The Tailor of Gloucester and the Ten Minute Bum Roll!
Fast work in the week that had us almost running screaming for the hills!
After (quite literally!) cooking up the costumes last weekend, and my Flash Gordon speed coat adventure, it seemed like the week was going to be calm and peaceful... ravenrigan 's car was in the dock after almost shedding the driver's seat, so we were going to be stuck in the house all wekk with nowt to do but get on with STUFF... Naturally, it wasn't quite like that.
Monday evening I cut the Harlequin and Columbine stuff out. The purple behaved reasonably well for cheap poly that had been boiled for over an hour, but the green was a nighmare! Proof positive that different coloured fabrics behave differently! I managed the purple OK on my own, but had to enlist the help of Himself as fabric weight, fabric mover, wielder of cat food cans and general ear-to-swear-in!
It ironed OK, but the purple dyed the ironing board!
There was some feline supervision...
I did have to go back and cut a small bit I forgot later, and some Vilene interfacing. Not worth using the good stuff on this! .
ravenrigan arrived on Tuesday morning with pengshui_master , and I tried the gray coat on him. He was chuffed with it, but in a hurry. No probs: work and all that!
She also had with her many bits cut out for making covered buttons!
Not only did she cut out and fuse the lace motifs for the blue coat, and then cut all the circles for the buttons, but she also cut lots of cream circles, each with a gold motif from the fabric neatly centered! Kewl! And painstaking! She had tried sewing the lace motifs down, but it was taking far too long...
Before we could really get started, we needed to do some serious tidying up and putting away! The place was a heap! Looked like an explosion in a costume hire shop... So we tidied, we swept, we hoovered, and we tidied... And when it was done, we had lunch!
The rail sank and sagged under the weight of one shirt too many, so we had to swap that out for the larger one from my room...
The waist coats needed to be completed... Err... Put together! We did that in tandem.
We were working too fast for many pix, but I did take some of my pocket assembly.
Tailor of Gloucester stitchery!
ravenrigan needed to cut her anglaise, so we did that (with some sneaky work in cutting the lining sideways to get it out of less fabric!), and the delicate muslin was mounted on the washed sateen, which still drapes beautifully, but has given the muslin some strength and body that it lacked after the washing mishap...
While there was a quick pic of me fettling the bodice pattern, we were in a bit of a hurry and forgot to take any of it being cut! However, there were a few pix of bits of it going together...
The bodice was flatlined to keep it tidy.
Shirt fettling went on in odd moments while waiting for me to be ready for fittings...
Once the anglaise bodice was together, it looked a lot better than the heap of fabric had ;looked, and it was time to bling it up with the rather fine (for that read 'very splendid') silk hand embroidered stomacher. And then we tried the lace on it, and it on the ravenrigan!
A quick trian with some pins showed that a flounce wa more flattering than a cuff in the lace...
Of course, while she was in the corset anyway, there had to be a prance about in Mme De P's Big Frock, just to be sure the hem really WAS pinned in the right place...
And then it all came off again!
At this point we realized that we had failed to tackle the false rump or bum roll, and that it would be needed for determining the fit and length of the skirts and petticoat! So we fished out the bum roll attachment to ravenrigan's pocket hoops and traced off a pattern. This was whizzed together in moments on the serger and stuffed with the 'spare tits' stuffing... Yup! A bum roll in about ten minutes flat!
And, naturally, one of both of us in Fat Bottoms! ;D
I addition to this lot, there was also a shirt or two completed and a chemise put together!
Friday was dedicated to the works of the Domestic Goddess. Both of us did masses of domestic goddessing, with tidying, cleaning, polishing, shoppings for food and stuff, and loads of cooking. We managed to make a gallon of Scotch Broth, a vat of roasted red pepper and tomato soup, curried parsnit soup, and a cheese and bacon soup, a chicken tagine, a veggie tagine, a beef bourgignon, and a veggie bourguignon for the final frocking weekend!
And then we rested on out laurels - NOT!
After (quite literally!) cooking up the costumes last weekend, and my Flash Gordon speed coat adventure, it seemed like the week was going to be calm and peaceful... ravenrigan 's car was in the dock after almost shedding the driver's seat, so we were going to be stuck in the house all wekk with nowt to do but get on with STUFF... Naturally, it wasn't quite like that.
Monday evening I cut the Harlequin and Columbine stuff out. The purple behaved reasonably well for cheap poly that had been boiled for over an hour, but the green was a nighmare! Proof positive that different coloured fabrics behave differently! I managed the purple OK on my own, but had to enlist the help of Himself as fabric weight, fabric mover, wielder of cat food cans and general ear-to-swear-in!
It ironed OK, but the purple dyed the ironing board!
There was some feline supervision...
I did have to go back and cut a small bit I forgot later, and some Vilene interfacing. Not worth using the good stuff on this! .
ravenrigan arrived on Tuesday morning with pengshui_master , and I tried the gray coat on him. He was chuffed with it, but in a hurry. No probs: work and all that!
She also had with her many bits cut out for making covered buttons!
Not only did she cut out and fuse the lace motifs for the blue coat, and then cut all the circles for the buttons, but she also cut lots of cream circles, each with a gold motif from the fabric neatly centered! Kewl! And painstaking! She had tried sewing the lace motifs down, but it was taking far too long...
Before we could really get started, we needed to do some serious tidying up and putting away! The place was a heap! Looked like an explosion in a costume hire shop... So we tidied, we swept, we hoovered, and we tidied... And when it was done, we had lunch!
The rail sank and sagged under the weight of one shirt too many, so we had to swap that out for the larger one from my room...
The waist coats needed to be completed... Err... Put together! We did that in tandem.
We were working too fast for many pix, but I did take some of my pocket assembly.
Tailor of Gloucester stitchery!
ravenrigan needed to cut her anglaise, so we did that (with some sneaky work in cutting the lining sideways to get it out of less fabric!), and the delicate muslin was mounted on the washed sateen, which still drapes beautifully, but has given the muslin some strength and body that it lacked after the washing mishap...
While there was a quick pic of me fettling the bodice pattern, we were in a bit of a hurry and forgot to take any of it being cut! However, there were a few pix of bits of it going together...
The bodice was flatlined to keep it tidy.
Shirt fettling went on in odd moments while waiting for me to be ready for fittings...
Once the anglaise bodice was together, it looked a lot better than the heap of fabric had ;looked, and it was time to bling it up with the rather fine (for that read 'very splendid') silk hand embroidered stomacher. And then we tried the lace on it, and it on the ravenrigan!
A quick trian with some pins showed that a flounce wa more flattering than a cuff in the lace...
Of course, while she was in the corset anyway, there had to be a prance about in Mme De P's Big Frock, just to be sure the hem really WAS pinned in the right place...
And then it all came off again!
At this point we realized that we had failed to tackle the false rump or bum roll, and that it would be needed for determining the fit and length of the skirts and petticoat! So we fished out the bum roll attachment to ravenrigan's pocket hoops and traced off a pattern. This was whizzed together in moments on the serger and stuffed with the 'spare tits' stuffing... Yup! A bum roll in about ten minutes flat!
And, naturally, one of both of us in Fat Bottoms! ;D
I addition to this lot, there was also a shirt or two completed and a chemise put together!
Friday was dedicated to the works of the Domestic Goddess. Both of us did masses of domestic goddessing, with tidying, cleaning, polishing, shoppings for food and stuff, and loads of cooking. We managed to make a gallon of Scotch Broth, a vat of roasted red pepper and tomato soup, curried parsnit soup, and a cheese and bacon soup, a chicken tagine, a veggie tagine, a beef bourgignon, and a veggie bourguignon for the final frocking weekend!
And then we rested on out laurels - NOT!