Time to trim the threads

The Canberra Show has come and gone. I entered two items: the Amygdala onesie and my 1830s ballgown. Because the Show no longer has the Costume or Historical categories, the only options for my garments were Winter/Summer Garment and Miscellaneous Sewing. I won second prize in both categories.

Now is probably a good time to mention that this blog is likely to be going on hiatus for a while. I mentioned in my review of last year that I had been spending more time on music and I've kept doing that to the extent that I'm pretty much not sewing at the moment. I never like it when blogs I follow just stop, leaving no clue about what happened to the person behind them, so I want to say what's going on at the moment. I do not know if this new interest is likely to last a few months, like the brief obsession I had with nuclear power plants the year before last, or 15 years, like costuming.

Here is the last thing I sewed: a quick cover for my pillbox hat so I could be a
'lady going to a funeral' at a dress up party with the theme 'Somewhere else to be'.

If I sew anything in the coming weeks or months I will come back and post about it. I miss the blogging. For now I don’t feel a need to be sewing; even though I have unfinished plans, I am (unusually for me) content with that. Maybe a silk Victorian ballgown was the final boss and I won the game. I can do this and I am good at this; it's time for a new challenge. But I also enjoy writing and without sewing to blog about, I don't have the same opportunity for that. Writing lyrics isn't quite the same thing (especially at beginner level – so don't expect to see an original song on here any time soon).

Anyway, this is my farewell, for the time being, from this particular venture. I wasn't expecting this, although I began to have some suspicions towards the end of last year that sewing wouldn't be my primary focus much longer. However I wasn’t certain enough to say anything then. But now it's well into the year and I have no sewing to post about so it seems time to put down a milestone.

Hattendum

When I made the black version of simplicity 1587 I thought it would go very nicely with a bright red cardigan. I was right, but I thought it wanted another red in the outfit and I took it into my head that I would like to make a co-ordinating pillbox hat. This would have been Thursday. I knew that Saturday would be my last chance for a photoshoot for a while so that was my deadline. I did some googling and appealed to my friend, who owns an original pillbox hat, for some photos and measurements. That evening was spent making paper mockups to get the size right - and hemming the purple dress, because I needed that for Saturday too.

Friday after work I immediately cut the buckram, wadding and fabric so I could be sewing it together while at youth group. The outside of the hat is made from faux suede left over from my Esther costume. As well as matching nicely, I wanted a textured fabric that would have some grip on my slippery hair. The hat is lined with leftover dress fabric because I had that immediately on hand.

For construction I opted to forgo blocking (because time and inexperience) and instead cut a circle (with tabs) and a rectangle and sewed them together. I wired only the lower edge of the hat as the top seemed quite stable without. I’m not certain that the wired edge isn’t slightly smaller than the top. I was eyeballing it and I think it should be just a few millimetres bigger, but I don’t know if the whole hat is too small or just that edge.

I have wadding on both sides of the top piece and a layer around the outside of the crown. Once I had the top and inside of the hat covered I put a band around the outside. I wanted this to have a bit of body from the hat so I wrapped my fabric around another strip of wadding. By this time I was at band practice and sewing every second I wasn’t singing, and then in the carpark while waiting to pick up my mum. Turns out the steering wheel makes a very convenient sewing stand.

I got the hat done just in time. We had been planning on an outdoor shoot but the weather was very overcast and windy. The hat stays on pretty well against a breeze; it wasn’t going to survive that.

Generally I’ve found that if you’re in public in weird clothes with a person toting a camera, people seem to assume you’re meant to be there. At one point another person with a camera joined in and took a photo as well. An elderly gentleman, who told me he owned 400 hats, asked about mine and was disappointed to find it wasn’t made properly. I’ll block the next one, promise.

Everything is Extravagant

I didn’t have time before Jafa this year to make a bonnet to go with my 1830s dress so I decided to get it done plenty early in preparation for next year. I used the Lynn McMasters Romantic Period Bonnet pattern. The base of the bonnet is buckram edged with gardening wire and with thin batting tacked on.

The pattern definitely worked but I did have a few issues with it. I would recommend it for an experienced sewer who is willing to fill in the blanks a bit. The pieces aren’t numbered and use a lot of colours and symbols that are not fully explained. The instructions do not have as many pictures as I would have liked. The instructions also have a peculiar obsession with view C. I made view A, the one in the hero photograph, but the instructions kept referring me to the view C section. The rim of the bonnet in the hero photo is edged with a shaped binding piece but the pattern piece for this is not included. Instead you have to make it yourself by using two halves of an unrelated pattern piece, oriented in a new direction, and attached to a specifically sized rectangle. This struck me as a very odd decision especially when they have printed out full patterns for the ties which really only needed a guide to the angle and width and could then be any length you wanted.

I wanted the bonnet colour scheme to go with the dress but not be too matchy. To this end I bought some olive green satin and a remnant of pink silk. The green didn’t make it to the final product. I decided I wanted to do pleating on the bonnet in several places and the green fabric did not have enough body to hold a pleat. I’m still a bit sad that the bonnet isn’t green but I think the pleating is more important.

Instead I chose a good solid satin in my favourite shade of purple. It’s a surprisingly hard colour to find and there was only just enough for the bonnet - if there had been enough for a dress I would have used it for that instead. I think it still goes ok with the dress.

I pleated the top of the crown. I was hoping to do box pleats but in my attempts they came out very uneven. To do the pleating I cut out two circles and cut a slit in each from the edge to the centre. Then I sewed them together. I used a minimal seam allowance and sealed the edges with fraystop.

I also put piping around the edge of the pleating. Usually I have many ideas about how to decorate something and have to limit myself to two, maybe three of these. But with 1830s, you go into it with a handful of ideas and that may not be enough.

I pleated the brim as per the pattern hero photo and pattern instructions (ie use a piece primarily meant for something else that has no guides for where the pleats go) but didn’t manage as many pleats as are in the photo. I had to piece the brim because of my limited fabric but I think it is disguised well enough.

Last year at Jafa I took in my fabric samples and bought some feathers to go on my planned green bonnet. I also bought a few other feathers that were so pretty I just couldn’t leave them. I was very glad of this when I changed colour scheme as my planned feathers were too dark for the new fabric but the pretty ones were perfect. And too long for me to fit the bonnet in my box of hats, but you can’t have everything.

Regency outerwear

I made a spencer and bonnet to go with my autumn toned Regency day dress. The bonnet was begun in a class at Jane Austen Festival Australia and is made from a straw hat.

The spencer is based on my adapted Sense & Sensibility pattern that I used for the dress. I found it worked a lot better for the spencer. It is comfortable and fits nicely, in terms of me and of the dress. The bodice of the spencer is lined. It does up with a frog and has a drawstring tie around the waist to ensure it is properly fitting.

The spencer and dress are made from quilting cotton, which I haven’t found to be a great fabric for these clothes. It is a bit stiff which means it doesn’t drape nicely and isn’t so comfortable to wear, and it gets very wrinkly in the wash. What quilting cotton does have going for it is the variety of prints available in it; prints being popular during the regency era.

The back. I rag-curled my hair which was recovering from being dyed blue.

I was very happy with how the spencer turned out and I think it turns a plain dress into an attractive ensemble.