Hold Your Hearses

I must apologize for being AWOL most of the summer.  I've been posting, of course, but those have been mostly It Came from My Closet! posts (as is this one).  My only excuse is that my allergies this year have hit me the hardest of my entire adult life.  I don't know if it's the heat, or the drought, or something else altogether, but this summer has been an absolute misery.  I can deal with the sniffling, coughing, and sneezing, but I can't cope with the itching and extreme exhaustion.  Normally, I just pop a Claritin and call it a day; this year, one isn't even close to strong enough.  I've been taking two, but since it's a steroid, it severely interferes with my sleep, which only adds to my exhaustion.  And ragweed season is still to come.

Well, onto the post.  The quality of these pictures isn't so great; the batteries in my camera were dead, so I used my cell phone instead.  Also, light was poor and I was in a rush.  On top of that, I am a poor photographer to begin with, but you already knew that. I mentioned this fabric back in His & Hearse - it's Eerie Alley by Robert Kaufman.  Pink isn't my favorite color, but when it comes to hearses, any color is acceptable.  The lining and underlayer comes from leftovers of the - you guessed it - Daisy-Head Mayzie costume.  I think everything I've made using the leftovers has been mentioned by now, so hopefully you won't have to hear about it again.  (Unless, of course, I post the actual costume.) I can't remember if I bought this specifically to make Simplicity 3956 or not.  The pattern does not list cotton as a suggested fabric, but it does suggest handkerchief linen, so I figured that was close enough.  In retrospect, cotton is a little heavy considering that it is lined and layered.  If you want to make this in cotton, probably one layer would be sufficient. On the printing of the pattern I have, nowhere on the outside of the envelope does it say the fabric is to be cut on the bias.  Once I made the decision to actually go through with this, and I had already deviated by using the "wrong" fabric, I wasn't going to let a little thing like a bias-cut layout stop me.  It might be prudent to go up a size, as I did, if you use this method.  (For those who don't know, fabric cut on the bias is stretchy, so the extra ease of going up a size makes up for losing that.) This pattern isn't super difficult, but it does have some tricky bits.  The lining was finicky - more than linings usually are.  Due to the gathering and matching up the tailor's tacks, not to mention the ravelly nature of cotton, it was a bit frustrating.  I prevailed in the end, obviously, but I would suggest that only those already experienced with sewing linings and gathering tackle this one.  Probably good for an advanced beginner or an intermediate. You think I would have learned my lesson after the trouble I went through with the other hearse fabric - namely, blouses like this are obscenely low-cut on me and gap in the front.  I hand-sewed in the privacy panel in the front.  Because it isn't sandwiched between the outer fabric and the lining, it doesn't look as nice as I would like.  It isn't worth taking the whole blouse apart to properly sew in the panel, but if I did this again, I would certainly take do so. In other news, though I haven't had the energy to trek up to the sewing room, I did mange to work up enough to do something I have wanted to do for a while: I got my nose pierced over the weekend.  I would take a picture, but at the moment, my camera's batteries are still dead, and my phone's battery is nearly so. Thanks for your patience over the summer.  I am hoping things will improve once the worst of the season has passed.

A Pirate's Life for Me!

This post is going to be a blast from the past.  I was a privateer for Halloween 2009 (for those of you that don't know, a privateer is basically a government-sanctioned pirate).  This costume was a bit of a rush job because I had to sew six costumes over the course of two months.  I apologize for the poor resolution of these images - I can't seem to locate the original high-res pictures.

First up here is the blouse.  It's Simplicity 4914, and if you want it,  I suggest you buy it as soon as possible.  It's been out of print for several years and I imagine that supplies are quite limited.  I actually didn't make the blouse to wear with the costume, I made it much earlier to as an everyday wear item.  It's a beautiful black-on-black brocade featuring phoenixes (phoenices?) and dragons.  I wish I had bought more of it, because it would make a fantastic vest or dress.

The blouse appears as though it would lace up the front, but it actually has a zipper in the back.  Unfortunately (though you can't really tell in this picture, but you can in the pattern link), the blouse starts to end at the actual waist.  I usually have to wear something under this, which is unfortunate, because the brocade is both quite heavy and lined.  The sleeves are also ridiculously short, so I lengthened them, but that only adds to the weight of the garment.  For those reasons, I don't get to wear this as often as I would like to.  Don't get me wrong, I love the blouse and get a ton of compliments on it, but it isn't as convenient to wear as I would have wanted.

Anyway, onto the pattern review.  The construction of the blouse itself wasn't too bad.  Some pretty precise marking is necessary here for the sleeve's grommet tape, and the front was a little finicky, but this could be tackled by an intermediate, I think.

I think the only pattern I hated more than this coat pattern (Simplicity 3677) was the tuxedo I made for my sister's wedding, and the only reason I hated that more was because a good chunk of the instructions weren't translated from German to English.  This pattern wasn't really difficult, but it was quite lengthy.  Nothing wrong with a lengthy pattern, as long as it produces a nice garment in the end, but this most certainly did not.  I know that I frequently bemoan Simplicity for calling for more fabric than the garment actually needs, but this had nearly two yards left over.

That was the least of this pattern's sins; if you look at the pattern picture, it doesn't have the best shot of the front.  I made this coat two sizes larger than what I normally wear because the blouse was so bulky.  Even two sizes too large, this coat would not close over the blouse.  I tried it over something with a slimmer silhouette, and it still didn't close.  It isn't actually meant to close - despite calling for twenty-eight buttons (which I had to special order), this coat contains no buttonholes.

And again, the sleeves here are just too short.  Do people think that pirates loved walking around with exposed wrists?

The facing here looked stupid and the instructions for the godets were crap.  There is nothing redeeming to this pattern and I would recommend it under no circumstances.

The breeches/bloomers are from the first pattern.  They're made out of crepe-backed satin.  They were so easy that I think I completed them in about an hour.   Basically, it was just cutting out the two pieces; sewing them together; folding down the waistband and inserting the elastic; and sewing on the bias tape into the legs and inserting the elastic.  Very simple.  They probably are not historically accurate for any era, but these would make a great start to a beginning sewer's steampunk costume.

There are two things I made here that I didn't have a pattern for: the wrap and the bandanna.  Both were super easy: the bandanna was just a square of satin (made from the excess from the failed coat) and the wrap is just a triangle of costume satin from Joann's.

A breakdown of my accessories:
Rose choker: $7, Hot Topic
Striped knee socks: $5 - $10, Hot Topic
Shoes: $20, Journey's
Hoop earrings: Claire's