Canberra Show Report

The Canberra Show happened last weekend and I entered as many sewing categories as I could.

On the Wednesday before, I got a rather exciting phone call to say I had won Overall Champion of the sewing section.

The costume that won was Eowyn, (construction posts here) entered in the 'Performance Costume' section. I was particularly pleased that this outfit was chosen as, while making it, I had begun to think my skills would never be good enough to do what I wanted. It was so nice to have other people judge that it was good enough.

I was invited to attend the opening of the Craft Exhibition to receive my prize which turned out to be a sewing machine and an over-locker, both Toyotas. Disturbingly, our two sewing machines have recently turned into five. I don't quite know what to think about that. I am excited to try an over-locker now. I also received a couple of Needlewitch vouchers which I will put to good use.

The special theme category this year was 'Retro'. This was very convenient given my sudden need to make 40s dresses at the end of last year. I won this category with my teal and peacock dress.

I also picked up a few other ribbons. In 'Any other article of machine or hand sewing' I won second place with my Viking costume.

I got second place in the 'Bustier' category with my black waist.

I entered my Regency Spencer in 'Winter/Summer Garments' and got second place.

My mum entered the sewing section for the first time this year and received second place in children's wear.

As you can see in the first photo, I wore another of my 40s dresses to the opening on Friday. I think my favourite thing about the day was the response it got. Several older ladies came up to me and told me it was just like a dress they used to have or had made. I was so pleased to hear that I had managed to make a historical dress that was recognisable to people who were there at the time. (This is not to say that winning Champion wasn't also great – I got the phone call on Wednesday, so it had been my favourite thing on that day. And also on Thursday.)

We Could be the Same

One of the weird things about costuming is how while you’re working on a project it can be completely consuming but after it’s finished it can just disappear completely. This is why it is important to photograph projects. I was looking through my photos a while back and got a shock to see these dresses because I had completely forgotten I made them.

Actually, that’s not completely true. I remember doing the painting. I know I spent a summer carefully painting these designs on a table with a lamp under it with a recording of Eurovision 2010 playing over and over again in the background. But that’s it. All the construction memories had gone and even the painting memory wasn’t attached to a particular project, just Eurovision.

(Suggested listening here. Or here if your musical tastes tend to calmer)

A long time ago I made a Barbie as the Island Princess costume for one of my cousins. A year or so later I had a request for two Barbie outfits so they could have one each. This time the costumes were from Barbie and the Three Musketeers.

 The short, sparkly skirts were easy – one seam, elastic and hem.

According to my notes, for the bodices I used Vogue 7845. (My notes don’t say a lot else, unfortunately.) As with the Island Princess dress I decided to have fabric over the shoulder for inset sleeves rather than having the dress held up by semi-detached sleeves. Because the necklines were annoying enough as it was I didn’t want to have to deal with having them open and close. Instead I made the bodice closure using a trick I’d learnt from a princess bodice I found in an opshop: put the zip in upside down.

By far the biggest challenge of this project was the painting. Each dress in the Barbie Musketeer series had its own skirt design repeat and bodice design repeat. As ever, I wanted to be accurate so I had to recreate these. I also decided to correct the off-centeredness of the patterns found on the dolls used in the promo photos I was using as a reference.

To make the patterns I spent a lot of time fiddling with autoshapes and curled clipart in PowerPoint (PowerPoint is an excellent graphics manipulation program).

This was the result, for the bodice and the skirt front:

 

We printed it out full size and I’m not sure what happened next. I know I painted by tracing something, probably a drawing based on of the printout but with the lines curved correctly and the swirls the right length (the computer design was mostly for scale and placement). I suspect I used a seperate set of transparencies for each colour and traced over these. As with all freehand designs I got my mum to draw out the tracing guide because I am not neat enough. 

For the purple stomacher I printed out a photo of the doll bodice at A4 size which was blurry but the pattern was visible. Mum drew it for me on plain paper and we photocopied it onto a transparency I could paint over. 

Mum also drew out the skirt design for me. The doll dress has kind-of glowy pink bits in the dress panel and I managed to find a gorgeous satin that had the look of being softly dyed with different shades.

Here are the finished results:

 

 

 

This was the project where I discovered fabric paint which turned out to be a very useful discovery. In particular, the gold bottle which I bought for this dress has served me very well.

The skirts are all lined with gold satin and close with hooks and bars.

Completed dresses:

 

(Please excuse the crumples – the dresses had been in a suitcase for two days.)

Barbie belongs to Mattel

Island Princess

Barbies were never my thing. In fact dolls were never my thing. When I was little I preferred animal toys and, when I was a little older, historical figurines. My favourite Barbie-related activity was listening to a boy from church talk about his plans to rid the world of Barbies through means such as melting or lasers. I spent my childhood avoiding the ‘pink aisle’ in Kmart and didn’t enter it willingly until I was 16 and needed a costume for a barbie-themed party. I put together an appropriately princess-y costume from the dress-up box and made myself a full length velour cape the day before.

I have since made velour capes for cousins and another one for myself to wear as ‘real clothes’, without the train, since mum said the trained one was too much of a hazard (for other people) on the stairs.

While researching for this party I got past a lot of my Barbie aversion because they do have some very nice dresses – and nowadays no-one’s expecting me to play with dolls.

All this meant that when my cousin requested a ‘Barbie as the Island Princess’ costume for Christmas one year I looked on the project more positively than I otherwise might have done. It was a new challenge (adapting dolls’ clothes) and a nice dress.

I used Butterick 4887 as a pattern for the basic dress shape as I had made it for this cousin before. I think I reduced the skirts a bit the second time because that pattern has so much skirt.

The first Butterick 4887 dress, seen here with afore-mentioned velour capes.

In order to give the impression of patterned fabric on the skirt, I used a layer of lace fabric over the satin. It was sewn into the seams and hem in order to appear as one skirt and not as a separate overlayer. The pink overlayer was draped.

After much consideration I decided that the straight neckline with attached sheer Bolero-like sleeves was not going to be practical on a child’s gown. Instead I used the bodice pattern as is and made it all out of satin.

I had bought three different sequined fabrics for the stomacher, but when they were put together the differences in colour and pattern were distracting. Instead I used the same fabric on all three levels but layered it so the colour got darker with each layer. The whole thing is lined with pink which showed through under the top layer.

The dress was very popular with its recipient.




Barbie belongs to Mattel.

2014 Review

In 2014 I made:

Lucy from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

A fantasy gown.

  A Viking outfit.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed II.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Ezio’s outfit from Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

A cotton petticoat (not pictured).

* * * * *

In the past year I discovered Dorset buttons which I first made for Lucy and then for my AC II costume.

These buttons are inexpensive, light, flat and soft which makes them very useful. The downside is that they take 40 minutes to an hour each to make, but for these costumes I found that manageable.

I used bleach on fabric for the first time ever to decorate the AC: Revelations costume and was very pleased with the outcome. I also discovered the usefulness of string as part of the trimming toolkit.

With the Lucy and Assassin costumes I started to come to terms with myself about not always needing everything to be screen accurate. I’ve often observed that the overall impact of a garment is more important than whether the small details are right but that doesn’t stop me getting worked up about them. However I managed to be satisfied with having the Lucy outfit and the AC II outfit trimmed with a gold pattern rather than trimmed with a screen-identical gold pattern.

 

These are not the same.

Very few people other than me will notice, and if I had adapted or hand-done something for the sake of accuracy but of poorer quality, that would have been noticeable.

While attempting an accurate trim on the AC II outfit I discovered my limits in the field of handsewing which might, if I am very sensible, help me to make more realistic decisions about future garments. I ended up painting the motifs and using braid instead.

While I didn’t develop many new skills making the Assassin outfits I still learned a lot from them. I had to solve many challenges with regard to patterning, fitting, historicity, accuracy and construction, and went through the process with a lot of doubt as to how they would turn out. Happily, I think they eventually turned out well. Of course, in 2015 they will require me to develop a new skill-set as I try to make the armour and weaponry to go with them.

Given that I am largely self-taught and am constantly putting myself in situations where I have no idea what I’m doing, it was kind of odd to take on a mentoring role in the last year. At the beginning of the year I was asked for help by a girl from church who had never sewn before, so I walked her through making a sundress. It was a fairly complicated first project, containing darts, front/sidefront construction and a zip, and required fitting a mock-up. However, I am of the belief that it is better for a beginner to make something they want rather than something simple but dull.

I also spent some time sewing costumes with my young cousin. I have achieved my goal of corrupting the next generation! When we visited in the middle of the year I did some corsetry with her. When she visited us a few weeks ago she made this Victorian-inspired gown (McCall’s pattern 6097).

It’s not completely finished in the picture, but it's pretty good for three days work. I’m very proud of her.

Now, I’m going to stop typing because I have a new project to start.

"It is such a very Narnian ship"

When I offered my cousins a costume gift at the end of last year the youngest requested Lucy’s outfit from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) . The outfit consists of a shirt, a tunic and pants. I must confess to having not seen the movie (partly because I'm a book purist, but mostly because I'm too attached to the old BBC series) so I did most of my research at this website.

The tunic and pants are decorated with painted gold curlicues. To get this effect I used stamps and gold fabric paint.

Because I only needed to use small sections of the stamps, I used a brush to get the paint on to the parts of the stamp I wanted to use. The straight lines I did freehand. I am very proud of myself for being satisfied with designs that are not exactly the same as those in the film. They still have the same effect on the outfit – and really no-one would notice unless they were closely comparing the two… which I invite you to do below:

The tunic pattern I drafted from my cousin’s measurements and, to my delight, it didn’t need any fitting alterations. Having now seen the whole outfit on, I do think it would be better if the tunic was a little longer, but it’s too late now and probably I’m the only person who will notice. 

Mum helped me make the pants pattern from a generic pants pattern that she had used for me when I was young. And by ‘mum helped me’ I mean mum did it while I sat nearby and hand-hemmed the tunic. The pants went together easily and fitted properly, so I suppose I‘m a step closer to being not-terrified of making pants.

The pants had to have pleats that could be clipped in place and could open out.

The shirt for this outfit is made completely out of rectangles of fabric – no pattern pieces required.  The collar and cuffs are knife pleated.

The tie is sewn on to the cuff, then loops around to tie on the outside of the cuff.

The collar pleating is decorated with cording on both sides.

I made Dorset buttons which I have never made before. The first one took me a little over an hour, but by the time I finished I had got the process down to 40 minutes.  

The buttons are made with thick sewing thread and a jewellery-making ring.

The collar doesn’t quite sit right, but I’m not sure what I could have done differently. Possibly it would have been better in a less stiff material. Overall, if I made this again there are a few things I would do differently but I am still very happy with how it turned out and so was my cousin.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader images owned by Disney and Walden Media.