The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Autumn Leaf Shirt With Greek Keys

This shirt was a try-out for copying my favorite winter button-down shirt.  Essentially a working toile, it has a lot of mistakes as I tried out working with satin ribbon, flat-lining, flat-felling seams, plackets, and generally putting a basic collared shirt together.  But I like it a lot.

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: White and Black

I have a whole box full of various white fabrics, and none of them is enough of the right kind of white fabric for what I want!

(Also, how did I end up with so much white??  It's not a color I collect by choice, so everything in that box had to be part of another project, or concrete idea for a project, that involved white.)

On the other end of not having the right fabric, the only black fabric I have in all of my stash is scraps of shiny 4-way stretch and scraps of sparkly velvet 4-way stretch, neither of which will do for the current project.

I must needs hie me to the fabric store.     

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: An Evening Dress For Elisheba

As I mentioned in my burn test post, I've been working on a dress for Elisheba.  Here it is:

My design sketch:

This dress felt like a lot of firsts: first evening dress, first time doing a little net crinoline, first time working extensively with straps, first time working with fabric chosen entirely by someone else, first time making a toile.  Writing it up, I realize that the only things I had never done before were making a toile, box pleats for the net crinoline, and the narrow (comparatively) straps.     

The dress is a princess-line, unwaisted dress with a contrasting center front panel, shoulder straps, decorative back lacing, invisible zipper in the back waist, and a mini-train.  The fabric is polyester (probably) satin with gold metallic overlay on mostly pale sky blue background with dark blue flowers.  The front panel is polyester (probably) brocade in dark blue with gold and bronze dots. 

I started with the pattern for McCall's 6382 and another dress of Elisheba's (from ebay) that has the same basic construction as the design sketch.

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Science!

Burn tests are a venerable and respectable way to identify stuff.  And you get to set things on fire!

A little explanation: I'm working on an evening dress for Elisheba with fabric she brought back from a Ugandan excursion while working in Peace Corps Tanzania.  Of course the fabric is fabulous:

It's very lightweight and drapey and shiney, but also easy to snag, pull the weave out of true, and it shreds almost as much as the heavy costume satin I work with a lot.  I wondered if it might be silk.  This seemed unlikely, given the cheap price, but I wondered.  A quick internet query suggested that the quickest way to determine fabric type is with a burn test.  One tea candle, bare concrete sidewalk, bucket of water, and scrap of fabric later, I came up with this:


Definitely synthetic.  The gold overlay flames and burns extremely aggressively (the twisted, blackened portion in the upper photo).  The non-gold-overlaid bits burned less aggressively, but they did burn, with flame, and left a crispy but not very hard, twisted edge.  The burned portion without metallic overlay had no smell that my nose could detect.





















While I had a lit candle and bucket of water, I tried a number of other fabric scraps from my stash, because science!

Satin from the underdress for Elisheba's dress:
it melts into hard, shiny, slick, slightly flexible (but easily broken if bent too far) plastic!  I actually like working with this type of mid-weight satin: it's strong, tightly woven, hangs well, and takes many types of embellishments in stride.  I just have to French seam everything and/or use Fraycheck liberally to stop the raw edges from shredding away.  And not set it on fire. 







Used silk sari I turned into large pillow covers:
it...vanished, flamingly, leaving a hard,
bad-smelling residue at the edges.  Had to be
dipped in water to stop burning.  Not real silk, then. 










Nylon tricot, used for aerial fabrics: it vanishes,
rapidly, with almost no flame, leaving a thin, brittle rim of hardened fabric.  Smelled faintly of burning nylon rope (hard to describe: not exactly unpleasant, but unbreathable, a little bit like old charcoal ash, a little bit metallic, a little bit chemical but not ammonia or chlorine smells.)  Note to self: do not under any circumstances combine fire dancing and aerial fabrics. 






Stretch velvet from a leotard: burned aggressively,
with flames (I'm guessing the added surface area of the velvet pile increases the burn rate), twisted up a lot and left a hard, plastic-y residue.  Also split where the selvedge edge met the main fabric.  Do not combine fire dancing and velvet leotards.  









Net, to fluff out the underdress for Elisheba's dress:
it vanishes, rapidly, with almost no flame, leaving a
thin plastic film at the edges of the burn:













Cotton/polyester twill (ratio unknown), used for a
doll's tae kwon do outfit, a Hakaryu doll for
cosplaying Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki, Zelda's apron
from Legend of Trapeze Zelda (yes, we do Legend
of Zelda on a trapeze.  We are that fabulous.), and
various other small projects: burned aggressively,
with flame, twisting up and leaving a hard residue.








100% cotton from cosplaying Meow from
Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran: burned aggresively,
with flames, no twisting or hard residues.
Burned portion split and frayed under tiny amount
of pressure.  Burned portion smelled good, vaguely like cooking meat on a charcoal grill.










100% linen from a commission for a Roman-style tunic: burned aggressively, with flames, no twisting or hard residues.  Burned portion tore and frayed
under tiny amount of pressure.  Burned portion smelled wonderful, kind of like pine straw heating up under a June sun or mesquite chips for grilling.


 




Conclusions:

1. Fire is still one of the most amazing and powerful forces for change that we have discovered. 
2. None of the fabrics I work with on a regular basis is the slightest bit fire-resistant.
3. The main fabric for Elisheba's dress is some kind of synthetic.  It feels more like nylon, but burned more like the cotton/polyester twill.  I didn't have any rayon scraps to burn, so cannot compare with that.  Tentative conclusion: nylon/polyester/unknown blended fiber.  It might be a satin weave, which would explain the shredding at raw edges.  
4. That was fun!  I learned stuff!  Let's do it again sometime when I can burn some real silk or wool!  I should take better notes!  Maybe take video!

Sewing Tidbit: Pintucks vs Pleats

So apparently (i.e., after some quick internet reading) a pintuck is just a really narrow knife pleat that's stitched the entire length of the pleat.

Earlier this year I was reveling in discovering that there exist different kinds of pleats.  The internet is a wonderful thing.

Also one "how to make pintucks post" mentioned that there are 60/8 sewing machine needles, finer even than 70/10s.  I want them.  Wants them, my precious!  This past year I've been sewing with longer and longer stitches and almost exclusively my 70/10 needles and with some particularly troublesome fabrics have decided that simply using the finest needle I have works better than my ballpoint or stretch needles.      

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: New Fabrics For My Stash

I adore printed cottons.  I can (and did) spend a whole trip to the fabric store just browsing the cotton prints and reminding myself that I cannot afford to buy them all.  I made myself stop with four, for now.

First, blue-purple paisleys with mixed flowers on black.  I love paisleys, but they're hard to find in the jewel tones and spacing that I like.

Autumn leaf print, because it was on the 60% off table:

Japanese crest inspired scales, a bit overwhelming in large swathes, but maybe an adorable drawstring bag?  Or cutting out individual scales for detail/embellishment/homemade applique.

Kaleidoscopic rondels in royal blue and gold and scarlett.  I am so in love with this fabric.  I may just hang it up and admire it for a while before I can bring myself to take scissors to it. 

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Inspiration Strikes! (Or Maybe Not)

A while ago, I discovered that old sari borders are sold on ebay.  But I felt guilty about buying some for my fabric stash without having any idea of what I would use them for.  Today I had an idea about using them: doing a bodice that is all about the contrasting ornamentation, like this one,

From Wikimedia.  Possibly Christina of Denmark.

using old sari borders instead of lace.  However sari borders are often wider than would make pleasing proportions on a small person (like me), and also are often directional, unlike the trim on the lady in the painting.

So maybe this idea wouldn't work after all.  I'll have to think about it

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Trapeze Doom Guy

For Aerial Anime's video game theme, Doom guy is making an appearance:

This was a 1-hour costume: green t-shirt, green leggings, 1/2 inch flexible foam, and shoulder pads of doom:

Elisheba ripped the leggings.  I cut the foam into abbreviated breast- and backplates and stitched them into the t-shirt, turning up the length of the shirt and using it as self-lining for the foam.  Add shoulder pads and an elastic breastband (covered with scrap leotard fabric from my stash), and it's done!

It even stands up by itself!  It's messy on the inside, but I'm wary of stitching the foam down too firmly: the t-shirt has to stretch enough to be put on, and the foam will only stretch a little. 

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Master Stitchery

Not mine, however and alas.  Elisheba recently acquired a new costume that has the most fantastic beading and sequining:

And this is the hand stitchery holding down all those beads and sequins:
That is amazing crafts-personship.

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Mini-Project

We have some large blocks of foam that are good for pillows.  Scaramouche also likes them.  He especially likes to rip nips of foam off the blocks (fortunately he doesn't actually eat them).  I'm making large pillowcases out of used saris, both for aesthetic and for anti-cat-nibbling purposes.  I used two saris: a blue with leaf-ish designs and a matte purple with bright orange border.

The blue:

I love blue.  So did my Grandmama.  The exact right shade of blue thread for this sari is from her stash.

Scaramouche will happily sit on the foam, even if he can't nibble.

The purple-and-orange, still to be turned into covers:

I love the purple-and-orange sari, too.

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Final Fantasy X Yuna's Sleeves

Back to where I left off in June: I am attempting to make a Yuna costume suitable for aerial performance.

Yuna:

My recreation of her sleeves, version 1.0:

These were made in heavy white polyester satin (leftover from Princess Zelda's dress, which I still haven't written about), and I attempted to give them a gradient dye job with a fabric marker.  I gave up about 2/3 of the way through, because my marker was starting to run low, and I didn't want to have to buy another whole set to get that shade of pink in a reasonably broad point.  Also the satin did not take marker well, and it was much more difficult than I anticipated to get a good gradient.

So I took to the internet to see if dyeing sleeves might be a possibility.  I was terrified of dying fabric.  In every by-the-way description of historical dying methods I've read it involves a terrific amount of work and substances that are either really gross or that humans shouldn't be around (for instance Memories of Silk and Straw by Junichi Saga has a chapter about a dyer).  But the good people of the internet provided youtube tutorials and assured me that thanks to modern technology, I can buy small packets of fabric dye in every color of the rainbow and handle it without more precautions than gloves and ordinary ventilation. 

version 2.0
Lightweight white cotton sateen, unlined, dyed in the kitchen sink: 

I can dye fabric!  Eureka!  QED!  The world of white fabric is my oyster!  

The light is a bit too bright to see well, but I got a lovely gradient on both sleeves, with far less work than I was anticipating.  The better sleeve had the hotter water: next time I have a dye job small enough to fit in a pot I'll do it on the stove, so as to better maintain the temperature of the dye bath. 

I made version 2.0 with square margins as shown in Yuna's illustrations, discarding trying to round the back corners of the bottom hem (it's a female/male distinction with probably as much worth as buttons on the left or right for western shirts).  The purple cord is for show: I basted the sleeves to a long-sleeved nude leotard to make sure they'll actually stay on during performance.  They are a royal pain to work with in aerial fabrics, but they make all my sweeping gestures look lovely.  Dance adapts to look beautiful in the style of clothing it is danced in, and in turn influences the clothing worn to dance.

Thunderbolt Fantasy: Costuming Dreamland

As the mad-person-who-stitches, I'm still not done recording my efforts for Yuna of Final Fantasy X, translated for aerials.  But I'm going to take this week to rhapsodize over the puppets in a new Japanese-Taiwanese television series called Thunderbolt Fantasy.  Because these puppets are gorgeous.  I am hanging on every episode as they come out, oscillating between admiration for the beauty of the costumes and sets, amusement when I spot cheap hacks (or clever work-arounds, depending on your point of view) in the costume construction, and severe criticism of how fake the weapons look. 

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Final Fantasy X Yuna's Obi

Yuna:


Yuna wears an outfit plainly derived from kimono and hakama, but a deeply pleated skirt instead of hakama, and her kimono has been cut down to the sleeves and a chest wrap.  She wears her obi in a butterfly knot, the easiest and a fairly secure way to tie an obi in my limited experience. 

Making her obi: A formal occasion obi will be heavy silk, damask or embroidered or appliqued or painted or otherwise embellished, lined with stiff cotton.  Less formal obis are narrower and more flexible, of lighter silks or cotton or other material, patterned or plain.  I wanted something sturdy and as little inclined to sliding as possible, so I used the stiffest, heaviest yellow cotton I could find, painted with fabric paint. 

I used SoSoft brand fabric paint for this, ordered off the internet.  This is really good fabric paint: opaque, goes on smoothly, neither too runny nor too thick, really good colors, dries flexible and without any residual tackiness.

When this picture was taken, with about 1/3 of the obi painted and the fabric stretching out seemingly endlessly, I quite hated this project.  Obis are long.

About this long, in this case.

Finished!  Now I love this obi again.  I painted the central design with a hand-drawn paper stencil.

It took me about 12 episodes of HPpodcraft, the H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast, plus another 3 hours of other internet listening-to stuff, to paint this.   And I even left a section that will not show when the obi is tied unpainted (quite common).   The obi construction cheats somewhat in that I did not line the fabric, nor baste the folded over fabric shut.

Slightly off-topic: One of things I am really proud of myself for is learning to tie my own fukuro obi in a basic taiko knot.  I learned from this good person of the internet.  (Bless the internet!)  For walking around a con all day, a wide, stiff, embroidered obi provides excellent back support and is amazingly comfortable.