I appear to have (mostly) made a corset.

I spent all morning faffing around with my printer, trying to put together some packaging for my badges, and sadly failed miserably. As a result, I decided to spend the afternoon doing something a little more productive.

So, I made a corset.

This is the first mock-up from the pattern I drafted the other day:

It's made from three layers - cotton fashion fabric, a heavy drill for strength, and the lining is some lightweight black poly/cotton I had lying around. The waist tape is enclosed between the layers and is made from grosgrain ribbon, and the binding's black poly/cotton.

The bones are Rigilene (two on each seam, plus front and back), and the front fastening is hook and eye tape. I'm waiting for my steel bones and busk to arrive, and I had these on hand, so I thought they'd be okay to just test the pattern.

I know it doesn't look very shapely, but that's because I'm not a very curvy shape! I wanted my first draft to fit my body shape pretty closely (this gives a two-inch reduction at the waist) before I started messing around with different proportions.

Sadly I can't try it on just yet, because the last thing I need to do is add the grommets!

As you can see, I didn't bother too much about pattern-matching on this one, as I was just using up a small remnant of fabric. The binding's also done on the sewing machine rather than by hand, just for speed.

I think it looks okay for a first attempt though - although it remains to be seen how it behaves once I put it on.

Finishing a couple of dresses...

In a sudden flurry of productivity (i.e. I needed to have the dress forms ready for my next projects!), I've finally finished two dresses for myself:

On the left is McCalls M4826, view A.
As you can probably tell, my favourite thing about this dress is the pockets!

On the right is Simplicity 3673, view C.
It's made in my beloved fish fabrics from Cia's Palette.

(Please excuse my grumpy face - I'm not feeling very well.)

Koi circle skirt...

This is my latest experiment - a circle skirt with an elasticated waistband. For those of you who read my elasticated a-line skirt tutorial, this one is made in exactly the same way. Instead of being triangular, the pattern piece is a quarter circle, which you then cut on a double fold in the fabric.

You have to be a bit careful with prints and circle skirts. If the print only goes one way up, you can end up with it going skew-wiff at the side seams. This particular print is so busy that it doesn't really matter which way up it goes! Circle skirts also take up quite a lot of fabric. You can get one of my a-line skirts out of a metre and a half of fabric, but the circle skirt takes at least three metres. You also need five metres of trimming for the hem.

The print is lots of koi, highlighted with gold.




Here you can see the skirt displayed without and then with a petticoat underneath.

I was quite surprised the first time I made a circle skirt and saw it without a petticoat. You see full skirts so often as part of 1950s fashion illustrations, and they're always drawn with the expectation that they're going to be filled out with lots of petticoats. They look so different when they're on their own - very flat, and almost disappointing.

I plan to wear this one to work tomorrow, without a petticoat. The one on the mannequin is a bit too tight for me these days, and I don't fancy wresting with thirteen metres of dress net and fifty metres of trimming to make a new one before tomorrow morning! I keep thinking that perhaps I'll buy one instead, from Petticoat Perfection, but somehow that seems like cheating, when I'm perfectly capable of making my own.

Mind you, I'm perfectly capable of doing lots of things, but that doesn't mean they're all at the top of my to-do list!

Would you like chips with that?

Today I have been mostly making a fish skirt!

I've been hoarding this fabric for ages, I wanted to make an elasticated gathered skirt, and the two just seemed to go together. A fish skirt needs to be floaty, obviously.

The fabric is palest blue, with little fishies swimming all over it!
The print is by Heather Ross, and I bought it from Cia's Palette.

It's a calf-length (27" plus waistband) gathered skirt, with an elasticated waistband. The hem of the skirt is 88" around, so it's pretty full.

The skirt is lined - the lining is edged with horsehair braid for extra stiffness. Not enough to make the skirt stand up on its own, but enough to make it nice and full without needing a petticoat underneath!

For those of you who might assume that elasticated skirts are somehow "lumpy", you can see here that the top gives you a perfectly smooth waistline!



I plan to add this skirt to the web shop, and offer it in four lengths - 21" (knee length), 27" (calf length), 36" (ankle length) and 39" (floor length). The two shorter lengths will cost £40. The longer lengths will cost £60, as they're also more full.


I can't wait to wear this one. I might even put a petticoat underneath it, for extra fluffiness.

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!