The Skirt Comes Together

On this particular piece I decided against a colorful lining or interior. I may later add a little bit of embroidery to the inside, but Mariah's pieces will mainly be less colorful and work-intensive than the other characters--excepting the coat which I've just begun work on, which I imagine to be a later addition to the wardrobe. Anyway, the lining is pieced from some linen and cotton bits and pieces I had about.

Nice lovely flat felled seams.

Lining installed! I'm really trying to push the level of finishing on every piece, no matter how ordinary/plain, I think it will help further along the aspect of confusion on the nature of the piece(s)--whether they are costumes, or garments meant to be worn, or pieces of fine art craftwork. I think I previously had too many 'filler pieces' that weren't particularly well done to serve to show off the more intricate pieces.

The skirt as a whole. It's pretty much complete, except that I haven't decided how to handle the closure--I'm researching passemterie techniques for buttons at the moment.

And the cut edge, which I'm very pleased with! This poor blog post has been so off-white--at least my next project will have more color.

As a rather non-serious aside I've also started up a collection of obnoxious floral embroidered tea-towels, which I'm envisioning being appliqued to....something eventually.

At the same thrift store I also found a big (about 6" high) spool of exactly the sort of buttonhole thread I like, which seems to have gotten increasingly difficult to find. It's a bit discolored, but once I use up the first layer it should be clean. This will last me a while!

Sick Days

I've spent the last week in various stages of sickness, recovery, and then sickness again, so not a whole lot has gone on. But I did manage to make some progress!

The skirt has been sewn together and all the cutwork cut. And I didn't cut through any of my stitching--I thought for sure it would happen. The seams also pressed flat really nicely, which I was concerned about.

Now onto outlining and cutting the bottom hem. I think that really helps pull the whole thing together. Then I'm going to half-line it (the wool it's made of is pretty scratchy) and figure out the buttons/waistband.

More grey wool! I never thought I'd say this, but I think I may have gotten too much! But at least I know I'll have enough for the coat, and patchwork always takes up way more fabric than you think.

That bag of silks also got dyed. I forgot how well silk picks up color, these are a bit darker than I had imagined. I might do a bit more silk-searching to get some lighter, brighter colors as well.

I'm starting to cut them up into little trapezoid shapes, the box is starting to fill up. This is definitely going to be an 'over time' project.

The Braid is Back

The reversible braid jacket in now in the 'material gathering' phase (which, when you use recycled materials, can take a while) but I decide to do a sample in the actual weight/type of materials I wanted to use, just to make sure I was on the right track.

And hooray, everything seems to be working fine! It is very hard to photograph something double sided like this though! This project seems like it will be a good continuation of Leoh's Coat: now with both sides patchworked together. But similar idea, gray/black outer, dyed bits of silk insides.

Both sides. I haven't yet decided how I will join the strips together, probably bias strips of some kind though. Also, the grays here are from the lighter gray pile, I also have a pile of dark, dark charcoal, and I'm not sure how I will arrange the colors.

The silks in the sample above were from a lovely gift from Astrid, and they'll certainly make it into the finished project, but they're not enough, so I've gone through all my scraps of silk and sorted them out. I still need more though, so a trip to the thrift store for more awful silk shirts is in the cards. Then to dye them all green/blue/purpley.

And my boxes to keep the little pieces in. Woefully empty now but I'm sure they'll be overflowing soon enough.

The skirts moving along. I was awful and did cut away the back on a whole panel, I just couldn't resist the temptation. The executive decision was made to nix the braid motif above this one, so once I'm done this last panel, I'll start sewing them together.

Drawing Dump

One of my other resolutions this year was to draw more, and I have, so just a quick post of some sketches and a little progress on other projects.

Playing with braid designs, and going back to Leoh's design, some of the basic components could be fixed, still want to make some decent pants.

I move my book around as I draw, sorry! Teoh, some thoughts on support garments for Mariah, based on something I saw on the Met online archive.

Mariah, wearing the skirt I'm working on now.

Thinking about outer garments using that double sided braid I made a sample of earlier, also a sketch of a tabard-type thing made of a traditional shell one-patch design.

I also did a thrift-store run, $30 gets you quite a bit of stuff. Most of this is for my student's 'thrift remix' project this semester, but the grey wool pants and white twill collared shirts are for my own work.

The pants have already been disassembled into chunks of fabric, I think these will become that braid-coat I sketched above.

And the cut-work skirt is continuing, I'm about halfway through the 3rd piece of it.