Archive for February 2013
February 24, 2013 | 
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So my love of Vivienne Westwoods 1980 collections continue. This weeks handmade overalls are influenced from Vivienne’s 1983 collection Punkature. Borrowing idea’s from this Dickensian/Ragamuffin/ Rastafarian look whilst sticking with the muted tones and textures of her Nostalgia of Mud/Buffalo collection. It takes a bit of thought and effort to sew up your own cohesive look based on images, research and music video’s alone and given the overall look, altogether it does look like hardly any effort has been applied and this is exactly what I’m going for.
So without having to explain myself anymore than I need to the above images are my inspiration for this look. I love this— Dickensian/ Ragamuffin look so I got to drafting up my own version. I splurged on 2m of brown linen, boy do I love this stuff and dug through my stash of leather scraps to fashion up the braces. A snap fastener kit was also purchased. I drafted up the pants adding big deep pockets extending the front rise and back rise into a slight elevated point for the leather brace to sit. I trimmed the top edges with brown broadcloth and then fashioned a strip of fabric- turned over on both sides then topstitched down for the rope to travel through which is then pulled through a machine sewn button hole. The insides are all neatly finished on the overlocker.
You can imagine how easy the leather brace was to make, the hardest part is hammering in the fastener snap kit and even that didn’t break a sweat. The brace is the same on the back as it is on the front. Easy! My net top was also handmade and dyed grey, the fabric was yellow and thrifted and I have enough to make myself the Kitchen Sink Cardigan (centre image^).
So yes, admittedly this is not for the faint hearted, and I don’t even expect my lovely readers to begin to understand where I’m coming from it’s just the pure joy of sewing up something I know I’ll never be able to afford! I’m just sewing through my fashion fantasies. A see and sew kinda a thing if you will. Happy to share those fantasies here.
I wore this out last night to see White Night- the projection of images onto our iconic buildings here in Melbourne which was mind blowing to say the least. I had some lovely compliments from like minded folk and a guy who took some serious effort to scream from his car window ‘hey weirdo’…why thank you bogan boy.
A second pair had to be made, how yummy is this cotton silk? I waited a longtime for this fabric to go on sale, saving up vouchers and hitting Spotlight when it went on sale so I didn’t have to pay the full price of $25 metre. I love the patterns and the colours so light and floaty.
These were made in a similar manner as the linen overalls, I just needed to change my tension on the overlocker to get a nice looking stitch. They’re so damn comfy, great for lounging about in this heat, the colours lend itself more to a winter palette wouldn’t you agree? I’m cool with that.
So there you have it, this particular look is looking somewhat cohesive, I might just have to expand on it. I did see some really big wooden buttons on Etsy the other day…hmmm.
In other sewing news have you dropped your sewing pin on The Map yet? Vicki over at Another Sewing Scientist has brewed up the best idea ever, a Google Map for all us sewing types to pin our location to, you know, for potential sewing meet-ups and what not, how cool is that? Go make your mark you never know there could be a potential friendship just around the corner from you.
I wont be here next week, super busy but I will be sewing throughout the week, probably mock bras in varies sizes.
Have yourself a lovely week.
Happy sewing.
After spreading a nasty Twitter virus around the sewing world and beyond earlier last week I’m pretty sure you all know by now that I do not possess a funny picture of you all. Arrr so sorry about that one. Let me spam you instead with some bra and knicker sets. I am slowly venturing into making bra’s for others which is a little daunting to say the least but I am determined to get my head around it all. Oh yes I am.
First off my Janome is this sweet set made from the above thrifted top made for my daughter. The top does absolutely nothing for me but I could totally see it sewn into bra and knickers. The fabric is really good quality, a thickish, soft, sturdy stretch lace at $3.99, Perfect!. Shopping thrifted RTW clothes to make sets from is quickly becoming my favourite thing to do, stretch lace dresses hello!! something I never would of looked twice at are being dreamed up into sets. This mauve set I made earlier was made from a thrifted top too and it’s so damn comfortable.
This bra is the Classic Pin-up Girls bra pattern, my first go making this pattern. I made up a mock-up bra for her to try on and found that I needed to adjust the width of the band making it wider and adjust the seam on the cups closer to the arms shirring off a couple of mm for a good fit. I made these changes to her paper pattern and then started cutting into this fabric.
I’m loving this picot elastic and the softer the better. The cradle is of course interfaced and all pieces are lined in a soft stretch nylon mesh with casing and underwires. My daughter said she could feel the hook and eye irritating her back so I placed a piece of the soft underwire channeling over the join which stopped the fabric from rubbing and irritating.
I loved how this sweet set turned out. They fit her like a dream, showering me with hugs saying how very very comfortable they are. Yay! A bit more sewing practice with this little sewing pattern and I’m good to go.
This little set is all woven fabric with the cradle/bridge interfaced and cut on the straight and the cups and band cut on the bias all lined in a soft nylon mesh. The fit of the bra looks and feels great on her. The knickers (Amerson) were downloaded from Madalynne’s free PDF pattern available here. Thanks Maddie. Instead of printing the pattern out on A4 bits of paper I placed the PDF into Illustrator and placed it all together and pressed print on the large digital printer at work; Love doing that! Using my inner sewing intuition I cut the large out for my daughter who is a small, if I were to cut the small I don’t think the gathering ratio would of worked out. They fit good, the centre back seam needs to be raised because they sit too low other than that they’re super cute.
Why is the back different to the front? guess? yes I ran out of fabric, I went back to Spotlight and pulled the place a part to no avail, it is a shame. I did find panda’s at least.
The perfect teen set don’t you think? my daughter loves this set she’s been swanning about the house in it like nobodies business. Perfect for these hot days we are experiencing lately.
The insides are looking neater and neater as I go, it’s the channeling that I want to improve on, it’s like sewing blind and when you turn the bra over it’s either no good or a winner. I was staring at Amy’s new polka dot bra last night and I’m just in awe of her impeccable finishing skills, something I’m hoping I’ll eventually acquire after much practice. How about you, have you tried sewing a bra? what’s on your sewing table at the moment? I have some serios blog reading to catch up on.
Today I received an email stating that my little blog has been nominated for Voices of 2013. I’m super excited because it’s kind of a big deal. It’s so nice to be recognised and appreciated and yes, yes, yes of course you can still vote for me, just head on over and tick some boxes, the creative section is where you’ll find me, how cool would that be if I won something because of you guys expressing your interest in what I do here? and of course I voted for myself who wouldn’t?
Hope you’re all having a great weekend. I’ve got some serious sewing to do, and the end of a book to finish see you next weekend.
What has she made now? look away if you don’t like to break sewing rules. If you have been following this little blog you’ve probably already gathered by now that I do like to step outside the box a little, I do like it there, it’s where I’m most comfortable and it’s not claustrophobic one little bit. This week I’ve taken Vogue Pattern 1185 and made it my own. The styling on the pattern envelope is ‘inside the box and that again sits inside another box’ with those hideous heels and the WTF hairstyle Vogue are really challenging us outsiders to help them take their patterns to the next level or maybe they are not intended for our use. Either way I could totally see potential in this pattern, especially while I’m on my Buffalo Gal/Nostalgia of Mud ride.
I found this smashing crinkle linen blend which wasn’t cheap, but really wanted it to look as organic as possible and boy is this gorgeous fabric it was a dream to sew with and it just complements the pattern and look I’m after. It’s black though and it’s bloody hard to show all the elements of the pattern in these pictures so here’s the line drawing, you can laugh at my funny facial expressions but not my sewing cause I’m serious about that shizz.
I love this! I found complementary matte black buttons which look great running down the back and the pockets are lovely and big, there is a smaller pocket inside the larger pocket, big enough to slide your favourite Murakami novel into. There is a knack to buttoning this thing up without any help; you can reach around and button up what you can then you pull the back neckline up above your head to reach the other buttons, easy!
I’ve sewn this up as instructed, facings, topstitching you know all the normal stuff required to produce a well made garment, sewing ‘inside the box’ being a good girl but that didn’t last for long. I wanted to take it one step further and make it look even more organic- ragamuffin if you wish?
This ensemble is c h e e s e c l o t h you can’t get anymore organic than that and at $2 a metre I wasn’t complaining especially after my splurge on the linen. The cloth was bright blue, I dyed it brown and it came out in the most perfect mottled ragamuffin grey. Ragamuffin Grey ? let’s patent that colour…it matches my Vivienne Westwood mountain hat perfectly. This thing is raw and totally defies the rules of sewing and to be honest I don’t care one little bit. I actually think this has eons more character than the linen piece.
I’ve left all the edges raw and even managed to attract strands of cotton along for the ride. I’ve sewn two lines of straight stitch around the neckline, armholes and bottoms to prevent it from fraying anymore than I need it to. The insides are all overlocked. The outside pockets are sewn on raw- designed to fray. The bottoms are different to the pattern as you can see, I’ve placed raw pieces around the legs for a drawstring to travel through and added some long straps to hang from the pockets, shoulders and center adding a bit of character.
d r a p e
The buttons were your basic wood colour so I threw them into the dye and they came out???…. yes you guessed it! Ragamuffin Grey baby.
I can hide my children in there, like a freak’in kangaroo I can eat all I want too. ↓
…and that’s it from me I’m off to run a muck and terrorise small children into giving me their pocket money to buy more fabric and learn to dance like Jeremy Healy and Helen Garner for the god damn love of 80′s music.
