2015 Review

2015 began with a spur-of-the-moment Eowyn costume that turned into a crisis of collar-design and a drawn-out quest for The Right Trim. I said in an earlier post that I had been to every sewing shop in the ACT, but I have since discovered this was a gross slander of Needlewitch which I hadn't heard of then and which did have something that would have worked.

For the Jane Austen Festival I wanted to make a couple of evening gowns but I found myself in need of a new pair of stays which dashed my plans to be ready early this year. I managed to get my Joker-inspired regency dress wearable for the ball and finished it afterwards. At JAFA I did an 1806 bonnet class where I made a Polish Casquette (using a Lynn McMasters Pattern). Later in the year I made a spencer which is now ready early for next year.

 I made a pair of pyjama pants (Kwik Sew 3882) as part of sewing lessons.

I played through the Bioshock series of video games this year which I loved. This inadvertently solved my “I can’t find any clothes I like in the shop” problem as I suddenly wanted to wear 1940s style dresses - and these proved surprisingly simple to make. I created a pattern with a number of variations and kept making new dresses. I was glad to have simple, quick projects as I spent the last half of the semester alternating between being sick and madly trying to catch up on uni and I needed something to relax with. Most of these dresses happened between 9pm and 3am at the point where if I didn't sew something I would go mad. Here are the individual blog posts: maroon, light blue, navy blue and teal.

Finally, here is the progress on my Bayeux tapestry dress. This year I finished the Church and these horses. Filling in the horses takes so much thread (and time).

In non-sewing news: I am finally finished with Uni! This year I completed a double degree in History and IT. (All together now: "That's an interesting combination!")

This is my tenth year of making costumes. And having come as far as I think I can under my own tutelage I started having lessons and they've been great. I now press and finish seams better; I use notches; I use a whole variety of new and different tools; I know how to treat my sewing machine better...

Speaking of sewing machines: I got a new one this year. My 1976 Husqvarna 2000, inherited from my Great Aunt, finally gave out after a long and full life. I now have a Brother NV610 which, so far, I am pleased with.

There were other changes to my sewing arrangements this year. We rearranged the house a bit so I now have a sewing-only sewing room far enough away from everyone else that I can sew late into the night whenever the insomnia takes me. We reorganised the pattern stash to be more accessible. My mum and I swapped sewing cabinets too. So basically my sewing setup now is all of the new. And I got a garment steamer. I love my garment steamer.

This was a year of plans that did not eventuate, starting with Eowyn taking two months longer than it was meant to. I was not planning to be sick all the time either. It wasn't anything serious but the time-out being sick followed by catching up on study really threw the last five months for me. There were several months this year which I pretty much slept through. When I finally had a chance to look seriously at the hardware for my Assassin's Creed costume I found that the method I was expecting to use wouldn't work. I had been planning to use draw slides for the hidden blades but the only ones I could find were nearly as big as my wrist and really heavy.  And finally, I posted a list of my future plans of which I have worked on exactly none. (Usually I don't publish 'goal lists' because I know how many dresses I think about and don't make.) Of course, I immediately went off and made four other dresses not on the list. All or none of my plans may be realised next year.

A moving story

When I was working on my 1940s dresses  I did a lot of the work in the small hours of the morning. This was not so well received because the noise disturbed the other occupants of the house who for some reason like to sleep then. This prompted a decision to move the sewing room post-haste.

We decided to get rid of the table. I think its intended purpose was for cutting out patterns on but its actual use was mostly to have things put on it or under it. It wasn’t a good height for sewing work and I now have a glass table to use for tracing so I mostly use that if I need a table. The sewing room also doubled [tripled] as a dressing room (which meant I couldn’t store things in the built in wardrobe) and an art room. One of the sewing cupboards lived in the spare bedroom which meant a trip down the hallway whenever buttons or zips or patterns were needed. (Most of the patterns made it to the sewing room earlier in the year but not all of them.)

Mum is an experienced house rearranger so she made up a floor plan with movable furniture and we experimented with possible solutions before embarking on the big move.

First, the table went. It had a good life but some of the veneer had snapped recently and its usefulness was limited.

The spare bedroom was a very crowded room. As well as the bed and desk it stored my costumes and a sewing tools cupboard that didn't fit in the sewing room. The new spare bedroom is a larger room which gives guests more space to move. My bonnets and hats are displayed on the shelves and my costumes now have covers to protect them from dust and light.

The sewing room is now ONLY for sewing. THIS IS SO EXCITING. Let’s tour...

My sewing cabinet and dress form.

The stand the dress is hanging from used to support a birdcage but turns out to make an excellent hanging rack for garments in-progress or being steamed.

The ironing stand holds the iron (duh), ironing ham, sleeve roll, pressing cloth, ironing spray and garment steamer. The steamer was a birthday present and I love it. Haven’t ironed a thing since (I have pressed a lot of seams though).

Next are the notions drawers, scrap fabric boxes and mum’s sewing cabinet. We don’t sew at the same time as much as we’d like but I think we have a better chance of both fitting in the same room now. The drawers used to be behind the open door of my sewing cabinet meaning I couldn’t easily access things while I was sewing so I’m very pleased it’s been shifted.

The brown cupboard has more notions and tools. There’s a nook for in-progress projects bags next to the pattern boxes. Having the boxes stacked on top of each other is not as convenient as lining them up on a table but they are small enough to not be too hard to access. Finally, the fabric cupboard. I would like to do some stashbusting over summer (ha ha, ha) so I can fill this cupboard with a stash of useful lengths. I often want to ‘make something now’ but don’t have enough of any particular fabric.

The new room is great. No more worrying about keeping people awake; no more having to share the space for other uses; less sun in the heat of the afternoon. I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner.

Middle [school] ages

In a year 9 history elective my class decided to have a medieval lunch. Due to my internet-ly wanderings at that time I had just discovered the concept of ‘historical accuracy’. I decided I wanted an accurate costume and couldn’t possibly wear the supposedly ‘medieval’ hot pink satin ‘frog princess’ costume my mother had previously made for me to wear to a birthday party.

Frog Princess

So I sought out a pattern for a sideless surcoat outfit (Burda 7977), bought some cotton poplin and embarked on the project. At the time it seemed like such a huge project. I had a week to make it – but it was a week when we were out every night.  Fortunately it’s not a complex outfit and I was able to follow the pattern as is (a very rare occurrence). Only the godets caused some grief. Godets were a new concept at the time for both myself and my mum and I had to redo them several times. Now I know to sew them differently from the pattern instructions (one should attach godets before sewing the side seams).

The outfit was ready to wear on the day, albeit unhemmed; Mum made the hat while I was at school and dropped it off just before lunch. 

This was my first attempt at a deliberate, accurate costume and I have never looked back.

This costume has since been worn to birthday parties and medieval festivals and has been a visual aid in class presentations. I’ve grown so used to it that it has migrated out of my costume wardrobe to be mixed-and-matched with my everyday wardrobe. 

Of course this is perfectly normal uni wear.  What do you mean it’s 700 years out of fashion?

I have since accumulated quite a collection of early medieval cotton garments. I made outfits for the doctor and lady-in-waiting for a scene from Macbeth in English class (I do that). These are both essentially lengthened t-shirts. I tried to use trims that looked like weaving if you squinted at them from a distance, and the one on the brown robe kind-of does. Lady Macbeth wore the cream dress (above) without the surcoat.

More recently I used the Burda 7977 pattern to make an everyday dress. I adapted the sleeve pattern into bell sleeves and I was very happy with how they turned out. This pattern has surprisingly agreeable sleeves and I use them when I have to add long sleeves to other patterns.

Origin story

This year marks 10 years since I started costuming.

The story actually starts a bit earlier, when I was about 3. My mum used to sew a lot of clothes for me so I was very familiar with the sewing machine. I was allowed to use it (electricity off – handwheel only) and I set out to make an "Indian costume".

So I suppose this was actually my first costume.

Around the same age I requested a purple dress 'down to the ground'. The dress did have to be taken up a little because I kept tripping on it, but it was The Beginning.

Extravagance!

I played dress-up a lot as a child, haunting second hand shops for interesting clothes. Star Wars was a particularly popular subject. Somehow, my later choice of costuming as a hobby still managed to take all of us by surprise.

Princess Leia you can probably recognise, the other is Sabé from The Phantom Menace.
I have not sewn a Star Wars costume yet. I don't know why this is.

I did a little bit of embroidery when I was 11 but mostly sewing remained mum’s domain until I was 12 and discovered that the sewing machine could be turned on. It had a light! And it could go fast! I made some clothes for my favourite soft toy and then started on cushions. That was a mistake; lots of cushions take up far too much space.

Some of the cushions I made.

In 2005 my best friend had a dress up party for her 14th birthday. I decided I wanted to make a flapper costume. Mum did most of the work to develop the pattern and cut the material but I sewed all the seams myself. Mum hand-sewed the feather boa on in the office of an osteopath (I had an appointment before the party) where it left a lot of feathers. I got changed there and walked out in costume.

I started spending a lot of time on the costuming part of the internet and discovered, mostly through Koshka-the-cat and her connections, that 'costuming' was an actual thing that people did.

The next few years had multiple dress-up events that I wanted to do properly and while I was turning school assignments into dresses I found that sewing was a thing I really enjoyed. Instead of sewing in order to get clothes I wanted, my focus has long been making clothes that I want to sew. I really enjoy the challenge and learning opportunities from this hobby. My "genre" of focus has changed a lot over the time I’ve been sewing: historical, fictional, original designs, corsetry, 'real clothes'... There’s always something new and interesting to explore.