The green velvet dress is finished!

After what seems like days of working on those enormous sleeves, the green velvet dress is finally finished!

Just in time too - Faerierhona's coming over to collect it tomorrow, and it's going to be worn on New Year's Eve.

I'm not kidding about the sleeves though. It took me longer to sew on all that trimming and get the sleeves finished, than it did to make the whole of the rest of the dress!

I can't express to you how pleased I am with this.

It couldn't be further removed from the sort of clothes I normally sew, but it's been an absolute joy to work on.

Selina's Skull Cushion

In the absence of dress photographs (I am still wrangling with the enormous sleeves, which are turning out to be tricksy), I can now show you a little something that I made as a Christmas gift!

It's a cushion cover, with a zip at the bottom, and broderie anglais trim all around the edges.

It's made to fit a 16" cushion pad.

The fabric is by Alexander Henry, and it came from Cia's Palette.

I think it's the trimming which makes this one super-cute!

Four New Vintage Duvet Covers...

Where do you draw the line between "vintage" and just plain "old"?

I have four new-to-me duvet covers now available, and I think I would describe two of them as "vintage" and the other two as "recycled".

The E.T. and Bambi duvet covers I would describe as "vintage", as each of them is more than twenty years old. The Winnie the Pooh and Finding Nemo bedding is much more recent, so I'd describe those as "reclaimed" or "recycled".

These four new fabrics are now listed on the website, and are ready and waiting to me made into shiny new items, just for you!

You can order them very simply. Go to the Design By Claire web store, and add your elasticated skirt, a-line skirt, bolero jacket or tote bag to the shopping cart.

When you check out, simply tell me your choice of fabric in the "information" box. you can also include your measurements at this point.

As soon as I receive your order I'll email you to confirm the details, and then get started on your sewing!

Green velvet overdress...

I didn't post about this yesterday because it was too dark to take pictures - and what's the point of posting about a lovely dress without a picture?

Here's where I'm up to with Faerierhona's New Year party dress:

The gold underdress is completely finished.
All of the seams are overlocked, and all of the hems are finished with bias binding.

The green velvet overdress is almost finished - it just needs sleeves!
However, the sleeves use up something in the region of six metres of fabric all by themselves, and I've run out!

That's not strictly true - I have enough velvet to make the outer layer of the sleeves, but I didn't have quite enough gold satin left to line them. So, for now, I've done all I can until my local fabric shop re-opens on the 27th. Please excuse the mis-matched green cord - that will be replaced by a creamy gold colour, after I've been to the fabric shop.

The only alteration I've made to the pattern was to raise the waistline by about two inches. This has had the knock-on effect of me only putting in eight eyelets instead of ten, although I can easily add two more in at the top, if Faerierhona would like me to. That's a decision to made when the finished article has been tried on.

And that's me, out of the Shed until after Christmas!

Badges now for sale on Etsy...

This afternoon I have been mostly listing badges on Etsy:

There are 25 badges up there, which is about a third of what I currently have in stock.

Hopefully some of these will start to sell after Christmas. I really want to make some new badges, but it feels a bit pointless to do that when I have 73 of them in the Shed already.


Thanks to Taimatsu, I now have two "sold out" items listed in my web shop, which pleases me greatly. :)

Perhaps some of you are wondering why I decided to sell the badges on Etsy, instead of in my shop? The answer is that the shop only allows me to list 100 items at any given time, and I didn't really want 73 of them to be badges. Also, it's important for me to get a little foothold on Etsy, and badges seem to sell well there, so they were the obvious thing to add.

I might start adding a few more readymade items to Etsy, and save the shop for things like the organic t-shirts, which I'm not allowed to sell on Etsy anyway. Perhaps the duvet cover skirts might go down well on Etsy too.

Did I mention that I currently have in stock Paddington, Bambi, ET, Winnie the Pooh and Finding Nemo duvets? I must remember to take photographs of those...

One green velvet bodice, coming up!

Today I have been working on the bodice of Faerierhona's dress.

It's three layers - one green velvet, one lining, and a layer of interfacing in between.
Yes, you can see raw edges on the outside - they'll be encased inside a creamy-gold binding when it's finished.

I'm not going to put the eyelets in the bodice or attach the skirt and sleeves, until Faerierhona's tried the bodice on, and we've checked that the waist is in the right place, and that it fits properly.

I'll be working on the sleeves and the skirt in the meantime, but I won't put all the bits together until we've made sure that the bodice is a good fit.


Don't the colours look lovely together?

Gallery Photos!

Faerierhona has been a total star, and has just emailed me a couple of gorgeous photos of a skirt that I made for her. They're now up in the Gallery.

The corset was made by Silk and Steel
The hair was made by Miss Needles
The skirt was made by Design By Claire. ;)



Those of you who keep promising to send photos of yourselves wearing Stuff That I Have Made?
You can email them to claire@designbyclaire.co.uk. Thank you!



These fabulous photographs are a perfect example of how wearing handmade clothes needn't be frumpy. The corset, the hairpiece and the skirt were all made to Faerierhona's specifications, by hand, by skilled, independent craftswomen. How luxurious is that?!

Two Sleeves in Two Days

Now that my Dad has opened his Christmas present (my parents are going away this year), I can safely reveal that it has taken three weeks to knit a single glove for him. It was ribbed, it was fiddly, and it was in DK, which is the thinnest yarn I have ever used.

Now that I don't need to have the second glove finished until he comes back from his travels (oops...), I decided to give my fingers a bit of a break, and go back to the Nicky Epstein Cardigan with Cabled Points. I knew that knitting with chunky wool on 7½mm needles would be much faster than ribbing in DK, but I wasn't expecting to complete both of the sleeves in just two days!

I'd completely lost track of where I was up to on the first sleeve, so I decided to bite the bullet, unravel what I'd done, and start again. I'm really not having very much luck with this pattern.

This time the mistake genuinely wasn't mine, but a printing error. The row numbers for the sleeve had been printed wrongly, and before I knew it I had three fewer stitches than I needed. I made an executive decision not to undo the sleeve again, but instead to make some cunningly disguised increases on the next row. Thankfully, this worked really well.

I also made an executive decision to change the increases on the sleeves. As you may have noticed on my previous encounter with this cardigan, my maths really isn't up to much, and I couldn't cope with cabling on every sixth row and increasing on every eighth. My decision was to make the increases on the same rows as the cables, which made for less counting, which is fine by me!

As it happened, by the time I'd finished the correct number of increases the sleeve was already at the exact length I was supposed to keep knitting to, so if I'd been increasing every eight rows instead of every six, it would actually have been several inches too long!

If you click through to the larger picture of the single sleeve, you can get a much better indication of how this will look once it's finished. You can really see the bright flecks of blue, and the occasional spot of red, scattered across the sleeve.

Golden Petticoat

I have started the process of making this renaissance-style dress for Faerierhona:

and having clarified some details with her today, I now need to make a trip to the fabric shop before I can start work on the dress proper.

In the meantime, I've now done as much as I can on the underskirt, without having Faerierhona inside it to check the fit.

The pattern helpfully says, "purchased petticoat", although I'm not sure why, when you could make this matching chemise pattern to go underneath. In order to avoid having miles of bulky petticoat, I decided to go for a slimmer under-dress, and have made a version of my basic tunic.



(The dress is for a fantasy costume, so historical accuracy is not a consideration.)

I extended the hemline to make the dress floor length, but without adding too much width. However, it is still wide enough to accommodate a hoop underneath, should Faerierhona so desire.

The sleeves are my usual raglan shape, extended to the wrist, and nice and wide. Faerierhona can decide whether we're going to leave the sleeves floppy, or whether she'd prefer them gathered into a cuff.

The neckline will be finalised when the overdress is made. The pattern illustrations show one version with an off-the-shoulder underdress, the other with it gathered up quite high to the neck. This tunic can be made to do either, or something in between!

The deadline for the whole outfit is New Year's Eve, so you'll be seeing a lot more of this one over the next couple of weeks...

Knitters Without Borders

As you may have gathered from the lovely picture below, I have now added a number of knitted items to my web store.

20% of the price of each of the knitted items will be donated to Tricoteurs Sans Frontiers, or Knitters Without Borders.

It's organised by Yarn Harlot, and as I'm currently knitting my fourth scarf from one of her free patterns it seemed only fair to try and give something back. All monies raised go to Medecins Sans Frontiers.


If anybody does want to buy anything, maybe as a last-minute gift, the last UK posting date before Christmas is Thursday.

Bags of Space...

...pun intended.

Today I have been mostly making cushion covers and Christmas presents. This means that I can't show you most of what I've been making, but I'm fairly certain that the recipient of this little bag won't be reading my blog and spoiling her surprise - she's only five!

This is a regular magazine-sized tote bag, made from a recycled duvet cover.

The handles are a bit narrower than usual, to accommodate little hands.



Don't forget that you can order tote bags in the shop, in any of the fabrics shown here.

Lies and Statistics...

...well, okay, just statistics.

Today I have redesigned the front page of the Design By Claire website.

Ten days ago I signed up for Google Analytics, so that I could track what kind of activity was happening on my website. It turns out that a fairly large percentage of people were turning up to the home page, seeing the Queen of Hearts dress (Photograph © S L Hodkinson), and going away again.

Given that the Queen of Hearts dress isn't really representative of the work I'm doing these days, I thought that was a very clear indication that it was time for a change!

One thing which is also clear - I'm going to have to publicise the website to a much larger number of people, if I'm ever going to make any sales through the new shop. Most of the people who go to the shop page do click through and look at a number of items while they're there, but nobody's actually bought anything yet.

Next year I want to try and change the balance of my work - taking on fewer custom sewing commissions, and concentrating primarily on the duvet cover skirts and on the Fair Trade cotton, when it arrives from Bishopston Trading. In order for that to happen, I need to be encouraging people to buy directly from the shop, so I'll be selling quite a few more ready-made pieces in the New Year.

I'm currently being inspired by Gudrun Sjoden. I was looking through some of her old printed catalogues the other day, and I particularly like the way that the collections are designed to be mixed and matched and layered together. If I can design some garments which work in that kind of way, and make them from the Bishopston cottons, I'll be very pleased.

The Story of Stuff

"From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

This is why I do what I do.

Please watch the video, and pass on the link.

Thank you.

The Story of Stuff

 

Thank you all for your support!

Today, I have been mostly going to the Post Office.

I had to make two trips, as there was no way I could carry everything in one go!



This is what the end of GothStuff looks like:


(The parcels on the right, on top of the box, are A4.)

and very satisfying it is, too.



There are a few more stray bits and pieces up on Ebay this week, but that's pretty much it for GothStuff now. The domain names expire on December 20th, so after that the website will be gone forever.

The business ran for seven years, and I'd like to thank every single person who supported me during that time.

Thank you!

Have you heard of the Handmade Pledge?

At handmade.org, you can sign a pledge to buy handmade gifts this Holiday season. Why limit it to the holidays, I say? A handmade gift is for Life, not just for Christmas!

The idea is that even if you can't give a gift that you made with your own hands, then why not buy an item which another craftsperson has made? That way you are supporting independent businesses, and bringing down the mass-produced madness of the holidays, one little gift at a time.

I must confess that I have bought quite a number of non-handmade gifts for my friends and family this Christmas. Why? Because that's what they wanted. I don't see the point in giving somebody a handknitted lacy poncho, when what they really wanted was the DVD box set of their favourite tv show or the latest blockbuster novel. Books, music and films will always be good gifts, for those that enjoy them. However, a number of my friends are also craftspeople, and they will be receiving not only handmade gifts, but also items which will enable them to go on and make more handmade items of their own.

If you don't know what your friends-and-relations would like as a gift, then handmade.org gives you plenty of resources for places to look for ideas. There are online hubs such as Etsy, and there are local craft markets springing up all over the place at this time of year.

Don't want to give the person who owns everything even more clutter to add to their lives? Buy them something which can be eaten, or used up. What about fudge, or soap? How about a ticket to an event, or some seeds for the garden? A "voucher" for a day of your time? A gift certificate towards something they really want, but can't afford?

If you're giving a gift to the person who really does have everything, then how about giving a gift on their behalf, to people who have nothing? Charities such as Oxfam Unwrapped and Christian Aid have amazing gift catalogues, where you can buy all sorts of items from seeds and goats to school equipment, condoms to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, and even a whole toilet!



Whether you buy handmade or mass-produced, whether you give a gift to your family or to charity, please take a moment to think about that person, and what they might like.

I've spent a lot of Christmasses working in retail establishments, and there's nothing more soul-destroying than the last-minute purchase of utter rubbish, clearly thrown together solely for the purpose of giving desperate shoppers something to buy on Christmas Eve. Except perhaps for the Boxing Day crowds, coming back to sheepishly return all of their unwanted gifts. If people didn't buy musical santas and light-up reindeer, eventually companies would get the point, and stop manufacturing such nonsense!


Don't give in to the madness! Shop early, shop thoughtfully, and please buy handmade if it's what's right for you.

Joanne's leafy jersey dress

Here you go - the second incarnation of Joanne's jersey dress:

I thought you might like to see them both together, so you can see how the same dress can look in different fabrics.

The leaf print is a viscose jersey, bought from John Lewis way back in the summer.

The height of the belt is an optical illusion, by the way. Because the sleeves are shorter on the leafy dress, it looks as though the belt is lower down. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that, but I measured it, and they are the same!

Now to parcel it up and send it off to my sister - and then try to get a picture of her wearing it.



I really enjoyed making these dresses. I might try and draft a version which is a little more full, so you can get it on and off without a zip, even in a non-stretch fabric.

Crazy GothStuff Closing Down Sale!

Right!

As the GothStuff domain names will expire at the end of this month, I thought it would be a good time to have one last GothStuff Crazy Closing Down Sale!

All of the remaining t-shirts, hoodies and net skirts have now been listed on Ebay.

Every item starts at just 99p!

Items also have a "Buy It Now" price, so you can snap up the ones you really want immediately, without getting into a bidding war!

The auctions last for seven days, and that's it.
No re-listing, no second chance offers, nothing. At the end of the week, GothStuff is gone.

Not bad for a bad day...

Today was threatening to turn into a distinctly unproductive one. I've got a stinking cold (not quite man-flu, but close!), and whilst I'd spent the morning sewing well, I seemed to send the afternoon unpicking everything again. Not good.

So, I figured it would be a good idea to step away from the complicated princess-seamed bodice, and pick up something more simple.

I've been wanting to sew Butterick 4928 for ages, and as it's basically just four huge pieces sewn together into a coat-shape, I thought I might as well give it a go.

Here's the pattern picture:

It's a new pattern, reproduced from a Butterick 1952 original.

I, however, decided to make in in a skull-and-crossbones printed polyester fleece. Well, it recommends using fleece on the pattern envelope, and I had three metres of this just lying about, so why not?

Here's how it looks so far:



Once again, you can't really see what this coat looks like, or more importantly how it feels by looking at a picture on a mannequin. I'm sure lots of you are looking at it and thinking, "but it looks like a tent!" I can assure you that when you put it on, it feels like the most glamorous coat you have ever worn.

It makes you want to swirl around - this coat would be perfect for ice skating out of doors. Or maybe for standing on the balcony of a ski-lodge, in the dark, sipping champagne as the snow falls gently around you. Really, it's that kind of coat. Honest.


It's not finished yet - it needs facings and interfacing, and maybe one ginormous button. You can form a queue to fight me for it, when it's done. ;)

Diane's Barkcloth Bolero

This morning I have been making a bolero jacket for Diane.

She chose the barkcloth herself, and sent it over to me to be transformed. It's a Robert Kaufmann design, in a 1950s style.

The ends of the sleeves are trimmed with a narrow black bias binding, and the lining is also plain black.

If I'd been making this for myself, I might have lined it in the deep red, or the mustard yellow, or even the olive green, and trimmed the sleeves with the same colour. Then I would have made a plain black dress to wear with it, with trim to match...

I don't know what outfit Diane has in mind, but I'd love to see some photos of it!

Website Update...

Today I have been mostly updating the Gallery section of the Design By Claire website.

It's still very much a work in progress, but the main gallery page was becoming far too long and unwieldy, so I decided to divide it up into sections.

There are now separate gallery pages for Dresses, Skirts, Tops, Jackets, Bags, Knitwear and Everything Else!

I still need to add a lot of the individual pages, but I've run out of time for web design now, and I need to get back to sewing even more things to show you!

If you're interested in anything which says "FOR SALE" next to it but doesn't have any more details, please feel free to drop an email to claire@designbyclaire.co.uk, letting me know what you're interested in.

Joanne's black jersey dress.

Here you go - I thought you might like to see the difference between the jersey dress on a mannequin, and how it looks on a Real Person:

I took the photo in electric light, and being black, you can't really see all the details. But you can hopefully see that it fits, and thankfully Joanne is really pleased with it.

The only alteration I need to make is to shorten the sleeves by about four inches - I think I can manage that!

A new incarnation in the leaf-print jersey should be done by the end of the week.

More Stuff for my Sister...

Here you go, I thought you might like to see a picture of the finished satin skirt:

I'm hoping to be able to get a picture of my sister wearing the whole outfit, although as she is very camera-shy, I'm not sure that I'll succeed!

Also on the list for far too long has been a jersey dress. This one is effectively a wearable mock-up, so that Joanne can try it on, and see whether there's anything she'd like to change before I make the real thing.



It's a tunic-style dress, which simply pulls on over the head. It has a deep neckline, and gathered raglan sleeves. The belt is fixed at the front and loose at the back, so it can be used to pull the dress in under the bust for a flattering shape. It's knee-length.

The mock-up is made in a heavy poly/cotton jersey with lots of lycra, but the final version's going to be in this gorgeous viscose jersey:

Work In Progress - Satin Ribbonned Skirt

This is what I've been working on today - a satin skirt for my sister.

It's a mid-calf a-line skirt. Finished it will be 27" long, plus a little ruffle of ivory net around the bottom. As you can see from the photo, it has two bands of ivory satin ribbon around the hem. I believe the technical term for this type of embellishment is "a bugger". ;)

My sister requested this skirt particularly to wear with her wedding shoes, and the bustier she wore the following day:



Isn't that going to be the most fabulously glamorous outfit?

A-line skull skirt...

Please excuse my wonky mannequin in this picture. I don't know what's the matter with her, she looks drunk!

Anyway, this is a new skirt for Chloe.

It's made with Alexander Henry "Mini Calaveras" fabric, bought from Cia's Palette.

The skirt is an a-line style, knee-length, with a side zip. It's fully lined, and attached to the bottom of the lining is a little ruffle of net. Not so much as to make the skirt stick out in a comedy manner, but just enough to give it a little bit of stiffness and shape.

This one is on its way to a Christmas party, so I hope Chloe can come up with some better photographs than this one!

A bag, a skirt and two costumes.

After yesterday's frenzied bout of organisation, I thought I'd better get on and actually do some sewing!

As a result I have photographs of two completed items for you:

This is a skirt which Rainbowskye needed, to replace one which I made for her under the guise of GothStuff. (Rainbowskye is not eight feet tall, by the way. It's just that my mannequin isn't very adjustable.)

It's a simple elasticated skirt in crushed velvet, with a lacy trim around the hem. It's a lot more full than my usual elasticated skirts, having four panels instead of two.



This one is another tote bag for Professor Yaffle - her third!

I'm so pleased that people are liking these little bags enough to want to buy more than one. There are so many cool fabrics out there, I almost feel as though I'd never have to repeat myself.


In other exciting news, I've been commissioned to make two costumes - McCalls M5444 and McCalls M4997. I don't usually sew costumes these days, so this is going to be a bit of a departure from my novelty prints!

The first dress is going to be made in a very dark purple satin, with silver satin underskirt and sleeve details. The second will be in forest green crushed velvet, with an antique gold under-dress. Faerierhona has been scouring Ebay for bargains, so she's even going to provide all of the fabric for me, and bring it over when it arrives. Expect lots of photographs, as the dresses progress...

T-shirts and Tidying.

Today I have been mostly listing an assortment of Organic, Fair Trade and Sweatshop Free t-shirts in my Ebay Shop. They're all on auction for a week, ending on the 19th.

There are a variety of styles, colours and sizes for men, women and kids. I hope you like them!


As well as trying to make a bit of space by listing t-shirts, I have also been trying to make a bit of space by throwing things out. I am amazed at how much junk I've managed to accumulate in the Shed in just over a year!

I needed to give the place a really good clean. Aside from the regular dust-bunnies you inevitably grow when you're working with fabric and thread, the place was full of feathers from my Hallowe'en costume, and I was getting to the stage where I had to move eighty-seven things to probably not find the one thing that I was looking for. Those of you who've seen my house will know that tidiness does not come naturally to me (I can hear my Mum laughing from here!), but the Shed is now a shining example of organisation, and I promise to try very hard to keep it that way.

The last thing I want to do is to sort out my buttons - something of a mammoth task! I've inherited half a dozen sewing and button tins from friends and family this year, and I've consolidated all of the contents - needles in one tobacco tin, pins in another, one box for trimmings, one for thread. The buttons are currently in a huge Tupperware container designed to hold a cake, and it's full to the brim! A few weeks ago I bought a "Really Useful" set of sixteen tiny boxes in a handy case, so I'm going to divide the buttons by colour and keep them in these little clear boxes, so I can see them all. I have a big tin left over, for all the black ones.

I'm really pleased with how the Shed looks now, so hopefully I'll be able to work more efficiently in my newly-organised room!

Fish Fabric!

I've just arrived home from my "Proper Job" to find my order from Cia's Palette waiting for me on the doorstep. It arrived all the way from Minneapolis in just nine days.

I opened it in a flurry of excitement - as well as Chloe's Day of the Dead Skulls, it contains my fishy fabrics!

Look!

This is what I saw when I opened the parcel:

An extra little fish! So cute!
I am saving all the labels Cia uses to wrap her parcels. Clearly I need to order a lot more fabric, so I can collect enough labels to decoupage a box or something. (That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.)

But look! Look at the fish fabric!





The fish have names! Proper fish names too, like Robert and Swimmy and Bjorn! (It probably helps if you know that my fish are called Alice and Dave. And the beautiful black one which sadly died was called Bob.) Look! The black one is called Spooky!

Sorry. I can feel a lot of eyebrows being raised at me across the internet.

But look! it has fish!

A scarf and a squirrel handbag.

Remember that frighteningly tangled skein of silk?

This is what became of it:

It's a narrow scarf, which is long enough to reach below the waist on both sides. It's knitted with one strand of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk and two strands of Colinette Parisienne held together. I cast on 13 stitches, on 5mm needles. Every fourth row, I changed to a 10mm needle. Otherwise it's just plain garter stitch - keep knitting until the yarn runs out!



Here's the last of the pre-ordered tote bags, which I finished today.



You may have noticed that it's a different shape from the others!

The photographs don't show the shape particularly well - it's more curvy than it looks. It's big, too - in the second picture the bag has an A4 pad inside it, to keep it nice and flat. It has one long handle, and you can just see a tiny sneaky peek of the Design By Claire label in there too.



Tomorrow night is Hallowe'en and I've just rustled up a very quick costume thanks to Martha Stewart. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I have some photos. Happy Hallowe'en!