Frilly Gothish Remodel

I had all sorts of plans for making clothing for myself this summer, but none of it happened. I got distracted by a bunch of other projects. This little plan was firmly stuck in my head however and I had a packet of navy dye that needed using before the water soluble enclosure succumbed to humidity.

This tiered frilly skirt was a 90’s Jigsaw brand number that I loved and wore a lot. I don’t wear this sort of warm colour combination any more though and besides, it no longer fit. I nearly consigned it to the opshop bag but the fabric is really lovely, fine and close woven cotton, near Tana lawn quality and all those gathers were already constructed. Surely I could rework it?

I pulled out the leftovers from the shirt featured in https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/yoke-wrinkle-solved. Irish linen, orange and grey shot. Really lovely stuff. Stiffer than the skirt fabric but a bodice is allowed to be different. It tones with the skirt so hopefully they would work together after dyeing.

I then put them both through the navy dye bath with a bunch of other things

Happy with the colours. I cut a bodice from the linen, black facings from the leftovers of a different shirt. I chopped off the original top tier of the skirt, which yielded a piece to make the visible part of a button band to tie the two fabrics together and add interest. Hmm, somewhat wonky sewing there. I made a bunch of mistakes in cutting, all of which were retrievable. I’m peeved that I screwed up by making the button band the “wrong” way around, buttonholes on the left. No one else will notice, but it will annoy me.

Here is the whole dress. Of course I put pockets on!

and on me. Maybe I’m too old to wear this many frills? I don’t care. I love the new dress.

Opalised gradient spin

A little over a year ago, I spun this yarn and wrote it up here: https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/15/opalised-yarn/

Much more recently, about 6 weeks ago, I gave this to a friend for her birthday and offered to spin some more yarn to go with it, her choice of which source fleece, or combination thereof. These are the two kinds of fleece. Rose grey alpaca and a merino/silk blend from Ashford.

My friend asked for two blends. One with a bit less of the blue mix and one with more than the original yarn. I took that thought, went a bit crazy and made 5 more balls to get a full gradient from one to the other. I had made the less blue ball, then slipped and bought another spinning wheel. To try out the new wheel, I wanted a simple spin. So I did some plain rosy alpaca plus some blue mix by itself. Then I went back to my lovely Suzie Pro and made the slightly more blue yarn. This gave 5 skeins and was the intended finish point, but I thought there was too big a colour jump between full blue and the next one. These are straight off the wheel except the original skein in the centre.

So, well, I was having fun anyway and proceed to make another blend to fill that gap.

Much better. This is post wet finishing. You can tell if you look closely that my spinning has become more even in the last year. Original yarn is just right of centre. I’ve also got better at blending multiple kinds of fibre during spinning. This original yarn was my first attempt at that. I’ve done a bunch more since.

I wound them all into cakes for easier handling. Right to left we have: full alpaca, 1/8th blue blended during spinning, 1/4 blue blended during spinning (the original yarn), 1/2 blue- one ply each of full alpaca and full blue, 3/4 blue- one ply full blue, one ply 50:50 blended, and finishing with full blue.

Here is a nicer photo of the finished set, given away as intended this morning. I’m really rather pleased with these.