Corset remake / Steampunk!

Well, hello, folks! Remember my green corset of fail last fall? I had made a ~1870's corset drafted to my measurements using this guide, but failed to take into account the amount of squish moved from my waist (and lower) into my hips (despite reading several posts about this very problem from more experiened seamstresses, so it's my own fault, really), thus ending up with a corset that did the opposite of what it was supposed to do: it reduced at the hips and added at the waist, giving me a form more tubular than my natural body. 

Just a reminder. Also: Help, I've lost my
Corset Dropbox Folder?

I was ready to chalk it up as a complete failure and move on, but then the nice people over at the HSF Facebook page encouraged me to add in hip gussets. It took me some time to do it, since there was more things to fix then just the hip-width (plus the thought of taking off an reapplying the binding an the bottom swallowed up all of my motivation) but recently I got fed up with studying and took some time to fix what I could. First, I redid the front opening (still hook and eye tape, sorry) because it was a b*tch to close and easily getting in an out of the thing would be necessary to try it on for the changes. But after moving the eyes from between tell layers to on top of the binding, I must say I'm really happy with the closure.

Thusly encouraged, I went on to insert some hip gussets. I didn't want a bone right ontop of my hip and there was a side panel in any case, so instead of opening up a side seam I cut a slit in the middle of the panel from the bottom to my waist (this took several cuts as I was very careful not to cut too far and tried it on in between cuts to see if I had hit my waist yet. I think I could have gone still a bit higher, but I thought better safe than sorry).

Corset with the slit. You can already see the
difference it makes to the shape

Better look at the gap :)

Then I put a piece of scrap fabric on my hip were the slit would be, put on the corset on top and marked the outline of the gap on the fabric. I used this shape as a template for my gusset (after addin seam allowance, of course). I snipped a little y-shape into the top of the slit, folded all the edges inward, pinned the gusset in between the layers and back stitched into place (the execution of that last sentence took several hours, don't be fooled by its shortness!).

After again setting it aside for some time (still dreading the binding) I felt like sewing again I realized that I had just enough black ribbon left over to rebind the bottom edge, so that's what I did (in an easier and prettier way than before, so yay me). After that I figured I might as well go the whole way and crochet some lace for trimming, and after finding this very easy pattern, I went and did just that. I'm pretty sure the crochet was actually the least time consuming part of this entire remake... 

Anyway, now that it gives me more or less the shape I wanted it to and even looks pretty, I'm actually very happy with it! There's still some things I can't fix without taking the whole d*mn thing apart, but I think for a first try, that's tolerable.

I learned a couple of things while working in this (twice), so I feel ready for a "real" corset now. It's gonna have an actual busk, spiral bones, gussets and flossing, and I even have an original pattern if I can figure out how it works. I won't show any pictures until I can, though ;)

On a final note: out of curiosity, I measured the bottom width of the gussets, i. e. the width I would have needed to add to my hip measurements to make this corset work from the start. It's 15cm! I couldn't believe it! I'm starting to think that I miscalculated or measured wrong at some point, because there's just no way all that squish could have come from my waist... O.o 

Anyway, I'm very happy I stuck with it, I can't believe how good it turned out after my disappointment last fall!

Update:
 I've been sitting on the post above for a while now, waiting for an opportunity to get some better pictures of the reworked corset. Well guess what: I'm going to a steampunk party! I knew I'd have about a day to put something together, because I wrote another exam yesterday and will go snowboarding tomorrow, with the party tomorrow night. (Wait, this feels familiar...)
So I took out my finally wearable corset and paired it with several shirts, blouses and even my regency shift until I decided on my black Dirndl blouse (yes, I own a Dirndl. Please don't go around assuming every German owns one, the first time I actually wore a Dirndl was in Canada, but since I live in the south and literally on the border to Bavaria, I bought one last summer. Works great as a Little Red Riding Hood costume, too :) )
To add yet more steampunk flair, I decided to give this video a trial:

Hey, it's Threabanger again! Or at least Corinne from Threadbanger... :) 
I have 10m of black polyester taffeta in my stash, which I bought some time ago simply because it cost 14€ (the entire piece. So, like, 1,40€ per metre. Sometimes my impulse control is not the best :D)

I cut all the pieces, changing the measurements a little (when my fabric's width is 1,40m I'm not gonna be particular about 10cm more or less), making the panels a bit longer and narrower, but I don't think that changes the look very much. Also, I didn't have any lace to sew around the edges, so it's just pinked :)

Because I need a yardstick to cut in a
straight line when I can't rip fabric

Biggest Panel

The video really tells you all you need to know, so here's the only thing i did differently: To tie the outfit together, I wanted to have some of the green fabric of the corset repeated in the bustle. I decided to put a band of gathered trim on the smallest panel, So I ripped two strips of 6cm * 1,50m fabric and sewed them together. I didn't bother with finishing the edges because I liked the ragged, rough look for steampunk and sewed to gathering lines at 2cm in from the edge. (ran out of bobbin thread about 3/4 through on the second line. Didn't feel like taking it out and redoing it, so I restarted the line about a cm further and tied the top and bottom threads each in a knot. Yeah, that's how I roll.)
Pinned on, sewed (along the gathering lines) and again followed the video to make a waisband.

To top it off, I retrimmed a tiny hat my mother bought for carnival years ago, pretty sure it's from H&M. Of course, I forgot to take a "before" photo, but here's the ugly trim I took off:

Luckily for me, it was mostly sewn and hardly glued on, after I snipped all the threads I could just pull off the glued bits with no residues. Finished result:

And on me:

 That hat kept wanting to fall off my head. I need to fix this if I want to wear it for dancing tomorrow night...
Anyway, I'm off to bed now since I neither want to fall asleep snowboarding nor dancing in steampunk attire. See you all next time :)

Stardress

This dress has been in the making for almost a year now. Well, in my mind at least :)

Last June, I went to a big festival in Nuremberg, and one of the acts I saw there were The Killers. I love their music, and being there in the crowd with all my friends while these amazing songs were played would have been a memorable experience in itself, but for some reason, something else also lodged itself into my memory that night: the singers outfit. More specifically, his shirt, which was dark blue with lots of individually shaped and sized white stars on it (one of my friends later told me that her sister had that exact same shirt from the women's section of H&M. Make of that information what you will... :D).

Also, I have no idea why I associate the song "spaceman" with the idea of the dress, maybe he took off his vest for the song and I saw the shirt for the first time, or maybe I just heard the song for the first time that night and space and stars is an easy association to make. In any case, when I saw that shirt (an maybe heard that song) I wanted to make myself a dark blue dress with white stars on it. I was immediately determined to make a 50s, 60s style summer dress with a fitted bodice and a wide, pleated skirt. At first, I thought I'd make the dress entirely out of blue fabric and then appliqué some white stars on it to get all those different shapes and sizes, but quickly abandoned that idea in favour of printed cotton. As for the pattern, I had wanted to try the basic patterns in a pattern making book of my mother's for ages, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for it. So, as I said, I had this idea back in June, but thinking it through took some time and then there were other projects, and exams and a hundred different things until it was February before I even started on the pattern.





















So I scaled up the pattern, made a mock up (which i didn't take any pictures of) and  gave a squee of delight when it pretty much fit right away. Only problem, it didn't go all the way to my waist, but I figured I'd just lengthen it before cutting out.

Construction was pretty basic - fold, iron and sew the darts, sew the side seams, pin yourself into the bodice every once in a while to figure out if it still fits (which was kinda tricky once I sewed the side seams, I had to ask my brother to help me, he seemed kind of surprised when my request for help wasn't immediately followed up by a description of computer problems).
When I was done with the bodice, I had about 150cm*140cm square of fabric left, plus some scraps, so I decided to go all the way and make the skirt 3m long. In hindsight, thath might have been a bit long... so next time, maybe only 2m, so that there's less swearing in the pleating process ;)
And my dress has pockets! YES! One thing that always annoys me about full skirts is that they rarely have pockets, which is just thoughtless nowadays where nobody takes five steps without their cellphones. Also, I don't like carrying around tiny purses all the time, so I figured out how to make pockets and hide them in the side pleats:





















I cut four pocket-sized rectangles from the leftover scraps and sewed them onto the edges that would be the side seams of my skirt. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the seam only goes about halfway down the pocket so that the bottom would be lower than the edge of the opening, if that description makes any sense. I also late clipped the part below the seam to reduce the bulk where the panels would be sewn together.
Then I pinned the skirt to the bodice, making sure that the sideseams of bodice and skirt met, and that's when I got the suspicion that I might have overdone it with the skirtwidth. I mean, three metres is what I usually use for historic skirts...
But double box pleats did the trick :)

After that I only had to finish the neck and arm opening, which I did with bias tape made from scraps left over from the quilt. It was quite a small scrap. But I made it work :)

I fixed the tape to the wrong side with a little hand sewing because I didn't want any topstitching to show. I'm absolutely happy with the dress and don't really want to take it off now... Well, summer's bound to come sooner or later :D

HSF #2: Innovation

Guess I'm back to procrastinating. Huh, who would have thought. On the other hand, I did say I'd sew when I felt confident in passing, so let's say I rewarded myself with a little bit of sewing last weekend. A couple of years ago, when I first started reading up on victorian clothing, I learned that in order to get such prettily bell-shaped skirts, women wore crinolines underneath. Obviously, I had to have one. Since I've always been a bit on the thrifty side, and round cage-crinolines seemed a pretty straight-forward concept, I didn't bother with a pattern. Instead I drew and calculated, and because that was several years ago, I don't have the sketch anymore. Still, I did kind of the same thing The Laced Angel did here, only I spaced all four hoops evenly, because I'm neat like that (and didn't know any better). The math I did went something along the lines of "well, I want to be able to walk through a normal doorway without squeezing, so the bottom hoop can't have more than 80cm diametre, so the circumference would be...(looking up formula in the internet)... 2,5m." and went on from there. I think I only used four hoops because of the price of the hoop-steel, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I ordered hoop-steel online, marked it in neat 10cm sections, marked where I needed to cut only to realize I didn't have any tools to cut it. My brother eventually helped me out with a Dremel. (To my embarrassment I have to admit he meant to show me how to and then let me do it myself, but I was way too afraid to slip and cut off my thumb to do it properly, so he had to do most of the work...)
I cut (tore?) an old bedsheet to strips, folded and pinned and sewed and so on, with the final result looking like this:

Because I didn't know any better, it ended up being way too long, so when I put it on and tried to walk around, I always stepped on the lowest hoop. Also the closure was impractical, and I didn't really like the form - not bell shaped enough. The picture above is what it looked like even after I shortened the uppermost strips by 10cm, so you can imagine how unsatisfied I was with it. So I packed it away and there it was, waiting, biding its time.
I had sometimes thought about taking a rectangle tube of fabric, sewing on channels and thus making a more stable hoopskirt (and eliminating the danger of stepping through the bottom "window"), but until I read the blogpost linked above, I hadn't thought about it seriously. And even after that, the thought of making four 2,5m channels (folding and ironing!) and marking, placing and sewing them onto 2,5m of fabric 4 times (8 if you count having to fix both sides of the channel) always put me off. But then, as you might know, I got the Green Checkered Nightmare. My brother had ordered a bright green checkered cotton to sew curtains for our van out of, and sew I did. (folding and ironing, folding and ironing, occasionally I even pinned!) Not being accustomed to calculating with lengths, widths and whatever of either fabrics or cars, he ordered way too much and generously gave the leftovers to me (which also encourages thoughtful measuring and counting ;) ).
But bright green checks isn't my colour - at all. So what to do with all that free fabric? Why, tear off strips until you have 10m and use the checks as easy guidance for where to place them! Here we go:

I took a rectangle of 2,5x1m as a skirt base and put a channel every 25cm. I didn't bother with pinning of ironing, was a lot more relaxing that way ;)

So I sewed down the channel once, folded over, sewed it down once again, rinse, repeat.

I took the opportunity to use up all those leftover bobbins wound with colours I don't even have the spools of anymore.
















After that I gathered the top and put it into a waistband (couldn't really do that without pinning, though)

Then I only had to feed the steel through...

...and done!

I put together a little comparison:

Much better!

Just the facts:
The Challenge: Innovation

The Innovation: Hoopskirt/Crinoline. As far as I know, hoops were worn by women of all classes, so this very small hoop could even be a working girl's skirt.

Fabric: bright green checkered Cotton

Pattern: Math and this 

Year: between 1856 and 1860

Notions: couple of metres of hoop steel 

How historically accurate is it? I have no idea if there were actual hooped SKIRTS, if there were, cage-crinolines were a lot more common. In any case, I like the silhuette and as that's the important thing about underwear, I'll give it a 50%

Hours to complete: ehm.. 3? 4? 5? something like that

First worn: not yet (as I have absolutely nothing to wear it with

Total cost: Once again, all from stash! yay

Confession time

I'm really terrible at time management. (Just in case you hadn't noticed that so far ;) ) And since I'm writing some exams I really need to pass this February and March, I've put my sewing on hold until I've studied enough to feel secure of passing those exams. While I'm sure that, with proper time management, one could still pursue their hobby with a clean conscience, I am (as stated) terrible at that, so I don't think there'll be any sewing to write about until March. That also means I'll be behind on a couple of hsf challenges, although I had some really cool ideas for some of them. I'll probably make and post about these ideas anyways, and just won't enter them into the challenge ;)
To make sure you don't get bored while I'm on break, I'm planning a couple of informative posts, one about carnival ("Fasnet"), which is in full swing right now, and one about the bodice I have planned for my celebrations skirt. Stay tuned!

HSF #26: Celebrate!

I'm going to a New Years Eve party tomorrow, and didn't have anything to wear. Wait, that's not right. I could have worn my prom/graduation dress (all in one ceremony here in Germany), but that's about knee length and a friend of mine wanted to wear her floor-length prom-dress without feeling overdressed. I had some lovely drapey/flowing black fabric given to my by my brother, who had used it to darken his home-theatre but took it down some time ago. I soon thought about making it into a ~1900 Skirt like The Dreamstress or Fashion through History, but didn't think I'd get it done before New Years, as I'm going snowboarding tomorrow and won't really have time to sew anything. But today at about 5pm I couldn't stop myself and started looking for patterns. From the diagram in Fashion through History's post I could tell that it didn't look too complicated, and amazingly googling "1900 skirt pattern" led me to this site. I looked at several of the patterns, my limited timeframe and my tons of free fabric and decided to make the 3 part skirt:

After measuring myself, I made it a little bit longer in the front by lengthening the center front line from 103 to 110 cm. To get even more flare in the back, I enlarged the rectangle from 118x112cm to 130x120cm. And confession time: While I drafted the front piece on a piece of paper and cut it out, I was too lazy to do so (and didn't have a large enough piece of paper without gluing stuff together) for the back piece and just drafted it right ontot the folded fabric. It worked like a charm (and lot quicker than the alternative, too!). 

Due to my rush, I didn't stop to take in progress pictures, but I think the construction is pretty straight forward. I did have to fiddle a bit to get the waist to fit, but those were minor changes. I finished the waist with a facing and did the hem with a rolled hem foot on my sewing machine - thank god for rolled hem foots! (feet...?) I sewed on two snap closures by hand and bam - finished skirt (as long as nobody looks too closely at the inside ;) ). 

I did a quick fotoshoot, but since the party is tomorrow, I'll probably get some better pictures by then. For now, you get this:

I just love how much fabric is in the train, I can easily pull it up and pin/tuck it to my waist for when we're going outside to shoot fireworks at midnight :)
And since this is literally an item made for a celebration, I guess it fit's the HSF challenge number 26: Celebrate!

The Challenge: Celebrate! (a ~1900 three part skirt for New Years Eve)

Fabric: Some synthetic my brother used for darkening purposes in his home cinema. After he took it down, he gave it to me, but he couldn't tell me what it was, just that it had been cheap

Pattern: http://www.marquise.de/en/1900/schnitte/s1900.shtml -> scroll down to the 3 part skirt

Year: it says 1908 somewhere on the website, but I didn't have time to find out if that year applied to my pattern as well. Somewhere around that time in any case

Notions: thread, two snaps -> stash

How historically accurate is it? Not at all. It's historically inspired, but sewn with techniques I'm pretty sure they didn't have in 1900 (rolled hem with a zig-zag-stitch, I think not :D) and the fabric is wrong.

Hours to complete: Two or three, including drafting the pattern. Wow, that went quick!

First worn: Today for some pictures, tomorrow for the party!

Total cost: It's all from stash, so FREE!

I will probably use this for a more historical costume some time, but for now I only have my modern clothes to combine with it. But even though the design of the skirt and the rest is more than a hundred years apart, I think they go pretty well together! 

(Because you made it so far ;) )

HSF Challenge 25: One Metre

Argh, where did the time go? That's what happens when you always start two new projects while still working on the first... Anyways, while technically a day late, I finished my shift pretty close to on time despite my sewing ADD. Look here:

This is me without a dress form or a self-timer.

I didn't use a pattern but rather just cut out a couple of large rectangles for the body, smaller rectangles for the sleeves, two squares for the underarm gussets (I made them 15 * 15cm, that worked pretty well) and two triangles for the hip gores/godets/gussets - you know what I mean.
In my last post (about the shift) I showed you the sleeves and my beautifull flatfelled seams - turns out, if you flatfell your sleeves and forget to double-check which side is right and which is left, you end up putting in a sleeve inside out. Not sure if I'm gonna fix that, though, because as I said, you can hardly tell it's the wrong side, plus it would be a lot of work for a piece of underwear that's not even supposed to be seen. So the armholes are the only seams that aren't finished while everything else is flatfelled. I did the shoulder seams last (for no particular reason), so here's the only other time I stopped to take a picture:

Calculating, drawing and cutting the neckline. I bound it with bias-tape which doubles as a casing for the drawstring, which is some Dollarstore Polyester-ribbon I had lying around. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with my first entirely handsewn (!) garment:

Just the facts:
The Challenge: One Metre
Fabric: 1m of white cotton
Pattern: squares, rectangles and triangles
Year: 1800 +/- 10 years
Notions: white bias tape and white poly-ribbon from stash, white cotton thread also from stash
How historically accurate is it? Completely handsewn, but wrong fabric for the era (I think linen would be accurate) and the poly-ribbon... so let's say 50%. Then again, it's underwear, so as long as my hypothetical time-travelling self doesn't get undressed in public, I should be fine.
Hours to complete: at least 3 movies and 8-10 Futurama episodes, so that makes... about eight hours over two weeks
First worn: half an hour ago for the bad cell phone pictures
Total cost: I think it was about 5€ for the fabric, everything else was from stash.

Thinking things through

...is not my forte, appearantly. Alternate title: Hey look, my quilt's got a little window!!

I did not see this coming. Probably because I had that part covered in my construction sketch. So I did just that, cut and ironed the green square and sewed it on top. Phew, there you go:

Before that, I had actually assembled all the patchwork pieces, but since that was just a case of pinning right sides together and sewing straight lines, I didn't take any pictures.
Simultaneously with the green square I cut two green circles - cut a green square, fold and iron it in half, fold and iron that in half and draw on a quarter circle with the center where all the folds meet. While I folded under the edges of the square twice, I tried two different things with the circles: for the smaller one, I folded under the edges twice, which was really a pain to iron/pin and looked all wonky while not attached yet. So for the bigger circle, I just ironed the edges under once, then pinned and sewed both circles to the base to see if they looked different, and if yes, which one looked better. I couldn't tell any differences, can you?

If you are confused now, congratulations on your exceptional visual memory! For everyone else, here's the design sketch for comparison:

Yeah. I rushed the sewing (and pinning etc) for the last circle, as my mother wanted me to clear the table off my sewing things and set it for dinner, so I somehow placed it into the completely wrong corner. Ugh. Thinking things through really doesn't seem to be my forte today. And while I'm not a perfectionist, I really liked my original design, so I put in a good movie, took out my seam-ripper and took the damn thing off. Pinned it in its correct place, took out a needle and some green thread and handsewed it back on (really too much effort to take out and set up the sewing machine again for one small circle...).
Oh, and speaking of realizing stupid, but fixable mistakes: When sewing on the border strips (labeled A & B in my sketch) I realized they were each missing 30cm. I have no idea where they went or rather what I was thinking when I cut (well, ripped) them out, but as most of these borders will be folded over to the backside, I don't sweat it. Because, really: I am done with the top part! Which means no more sewing machine for this project, which in turn means I can take it to my appartment (along with the tablecloth that will serve as backing) where the batting has been lying idly these two months, I think, and begin with the quilting. Yay! :)