Thursday, March 29, 2012

Beginning

I have been reading a lot online about hand sewing, and doing a bit of it myself on my garb, but I decided to invest a bit in some reference materials and tools.

I bought three pamphlets from Wm. Booth, Draper, The Lady's Guide to Plain Sewing (Book I & II), and The Workman's Guide to Tailoring Stitches and Techniques. I have yet to really delve into them, but I am hopeful.
The little bone implement you see on top of my new pamphlets is a stiletto. It's not a weapon, or a heel type, but a little pointy thing one sticks between threads of a fabric to spread them open for lacing holes. Often people use awls or some such for this enterprise, but since it was so cheap and nice looking, I decided to go for the real thing.


First Contemporary Project
I've decided to start off easy and have my first project be a pair of pajama bottoms. The construction should be fairly simple, and if the results aren't quite to my liking, hardly anyone sees me in my pajamas, anyways.
Also, this printed cotton flannel should be fairly forgiving if my stitches become clumsy. I have already cut the pieces up and started stitching the front and back together, and I am finding that I am very anal retentive about matching up the pattern insomuch as they at least align. I basically measured the widest part of my hips and added a couple inches, thinking I'd just cut two large rectangles that would be come the legs and join at the top for the hips with a gusset in the seat, but now that I have tried it one once, I think I underestimated how much ease I'd like in my thighs. I have a solution in mind for this which is fairly straightforward, and fortunately (as I remarked above) hardly anyone sees me in my pajamas, so some creative solutions are hardly the end of the world at this point.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Dyeing is done with

I tried dyeing with some conventional, non-organic dye last week for a non-By Hand project, and it turned out terribly. I simply don't have enough experience to do it very successfully, and I'm not sure that there's enough time to reach an acceptable level of proficiency for this project. Any attempt to do so would take an effort that would completely overshadow the hand-sewing, so I am changing some of my requirements.

I will still sew everything by hand; that is the priority.

I will still use natural fabrics that are not machine knit (no T-shirt material, like jersey knits).

For reasons of cost, I will allow myself to use polyester blend thread.

But there will be no zippers, or Velcro, or anything like that. Buttons, lacing, hooks and frogs are going to be my approach.

Hopefully this change will set things more in motion, because it has been holding me up considerably.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Purging the closet

It is amazing how attached one can become to clothing. It took some time for me to complete my closet purge, what with the holidays intervening, and all the various day-to-day crises that come up and demand immediate attention, but in the end I had over two full sized garbage bags full of clothes.
The Car Bears pajama bottoms were especially hard to give up. :P
I folded it all up and laid it out on the craft room table so you cane see the full scope of it.
I didn't expect as much pathos as I actually experienced. I had be really cutthroat with myself about it - if I haven't worn it this year, or it was unflattering, or getting too worn, it had to go.
During this purge I also lost about 5-10 lbs, so I had my size to consider. I went from a size 6 to a 3 or 4, depending on the brand. So now the pants that I kept no longer fit, and neither did the ones I got rid of. It's making more and more sense for me to have a new wardrobe!

I'm not showing you the underwear and such that went in the bag, or, alas! the garbage. There are some things that don't need to be immortalized with pictures, and my white cotton granny underwear from my post-partum days are among them.

Next time: What I kept, and why.