There were some already-measured ingredients left over at the end of the day, so I had a go at making my own loaf. It didn’t go too well, which was a bit embarrassing when a room full of children had made it look quite simple! I didn’t use enough liquid in my dough, so it came out a bit on the heavy side. I also forgot to compensate for the speed of the fan oven when I baked it at home, but thankfully I managed to rescue it before it burned to a crisp! Despite being a bit dense, it tasted pretty good.

To make your own butter, you need the following:

  • A tub of cream, at room temperature. (Ours had been opened and left overnight.)
  • A clean glass jar. (Ours had been sterilised in the dishwasher.)
  • Two wooden spoons, or a piece of cheesecloth

That’s it!

Simply spoon in the cream until the jar’s about  one third full. Make sure the lid’s on very tight, and hold the jar with one hand on the top and one hand on the bottom. This makes sure that the lid doesn’t fly off, and also means that your warm hands aren’t all over the jar, heating up your butter. Now shake the jar.

As you keep shaking, you’ll see the cream start to go through some changes. At first it might be quite runny, but it will start to granulate and separate into yellow fat and white liquid. Eventually the buttermilk will separate out, and a large lump of very squashy butter will form.

Drain off the buttermilk – you can use it to bake scones or pancakes, or if you like the taste you can just drink it! You’ll need to pour some cold water into your jar to rinse off the rest. If you don’t get rid of the buttermilk, the butter can go rancid very quickly. Rinse until the water coming out of the jar is clear. The cold water will also help your butter to become more solid.

Once the rinsing’s done, you can pat your butter between two wooden spoons, or squeeze it through cheesecloth to get rid of the very last remains of the buttermilk. Pat it into shape and leave it in the fridge to harden, and it should be ready by the time your lovely loaf of bread comes out of the oven!

If shaking a glass jar seems like altogether too much hard work, you can also make butter in food processor. You have to pay attention though, and stop immediately the butter’s formed. If you keep going, you’ll get… well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely not butter!

Handkerchief Hem Skirt

Handkerchief hem skirt

I’d been thinking about making myself a floaty black skirt for a while. My seersucker skirt‘s been worn almost to death, so I thought I ought to have a backup plan for the day it comes out of the washing machine in pieces. I’ve been waiting for this to happen for months, thankfully the fabric’s more resilient than I’d thought!

This time I wanted a more floppy skirt, full and drapey, with an asymmetric hem. I looked at patterns, browsed through fashion magazines, and eventually had a brainwave in the middle of the night. This is made from my simple circle skirt pattern… only instead of rounding off the hem of each quarter piece, you just leave it as a square! So it’s effectively four squares sewn together, with a little shaping at the top for the waist.

As usual it has pockets in the side seams, and my trusty elastic waistband. The edges were done very simply on the overlocker, because I didn’t want to make hems that might spoil the soft draping of the very thin cotton lawn. I’m not sure this would work as well in a heavier fabric (even a shirt-weight cotton might be too much), so next time I’d like to make one with two layers. If I offset the points at the hem I think it could look really pretty, especially if I went for contrasting colours.

The only problem with using a fabric as lightweight as lawn for a skirt (aside from it being a bit chilly if you happen to live in a country that’s apparently not having a summer this year) is that it creases like crazy! This skirt was beautiful when I took it off the ironing board (yes, believe it or not I did iron it!), but within seconds of putting it on it was all wrinkly again. I think I’m going to have to adopt the same approach as I have to linen, and simply not mind looking a bit crinkly around the edges.

Feathers and sequins

Feathers for mask

Oh my goodness, the feathers. Fluff everywhere. My Shed will never be the same again.

Once the glue’s dry, I’ll be getting out the hot glue gun to attach these feathery extravagances to the sides of a mask. The black feathers and the sparkly bits were originally attached to the mask in the first place, but the feathers were on very long stems and a lot of them were broken.

I bought the mask late last year, with no particular occasion in mind, and it’s been in somewhat careless storage ever since. So, I ripped off the sparkly bits, ripped off the feathers, and then spent absolutely ages trimming the stems off and pulling apart the little red feathers until they were the right size. And then I glued it all back together again. Except that I got a bit carried away and used far too much PVA, so now it’s all sandwiched between clingfilm and weighted down under a pile of books until it’s properly stuck together.

I also sewed a rather unsightly piece of wide black elastic to the back of the mask, which seems to keep it in place over the top of my glasses without squashing the frames into my face. Not the most elegant solution, but after a great deal of trial and error it turned out to be the most effective. Wearing a mask over glasses is always awkward, so I’m pleased to have found something that stays put and doesn’t hurt!

Single Sock

Single Sock

It’s not that I haven’t been knitting much lately, it’s just that everything I’ve been working on seems to be taking approximately a million years. Like this sock.

It’s a very basic little sock: toe-up, slip stitch heel, and then a million miles of ribbing. I kept it simple of purpose because it was my first toe-up sock, but that made it very dull to knit, and very time-consuming.

And now I have to knit another one.

The second sock does have its toe already, but I’m not quite sure I can face all the plain knitting and endless ribbing all over again. Now I understand why people knit fancy lacy socks – to alleviate the boredom of knitting round and round and round and round and round…

Mind you, a very good friend of mine has expressed an interest in receiving a pair of extremely pink hand-knitted socks for Christmas. I wonder whether I can get them finished in time?

Steampunk Coat

Almost finished...

Here’s the final part of the outfit – a somewhat modified version of Simplicity 2172. Actually, it’s not as heavily altered as you might think – I just left off a few pieces that were surplus to requirements. Like the sleeves.

The buttons are the original ones from my friend’s military jacket. There are four on the front (complete with more hand-sewn buttonholes), two on each pocket, and an extra one at the centre back.

Almost finished...

As you can see, I decided to bustle the back of the coat, so I made thread loops in the seams which simply pop over the buttons on the pockets and at the back. The coat was exactly the same length as the skirt, and the red lacing looked a bit out of place without being able to see the red of the skirt to tie it in, so to speak.

The feather collar is actually a cape that I bought from Next, last winter. Sewing it into place around the neckline of the coat forces the feathers upwards into a more wing-like shape, rather than the cape simply sitting flat around the neck.

In case you’re wondering where on earth I’m going in this outfit, it’s for the Wild Boy’s Ball at Kensington Palace. All I need to do now is add some more feathers to my mask, and carefully choose the rest of my accessories. I’ll make sure to show you photos of the entire outfit when it’s finished!

Cole Museum: Bat Conservation

Bat, being re-wrapped

Once a week I’ve been helping out at the Cole Museum of Zoology as a volunteer. A couple of us have been checking the inventory of some of the store cupboards, and we’ve started to do a bit of conservation work as we go along.

This little bat was wrapped up in a plastic bag, which is a bad idea as condensation can develop inside and damage the specimen. I carefully unwrapped it and prepared some little cushions of acid-free tissue paper so that it wouldn’t get squashed.

New boxes for the bats

There were two bats which belonged together (mounted to show the front and the back), so I wrapped them up carefully and popped them each into a little box. This was then labelled with the specimen number and a brief description, so that the next person to come looking for these bats can find them nice and easily.

There are quite a number of bats in the Cole Museum’s cupboards, including a huge vampire bat that I pulled out on a day I didn’t have my camera with me. I think we’re going to need a lot more tissue paper and a bigger box to keep him safe!

Steampunk Petticoat

Petticoat

You might have noticed that this is made to roughly the same pattern as the black linen dress. This time the ruffle’s a bit shorter, but that was mostly because I’d almost run out of stripy fabric. The body of the dress is a little longer to compensate. The hem is trimmed with one layer of wide flat lace, and another of red gathered lace to provide a little bit of extra fullness. The butterfly sleeves are simply overlocked at the edges, and the beaded trim matches the skirt.

Petticoat and skirt

Here’s how they look together – rather smart, I think! The plain red doesn’t exactly match the stripes, but I think they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter too much. The petticoat doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the fullness of the skirt because it’s much too narrow, so you probably won’t even see the two layers of lace. The attention to detail makes me feel better about the outfit though, so it’s worth the effort.

Muslin Boot

Muslin Boots

I’ve been thinking about making boots for a little while. I finally decided to stop thinking, start sewing, and see what happened. Some minor tweaks are needed (the uppers don’t fit properly to the insoles for a start), but here is the beginning of some little boots. I have plans for more of a pull-on pixie-style thing as well, but haven’t quite got my brain around those yet.

I have terrible spacial awareness, which makes imagining objects in three dimensions very difficult for me. I have to build them, and see what happens. I am terrible at pattern drafting for exactly this reason. Also, small children can beat me at Tetris.

If I can get this pattern right, and make sure that the construction isn’t deathly complicated and time-consuming, I should be able to make these in lots of different heights without too much difficulty. She says, optimistically.