Month: March 2009

Investigating African textiles.

When I worked in a fabric shop, we had a large number of customers who would come in and buy linings and haberdashery to go with the most amazing fabrics that they’d brought with them from Ghana. The image above is a beautiful example of embroidered french lace, which you can buy in the UK from Middlesex Textiles.

I was watching Comic Relief last night, and looking at all of the amazing textiles being worn by the women in Africa.

I buy my organic cottons from Bishopston Trading, who import directly from rural India with the sole aim of fair trading. What I’ve been trying to find out today is whether there’s a company in the UK who works on a similar basis with textile producers in Africa.

I think batiks and wax prints would work beautifully with my new dress, as would the laces and embroideries.

It would be brilliant if I could say that every dress in my future range was made from fabric that had been locally sourced, recycled, organically made or supported fair trade across the world.

To be honest, it seems like the least I can do.

Terracotta Dress

Terracotta dress

This is what’s been keeping me busy this week – designing, drafting and making a new dress.

Once I’ve sorted out a pricing structure and a size chart and some other information, I’ll be putting this up for sale, and taking orders.

(Assuming that anybody else thinks it’s a nice dress, and that the credit crunch hasn’t crippled everyone’s dress budgets!)

I’ll be starting off with a range in UK sizes 10-22. Smaller and larger sizes will come later, when I’ve done a bit more work on the proportions of the patterns.

The basic incarnation is designed to fit a B/C cup, but I will eventually be offering larger cup sizes.

It will also be orderable in three different waist lengths. So, if the waist always sits in the wrong place when you buy clothes, you can have the bodice made longer or shorter, for a better fit.

The dress fastens with poppers, with buttons sewn over the top. It comes with a matching sash belt. There are pockets hidden in the side seams. (They don’t add bulk to the hips, because the skirt’s already enormous.)

I’ll be making a few more versions for myself, so that I can build up a picture gallery.

This dress is making me excited and happy every time I look at it across the Shed.

Now I just need to find the people who want to wear it…

Jelly shoes?

I have to say that jelly shoes have undergone something of a transformation since I was a kid!

As a child of the 80s I remember jelly shoes all too well – and the agonising blisters that went with them. These amazing purple brogues by Melissa couldn’t be further removed from the plastic shoes of twenty five years ago. The socially responsible company employs sustainable practices and pays employees above-average wages and benefits. The shoes are made from recycled materials, with the factory recycling 99.9 percent of waste and water used in production. 

I first found out about Melissa shoes via the collection that Vivienne Westwood has been involved with. I’m an enormous fan of Vivienne Westwood’s shoes, and one day I am determined to own a pink pair with toes.  (Such a thing doesn’t exist at the moment, as far as I know, but I’m sure she’ll get around to designing a pair by the time I can afford to buy them!)

This morning I was idly Googling for a pair of comfortable shoes to wear for dancing at my wedding (as you do), and I spotted the pair above. Two-tone purple wingtip derby brogues. Perfect!

Designed by Alexandre Herchcovitch for Melissa, they’re available in the US from Tobi, and in the UK from Coggles.

Who knew that jelly shoes could look so good?

Drafting a new blouse.

Blouse - step two.

Yesterday I drafted a pattern for a blouse, and made the toile on the left. The dressform is wearing my necklace so I can check that I’m putting the top button in the right place to show it off.

Today I worked out the pattern pieces for the facings, and made the blouse on the right. Apparently I was having a little difficulty with spatial awareness when I cut the pieces out, because I’ve ended up with the buttons on the wrong side. Oops…

I’m not entirely sure about the buttons on the collar, but in this case they serve a practical purpose. The interfacing I had available was a bit on the heavy side, so the collar sticks up more than I’d like. The buttons will serve to fix it in place, whilst looking decorative at the same time.

My next step is to draft a skirt pattern, and then it’ll be a dress!

DIY Diary

I freely confess that I am an avid lover of stationery. I have more blank notebooks than is entirely sensible, and I am apparently incapable of sticking to one diary for an entire year. I tried to combat this tendency by buying the most glorious enormous pink Filofax, but even the beautiful leather binder can’t keep me faithful to one diary format.

I’ve tried the Time Management system, the week to view in columns, the week to view with notes, and am currently using a very ambitious page to view, which I’ve been keeping as a sort of a scrapbook.

Over the past year or two I’ve been thinking of making my own diary pages. I’ve looked at the customisable templates over at DIY Planner, thought about hacking a Moleskine, and oooohed over some beautiful planners at Etsy and Little Otsu.

Finally, today, I have bitten the bullet, dusted off my Typography degree, and designed my own planner, which works around the way that I organise my week.

I’ve left enough room down the middle to separate the two pages, and to punch holes so that I can fit them into my binder. I’m not going to print these pages double sided, I plan to use the blank sheets between each week as extra space for writing down notes and ideas.

Once I’ve used the pages for a few weeks, I’ll think about printing them onto nicer paper so that I can use a variety of pens without the ink bleeding through to the other side. I might even consider designing a cover, and putting it up on Lulu, so that other people can use it too. Or perhaps releasing the file as a PDF, so you can print out the pages and use them to make your own planner.

Comfort Zone

A little observation from Keri Smith.

 

I’m also very tempted to make a real-life version of her Secret Explorer Uniform:

(Both images are © Keri Smith.)

Feather and Fan.

Feather & Fan sock yarn

I have no idea what this is going to be, I plan to just keep knitting it until it’s finished.

I was reading the third issue of The Knitter, and there was an article about hand knit scarves, with a recipe for feather and fan stitch. It looked pretty. I had some silk yarn left over from knitting socks. A plan came together.

I’ve been feeling inspired by lacy neck warmers lately, to fill in the gap left by the enormous neckline of my flamingo coat. But I’m not much good at knitting lace, so I figured a simple feather and fan stitch would be an excellent place to start.

I haven’t got all that much yarn (about 35 grams, I think) so this piece is going to be pretty short. I’m thinking I might make buttonholes when I get to the other end, to make a little polo neck without the jumper. Pretty!

Progress on the petticoat.

Petticoat - in progress.

This is Simplicity 3737 (now out of print), view B. You’re looking at the bottom tier of the inside layer – which itself is two layers of dress net/crinoline, edged with satin bias tape.

I still have to make the outer layer, and attach it all to the yoke.

So far I’ve been working on this for three days, and the biggest difficulty I’m having is the amount of space it takes up! 

I’m perilously close to losing my temper with this, so I think its time to pack it away and work on something else for a while.

Having a little look at the internet.

For the past two days I have been wrestling with fourteen metres of dress net and fifty metres of bias tape.

I’m hoping that these ingredients will eventually turn into this Simplicity petticoat. (Bottom right.) So far I’ve cut out all forty-two pieces, and stitched them into the appropriate tiers. Now I need to do all the gathering, and sew all of the tiers together.

I am beginning to understand why petticoats are so expensive, and also wishing that I’d just bitten the bullet and bought one in the first place. Petticoat Perfection do one which would have been absolutely ideal.

The cartoon is by Dave Walker at We Blog Cartoons. I have a print out of this pinned to my noticeboard, where I can see it every time I think I will just go and have a little look at the internet…

New corset style…

This is what I’ve been up to today – making a corset from my new pattern.
It’s made from pink silk dupion shot with purple, and trimmed with purple satin.

Pink & Purple silk corset

I’m developing two new patterns in this style – a “comfy” corset, which gives two to four inches of waist reduction, and a “curvy” corset, which can reduce the waist by four to six inches, depending on the waist-to-hip ratio of the wearer.

This one’s an example of the “curvy” style. I had been planning to keep this one for myself, but unfortunately it doesn’t fit. Apparently I am more comfy than curvy, these days!