For the stripes challenge, I'd love to use this Sahri which I bought around 10 years ago when I was a student - believe it or not, I paid £10 in the charity shop for this beautiful piece! It's been worn a couple of times as fancy dress, and was hung up in my room as decoration for a couple of years, but until now I've never found the design worthy of the fabric.
Well, as you've noticed I haven't been keeping up with the HSF challenges very well (but its ok cos my target was to do 10 out of 26!) That doesn't mean I'm not inspired by them though! So, for those challenges I can't take part in but would really love to, I decided I share my imaginary projects! For the stripes challenge, I'd love to use this Sahri which I bought around 10 years ago when I was a student - believe it or not, I paid £10 in the charity shop for this beautiful piece! It's been worn a couple of times as fancy dress, and was hung up in my room as decoration for a couple of years, but until now I've never found the design worthy of the fabric. But thanks to HSF I now know exactly what I want to make with it! I was flipping through the Harper's Bizarre Victorian fashion book and came across this plate: It's perfect! I think I'll have to carefully plan the trim placement based on what I have available, and probably mix in some plain pink fabric but I LOVE it! This is now on the 'to sew list' and hopefully will get made some time this year!
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So this is another inspiration post, this time I'm inspired by dressing gowns! I was looking through the Rigby and Peller website and DH said this caught his eye - hmm. Surely I could do something like that? Thinking about lingerie and dressing gowns reminded me of something (or should that be someone) I discovered recently. I came across this gorgeous, feminine little dress desgined in the 1920s by a designer called Lucille Duff Gordon. Lucille made some really gorgeous stuff AND she was the one who made it acceptable for the average woman to wear something nice in the privacy of her own bedroom - before lucille, lingerie was for actresses and mistresses, not happily married women. I was pretty excited to hear that the Lucille design house had been reestablished by one of her descendants and that they were going to design lines inspired by some of lucille's original clients. Maybe there'd be something there I'd like... Yes! This dressing gown is gorgeous! Again, its super floaty and feminine, and so luxurious! Now, I don't have £715 to spend on a dressing gown, but I do have a stash of fabric, surely I can come up with something nice?
I'll show you what I came up with next time. So I will never wear the plaid skirt, but I did learn something about working with plaids, and learning is what its all about! I'm glad I learnt on a small, cost practically nothing project and not on something bigger - like the dress above which has been in my inspiration folder for several years now. I was hoping to show you a picture of the fabric I brought for it, but unfortunately I can't find it - I suspect it may be in a box in my parents attic.
I did a bit of internet research on plaids, and found some useful tips. 1. Plaid comes in two types, even and uneven weave. Basicly, in the even weave, the pattern repeat on the cross grain and the grain are the same distance, so you end up with squares. In an uneven weave, you end up with diagonals - particularly unsuitable if you're hoping to use it on the bias. To check whether a fabric has an even weave, fold it diagonally so the cut edge is along the selvedge. The pattern repeats should match up. 2. Be super careful when cutting out. Decide which piece to use as a base, and cut that piece. The match up the next piece, choose a specific line of the pattern and mark that on. Place the pattern piece on the fabric so that the lie matches the mark. 3. Avoid fabric creep! I never baste, but I think this is one occasion I'll have to! One way of doing this is to iron under teh seam allowance on one piece, place it on top of the other as it will be in the finished garment so you can see exactly where you need to match up. This is also an occasion I should probably try out my walking foot! 4. Avoid curved seams - this is gonna be interesting in making a victorian dress! but you can see on the picture that horixontally at least the plaid is beautifully matched at what appears to be a back seam on the bodice. Now all I need is an extra 10 hours day.... DH took me to see the new Snow White film, Mirror, Mirror yesterday - it was fabulous! The costuming was absolutely amazing, and on top of that it was a cute story that made us laugh and we left smiling. Today I started googleing the costumes in the movie, and discovered they were designed by a lady called Eiko Ishioka, who passed away earlier this year. She was an Oscar, Grammy and Tony winner, and I felt kinda sad that I'd missed appreciating her work while she was alive. As I googled further I realised there was one dress I had appreciated - me and every other costume nerd out ther - Mina's red dress from dracula. However, thats not one I've ever felt the need to make. There were two things in Mirror Mirror that are going on the inspiration list. The first is Snow's yellow cloak - this is huge and ornate, with a stiff hood and a piped yoke which is straight at the front and a deep V at the back, and it ties with a bow at the neck and has bows above the two hand slits. I can so see this as a dramatic wedding cape for a winter wedding - in fact I have some deep red satin in the stash which is now ear markerd for a cloak like this. The other think was one of prince charmings suit- a three piece, unornamented suit of what I though was brown satin, but looking at pictures online its possibly more aubergine. I love the simplicity of the cut (shawl collar and flowing lines) and the lack of ornamentation, the collar and the way the coat swishes - DH loves it too, I think mainly for the swish! So this one may also be on the cards at some pouint in the future!
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AuthorMy crazy costuming, sewing and maybe other stuff too blog! Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes and I can learn from your comments :) Hey you! ;)According to the stats people are actually visiting this site - I'd love to know who you are so please leave comments!
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