Autumn Sewing

Hello everyone!

I have been really busy sewing and embroidering all autumn. Now that it´s 1st of December, I thought I will show you what I have been up to this autumn. :) And then I should probably start working on some Christmas items I have been planning to do...

First project is 1890´s Walking Dress:

Here are the materials I used for my 1890´s Walking Dress: dark purple lace, mauve taffeta, dark purple cotton velvet, beige/purple plaid, beige satin, mauve floral jacquard, dark purple lining fabric and mustard cotton which I used for lining the bodice. Dottie approved all of them. :)

Front and side view of finished dress. I haven´t yet made 1890´s petticoat so please excuse the silhouette of the skirt. The petticoat will give it it´s flare at the bottom. It is on my "To do" -list. ;)

The sleeves are Mutton Leg Sleeves and I used Laughing Moon´s pattern (LM103) for them. I adjusted the cuffs and made them pointy in the back. The bodice pattern I´ve drafted myself. Front opening closes with hooks and eyelets. Buttons are for decoration only.

I made a reticule form cotton velvet with metal clasp. The floral motif is embroidered by machine.

Back view of the dress with machine-embroidered sash made from beige satin. I took an inspiration for the sash from the book Victorian Fashions by Carol Belanger Crafton.

Detail of the sash. The black border is hand crochet by me using cotton crochet yarn. I also made the tassels using the same yarn in orange and black. I love the colors, very autumn, very Halloween! 

Hem of the skirt.

Since this is an autumn outfit it needs an outer-garment- a cape! Which were ever so popular during this period. The pattern is from Truly Victorian (1890s Cape). Standing collar is wired with heavy-weight millinery wire. Dark purple lace fabric is applied over the plaid fabric to give it interesting detail and to make it more cohesive with the dress.

Front and detail view of the cape. I still have to make a hat to go with this piece. 

Side and back view of the cape worn with the dress underneath.

This purchased velvet bag I had for ages and it was stored away and unused. I remembered it and dug it up. I embroidered the motifs on a machine, added lace trim and gold tassels and it´s back in the game! 

I made this Halloween table-runner from quilt-weight cotton fabrics. I love it! Two machine-embroidered designs on big squares and smaller squares.

Detail of first embroidery- Skeleton Unicorn from Urban Threads. I framed the design with some decorative stitches.

Detail of second embroidery- Pumpkin and Squash from Embroidery Library. Both designs were free in October. And they got me completely crazy about machine embroidery. I had an embroidery machine for two and half years and only used it a couple of times to embroider reticules. For those I used designs that came with the machine. But now that I discovered what gorgeous designs are out there, I will definitely embroider on it more!

Other view of the table runner.

I had to get these silly lanterns! Maybe you can tell I love Halloween. ;)

And some more machine embroidery. Our cushions were rather faded and after seeing these designs I had to embroider them. These are from Embroidery Library and they took ages to make. I have set my machine almost at a slowest embroidery speed to not to put excess stress on it. This way I hope it will serve me longer. Each of these designs took about 4 hours to embroider and that´s only embroidering time, when you add thread changes ( about 38-48 thread changes per design), each design took me whole day to make. But they were well worth it.

Geisha appreciating new cushion.

 Witch´s Hat and Too Cute to Spook designs in detail.

Witch´s Boot design in close view.

And I was so excited about Halloween I made this hexagon bag from the same fabrics I used for the table runner. Whole bag is hand-stitched. There were still some fabrics left so I started to work on hexagon quilt, but that will be finished later...

Back view of the bag.

Bedroom needed new cushions as well. These are from Urban Threads. 

His Skeleton Cameo- Baroque style embroidery design. Both cushions are 40 x 40 cm.

And Hers Skeleton Cameo design. These two almost took entire spool of obsidian embroidery thread (500 meters)!

Thank you for reading and see you soon! :)

Happy New Year Folks!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had lovely holiday and that new year will bring you lots of joy, filled with sewing of course ;) I haven't been posting for a while. Last summer we have been looking for a house since our flat became too small for our hobbies. After seeing about 30 houses we've finally found the perfect one for us. And so we've moved in September.  And I have finally got my own sewing room! Love. love. looove it! Little sewing I got around to, has mainly been mending and sewing curtains and tablecloths (oh yes, my favorite! Not really ;) But now that most of it is done, I can finally start some projects I truly enjoy <3

I got some new sewing gadgets for Christmas I´d like to show you. 

• Adjustable dress form and polka-dot cover. Thank you daddy! <3 This was really needed since my other dress form has fixed measurements, all too small and most annoying- short back. I noticed it was pretty difficult to work with it while making Victorian boned costumes. 
• Tailor´s ham and roll for pressing curves. These are really great helpers. I've been looking for them for a long time and when I saw them on the internet I ordered them right away. Great for ironing curves on corsets by the way!
• Bee´s wax for easy threading.
• Multi-pack of 4 mm eyelets for corsets.
• Prym Vario pliers for setting eyelets and washers for corsets etc. These pliers are really good, I can recommend them. First I was suspicious about them and got eyelet machine but eyelets that came with it were poor quality and the machine was breaking them. Prym eyelets didn´t fit the machine so I had to look for an alternative.
• Prym Tripod Tool for setting eyelets and washers. I got this one as well in case the pliers wouldn´t work but they did so I haven´t tested this one yet.

And a sneaky book webstore sent me a VIP customer voucher. Of course I could not resist and I ordered some books then. 

• Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from " La Mode Illustree". Great book full of fashion plates in black and white from 1860 to 1914. It has no patterns, only fashion plates. 
• Lucile Ltd. Beautiful book in hardcover (you don´t see that often these days) full of Lucile´s fashion sketches from 1890s to 1930s. It has mainly Edwardian sketches though. I must say her sketches resemble mine a lot. They are like paintings, realistically colored with porcelain faces, none of the modern non-sense. I´m only mentioning this because in time I got forced by teachers in art school to modernize my sketches. Which I didn´t of course, we all have our aesthetics, right? ;)
• 19th-Century Fashion in Detail. Quite thick book full of inspiration for designing your own Victorian clothes. Book is divided into sections: embroidery, trims etc.
• A-Z of Whitework. Great How-to book of whitework embroidery. It has step-by-step instructions with photographs for all whitework stitches. Search Press has published about 20 A-Z books of embroidery, sewing, knitting, crochet. I think I will be collecting them.
• Costume Close-Up. Georgian patterns from 1750-1790. Patterns can be scaled although I prefer to draft them myself, I find it quicker. Book has detailed B&W photographs of each project and a few in color at the end of the book.

Let me introduce the newest member of our family, a seal point Siamese Dottie! Here she is with Lupi helping mommy to pick fabrics for next quilting project.

Here is the first block of "I love sewing" wall-hanging I will be making this ear. The plan is to make one block each month and get it done by December! We´ll see... This block was made in December.

Dottie insisted I take a picture of her as well :)

And here´s another quilt I started. Flower Spool Quilt by Lynette Anderson. I was thinking I´ll make this as double-bed cover. This one will take LOTS of time since all the pieces are tiny! I have almost finished all the patchwork squares and started making yo-yos. Look at the size of the finished yo-yo, it´s about 1 cm!!! I don´t like this :( And I can´t change it anymore because I have pre-cut all the yo-yos required. And the hexagons are going to be super-tiny as well...

That´s all for today, see you soon! <3

Patchwork & Quilting Projects

 Hello again!

I didn´t get to write any post last two months although I sewed and knitted and crocheted most of the time. I´ll try to update the projects gradually. :)

 

Glove bag I made from 1850s Victorian dress fabric remnant and machine embroidery panel. Purple bias binding and white lace trim are also remnants from other projects.

Machine embroidered flower and birds. I used Metler PolySheen and viscose machine embroidery threads (Coats Doli & Anchor Alcazar).

Lace Bobbin Bag #1. 

Lace Bobbin Bag #2 with some antique english style bobbins from England. I replaced all the beads as the wire was all rusty.

Lace Bobbin Bags closed with satin ribbon.

Embroidery Sampler. Embroidery samplers were hugely popular in 19th century and I figured why not assemble my own from my samplers from school. All samplers were embroidered by hand by me in 2000, my first year in the Art School. Then they were stored in passepartout in a folder and forgotten for 16 years... Until I took them out and made this wall hanging out of them.

Detail of sampler I. and II. Decorative stitching around samplers is done on a machine.

Detail of sampler III., IV. and V.

Detail of sampler VI. and VII.

Detail of sampler VIII. and IX.

Machine Dust Covers

Some of my machines were still missing a proper dust cover. Since I don´t approve of the plastic covers, I made them something nicer. :)

For the Janome CoverPro CPX 1000 aka Cornelia, I made quilted stripey cover in green and white shades:

For stripes I used 100% cotton fabrics for quilting.

I used two home dec fabrics and a lace fabric on top for one side...

... and one home dec fabric, duchess satin and lace fabric on top for the other one. Satin ribbons are topstitched.

Details of decorative topstitching sewn on Henrietta. I used topstitch and embroidery threads.

For Singer 221K Featherweight aka Fiona, I made cover and some accessories. Foot control is stored in its own draw-string bag. Flip-table has its own cover since it hits the screw on the face-plate while turned up and that can scratch the table.

Cover turned upside down turns into a storage bag that fits into Fiona´s case. No scratches on my machine while pulling it out of the case. ;)

Dust cover/ storage bag with hand quilted hexagons. 

Union Jack cushion I designed last year got finally finished too! Blue triangles are replaced with little brown hexagons fitted into the triangles. Diagonal red stripes are topstitched with decorative stitches.