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.

His & Hearse

This is another It Came from My Closet! post, as I am attending a wedding this weekend and working on a project for someone else. It is no surprise that I, like most spooky types, dig hearses.  I love them, quite frankly, and they hold a special place in my dark little heart.  Ya see, when I met the now Mr Not Pixie, he drove a purple hearse.  (I wish I could say it was love at first sight, but it wasn't.  Not even close.  But he grew on me.)  Ever since I started sewing, I have been on the look out for hearse fabric.  I had even pondered doing something like Spoonflower, but always shied away at the cost. Then two summers ago, Robert Kaufman released Eerie Alley.  Not just purple hearses, but lime green and orange ones too!  On white and black!  (And another with pink hearses on black, which I, of course, made into a different blouse.)  "It must be mine!  Immediately!"  It was a designer release, and a new one at that, so this didn't come cheap, but I didn't care.  For purple hearses, I would pay, and pay gladly!  And so I did.  (Even a designer fabric is cheaper than Spoonflower.) New Look 6515 is so long out of print that it doesn't even appear on the Simplicity web site.  (This link will take you Pattern Review's, um, pattern reviews for the, um, pattern.)  I made view B, though my finished blouse doesn't really resemble theirs.  It's a testament to how much I love this fabric that I was willing t put in so much work to get a wearable garment. First up: blouses like these, that lap one side over the other, rarely (in my experience) instruct you to stitch the bust pieces to each other somehow.  I suppose that would work out just fine if you're the busty variety, but I most certainly am not; consequently, these always gap in the front.  Though I am flat-chested, I am also broad-backed, which tends to even out, usually, in terms of ease.  However, the amount of ease in both the front and back was ridiculous.  I kept pulling the bust pieces closer and closer together, and omitting more and more gathering (so the cup itself would be smaller), but it finally got to the point where I had no gathering left and the pieces were lapped straight over one another.  It fixed the gapping, but because there was no gathering, it ceased to be an empire-waist blouse.  So I grabbed a piece of elastic and hand sewed it into the white band that you see at the front. Even after all of that, the ease was still so extreme that I look off a few inches of the back of the blouse too.  Originally, this actually called for a zipper, but even now, I can still pull it on over my head with no problems.  I can't imagine why you'd need a zipper with as much ease as the pattern originally called for. So, in conclusion, this pattern didn't really work for my body type. It might work for someone who has a full bust (but not too full, or you'll spill over the top). It wasn't difficult to sew, but it did require a lot of adjustments to get it me-sized. I did see a lot of other people complaining about the same problems I did, so maybe it wasn't just me Sorry, once again, for my wet hair. Please admire my floormat in the background. I usually move it out of the way for pictures, but forgot to this time. It decorates my foyer year-round (I have another at the back door as well). They were gifts from my sister-in-law, who seems to live out her spooky dreams vicariously through me.

Lydia update: the day I write this marks four weeks of having this little grey terror live with us.  She's put on 18 ounces (~.5 kg) in that time.  The vet said she's doing well, though said with her feral start to life, she will probably have some delayed growth.

Outfit:
Skirt: Wet Seal, free at a clothing swap
Shoes: Famous Footwear, $70 (featured on Green with Envy)
Socks: from the same pack of vibrant colors featured on Green with Envy
Earrings: Hearses and coffins were charms I bought on Etsy and attached to fishhooks; skull earrings from eBay (featured on Skull Skirt)

I have a coffin necklace (made from the same charms as the earrings) that I usually wear with this, but couldn't find it this morning. I was so distraught that I forgot my awesome purple hearse barrettes too. :(  Not all bad though - at work, a guy in a suit that I'd never seen before, told me he liked how my purple socks, hair, and hearses coordinated together. :)