A brief interlude ...

Over the weekend I sat down to sew. As I looked around over the clouds of netting, I realized that I had neither the desire nor the will to work on petticoats. So, in the time-honoured tradition of students everywhere who have term paper deadlines looming, I found something else to do. :)


For reference, this is the hat
in question.



A while back, my husband had asked if I would make a black Imperial Officer cap for him to wear around during an upcoming trip. I said, "Sure!", and then nothing else happened on that project. Over the weekend, though, this became the rough equivalent of the aforementioned student's realizing that the bathroom needs to be cleaned or the floor should probably be swept or perhaps those dishes in the sink should really be washed. So I dug through the fabric stash to find something that would work, and on I went...

IO caps are small and finicky, but they're really not all that hard to do. You just have to make sure you have all the pieces, follow the directions and take your time about it. In about 6 hours (with time out for dinner), I cut out all the pieces for two caps, did all of the interfacing for both and got most of one sewed together (in my defense, I only stopped because I was at the handsewing stage, and black on black at night is just not fun - there's probably only another couple hours to get it finished).

Fabric choice here depends on how authentic you want to be. Medium to heavy cotton twill or wool gabardine is closest to screen accurate, I'm told. These are a heavyweight cotton twill on the outside lined with a shirt-weight cotton twill (because that's what I had, and it will breathe :).

Roll photos...

I'm making two of these at the same time, so I thought I'd lay out the pieces in the tan one and show the sewn-together piece in the black. Here's the visor section. It has two pieces - one interfaced with a light or mediumweight interfacing, the other has a sewn-in heavyweight stabilizer.

Here are the pieces for the crown of the hat. Two pieces interfaced in the lighter interfacing and sewn together into a loop.

And the two flaps - one at the front, one at the back. Each flap is made up of one piece that is interfaced and one that isn't.

Note on the flaps: the standard IO hat pattern doesn't include something you can see on close-ups of the movie costume hats: a binding on the outer edge of the flaps. It's a small detail, and something you can add or not as you like or as your authenticity desires. :)

And the most important piece of all - the greeblie!! Without a greeblie, you've just got a cap. The ones with the notches cut out of them (bottom row) are the ones recommended for hats. The smooth ones are usually used on belt buckles. As you can see, we keep a small stock. :)




So, why, when the movie Imperial Officers are all dressed in gray or black (or occasionally white), am I doing one in tan? Well, it's for a group called the RSO (Republic Services Organization), which is like the USO but for the 501st. It's a way for the handlers (ie, the wives ;) to dress up too. So the tan one is mine.

And for those folks who'd like to try this, here's the link to the standard IO hat pattern. It has great directions - follow them, take your time, and you can't go wrong. :)

I'd gotten the crown and top sewn together, but I'd stopped at the handsewing required for putting the binding on the flaps (because I am that authenticity-minded, unfortunately). More when I finish them!

Happy sewing, folks. :)

Airship Project: Still the petticoat

I have discovered a new and very deep respect for all those ladies who make or have made tutus and dance skirts for ballet companies. Ladies, chapeau.

So, netting ... yeah ..... *sigh*

Let's start with the good things about netting:

1) The clips I bought for the satin work like a dream for netting. You can even catch the gathering thread under them instead of trying to wrap it around a pin (because pins, FYI, have a tendency to just fall out of netting).
2) Netting is self-gathering. Run a long gathering stitch across the top of a strip, and you'll find it's gathered itself up very nicely by the time you get to the end. Note: this does mean that you need to leave a very long thread tail at the start of the line just in case you need to take some of that gathering out.

And then there's the not-so-good things about netting:

1) It loves everything. As in, wants to hold it, squeeze it and call it George. And I do mean everything - fabric, thread, your clothing, other strips of netting (oh, it LOVES these!), random pieces of paper - nothing is beyond its loving reach. My personal favourite (not!) is when it grabs the thread coming down out of the machine to the needle and pulls it under said needle so it gets stitched to the fabric, thus creating a thread-based negative feedback loop that immediately locks up your machine and sends you in search of the nearest alcohol-based beverage. My only consolation is that the wig is in another room completely (but I'm only half-convinced that I won't get up one morning to find the netting curled up happily around its newest platinum blonde acquisition).
2) My little well o' sewing is not nearly large enough to handle multiple long pieces of netting.
3) Netting strips, when sewn together, are quite difficult to fold up into orderly stacks (see previous post for a photo of said orderly stack). I resorted to gathering them into piles and placing them in different spots so I'd know which length was where. My well o' sewing now looks like a Spielberg early experiment in special effects:


Yep, it exploded.

Yeah ... I recommend cider for this. Right now I'm drinking the Woodchuck Summer. It's got blueberries! :)

The Airship Project: V's Petticoat

I've three projects all proceeding at the same time. If I were ADD, this would probably be heaven. But I'm not, and it's a little stressful wondering if they'll all get done in time.

I had a couple of hours last night so I started working on the petticoats for "Mrs. V", the wealthy patron of our airship. This is one of those projects where I said from the beginning that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right. /footstamp. The other one was the Star Wars Imperial Officer. Note that the Enchantress project (of which I did not utter those famous words) is the one that's almost done.  Anyway, back to V...

I'm not au fait with Victorian costuming, so this project is pretty much being done from Truly Victorian patterns, although some modifications are being made because I'm tall. (As in, I had to add 6" to the petticoats here!) This one is pattern TV121.

Here's the pile of fabric pieces. Yes, there's a big stack of netting pieces underneath.




Yes, those are my monkey slippers in the background. :)











The body of the petticoat went together pretty quickly. If I could figure out how to install an ironing board in my little well o' sewing, it would have been much quicker! I opted to do the ruffle around the bottom of the petticoat, so I had to sew together and hem four large strips of fabric before I could start ruffling / gathering. Here's where I make a recommendation:

This is a godsend. This is a rolled hem foot which I'd gotten for my machine lo, these many years. It pretty much sucks up the fabric, rolls it and stitches it all in one go. No fold, pin, fold, pin, sew. Takes a bit to get used to it (ie, how much fabric you need to feed into it to keep the hem consistent), but once you do .....

... it did hems on both sides of two long strips of fabric in about 20 minutes (it got quicker as I got more practiced). You can see a big learner's bobble down towards the bottom of the stack there - but I figured it's a ruffle, right? And it's at the bottom of the petticoat, right?


Right.



Then it was time to get some sleep, so more on this project later. Happy sewing!

The hat: assembled!

Alright, so I gave some childish whoops of glee when this was done. It was silly, I know. :)

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, all hat pieces had been covered in fabric and were ready for final assembly (you can see that post here). What had to happen next was probably the scariest thing I've ever done to a project.

See, the brim of the hat was a solid piece of buckram, wired and covered in the satin. (In this photo the crown's just sitting on the brim for the sake of the picture.)

The next step was to stitch everything together just inside the wire ring (on the "headhole" side). Then you have to cut out that inner circle. Now, the pattern has lines on it as guides for cutting, but when you draw those on the buckram that you've now covered with fabric, it makes it a touch hard to see. So a little bit of guesswork to add to my total panic at cutting this apart. But, it had to be done, so I took a deep breath and took the scissors to it.





I did have a photo to show of this once it was cut out and looking horribly ragged and scary, but the camera for some reason didn't save it. :( Stupid camera.

Anyway, so you fold the clipped bits from the inner edge up into the crown of the hat, sew through it all to keep it together, add a piece of extra wide bias tape for a hatband, and you end up with this:

BTW, the lower edge of the crown where it meets the brim - total mess. Stitches everywhere! I gave myself permission to do this because I knew I was going to have some fairly full trim around the band.

And then I set to trimming. I'd gotten some green netting to drape the crown with to give a nod towards the headdress the original character wears in the comics....

...and in one image I'd found, she has a green diamond-shaped gem set in the headdress right in the middle of her forehead, so to kinda bring that in, I found these at Fire Mountain Gems (great place, btw :). I'm horrible about judging the size things need to be on hats, and they looked kinda small so I wasn't certain if I would use three in that triangular pattern in the photo or all four in a larger diamond-shaped pattern.


As it turned out, I opted for only one....

Happy sewing!

Episode "I": Update

Way back at the beginning, I talked about how I would one day do an Imperial Officer costume from the Star Wars movies (original trilogy, thank you!) to go with my husband's. With all the work on the Enchantress lately, I haven't really been doing as much on it as I should be (the shame!), but I thought I'd do an update nonetheless. :)

OK, first off, I'd like to point anyone interested in doing one of these to the Imperial Officer forums at the 501st Legion main site. There is a wealth of information to be had there. Go mine it! This is where we started when we were doing my husband's IO, and it's where I got the tip to start here:

This is a McCall's Civil War costume pattern (M4745). It's a good place to start, but it needs modification - more or less modification depending on how accurate to the original you want to be.

As I think I've mentioned, I have a bad tendency to want to do things "right". So, armed with this pattern, some photos from a museum exhibit of the Star Wars costumes, and photos of the inside of one of the original movie IO's (all found on the forums), we set to work.



There are several things that are right with this pattern - the seams on the back, the fact that the panels are seamed at the waist, for example. But there is still mod'ing to be done!

Modifications include: 1) reshaping the panel that overlaps in the front so that it's the same shape as the IO's in the movie, 2) putting in pockets on either side for the code cylinders, 3) tweaking the way the shoulders lay (they kinda kink off towards the back on this pattern), 4) shortening the panels over the legs, and 5) adding a seam to the overpanel on the left side (to match movies). We also ended up adding shoulderpads and sleeveheads to get the sleeves to look right. And because I wanted this to look just like the original, we reseamed the right panel. It's not something you can see in the movies, but in some of the photos we had, it's there, so I had to put it in on mine (unless you really are that worried about being completely accurate, you can skip this step and save yourself a lot of headaches).

Now, I don't have photos of this process because most of it was done with my husband's, but I'll sum up by saying that we ended up tracing the original pattern onto brown paper, taping it all together to do the seamline modifications and cutting it to pieces again, putting together a muslin mockup, pinning fixes there, transferring those to paper patterns, redoing the muslin mockup, etc, etc, until we came up with one that worked. Then we made those same modifications to a paper pattern made off the pattern pieces of a smaller size and created my muslin. (Note: I don't know why the centers of the following photos have a green tinge to them. I apologize.)

I tried to label some of the changes on there for folks who might want to try this at home. This is the mockup of the jacket above the waist (no leg panels), laid out as if it were being worn. Note the added seam on the right side of the picture (left side of the jacket if you had it on). Also note the pocket seams labelled. Let me tell you about those...

There are several theories on doing the pockets. A very popular one is to cut the side pieces longer and then fold it up onto itself to create a pocket. I was worried that the heavier fabric we were using would cause too much bulk there, so I decided to do in-seam pockets out of the lining fabric. We really should have done them out of the main fabric as you can see the color change if the pocket gaps - one of the things I'll change on mine. I'll probably still do them as in-seam, though. Although probably cut-on.

Here's the same shot with the overpanel laid back so you can see the craziness we indulged in. (This is that step you can skip if you want to save yourself the frustration.) Now, it's perfectly allowable to do this side as a long piece folded up on itself for the pocket. However, I had found a photo that showed one of the original movie IOs with the overpanel flipped back, and they'd done this side with this funky square inset piece. The seam for the pocket is at the top of the piece, and then you've got a seam that runs down under the overpanel, but that doesn't go all the way to the shoulder. When you put this piece in, you have to do an inset corner, which has to be one of the most annoyingly finicky techniques ever. *sigh*



And just for all those folks who may want to try this, here are a couple of photos with the muslin turned inside out (it's easier to see where the seams are).

This is the same lay-out as the first mock-up photo, only inside out, so it closes the opposite way.

And here's the second photo, inside out, showing the seams on that funky square inset piece a little better.




There are still several things I need to do to this to make it fit me and look good. The first is to shift the long seam on the overpanel piece in about 1 1/2 inches. I will also probably tweak the long seams a bit to account for the fact that men and women are not shaped the same (in-seam darts? who knows!).






The good news about working in brown paper and muslin is that you're not so worried about staining them should the red wine spill. So indulge in some nice Languedoc or Provencal reds if you're pattern-mod'ing with paper!

Happy sewing!

Project the Third, in which my dreams are crushed.

So, apparently my offerings to the sewing gods were deemed inadequate. While the bodice of the Enchantress costume fit beautifully, something went wrong with the skirt. There were many theories as to what exactly happened:

1) Water retention caused by the sustained crazy heat we've had here lately;

2) Something hinky with the pattern itself (supporting evidence: the skirt was cut from the same pattern and same size as the bodice, so in theory it should have all fit together);

or, my personal belief:

3) I have a big ole butt.

Anyway, there is a photo to prove that I actually did try it on. :)

I apologize for the jeans underneath. I hadn't put the leggings on yet, and trust me, no one wants to see my pudgy legs!

There is about a 1-2" gap at the back of the skirt. In this photo, it's held on by sheer will power. The bustled back part of skirt looked pretty good when we tried it, but there's no photo as it was held on by wishes, dreams and more safety pins than you can shake a stick at.

I'll also note that the room we were doing all this in was west-facing and it was *very* hot. Not too long after we'd tried the full skirt on, I ended up kneeling on the floor trying to stop the world from spinning. My first fit of the vapours. I do declare!




The current idea to fix this is an extra panel across the back to span the gap. However, a good friend of mine suggested (as I was standing there holding back the tears of frustration) that I put this in a corner for a while and work on something else. Think I'll take her up on that. (My first thoughts tended much more towards mad capering around a large bonfire, but we have a burn ban on.)

Needless to say, there was much wine after this little setback. There was a Hook & Ladder Chardonnay that my friends had found. It was pretty tasty - not heavily oaked and some nice fruit. Lighter than a typical Chard and quite good for the really hot afternoon it was. The second wine was a 2011 Charles & Charles Rosé (another tasting bar find). One of the Charles's involved is the Charles Smith who does Kung Fu Girl Riesling, which is a favorite among our friends. The Charles & Charles is a 100% Syrah rosé and it is quite yummy.

Happy sewing!

Project the Third: Skirt!

What I learned this weekend:

1) Those little clips are a godsend for satin. Seriously.
2) The mantra for sewing satin is, as a former roommate of mine in Edinburgh was fond of saying, "softly, softly, catchy monkey."
3) French seams ... I loathe French seams. Whoever dreamed up a system where you sew the seams backwards?! Do. Not. Want.
4) Bustled skirts do not look good in photos if they are laid out flat. (Which is by way of an apology for the photos to come.)

OK, the design concept for the Steampunk Enchantress was a saloon girl look. So the skirt is bustled up short in the front and hangs long in the back. To carry through the fringed skirt she has in some comic book depictions, we decided to fringe both the base of the bodice and the lower hem of the front of the skirt.

[As a side note, I attended a panel once where the conversation turned to how to steampunk non-steampunk characters (like Boba Fett or Princess Leia, for example. The advice given was to determine the defining characteristics of your character (like Princess Leia's buns and white dress), make sure those were in your costume design so folks would have a visual reference, and then have fun with the rest. Best advice ever. :) ]

Alright, so back to this weekend's skirt-making adventures. Got a late start on Saturday due to the prologue of the Tour de France (yes, I'm a cycling fan!), so didn't really start sewing until the afternoon. Over the next 5 hours before I was called away to play WoW (oh! the sacrifice!), I managed to get this done:

I'm afraid I got on a roll and forgot to take "in
progress" photos. So all I've really got are
"done" photos. Sorry! I'll try to do better.


That's the apron, or front of the skirt. Entirely too much handsewing and gathering in this skirt, by the way. And, yes, I totally forgot I had a gathering foot for my machine!

Must. Remember. All. Tools.

The light green at the top is a grosgrain ribbon used for the waistband. It'll be covered by the bodice once the whole thing is sewn together. At least I hope it will, because it's really, really ugly with all the random things stitched to it. Around the back are snaps and skirt hooks and all kinds of rigging. It ended up being a lot more time-consuming than I'd thought. Ah well.

Sunday, I started again on the back of the skirt which is a series of layered, semi-bustled poofs with a straighter train at the bottom.  It was pretty straight-forward apart from the hated and loathed French seams, but those were enough to make me grumpy for most of the morning. Especially when I had to take one out right across the back of the skirt after I'd already trimmed it down. Going all Hulk Smash! on the world became a serious option for several minutes. But anyway, there's the skirt at right with the apron laying on top of the back (yes, for reasons unknown to me, Simplicity opted to make the skirt two separate pieces). The white you can see at the edges are twill tape ties that bustle up the back part of the skirt. Not sure how I'm going to hide those in wearing, but I'll figure something out, I'm sure. :) Time here: 3 1/2 - 4 hours.

And below is the back of the skirt.

Again, sorry about the fact that these just look like piles of material. Apparently one needs a dressform or a live model to make bustled skirts look good!

The plan is to try all this on in the near future, so hopefully there will be "live model" photos to post soon. Yes, I've not actually tried it all on since the initial fitting of the bodice interlining way back at the beginning (my "fitting assistant" has been on vacation :).


Yes, I'm doing a lot of praying to the sewing gods. :) 





This weekend's drink of choice is a bit different and owes something to our family's custom of "drinking the Tour". When the Tour de France is underway, the chosen beverage for the day relates to whatever part of France the Tour is currently passing through. Since they started this year in Belgium (and Belgium really doesn't make a whole lot of wine), we opted for the Belgian beer Saison Du Pont, which is a farmhouse ale and was pretty darn good (and I'm not really a beer drinker). Quite light and worked well for our highs-in-the-upper-90s temps. :)

Happy sewing!