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…

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!

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

This is the cover of Aspen‘s Lady Mechanika #4, which is yet to be released. For those of you who haven’t come across this graphic novel yet, it’s a steampunk detective story in which the imaginatively, but not always very practically, clad Lady Mechanika leaps from one adventure to another in an alternate reality, steam-powered world. While the stories are fun, the real attraction for me is the art and the costumes. For each issue there are usually four alternative covers, each featuring our heroine in various states of fantasy dress (or undress).

Lady Mechanika #0

She’s a typical Aspen heroine complete with highly improbable figure and gravity-defying attire. While all of her outfits are pretty amazing, I’ve picked the top one (from Issue #4) as being one that I might pull off successfully. Although it is revealing, it allows for me to build a corset into the ‘dress’, which I think is vital in achieving Lady Mechanika’s pneumatic proportions. The fabric components of the dress are also not extremely complex, which leaves me more time to focus on the hardware, weapons and general steampunk-bling – of which there are LOTS in this costume.

My deadline is the newly-announced Adelaide ComicCon, the weekend of April 1st. I’m thinking of going to Melbourne for their ComicCon at the end of June as well, which would be a great opportunity to re-wear this. Hopefully I can make a good start during January, as once I go back to school, time is going to be scarce again. I’ve already had a cursory look around for suitable fabric for the dress but haven’t had much luck, so in the meantime I’m starting to think about how to make those mechanical arms.

Mechanical arm detail

I want them to look like machines, like real, working armour made from solid materials. This will mean working with unfamiliar materials, so plenty of time for tests and play will be needed! Wish me luck!

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!

This one is going back a few months! The world of cosplay is not my natural habitat, but when you’re going to an anime & video game convention… you’ve got to blend in, right?!

The King and Queen of All Cosmos

The Queen of All Cosmos is a character from the Katamari series of console games. I’m not much of a gamer, but suffice to say the surreal wackiness and hyperactive colours in these games are something I can really get into! Basically, you control a ball (a ‘katamari’) that you push around a fantasy world and… roll things up. Really, it sounds silly even as I write it! Check out the Wiki entry (linked above) because there is no way to properly explain the addictive cuteness that is Katamari.

There are a few different ways you can approach cosplay, I think. Some costumers really like to create an outfit that is as close to the character as possible, and go to incredible lengths to make their costume as ‘realistic’ as possible. This can include wigs, spray painting on bigger ‘muscles’ and wearing coloured contacts. My personal interpretation is usually more ‘inspired’ than accurate. I like making costumes that suggest a concept, or a particular aspect of an anime or game. My Queen of All Cosmos maintains the colours and feel of the character, but I have played with the shapes of her costume to make it a little bit different.

I like to work out what elements make a character recognisable. Instead of making an oversized headpiece, I used a knitting pattern (available here) to make some earmuffs that suggest the Queen’s enormous head. Her son, the Prince of All Cosmos, is a very important accessory to this cosplay – so I crocheted him as well, from another pattern available online.

Crocheted Prince

Once you have these two important elements to establish the character, you can play around with the rest of the outfit a bit more. My version of the Queen is a skirt and jacket combo rather than a dress, with the skirt being shorter than the ‘real’ version. The top is a tailored jacket, with a scalloped collar embellished with gold buttons that echoes the shape of the original. I thought white thigh-high socks and sparkly pink sequin sneakers were an appropriate, though made-up, touch!

Queen of All Cosmos and King Kazuma

I can’t finish this post without mentioning my partner’s incredible costume. He is still fairly new to costuming in general, and he made this whole outfit (King Kazuma from the movie Summer Wars) himself! He is cosplaying a 6-foot tall anthopomorphic fighting rabbit, and I think he did an incredible job! The giant shoes and gloves are all made of foam, and the wig and headpiece/ears are one unit.

PS: If you are on Ravelry, find more details of my knitted/crocheted projects!

Earmuffs

Prince Plushie

Hi everyone! Hope your week has been just wonderful! Between two jobs and coursework, I hardly know where I’m at anymore… so I’m sorry if this entry is a little bit later than promised.

So here’s a lesson we learned while letting your gelatine/stiffener dipped flowers dry: don’t spread them out on paper, hang them up! If you put them on paper, they WILL stick. If you’re not around to turn them over every so often, you will end up with lots of paper residue stuck on your petals. Not cool. Luckily I did turn mine over before leaving for the weekend, so I had whole bunch of crispy, paper-y, stiffened petals to work with.

Our guest lecturer was Gwenda, a lady in her mid-80′s who was a millinery teacher to our current millinery teachers. She is a French Flower Expert. This is one of those rare skills from another era, where people really did get to perfect the art of making delicate little flowers, complete down to the stamens, from scraps of fabric and earn a living from it. She brought with her some flowers she had made, bunches of little stamens and buds, and a whole box full of french flower tools.

French Flower Tools, for all sorts of different petals.

Aren’t they just beautiful? Part of what I love about sewing and fabric craft is the vast array of tools and gadgets you can accessorise with!

Using a gas burner, you heat the copper heads of the tools until they are hot enough to sizzle when you touch them with a wet finger. Hold the silk petal on a thick sponge covered in cotton. Press the hot tool into the petal with quite a lot of force. In the case of the ball-ended tool push down and away from yourself to create the ‘cup’ of the petal. You can use the tool with two prongs to uncurl the petal gently to create a more realistic shape.

Olivia and Abi using the gas burner to heat tools and shape petals.

 

Once you have a whole set of shaped petals, you can make a flower centre and stamen.

Ready-made stamens

The flower centre was made of a tuft of cotton wool wound around a length of wire in a bud shape. Then, I covered this in a bit of stretchy fabric and sewed it in place. Ideally you can use a square of pantihose! You can colour or dye the resulting bud to match your flower petals. Nifty!

Frayed rope bits tied up and ready to be singed

For the stamens, we used – get this – nylon rope frayed open and melted with a match! Gwenda herself worked out that this was a really easy and cheap method to get realistic looking stamens. Of course you can buy beautiful ready-made stamens, but this was such a good trick, especially since so many of the supplies for crafts like these can get very expensive. Glue and stitch the rope stamens around your cotton-wool bud. Wind thread around the whole flower centre to hold everything in place.

To attach the petals, start with the smallest at the centre. Attack to your centre with a dab of glue, then wind thread around the stem a few times to hold in place. Add the other petals in the same way, wrapping with thread after each. Be careful not to ‘creep’ the petals down the wire stem too far – you want to keep everything compact. After you have attached the final petal, you can shape things a bit more with the tools. We ran out of time in our session, but Gwenda explained how you can make a thin bias tube to cover the wire stem as well.

Calico buds

How sweet are these buds? Gwenda made these from calico. They don’t have to be silk!

Here is my final flower – it could have used a few more petals, but has a certain blowsy quality I think! I really wish this were a whole semester subject. A taste is just not enough!

Tiny scraps of silk left over after cutting the petals. I can't throw them out!!

Today was my first day back at TAFE after two weeks off. It was also the first day of what I consider ‘proper’ Spring weather, in which the temperature strays above the 30 degree (Celcius!) mark. I suppose making silk flowers fits the season, but I was feeling a bit wilted myself, and certainly never miss the opportunity for a good pun.

In this first session we cut out and stiffened our petals in preparation for next week’s actual making of the flowers. Using fabric scraps consisting of all natural fibres, we cut out a bunch of petals in different shapes. Some students used a template, but I just went at it freehand for a more naturalistic feel.

Paper templates you could use to cut out scraps.

Most of my scraps were bits of silk I fished out of the stash, but I painted some calico with fabric paints as well just to see how a heavier fabric will perform. Other students used cottons, tulle, hessian and even leather – basically any natural fibre we could find. After cutting out, we painted/dipped the petals in stiffener and left them to dry on sheets of paper.

My silk petals, stiffened with gelatine solution.

The two stiffeners we are using are a chemical lacquer used in millinery, and a gelatine-based water soluble alternative. The former has a very strong smell and should really only be used under a fume hood. I ruined a brand new pair of leather shoes last term by spilling this stuff on them, so needless to say I don’t have fond feelings towards it! The gelatine is completely safe, but takes longer to dry and may not respond to being heated as well. I have also heard that a mix of PVA glue and water can be used. We will find out next week!

A whole garden of petals laid out to dry.

It was quite lovely to see everyone’s petals laid out to dry. They ran the gamut from quite psychadelic to beautifully handpainted, and I’m quite interested to see how the hessian ones will turn out.

PS. I do apologise for the bad quality of the images in this post – I only had my phone camera with me at school, so I had to make do!

Lawn needs mowing, shed looks.... sheddy. Ah well! But how about that Hills Hoist?!

There is something about a sunny, slighty windy day in early Spring… hanging out the washing is just a lovely thing to do.

It’s one of my favourites chores anyway; damp clean clothes fresh out of the machine, standing in the sunshine and enjoying the day as you hang them up. The satisfying way you snap the fabric when it’s wet and the wrinkles fall out. The eye-catching colour combinations you get when you hang some pink undies next to a yellow blouse, or a green bit of fabric.

All clean and dry and ready to go into the stash!

Even better is taking it all down again. Satisfyingly sun-warmed sheets, soft dry t-shirts, lengths of fabric ready to be sewn up. Folding things into neat stacks. I probably sound a bit silly waxing lyrical about doing the washing, but hey, it’s the little things, right?

Zombie Rosie the Riveter // We Can Eat Your Brains!

It was a no-brainer (pun intended!) to put together.

Denim high-waisted 1940′s trousers – drafted & made by myself

Blue Hard Yakka work shirt – thrifted

Head scarf

Gratuitous amounts of face paint and liquid latex!

Liquid latex is fantastic for getting a really disgusting, textured layering happening. Smear it on over a layer of oil-based face paints in white, bruise green and brick red for some really excellent mouldy zombie effects! It’s great fun to pull off to make it look like flaking skin.

My partner went as a  Zombie Road Accident victim, complete with steering wheel through his chest and (plastic) glass shards protruding from his face.

All in all, it was great fun. The Zombie Walk was in aid of charity, to raise money and donate non-perishable foods. I’m no judge of crowds, but there must have been at least 3000 people, all dressed in their bloodiest and most revolting finery! There is definitely something liberating about not dressing up to look ‘pretty’ or ‘hot’, but setting out to create a truly disgusting costume and roaring at unsuspecting victims!

Costume on the mannequin by Abi Casey/Image courtesy of PeterFisher

Actually, that’s not true at all! I’ve been sewing… a lot.

Sometimes I sew so much, I don’t feel like sewing anymore.

But then I have a good sleep and that craziness passes.

A lot has happened in my little sewing world over the past year. I’m now a second-year student of wardrobe and costume production for theatre and film, and I even have a job where I get paid to draft patterns. Pretty cool! I’ve missed having a blog, even though I’m often super-busy, because it lets me keep track of ideas, keeps me accountable to finish projects (!) and gives me a space to think through stuff – all with the added bonus of hearing what others have to say about it!

So here I am again, giving this another shot. The focus of ‘Whipstitch’ won’t be solely vintage-inspired sewing any more. I still love it, but it’s become a slightly smaller part of what I do. In addition to sewing, I want to write about pattern drafting, a bit of embroidery, the creative process, cosplay, historical costume and my quest to learn how to use software to digitise my hand-drawn patterns. Sometimes completely unrelated adventures, like the side-quest in which I attempt to build a bicycle from miscellaneous parts, might creep in. Bear with me. I’ll try and be a good pen-pal!

This blog will also eventually become my online portfolio. I have made so many costumes that are destined to see only the inside of a storage room unless they are hung up where someone can see them – like here! To the right you can see my Flickr gallery, to which I will upload photos of my completed costumes.

I’ve also put up a few links to other places on the net that I frequent. I only just joined The Sew Weekly, and am looking forward to hanging out there!

In addition, as I learn how to use software to digitise my patterns, I will post some of them here. They’ll be pretty basic to start with, but I’m hoping it will help me learn. I love to draft by hand, but I can see how having neat, digital patterns is easier to share and much more professional.

That’s it for now, but I’ll be back soon!