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.

Triple Metallic

Primed--and that matte gray is sort of lovely in it's own right.

Top masked off to do the first layer, the sole.

Gold soles achieved, then the soles were masked off.

Uppers sprayed copper, then the wingtip details were carefully taped off.

Careeeefully removing the masking tape!

And all off! I did mess up and get some drips and chips but all in all I think they came out pretty well. I need to get some new laces though, their old black ones don't really work.