The Fashion In Shrouds

The green shirt, so far:



Made pattern, cut out the pieces, zig-zagged edges, sewed the darts and then I decided that I wanted to flat-line it after all, so unpicked darts, cut out cotton twill lining pieces,  zig-zagged them too and re-did the darts. Great planning! Resulted in some stitch marks in the fabric, of course, but I will have to live with them. This is one of the reasons I think I'm a pretty bad seamstress. At least I am pleased with the cuffs and collar, for a change.

This is one of the sleeves, obviously, and one of the shoulder straps. There's another photo showing the rest of it so far ( after the cut. )

I think the point of the meme may be to illustrate how bad at least I am at coming up with something to gush about for eight days straight - I'd say I failed spectacularly. Well, well!

On Sunday we had lovely winter weather, cold and bright and sunny, so I went for a walk with my mother. Saw no less than two different plants in bloom, outside in Sweden on the winter solstice, how about that? A hellebore, of course (not one of mine, sadly, the Helleborus niger in my garden is one of those late-blooming strains and although it has small buds, they probably won't open until February or March) and a colchicum in my garden. Extremely late to the party, that one.

On Monday I started work on a slightly more casual wiggle dress in black cotton twill, which is fun. I've been wanting a uniform dress that doesn't show acres of cleavage for a while, and on Christmas day I'm going out, so I'll try to get it finished for tomorrow night. I'm really looking forward to that, the Christmas club nights are usually a lot of fun - people you don't see that often come home to celebrate Christmas, and all that. Kommando XY are playing, which is always a hoot, and Daniel and Anders are DJ:ing, so the dance floor will be everything I want it to be too.

Bodice and skirt cut separately, for once, rather like a shirtwaist with the bodice buttoned in front, a regular shirt collar, breast pockets, shoulder straps and a double cuff-like sleeve treatment. The skirt has an inverted box pleat at center back. I'll be using the grey plastic three crowns buttons and make a fabric belt for it, I have a couple of very nice vintage, chromed and grey belt buckles that I really should do something with. Not sure which belt buckle I'll use yet, though, both match the buttons well and I like them both. The buttons look almost exactly like the grey three crown one in the photo, by the way, apart from the different material.

Yesterday I discovered that the black twill I'm using is not the thin, stretchy twill I thought it was and planned on using, but a heavier one with no elastane content that I bought for using in the planned corset dress; bummer. I had completely forgotten about it and was sure I only had one large piece of black cotton twill, and so assumed that this had to be the the right fabric, even though it was a lot less stretchy than I remembered it. Stupid not to check properly, but oh well.

Now I'm going to do some work on the dress, and then go over to my mother and help preparing the Christmas dinner. We're having our usual peaceful Christmas; me, my mother, a good friend of hers and my younger brother. No other relatives, no drama and everyone doing pretty much what they want to do. I am enjoying my Christmas, I hope you are enjoying yourselves too. Merry Christmas!

It struck me yesterday that I think I have a white and grey, fairly heavy wool that's been lying around waiting for the right project for about ten years - winter coat weight, if I remember correctly, in a spreckled, salt-and-pepper kind of pattern and texture. I found it, or was given it or something, possibly grandma's leftover fabrics that never came to anything; don't remember, I just know that I didn't buy it. Anyway, I think I should stop waiting for the day when I'll want a white/grey salt-and-pepper coat and just dye it black. Must do some digging.

On a completely unrelated and probably too personal note, I had a "you know you're not well when..." -moment the night before yesterday - namely, you know you're not well when you're lying in bed watching TV because everything else is too exhausting, wearing double layers of wool sweaters under a duvet and two wool blankets, still freezing and moved to tears (literally) by Robert Altman's hilarious, but quite unsentimental Prêt-a-Porter because Sophia Loren is so gorgeous, and the storyline about the woman who shops designer clothing for her husband is so touching. Yes, really.

Still ill, which makes a decent excuse for posting this:

You Are Courier New

You have a deep appreciation for tradition and history. You don't eschew modernity, but you do have a deep reverence for the past. You are very literate. It's likely you enjoy writing and reading. Some people may feel you're a bit cold, but you just have high standards for who you hang out with.

Normally I wouldn't post a quiz result, but this result was rather funny, at least when posted here.

Sketch and fabric samples - voilá.



I'm not neat on paper without working hard on it, all my raw sketches look like this. A, who has an exceptionally neat and meticulous style of drawing with plenty of small, clear details, always mocks me for it, saying that my drawing look hairy. I say screw him and refer to my favourite comics artist Ulf Lundkvist, but I feel inferior too, just like when he pointed out that my singing voice is awful - not like I didn't already know that, but still. Well, well.

Anyway. The fabric samples are as close to how they actually look as I could get them, at least on my monitor; you know the drill. I will say that the satin is definitely a lighter pink than the dupioni in reality, a clear, bright hot pink with more of a faint yellow undertone than the red undertone this photo shows, but the colour of the dupioni is pretty close to how it actually looks.

I had another idea, by the way, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good one; beige dress, close to my skin tone, with hot pink lining in the bustle. I can't quite picture it, and I honestly have no idea how I would look in a beige dress, while I do know that hot pink works on me.

Am also considering lining the bustle with bright red if I make the dress out of the hot pink dupioni - that would be a great colour clash, and it's the kind of garish, awkward colour combination that appeals to me.

We went to the movies and saw Blade Runner: Final Cut last weekend, and my head is still spinning with shoulder pads - goodness, what shoulder pads! Am going to see it again with a very young friend who hadn't even heard of it, so clearly needs to take the chance of seeing it on the big screen. I'm happy that I did, it was a completely different experience than watching an old, worn VHS copy on a small TV. There were so many little details that I had missed, and the restored sound was good, too.

And oh, the shoulder pads...

The silver-coloured three crowns buttons have found a project at last, by the way - I'm completely disregarding all the things I actually need in favour of another little mock uniform dress. The fabric is a woven polyamide/lycra that I have used for a couple of similar dresses before, fairly stiff and sturdy but quite stretchy, up to about 40%. Black with silver piping, buttoned down the front with a single row, comparatively narrow collar and lapels, pockets with buttoned flaps on the half-length sleeves, buttoned shoulder straps and big 40's style shoulder pads. I will make them myself, modern shoulder pads are too soft and flat. The 40's pads I'm trying to emulate are built high, often 2-3 cm or more, but not extremely wide, they are tightly curved over the shoulder and stuffed hard.



I had only seven of those buttons and needed at least eleven for the project, so I went to the two remaining military antiques shops in town (after a detour to the Army Museum half a block from where there used to be a third one, where I poked and prodded another set of great shoulder pads in a female WWII Blue Star uniform) and asked for them. Found only two expensive ones at my first stop, but hit the jackpot at my second - seven large ones, two small ones, plus oodles of the also very pretty grey M/39 version of the same button, two sizes, in metal and plastic. I bought in the region of 40 buttons there and I'll go back for more. Was asked to show off the dress I'm using them for, too, when it's finished. I think I should, maybe.



I know that many sewers tend to collect tons of fabric. I've never been that bad a case of fabric hoarding, but I can't resist good buttons. They do take up less storage space than fabric, there is that to say for it..
The K came from the same place as most of the buttons, by the way. I have been thinking about the metal numbers and letters featured on some uniforms lately, and since K is my first name initial and they only had this one little letter lying around, it was obviously meant to be.