easily distracted by shiny things…
Posted in costume, crafty things, sewing on Apr 3rd, 2012
This is what reminded me that I hadn’t shown you the silk steampunk outfit – I finally found the time to make one of the accessories to go with it! In our original sketches, we’d talked about a beaded silk collar and matching wrist cuffs. I haven’t made those yet (I’ve run out of gold [...]
This is a costume that I made for a friend, way back last October for a Hallowe’en event. She already had a corset and a mask, so they dictated the copper, gold and brown accent colours. The ivory silk had a previous incarnation as her wedding dress. The slightly distressed texture is a result of [...]
This is a little underbust corset which matches the silk waistcoat. It’s made to a pattern that I drafted a couple of years ago. The only alteration I made to the original was that I boned the modesty panel with plastic rather than metal. This makes it much lighter to wear, and as the metal [...]
This is Simplicity 4923 again – a waistcoat to go with the pirate shirt. It took me a whole day to hand-work fifteen buttonholes and then sew on fifteen buttons. Blimey. I know I’m quite slow at hand-sewing, but I didn’t expect it to take so long! It was worth it though. The waistcoat looks [...]
Posted in crafty things on Aug 7th, 2011
These are fifteen silk-covered buttons, waiting to take their place on a waistcoat to match the pirate shirt. They have to wait until I’ve made all the buttonholes by hand. This could take some time…
Posted in corsages, crafty things on Aug 2nd, 2011
I made this little silk rose a while ago, but forgot to take a photo to show you. It’s backed onto a magnet, so you can wear it as a buttonhole on a smart jacket without making pin holes. Now I’ve seen this larger-than-life picture I think I might add a silk-covered button in the [...]
Back in March I managed to find a lovely TM Lewin women’s shirt for a bargain price in TK Maxx. We were going to see Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a gentlemanly sort of an outfit for the occasion. The bow tie is Kwik [...]
As promised a couple of days ago, here’s an almost-finished Burda 7808. Just the hand-sewing and thread-neatening to go, and then it’s done. As it turns out, I followed the instructions more than I expected to – although there are a few things that I’ll change next time. I added extra gathering to both the [...]
Posted in bags, embroidery, sewing, wedding on Jun 8th, 2009
I don’t like showing other people’s wedding things in their entirety before the wedding, so this is just a little snapshot of Laura’s beaded wedding bag. The ivory silk dupion was already beaded and embroidered. I removed some of the clear beads, and replaced them with red ones. You can also see the pretty flower [...]
I’d always wondered why you weren’t supposed to wash silk. I bought three metres of ivory dupion a little while ago, but it had a dirty mark on it, so I knew I was going to have to clean it somehow. In a fit of “what the heck”, I chucked it in the washing machine, [...]