6mth Blogversary

My little blog is half a year old. Or it was 2 days ago. I had plans to post on the day but my time got filled with other things. An obsession with boxes (more later) and preparation for very welcome house guests.

I have mostly written here about finished projects. Today though I’m going to share a longer term labour intensive project that will take many more months to finish.

I have a fondness and admiration for Liberty Tana Lawn. I know I am so not alone in that.  I’ve made quite a few shirts over the years out of it, and saved the cabbage. I’ve also purchased a few remnants. I’ve been keen for years to eventually come up with a patchwork project to combine and use these. Then I had a 3wk trip to plan for, which of course includes deciding what handwork I would take with me to keep me happy and occupied. I often take sock knitting, but the other thing I like to do as a travel project is English pieced patchwork.

Hmm, but what design to use? I felt that all the Liberty scraps did not divide well into sufficiently contrasting shades, so they all needed to be treated as one. I did however want some contrast to make things “pop”. I played with image searches and eventually decided that a lattice design with black as the contrast might work well. I drew up a trial version on engineer’s graph paper to test the thought and decide on proportions. It turned out to be remarkably difficult to reliably identify the correct intersections to draw to!

I did like the plan though so I cut a bunch of fabric shapes and much more carefully cut the papers. By golly it’s hard to cut the papers accurately!

After a couple of weeks of travel and amusing myself working on this, I laid what I had done out. Thankfully I like it a lot.

Now, several more weeks on, I have 52 blocks made. Many more to go to!

Ho Hum

Yet another chemise. Now I can do Festival in 14thC with a clean chemise each day.

It doesn’t look like much hanging. White on white.

It’s linen. Of course. Or at least what we believe to be linen (some of the Job warehouse haul). Sewn mostly by machine in cotton thread. All seams are neatly flat felled, even if only by machine. My uber authenticity friends will think ill of me for that. I’d claim to not have enough arm to do it by hand. Actually I suppose I could, over quite a long period.  It seems I’d rather spend that capacity on my patchwork.  Some medievalist I am eh?

Neckline is faced with straight grain double fold tape of the same fabric. Handsewn down, though I had a brain spasm and went with a less than wonderful stitch choice. I realised partway, but chose at that point to just continue.

The wrists and hem are done by hand in a prettier stitch, which the camera really didn’t want to focus on.

Here she is having a rest on the little sofa :-). Nope I’m not pressing it.

Dress from a coat pattern

Two years ago, I made a coat for a friend who lives in another state. I was delighted and proud that the pattern I draped from scratch, worked so well even without any further fittings at all.

I had thought at the time that I could possibly make some minor modifications to the pattern and make it up as a dress. Then the lady had a birthday approaching, so I decided to gird my whatsits and give the dress plan a go. Again, no physical access to the lady, and I wanted it to be a surprise, so I had to work completely from the 2yr old pattern.

So I dropped the shoulder seam and cut in the top of the armholes a bit so it would work without shoulder pads. I added a waist seam to both make it more alterable just in case. This has the bonus of making the cutting a lot more efficient. I cut the skirts a tiny bit fuller, just following the line from the waist, there was no issue trying to minimise weight from that heavy wool. I made it up in shirting weight indigo blue linen. Very simple and severe, which suits the lady’s taste. 3/4 sleeves ditto.

Last night she told me that not only did it arrive safely, she loves it and it basically fits. The side seams need taking in a bit, but if that is the only change needed, that is fairly easily done. I’m delighted. Of course now I notice that the left sleeve is more creased than I would like in these pics. Oh well, I can’t take any more now!