Rainbows everywhere!

Everything is colourful!

I chained my bike (the big turquoise one!) next to this tiny knit-bombed rainbow covered trike outside work last week. All around town these yarn-covered bikes have appeared, a lovely impromptu street art to brighten up our car-infested streets.

 

 

One of my costume lecturers is knitting these amazing sweater dresses out of 4-ply sock wool. She has made three so far, and by all accounts it is totally addictive, watching the colours change and grow. They are truly beautiful, light and colourful works of art! She keeps one in the car so she can knit wherever she finds a spare minute.

 

 

A whole basket full of 4-ply yarns ready to be knitted up. Irresistible!

 

 

Of course I couldn’t resist! I have a whole bunch of 4-ply wool in the stash myself, and socks are not my favourite thing to knit (I suffer dreadfully from ‘second-sock-syndrome’!). Tomorrow I am flying to Tasmania to visit my Mum for a few days, and this will be something to take along and keep my hands busy. That gold sparkly yarn will be in there somewhere, oh yes…

Tags: craft + life, knitting

Pretty Little Herringbone Stitches

Herringbone stitches on the inside neckline

Although overlockers leave the insides of your garments looking neat and tidy and professionally finished, sometimes I feel it takes something away from the ‘feel’ of a handmade garment, especially one made from a vintage pattern or vintage fabric. I love looking at the insides of old garments and finding where the maker has left their personal touches – stitches to alter size, mend holes, or finish raw edges. Once upon a time someone took the time to sit down and finish all the unseen parts of their creation, little guessing that it would survive many decades for another seamstress to marvel at.

Herringbone stitches are particularly lovely. Originally a decorative stitch often used in embroidery, you can use it to finish a raw edge to stop it ravelling, or to hold up a hem securely. It works really well on loosely woven fabrics as well as it makes kind of a ‘net’ to hold the threads down.

 

Image from funfabrics.com

 

In the first picture I have used it to finish a strip of bias tape to the back of a neckline. Folding the tape under and slipstitching it proved to be too bulky and not pliable enough to curve around the sweetheart neckline, so I experimented with the herringbone stitch. I think it looks rather pretty! This dress, made from a 1940′s evening dress pattern (but in a much more daytime gingham), felt suited to a more handmade finish rather than having the insides overlocked. I think I might even pull out the pinking shears!

 

Fun fact: the German word for herringbone stitch is ‘hexenstich’ – literally, ‘witches stitch’. It does look a bit like old runes or pagan symbols, I think!

Tags: craft + life, sewing, techniques, vintage pattern

Costume Journal 2012 // Lady Mechanika

Happy New Year friends! Hope you’ve all had a relaxing and inspiring break – or not! For those of us who work in retail or hospitality, it’s usually pretty exhausting! But now here we have a brand new, fresh-out-of-the-box year… some assembly required.

This is a big one for me – I’m starting my third (and final) year of costume school, and while at this stage I’m not exactly sure how that is going to run for me, I do know that I want to devote more time and energy to my own personal sewing goals. After all, this is what I love doing, so why let procrastination ruin the fun?

So here it is, the big one, my personal Holy Grail for 2012. Something I can sink my teeth into, that will stretch my craftiness, my niftiness, my powers of fabric-persuasion:

 

Lady Mechanika Cover #4

 

Tags: cosplay, Dress Diary, Lady Mechanika, project planning

Little Dala Horse Top

 

I get really hung up on details sometimes. Start out with a great idea, full of enthusiasm, pull out all my fabric, my patterns, my machines… get stuck because I don’t have the right colour thread. Or ric-rac. Or buttons, or some other little thing no one but me would ever notice.  I want so much for the end result to be perfect that I can’t even start for fear of not finishing!

This little top was made in about an hour out of some scrap fabric (just enough for midriff-length, no longer!) and a Dala horse stencil. Not thinking, no deliberating. I cut the fabric freehand around a pattern block, measuring on the fly and deciding necklines and sleeves as I went. The horses I stencilled on and dried with a hair-dryer, to prevent the project lying around waiting to dry. The neckline is bound with some calico bias tape I had lying around. Finished!

 

 

It was so refreshing, not *having* to think about every little detail. I didn’t have a clear image in my head of what I wanted to make, so the project was free to change as I went along. Does anyone else get so hung up on details that they can’t start? It’s an almost painful feeling!

Tags: Finished Project