(Cross posted from my main blog: http://www.kimiko1.com/blog/?p=286)I did find one more silk fabric that I had enough to use, but it is such a raspberry color that I'll pass for this project. Bess has also been willing to look this weekend for some special fabrics in the UK that may work, as she's close to a special fabric store/mill place ( Read more... )

(Cross posted from my main blog: http://www.kimiko1.com/blog/?p=264)

For those of you just reading along, you may want to read my last post, where I explain what direction I'm going towards, and what options are in front of me, and yeah, that laurel thing. :-P ( Read more... )

Today is another book review. I decided to cover a book on silk fabrics, since this kind of fabric comes with all sorts of questions that are often repeated in the various mailing lists and FB groups I am in. In fact, when I first got involved with silk, I had lots of questions of my own, and this book really helped to make heads or tails on silk ( Read more... )

I bought some wool from the sale at Fabric.com last week, and it finally arrived on Friday. I didn't open the box until today. I could have gone crazy with the wool stash with all the colors they had, with prices at $4.99/yd, but I kept it sane and only ordered what I needed for one project, along with vinyl for another project. The crimson was ( Read more... )

Earlier this week, we had to pay the car repair bill, and ouch, that really hurt. But we needed the car fixed especially if I plan to go anywhere outside of walking distance. Thankfully, our IRS refund, which had been delayed, also came in, so we aren't hurting, but we are also not flush with cash either. My original plans sorta hinged on having ( Read more... )

Back to costume work. I finally got off my rear and got the red damask fabric into the wash, which sounds like it is ready for the dryer. I didn't test sample the fabric as I should have, so I hope it wasn't badly damaged. It's all cotton, it should be fine, and hopefully a bit tighter in the weave now. I'll test wash the wool a bit later. ( pics and thoughts beyond... )

Day 1 starts with a whimper. Mainly because I've been cleaning several loads of laundry, as the cat marked my daughter's blankets and those take time to get through all those blankets, along with the regular loads that were washed, dried, folded & put away ( Read more... )

Yesterday I wanted to do some fabric shopping, but for various reasons, I ended up with too little time to drive to the fabric stores and have enough time to actually do more than pick up a couple of items. I wanted time to just shop a bit, wander through and enjoy the fabric experience - something I've not done in a very long time ( Read more... )

Ok, I thought I had pooched it hard when I machine washed the new linen collar canvas fabric. It came out a soggy mass, and even tho I had serged the cut edges, I didn't look to see that the piece only had one selvedge edge, so the other side became tangled with the ends of the serger threads. Thankfully, that was only one minor issue and only 1 or ( Read more... )

Now I need to start work on the fitted petticoat bodies and skirt. It will be made of red silk dupioni, bought for cheap on eBay (because I had no red silk, and wool would have been too warm for October in a hall ( Read more... )