Category: costume

Meet Mrs Magpie

Mrs Magpie

I can’t believe it’s taken me since May to get around to showing you this, but please say hello to Mrs Magpie!

As you know, she’s one half of Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium – a Victorian-inspired but thoroughly anachronistic curiosity shop. She only makes a public appearance roughly once a year, so she likes to dress up for the occasion.

I made the costume, with the exception of the sonic screwdriver (made by Paul), and the birdcage necklace, which I bought from Atelier Fabry-Pérot. It’s part of a set of laser-cut decorations, but Mrs Magpie, being a lover of enormous shiny things, thought it would make a fantastically extravagant pendant.

I’m sure I’ve been going on a bit about all the changes that have been happening this year. My health’s gone out the window, my hours and role at work have changed, and now we’re in the middle of moving house. I’m also changing the things I make, and am trying to focus at the moment on the materials and the creation and the process, rather than the selling of an end product. I find it helps me to imagine who might buy or wear or use the things I make, and Mrs Magpie is most definitely in charge of all things bright and flambpyant and shiny! I think she might need a friend, who’s more interested in the soft and natural and comfy.

Striped silk bloomers

silk bloomers

Still on a bloomer-making kick, these beauties are made from a silk skirt that I haven’t been able to fit into for years. The leather top is a very rare item of clothing from Fairysteps.

As part of the Unravelling course, I’ve been thinking about the various roles I play, and about alter-ego characters. I’ve still got the Angel Islington’s long white wig, from Progress Theatre’s production of Neverwhere (yes, I know I still haven’t shown you the photos of the costumes!), and I was brushing it out the other day whilst thinking about fairies and other mythical creatures. I’ve recently made white bloomers and a white linen dress, so I could have put together a beautifully ethereal white outfit really easily, and gone down to the woods to take some photos. But my first thought was “but white will just get really dirty”.

Then it struck me that not all mythical creatures are ethereal and fairylike. Some of them are tied to the earth, and fascinated by its processes, and invariably a little bit grubby if not completely covered in mud! So along came a leather top, and a not entirely practical pair of silk bloomers.

What this outfit needs, I think (apart from a good iron), is a little bag or tie-on pocket of some description. I mean, there’s no point going out investigating in the woods if you’ve got nowhere to stash your treasures, is there?

Hopefully I’ll be able to convince Paul to take some photos of me mucking about in the woods in this outfit later in the week. We’ll see.

Prototype Gloves

Prototype fingerless gloves

Well, they fit, but only because I happen to have very small hands!

They’re made from polar fleece which, it turns out, isn’t really stretchy enough for gloves – not ones as fitted as these, anyway. I’m very pleased with the shape at the top (tall over the fingers and cut away underneath), although the placement of the curve needs a little alteration so that the little finger doesn’t disappear. The decoration on the cuffs also needs re-thinking. On auto-pilot I put the centre of the braid in the centre of the cuff piece, without thinking that this would cause it to end up hidden on the inside of the wrists. Oops.

I’ve never made gloves before, and it turns out that they’re very fiddly, especially parts like the thumb which obviously can’t fit over the free arm of the sewing machine. I am pleased with the way the thumbs have come out though – they’re the right height, and they fit really nicely around the base. Next time I think I’d change the order of the construction and attach the cuffs before sewing up the side seams. That would have made the top stitching in particular a lot easier!

My disembodied hand has arrived! Yay!

Perhaps most frustratingly of all – my disembodied hand arrived last week, and I was so looking forward to displaying my first glove on it… but they’re so tight that they won’t stretch far enough to fit. Damn!

Velvet coat – almost finished…

Butterick 5266

Not the greatest photo ever – the combination of black velvet and a dark Shed is not the best – but I think you can see the progress on this coat! It has a body now, which is a big improvement on last week’s cape and sleeves. It’s still not quite finished – the hem needs, well, hemming, and it needs front fastenings of some kind. It also needs overlocking around the sleeves, and a jolly good pressing around the collar.

(Before anybody says anything, yes, I know the purple lining doesn’t go with the red outfit underneath. I wasn’t about to go out and buy another five metres of lining when I already had this purple in the stash.)

The saving grace of this project has been its simplicity. If it had been more complicated, there would probably be a lot more swear words in this post. As it is, I simply left out most of the tricky parts to make my life easier. The sleeves will be overlocked to the body instead of slip stitched. The fronts and neck and sleeve hems are topstitched rather than understitched. Where the lining came out a quarter of an inch bigger than the coat (at the sleeve heads and the hem, don’t ask me why!), I simply chopped off the difference and stopped worrying about it. I haven’t bothered with the fourteen metres of braided trim, or the openings in the front panels. Oh, and I left out the side seam vents too. Simple!

Having moaned on about the frustrating parts, I will concede that the sleeve heads eased into place beautifully, as did the collar. I’m now deciding how I want the front to fasten, and whether I’m going to add any kind of trimmings at all. I think I might need at least a little bit of detail on the ends of the collar, to make them stand out against the front a bit more. Paul’s suggested black frog fasteners and sequin trims, and I think he might be right.

Oh, and the poster in the frame, behind the dressform? That’s a little idea we had, that we’re hoping to turn into a reality!

Pinstriped velvet coat and cape

The tidy side

Remember when I bought this fantastic Ikea unit for the Shed, and tidied everything into neat little cubby holes?

Today I had every intention of making a hat. I had everything I needed laid out on the sewing table. Instructions, fabric, buckram, wire, lining, curved sewing needles… but no pattern. I knew it was in the Shed somewhere – most likely in the ever increasing pile of stuff I haven’t put away yet.

THE PILE

This is my (technically Paul’s) big comfy chair – where I can sit to do hand sewing. Except I can’t, because on the chair lives THE PILE. Anything that doesn’t have a tidy home yet, or anything that I’m going to “put away in a minute” tends to be dumped in the pile. I knew the hat pattern was in there somewhere, and I found it almost at the bottom – alongside the missing pattern for my niece’s dress. The last time I’d looked at either of those patterns was May. Eight months ago. Oops.

What you can also see overflowing from THE PILE is a mountain of pinstriped fabric. That’s about ten metres of cotton velvet, which I bought way back in the mists of time when I worked in a fabric shop. Scrunched up underneath it was the pattern for Butterick 5266, a pattern for a Victorian-ish coat with a cape. (Now out of print.) In my infinite wisdom, I decided that the best way to tidy this fabric and get it out of the Shed was to finally sew the dratted coat.

Cape and sleeves

So, I now have the cape part, and a pair of sleeves. Unfortunately I have also remembered how much I absolutely loathe sewing with cotton velvet. And the pinstripes aren’t helping either. They look great, but they’re printed onto the fabric rather than woven in, and they’re not printed on the straight grain. Which means that I have to choose either to follow the pinstripes or follow the grain. Not an ideal situation, particularly with velvet.

Pinstriped velvet

Isn’t this lovely though? That glorious moment when the pinstripes actually match at the seams as though I meant it, makes up for a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make up for the frustrating way that velvet moves around when you sew it, even with the usually fantastic differential feed on my machine. So the pinstripes only match beautifully on one of the sleeves, and of course that’s the one where the fabric kept slipping as I was sewing in the lining, because the velvet was off the grain. And the sleeve that isn’t puckered around the cuff? The pinstripes don’t match up at all. Of course.

And that’s the easy bit.

The front and back panels are so big that they each have to be cut twice from a single layer of fabric. And then lined. I think from now on I’m going to ignore the instructions, and just leave out all the fiddly bits that could go wrong. No braid trimming, no side vents, no slits to put your hands through (what are they for anyway? the thing has sleeves!), no loops for the buttons – nothing. I’ll bag out the lining so it can’t slip around, and I’ll sew on enormous poppers with buttons over the top. Or buy frog fasteners.

It’ll be a few days before I can get back in the Shed to finish this off (my Real Job calls), but hopefully I can get this finished very soon. Then I can gleefully THROW AWAY* whatever’s left of the velvet, and rejoice in my decision to NEVER SEW WITH IT AGAIN.

 

*No, of course I won’t actually throw it away. I’ll give it to a charity shop, or donate it to anyone daft enough to take it off my hands after they’ve read this.

[edit] Well, Lisa of Off With Her Head has admitted to being daft enough – so when I’ve finished the cape, I’ll be sending her a big parcel. Look out for pinstriped velvet millinery, coming soon!

Spotty bolero and apron…

Spotty bolero

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week – making a spotty bolero from Simplicity 1819. I was intending to make a stripy one, to match the red and black outfit I wore to the Wild Boy’s Ball at Kensington Palace a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the fabric shop was out of stripes and, being too impatient to wait for an order to arrive, I decided to go with spots instead. As you do. This had a knock-on effect as the matching black trim (also unavailable) would have been invisible on the spotty fabric, so I had to go with red. I think it stands out rather nicely! It’s the first time I’ve done this sort of decoration, and although it was a bit fiddly in places, I’m pleased with the way it looks.

(I have to confess that I also love the way it looks with this yellow skirt. The temptation to wear these together is now almost irresistible.)

Spotty bolero and apron

And here’s what it’s supposed to look like, complete with matching spotty apron. That’s only pinned into place because I still haven’t decided whether it’s actually going to be an apron or a bustle. I think an apron though, as I rather fancy tying it with a ridiculously oversized bow at the back. As you do. The apron is also made from Simplicity 1819, a rather loose interpretation of the overskirt.

I think during the day I’ll probably wear this with a plain black shirt, and I have just enough spotty fabric left over to make a matching tie or bow tie. Then for the evening I’ll switch to the dress shown above, and swap the bolero for the black taffeta coat. If I’m feeling fancy, I might put the feather collar back on.

Then, of course, all I’ll need to make is a MASSIVE HAT. I have Lynn McMasters‘ top hat/riding hat pattern, some spare black taffeta, and a magpie skull on order. Watch this space…

Waltz on the Wye – Sunday

Sunday

On Sunday it was very cold, and I was very tired. I honestly thought I was smiling in this photo. Apparently the smile didn’t make it as far as my face! In case you’re wondering, the stones in the wall are level, but the bench is on a slope.

(All benches in Chepstow are on a slope. In fact all of Chepstow seemed to be up a hill. In every direction. It certainly felt like it by Sunday, anyway.)

This was my least successful outfit of the weekend, or at any rate the one I was least happy with. I couldn’t face wearing my bowler hat (too tight) or my top hat (too big) again, so I borrowed Paul’s cap. The jacket (McCalls 5759) looked fine on the dressform, but turned out not to fit me terribly well. In fact I disliked it so much that it went to Oxfam along with the previous night’s dress.

We spent the morning looking at the contraptions exhibition, which was incredibly inspiring. The competition part of the proceedings was won by Richard’s beautiful pocketwatch. Chatting with Richard and Donna later that day left us full of ideas that we really must try out…

Sonic Screwdriver

I successfully nagged Paul into making a little contraption for me, and I’m hoping that next year I can encourage him to enter something into the exhibition himself. This started life as a Sonic Screwdriver projector toy. After some mysterious shenanigans with Milliput, wargaming model parts, and a detailed paint job, it turned into this lovely little thing!

Sonic Screwdriver

This was our one concession to sticking a watch part onto something. I take full responsibility.

We spent Sunday afternoon in the Drill Hall, looking around the market and listening to some of the talks. We started off with The Atomic Chemist’s slideshow about firearms. It was enjoyable, but became much more interesting to me when we came home via the Pitt Rivers Museum, and I could see exactly what he’d been talking about as we looked at their gun collection. We then stayed for Crinoline Robot‘s talk about Victorian and steampunk knitting, which was by turns informative and hilarious! I can’t wait to knit her scandalous Victorian ankle-less socks, designed especially for the event.

Sadly we missed Mark Cordory‘s Q&A session, mostly because we didn’t recognise his name until after we’d seen his contraptions, by which time it was too late. He used to be Head of Props Fabrication for Dr Who, during the Ecclestone and early Tennant eras, and the quality of his work was just lovely. We did manage to catch Will Segerman though, and his talk about quick-and-dirty ways of making great looking props was good fun. (And packed!) We came away from that one with lots of notes and ideas, well worth sitting in a horribly warm room for an hour!

Waltz on the Wye was our first steampunk event, and we went into it not really knowing quite what to expect. I was only really interested in the dressing up (anachronistic Victorian-ish clothing? yes please!), and I’d hoped that Paul might be interested in the contraptions. As it turned out, Paul was more interested in dressing up than I’d expected, and we’ve both come away inspired and enthusiastic. Everyone we met was friendly, helpful and open, which is a lot more than I can say for certain other events that we used to go to. The willingness of people to share their knowledge was just lovely, whether it was the best place to buy a pith helmet or an interesting way to make a contraption.

I really hope there’s another one next year, I can’t wait to go back!

Waltz on the Wye – the Cabaret and Ball

Waltz on the Wye by PP Gettins
Photo © PP Gettins

This is our official Waltz on the Wye ball photo, taken by the official photographer Pete Gettins. Isn’t it lovely? The photo booth was set up in the Drill Hall, and there were lots of brilliant props to choose from. We had our photo taken very early on in the evening, which was just as well, as I suffered a slight dress disaster later on!

Do have a look at Pete’s official photos – they give a really good sense of what the atmosphere of the weekend was like, as well as showing how fabulous everybody looked!

Saturday Evening

And here’s the dress in glorious technicolour, taken on Paul’s iPhone. He didn’t bring the Canon to the ball, as it had steamed up the night before, so it seemed more sensible to leave it behind. The gold trim on the hem does go all the way around (five whole metres!), but I didn’t wear the original shoes that went with the outfit, despite having given them three coats of gold paint and glitter. I wore my gold Fairysteps boots instead and, being completely flat, they made the dress a bit long.

Saturday Evening

And here I am, trailing my dress in the gutter. How glamorous. But given that I’d already trailed it the entire length of Chepstow high street, I didn’t think it mattered too much! Unfortunately the length of the train was the cause of a slight wardrobe malfunction. I walked away without realising that Paul was standing on the back of the dress… and the stitching broke, leaving several inches of suddenly unpleated fabric flapping around at the waist. Oops!

Whilst I did enjoy the cabaret acts, there were a few technical difficulties, which was a shame. All of the acts were very entertaining to watch though, and the compere kept us all amused during the moments of technical wonkiness, so full marks for professionalism to Lily Belle. I think my favourite performers of the evening were Hazey Hoop, and The All Electric Music Hall.

After the cabaret Paul dashed back to the hotel to fetch safety pins, arriving back at the Drill Hall just in time to see Professor Elemental. Who was brilliant. Absolutely hilarious. Best act of the night, by an extremely long way! Anybody clever enough to invent an impromptu rap containing the word antidisestablishmentarianism on the spot, gets a huge round of applause from me!

Waltz on the Wye by PP Gettins
Photo © PP Gettins

After Professor Elemental had left everyone in the mood for dancing, Gwilm obliged with a typically eclectic DJ set. Putting the punk back into steampunk, I think Pete caught me dancing to the Sex Pistols. In a giant ball dress. As you do. (If you look closely, you can see the safety pins holding the waist of my dress together!)

Sadly all that dancing was the cause of another dress malfunction, as one of the steel hoops escaped from its casing. Fifteen years in the loft had caused the lining to become brittle, which I hadn’t realised until I stepped on the hoop and the internal workings of the dress came to bits! Rescued again by more safety pins, the dress just about held out until the end of the evening. It also caused a comedy moment when we got back to the hotel. We had to go through the bar to get to our room, and just as we were walking past the gents, a very drunken man emerged, looked at me, and simply exclaimed “bloody hell!!”! I guess he’s not used to going to the pub and encountering a woman wearing a ball dress that’s wider than the corridor…

The following morning I surveyed the damage to the dress and decided that it was just too much for me to fix. I snipped the remaining stitching holding on the satin overskirt, and bundled the five metres of horribly filthy fabric into the bin. I then carefully replaced all the flowers over the freshly revealed ivory dupion skirt, and packed it up in its original bag, complete with the matching shoes. It’s now been donated to Oxfam in Chepstow, looking like a wedding dress again. Hopefully it’ll go to a good home – or perhaps I’ll see somebody wearing it to Waltz on the Wye next year!

Waltz on the Wye – Saturday

Saturday

Saturday was mostly spent at Chepstow Castle, exploring the site and looking at the extremely inspirational contraptions exhibition. We also ate some very good pies at the Chepstow Castle Inn. (Mmmm, pie…) Paul went to Professor Elemental‘s chap-hop workshop while I mooched  slowly back to the hotel, stopping at all the antique and charity shops on the way.

Saturday

The two skirts are from my own patterns. The waistcoat’s Style 1815, in a lovely shot silk, and the jacket is Vogue 8299. Even for a cropped style, it came out a little shorter than I’d expected! At least it shows off the waistcoat nicely though, unlike the shirt (TM Lewin) and bow tie (Kwik Sew 3183) which remained sadly unseen. The brooches were a gift from Miss Alice, and I knitted the mittens in a tearing hurry, casting them off on Friday morning before we left. They’re made from Rowan Felted Tweed. Boots (Moonshine) and handbag (Elder) from Fairysteps, of course!

Saturday

Lesson of the day? Just because your skirt pockets are big enough to hold an A5 book, a folded pillowcase, a small bottle of hazelnut liqueur, a pair of mittens, several oddments of haberdashery and a little pile of business cards, it doesn’t mean that you should shove all those things in at once. Especially not if the waistband’s elastic. Yes, once again, I embarrass myself so you don’t have to!

Waltz on the Wye 2012 – Friday

Friday

We arrived in Chepstow at lunchtime on Friday. After we’d settled into the hotel and had something to eat, we got changed and went off to explore. I checked out Chepstow Castle with my sonic screwdriver. As you do.

Friday

I only saw five of these coats over the weekend, including my own! This was a bit of a surprise, because I’d expected to see lots of people wearing outfits made from Simplicity’s steampunk patterns. Too obvious, perhaps? The coat is Simplicity 2172, and the skirt is Simplicity 2207. I learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea to walk around on wet grass, in the rain, in a floor length velvet skirt. By the end of the night it had soaked up what felt like all the water in Chepstow, and my shoes and socks were soaked through as well. The skirt still wasn’t properly dry when I brought it home three days later, but thankfully it seems to have survived a trip through the washing machine and tumble dryer relatively unscathed!

Friday

I also learned the hard way that when you accidentally drop your beautiful new sonic screwdriver onto the pavement, bits can break off. Oops…

My absolute highlight of Friday evening (and indeed of the entire weekend) was Morgan & West’s magic show. A pair of Time Travelling Magicians who’ve fooled Penn & Teller, they were extremely clever and absolutely hilarious!  At the beginning of they show they explained that there would be a lot of audience participation (argh!), but promised that they wouldn’t embarrass or humiliate anyone. They were true to their word, and the show was funny, exciting, and extremely clever without ever resorting to being shocking, sweary or gory. (The only thing I didn’t like was the needle-and-thread-swallowing, but that’s just my own personal squeamishness.) I loved the part with the apple and the shoe, and the trick which looked as though we were being shown how it was done but we actually weren’t. I’m not sure how descriptive I can be about a magic show without venturing into the territory of terrible spoilers, so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that they were absolutely brilliant!

After the magic show we headed out into the rain to grab something to eat from the Strumpets with Crumpets (goat’s cheese and blackcurrant jam, yum!) and to watch the end of Boxcar Aldous Huxley‘s set in the bandstand. Any band with a french horn player usually gets my vote, but add a harmonium, saw, banjo and euphonium, and you’ve got a very interesting sound indeed!

We went back to the Drill Hall for the headlining band, Rogora Khart. A sort of bonkers Welsh Russian circus punk folk band, with clown make-up and a bellydancer. It took me a little while to get the hang of them, I must admit, but by the end of the evening I was really enjoying the music. Although Paul says I’m not allowed to learn to play the Bombarde. Meany.