Sewing

I finished my aquamarine corset!
Aquamarine Corset
The fashion fabric layer is aquamarine dupioni from Silk Baron interfaced with fusible tricot. Strength layer is one layer of black English coutil from King and Company, and it's lined with purple couture linen from FabricMart. I used the King and Company Celine underbust pattern. It's supported by 24 quarter-inch spiral steels, 4 regular 1/4" flat steels (sandwiching the grommet panels) and two of those extra-thick flat steels that corsetmaking.com sells as 1/4" but are actually 3/8". I put the extra-thick ones in the side-back seams to improve the back support. I boned all of the seams as usual, and used black tubular bone casings between seams for the additional bones.
Aquamarine Corset Front Embellishment Close-Up.
I embellished it with two different types of lace; a fuchsia stretch lace and a black lace netting "shadowing" the front lace embellishment. The fuchsia lace was a bad choice, it wanted to pull and snag and unravel at every chance. I ended up applying small bits of fusible web and liquid thread with the a flat hotfix tip to stabilize the lace. Next time I'm definitely going to be much more careful about selecting the lace. I like the visual effect of this lace, it was just really not well suited to being cut out and sewn to a corset.

I used black silk threads for the flossing, which was also unnecessarily difficult. I liked the look better than using topstitching thread, but I didn't have any black dupioni so I used threads from another black silk that wasn't as thick and required more threads. Next time I'll either make sure I have the right colors to use dupioni weft or I'll get some silk embroidery thread.

I accented the lace embellishment with hotfix swarvoski crystals. I used a few ss10 AB crystals on the protruding parts of the pink lace, but the majority of the of the crystals I used were the teeny tiny ss6 crystals. I used jet ones on the black shadowing lace lace and a few different colors from a "passion" pack (which contains shades of pink, red, and purple) scattered around the fuchsia lace.
Aquamarine Neck "Corset"

I had just enough of the aquamarine dupioni left to make a neck "corset"/posture collar thingy to match. It's kinda cute, but next time I make one of those things, it must have a zipper! I'm not entirely sure how I'll fit a zipper in because the back felt thick and awkward to work with as it was, but it's a pain to get on and off and it really needs a zipper in addition to the lacing.
Aquamarine Corset Finished

Despite my zillion complaints about my choices on this one, I'm actually very happy with the results. This is only the second corset I've made with coutil, and the last coutil corset (the tea-dyed one) didn't have a separate fashion fabric layer, so I learned a lot with this corset.

Yea, I know I've been horrible about blogging lately.
So finally I'm getting around to posting about the capelet I made for Val for the PR chat gift exchange. I forgot to take pictures before mailing it, so the picture is Val's.

In the questionaire for the gift exchange, Val said she has fitting issues so she didn't think clothing was do-able. So I figured that she wouldn't be expecting clothing, and the Simplicity 3921 capelet doesn't require much fitting.
I used a turquoise wool gabardine and a light purple dupioni for the lining. Originally I was planning on using these two purple appliques I had from a mystery box as a front embellishment.. but then I realized that they were identical, not mirror images of each other, so there went that idea. So I dug through my trims box some more and pulled out the ruffly white lace, which was excuse to use the jar of purple dye-na-flow that had been sitting on my desk since some sale a year or two ago. So I got experimental and dyed the lace purple. First I tried painting it on, but then I realized that for bright color it needs salt, so I ended up mixing it with some water and salt in a plastic container and letting it soak. I still have to figure out what else to dye purple, assuming that the dye-water-and-salt mixture is still good. It's sitting on my kitchen counter.

The instructions on the dye say to iron it to set the color. Obviously this wasn't particularly practical with ruffly lace. Happily, a hair dryer works too! I soaked, hair-dryed, repeated a bit to get the color where I wanted it. Then hand-washed it with some detergent to get off the salt and excess dye. Water ran clear, and lace was still purple. Yay!
Then I hand-sewed that flowery trim (another mystery box item) over the seam where I'd sewn on the purple lace, so that the seam wouldn't be visible.

Val thinks it could be reversible. If I'd thought of that I would have put a button on the other side too! Val had told me awhile ago that she was allergic to wool but that she could wear it so long as it was lined. For some reason it didn't occur to me that as I was making something that she'd wear over other clothes, the wool allergy was irrelevant anyways. And the lace isn't exactly the same color as the lining.
But Val was all happy and so I'm all happy.
And now I've finally blogged it!

Pink Simplicity 4079 Vest Really, I haven't been doing nothing.. I just haven't been posting. Bad me.

So I finished this Simplicity 4079 lined vest. I used that pink cotton basketweave that was on sale for $1/yard from FabricMart awhile ago, and lined it with a pink cotton/linen blend.

It's somewhere between a mockup and an actual project. It certainly has its share of problems, not the last of which being that I sorta didn't realize that there's supposed to be a little slit in the bottom of the sides. I was having trouble visualizing how it went together. How to turn it by pulling it through the shoulders is just really hard to imagine until you do it. And the bulky cotton suiting certainly didn't help with that.

I didn't have anything suitable with which to make Chinese frog closures that would match, so I used shell buttons and ribbon loops in the front. The suiting is also too bulky to work with any appropriate buckles I have, so currently the back tabs are just held together with a safety pin until I figure out what to use.

Velvet and Wool Cloak
So, I've made progress on my cloak! Actually I think all that's left at this point is hemming it. I haven't decided exactly how long it needs to be, though. I'm actually having some thoughts of trying to make it floor length or almost floor length, but with some way to fasten it up at least another several inches to keep it off the ground, especially when it's icky out.

Dfr thought that the wool should be on the outside and I thought that the velvet should be on the outside.. But who says it should have an outside at all? I decided it should be reversible.

I haven't decided if that ribbon closure is permanent or not. A tie closure certainly is the easiest way to close a reversible cloak. I might go with a less conspicuous ribbon, though. Or a Chinese frog closure, maybe on both sides? ...or I'll just keep the ribbon.

Of course, eventually I'll get a penannular brooch, which will make closure on most capes moot.

It wouldn't have worked to make it reversible via the directions, but I wasn't fond of the directions anyways, so I scrapped them. They were just wrong anyways. They wanted the outside to be sewn to the lining at the bottom! And they wanted the lining to be sewn to the outside at the bottom too, before sewing on the hood! Even if I weren't making it reversible I wouldn't have gone for that.

I haven't pressed it at all yet, besides pressing open the seams on the wool part. Pressing velvet is a PITA. I haven't decided just how much pressing actually needs to be done.

Velvet side out vs. wool side out is certainly a very different look.