Steampunk poison doctor coat

Almost a year ago my husband and I made leather steampunk plague doctor masks and then wore them to a local convention called Steampunk Spectacular. I was very happy with how the masks came out, but always felt that we really needed outfits specific to the masks.  I begun an outfit for myself based on the Dia de los Muertos skeletons to match the sugar skull mask, but had not begun an outfit for my husband.  His mask reminds me of those Mr Yuk stickers that used to get stuck on poisonous stuff when I was a kid, so we decided he should be a poison doctor and provide poisons to people.  To emphasize the poison tie, I decided to machine embroider the entire coat with poisons and evil elixir designs.  I purchased the Apothescary and the Pretty Poison design packs from Urban threads and set to work embroidering the base black linen.  The coat design was based off of Rasputin's black robe as the idea of a mad poison doctor also reminds me of Rasputin. To keep with the Mr. Yuk theme, all the embroideries were done in greens and golds.  To give people an idea of how these designs come out, here are images of each design.  Since each design was to be used multiple times, I altered the colors between runs, to give you an example. 'wolfbane' is shown twice, but once with an emphasis on yellow and once with an emphasis on green.  All designs were used at least 3 times on the coat and the designs are 6-7 inches in their widest dimension.

Even with the embroidery machine, the embroideries took about 20 hours to complete, but I really love the detail and dimension they add.  The embroideries were done on the cut out linen (edged with the serger to stabilize the fabric during embroidery) and were done with wash away stabilizer.  Once the embroideries were complete, I washed the coat to remove the stabilizer to keep the coat from being too stuff.  The coat is then lined with lime green cotton and edged with light green bias tape.  Once the embroideries were done, the coat went together fairly quickly and I am overall pretty pleased with how it came out. 

Coat Front

Coat back

Coat side

Historical Sew Monthly May: Holes or in my case fixing them

I know this entry is woefully late, but I did in fact finally finish it!   I am however too late I feel to post on the facebook page, so I am only posting it here!

When the May challenge came up, Holes, I immediately thought of Landsknecht fashion of the late 15th and early 16th century. This time period and fashion style is one of my all time favorites and I immediately wanted to make something completely new.  Then I remembered the dress sitting in the naughty pile.  I dont know if other costumers have a naughty pile, but this is where sewing projects or outfits go that did not go as planned and now require some work I really dont want to do. Examples of this are usually that the sleeves are wonky and I really dont want to redo them.






In the case of this dress, I put the whole dress together out of linen (black) and wool (blue).  The blue wool is woven, so I washed it with hot water and dried it in the dryer on hot.  This shrunk the wool, but also thickened it and strengthened it so it can handle the open cutwork.  The fabric looked good, so I designed the cutwork and carefully cut out the design in the blue wool.  I then hand stitched the white bands (left over linen from a previous project) to the bodice and pieced the white and black bands for the skirt. I then handstitched the blue bands over the white bands. 

Since I have made several of these dresses, the pattern was already worked out, the banding went very quickly.  I decided to see if lacing was a functional option for the the fronts of these gowns, so I stitched eyes (the eye part of hook and eye sets) to the inside of the bodice opening.  The eyes were off set to allow spiral lacing and also went into the dress very quickly.  All in all, this dress took about a week of working in the evenings so I was very chuffed with myself!  I then wore the dress to the Maryland Rennaisance Faire.  When I returned, I noticed I had ripped some of the blue wool and thought "Wow, I must have really caught the skirt on something sharp!"  I repaired the rip and ignored the whole incident. Fast forward about 6 months (and a cross country move) and I wore the dress again to a local SCA event.

This time I felt the skirt catch and rip!  When I got home, I found multiple rips in the blue wool that occurred at a specific place in my design.  I realized that my choice of cutwork design plus the wool being thinner than the wool I usually use meant that there was a systematic weakness in my design.  Really, there should never be too open shapes that close together with the grain straight between them as you can see in the ripped image to the left.  I realized I would either need to replace the lower cutwork band with a totally different fabric (this is totally a correct for the style solution), deal with repairing the rips every time I wore the dress or hand stitching down around the cut outs to stabilize them.  I did not want to do any of these things and I was frustrated with myself for not seeing the design flaw that I threw the whole dress into the naughty pile!


The dress stayed in the naughty pile until this challenge.  You see, I love the color combination and I love the way this dress looks and moves when I am wearing it so I decided that fixing this dress should be my goal for the May challenge.  I decided I loved the color combination and the lower cutwork band so replacing it was not a good option.  I also decided repairing the rips as they happened was not a good option either, so I decided to hand stitch around each cutwork motif by hand.  First I repaired the rips and then each motif took me 40 minutes to stitch. There were 16 motifs, so the total time was about 11 hours of hand sewing.   Here are images of the newly handstitched motifs. There are 2 different motifs that alternate on the lower band.

While this took a really long time, I am so happy to be able to wear this dress again!  I am even thinking of making a special chemise with blackwork or smocking details on the sleeves to showcase the dress!  Here are some detail pictures of the final dress.

The Challenge: Holes!
Material: linen (black and white), woven wool (blue)
Pattern:self drafted from woodcut images
Year:1510-1530
Notions: metal eyes, thread (poly), cotton cording
How historically accurate is it? Maybe 70%, the pattern is accurate and the cutwork is based on woodcuts.  However the dress would have most likely been all wool, the thread would have been linen, the eyelets hand made and the cording silk, linen or wool so there were compromises on the materials.  Also, while sleeveless is document-able, it is rare and I dont have an image with both cutwork and sleeveless on the same dress. Finally, of the outfits for Landsknecht we have color descriptions of, this would be very tame and may not have been the best choice on my part.
Hours to complete: Initial construction was ~20 hours and this current batch was 11 to fix the holes
First worn: In the current incarnation, not yet
Total cost: none, all this was stash

A quick Darth Vader hat and time for tea!

I did run out of time and did not get to finish everything the way I wanted for the Star Wars tea.  I was struggling with the hat.  I had this idea in my head of Darth Vader on my hat enjoying tea, leaning against a decorative tea cup on a red hat with a black veil.  The first issue was I could not find a hat base I liked in red, but I did find a lovely one in black.  This is a vintage hat base from Hats by Leko that I just love.  I then tried to make a tiny lace teacup in red for Darth Vader to lean upon.  This was a complete failure, as was the red veiling, so I simply ended up making a tea cup for Darth Vader and stitching him to my hat.  I managed to not damage either Darth Vader or the hat so both can be reused.  While I wish I would have had more time for my hat, it was still lots of fun to wear the way it was. 

Hat back

Hat side

Hat front

Darth Vader with tea cup

Finally it was time for tea!  My two very talented friends each made really cute skirts.  The black skirt is made from black and gold Star Wars fabric with C3PO ruffle.  This friend also made super cute lego Star Wars lightsaber jewelry and matching fascinator.  My other friend made a BB-8 themed skirt and styled her outfit to match. All in all it was a wonderful evening with friends!

A Star Wars Purse

Since I finished my Star Wars dress, it was time to work on accessories. I think accessories are my favorite part of most outfits!  I really wanted to cover a range of bad guys in my outfit and my favorite Star Wars costume of all time has always been the Imperial Guard, so I decided to make an Imperial Guard themed purse. The main body of the purse would be decorated with an appliqued Red Guard helmet, the pattern I drew is here.






Off I went to the fabric store to get red vinyl and purse bits.  I picked up 1/2 a yard of the new vinyl from the Yaya Han collection at Joann Fabrics (more on this fabric later). I decided on a sew on frame for my purse. Once I got the frame home, I drafted up the rest of the purse to fit the frame.  Since at least one of my friends has asked how to use this style of purse frame, I will discuss it a bit here.  First I traced the frame onto paper, you can see in the photo how the frame fits the top edge of my paper pattern.  I then designed the rest of the purse shape.   I then cut out the fabric adding a seam allowance to each side, including the top edge.  I tend to use a narrow seam allowance but this is not necessary, use whatever you are comfortable with.

Once I had my fabric cut, I cut the helmet shape out of the vinyl and cut out the eye slit.  I then stitched the slit down to a black vinyl from my stash and cut away the excess black vinyl.  Once this was done, I   appliqued the helmet onto the my base black cotton.  I have appliqued vinyl before, but never 4-way stretch vinyl.  I usually do not pin the vinyl since it scars the vinyl and I also don't use a fusible interfacing since it is easy to scorch vinyl.  Usually just holding the vinyl shape in place is fine.  Not with this stuff, the vinyl caught on my presser foot and stretched out of shape!  I had to re-cut the helmet and try again.  This time I pined right on the very edge, basically where the seamline would go and turned my machine speed to the slowest possible stitch.   I then had to release the presser foot every couple of stitches to prevent the vinyl from stretching.  It probably would have been better to just go buy a different vinyl, but this stuff is more than $25 a yard so I did not want to spend anything more on this project!  I then stitched the detail lines by sewing slowly and releasing the drag on the presser foot every few stitches. If you look closely, you can see scars from where I had to resew the details, this vinyl was just horrible to applique with.  It might have helped to use one of the temporary bonding sprays to keep the vinyl in contact with the cotton, but I did not have any so I did not try this trick. 

Next I added some red rhinestones I had laying around and stitched up the purse.  I stitched up both the exterior fabric as well as the lining.  I then added the lining to the exterior and completely finished all seams.  The frame is then hand stitched to the finished purse edge.  I have worked with nicer versions of this frame before and was able to use fine thread.  This frame is a cheap one from Joann fabrics and the holes were a bit jagged, so I used button weight thread and doubled it to give it some strength and resist fraying.

The final thing was adding the purse strap.  I intended to make the strap out of the vinyl, but it stretched too much and did strange things when I tried no matter what I did to control it.  As an alternate, I bought a couple of Star Wars themed ribbons and layered them to make a strap. 

Star Wars Ribbons

 The "Star Wars" ribbon is grossgrain and the Captain Phasma ribbon is satin. I stitched down the Captain Phasma ribbon onto a length of the Star Wars ribbon and then zigzag stitched a second piece of the Star Wars ribbon to the back of the first to make a double sided strap.

Finished strap (back and front)

The only downside to using the ribbon is that I could not find metal strap pieces that were the right size, so I ended up using metal findings that were intended for creating adjustable straps.  These worked fine but are a bit odd for just stitching straps to.  I hand stitched strap holders to the back of the purse using some left over fabric.  I then hand stitched the straps onto the holders.  Here is the finished purse!

May the 4th be with you: a Star Wars Dress

A couple of friends are I are going to a tea celebrating May the 4th be with you.  The tea is actually being held on May the 7th since that is a Saturday but is going to be Star Wars Themed.  The tearoom requested costumes or Star Wars themed outfits.  I don't have a Star Wars costume, but I though a Star Wars themed outfit could be fun. 

I knew I wanted a vintage style dress, but I also knew I was going to have a problem, I had minor abdominal surgery scheduled about 1.5 weeks before the tea.  I was still going to have stitches and probably swelling and tenderness the day of the tea.  So the dress needed to be at least somewhat adjustable.  I settled on this pattern, Butterick's Retro 1952 dress.  I figured if I switched out the snaps and buttons for ties, this dress, since it is a wrap dress should be adjustable! 

Now all I needed was fabric and I was ready to go!  I knew I wanted to go with a bad guy theme and I wanted the dress to be Black and Red.  So I went fabric shopping, and this is where I ran into a problem.  There was basically nothing available in black or red in the Star Wars fabrics!  The closest I could find was a white fabric with black and red print of Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma.  After spending way to long wandering around a fabric store, I decided this print could work if I overlaid it with a black sheer.  I then spent even more time wandering around testing various black fabrics for the overlay.  Since the print is already pretty dark, most of the sheers were too much and obliterated the detail in the print.  I finally found a fine net fabric in the with the tulle that fit the bill. I decided to layer the skirt, and have the net fabric stop shorter than the print to add some dimension. 

I will say this pattern is amazingly easy to put together, the only tricky part is the darts (there are 3 darts per side on the front panel!  I then added ties to allow the dress to wrap and be adjustable.  I used simple grossgrain ribbon for tying the front panel around to the back and sewed fancy ribbons and decorative buttons to close the front.  Overall I am pretty pleased with the dress.  I do plan on wearing a petticoat with it, but the one I ordered has not arrived yet! Here are some pictures of the full dress without the petticoat.  I am really looking forward to wearing this dress on Saturday!  Now to work on the accessories!

An Outfit for a New Pelican: kirtle and ropa

I have been working on a secret project, and I have wanted to share it with you all, but I wanted to wait until the event had taken place before posting anything online.
A friend of mine in the SCA was offered admittance to the Order of the Pelican (this is a Peerage within the Society for service).  She asked if I would be willing to make her a kirtle and ropa for her elevation ceremony.  I was thrilled to be asked! I am so proud of her for all her hard work and all that she has done to help everyone in our local group.  She provided me with almost all the fabric and trim and told me what she wanted.
For the kirtle, she wanted it done in her personal colors: blue, silver and black.  The kirtle is made of white linen, banded with silver/grey brocade and trimmed with blue and black trim and silver trim.

For the Ropa, my friend provided me with a patch of the 'pelican in her piety' she wanted used on the back of the ropa, but she allowed me to embellish it as I liked. I decided that the Pelican should pop out a bit more and that the edge of the patch should blend with the actual dress. To do this, I stitched 5 rows of gold metal thread around the patch and then added pearls and beads for detail.

Once the back piece was complete, I worked on completing the full ropa.  My friend provided a gold brocade table cloth, burgundy velvet, and two types of gold upholstery trim.  I think I used about 20 yards of trim on the Ropa by itself!  A word of caution to the users of upholstery trim, while most is fine, the wide trim with the very nice interlacing on the top is evil (at least this lot was)!  The interlacing is made by covering ocean weight fishing line with thread.  This fishing line bent a part of my Serger and would explode needles anytime I hit the fishing line.  I broke ~10 needles doing this Ropa and resorted to wearing safety glasses when sewing as I was scared I would get a needle fragment to the eye! Anyway, on to pictures!.

 I am happy to say that my friend liked her outfit and I am honored she let me make this for her!

Here are a few pictures from the event, these pictures are not mine, but were shared on the SCA facebook page.  If these are your pictures and you would like them removed, please let me know and I will remove them!  Oh and the chick in the pink and purple dress is me, I got to wear my new apron!

HSM March 2016: Protection

The HSM challenge for this month was protection, either something to protect yourself or your clothes.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to make an apron to wear with my 16th Century Kampfrau outfits.

My inspiration for the apron is the Seamstress by Edward Schoen, dated 1535.  Her apron looks smocked so I decided to smock my apron as well.  Smocking on aprons does not seem to have been very common.  Looking at historical images, there are many plain white aprons, some colored aprons and a bunch that are embroidered, but only a few that are smocked. For historical references I recommend http://www.larsdatter.com/aprons.htm
This is a wonderful source for all kinds of clothing and accessories.

First, I hemmed the 3 edges that would not be smocked.  Then I did the smocking.

I have previously smocked things, but I have never done honeycomb smocking.  A look at my inspiration image suggested this is honeycomb smocking, so I decided to try it.  This is a really easy method of smocking, you basically mark your points (mine is a 1cm grid) and then stitch 2 dots together, alternating by rows to create the pattern.  For example, on the top row, I connected dots 1&2, 3&4 ect.  On the second row I connected dots 2&3 and 4&5 ext.  You stitch 2 rows at a time, so I did row 1 dots 1&2 then dove down to row 2 dots 2&3, then back up to row 1 dots 3&4 and so on.  I did not use a tutorial, but there are many available online if this description is confusing.

EDIT:  I could not remember where I read that 1cm marks made great smocking for garb, but I have now found it.  Many very cool tutorials and information are available on this page Katafalk, and the discussion on smocking is under her Hemd tutorial. 

Here is a close up of the smocking.

Once the smocking was done, I hand stitched the top of the apron to the fabric that would form the tie.  I then folded the tie fabric in half and stitched the tie together, hiding the raw edges as I went.  In the photo below you can see the tie at the top of the smocking.

Finally, here is a picture of the full apron!  I think it will be a great addition to my kit and provide me a nice apron for keeping my dresses clean.

The Challenge:Protection
Material:Linen
Pattern: None, this is really just 2 scraps of linen.  The body of the apron is a rectangle twice as wide as I wanted the final apron to be and as long as was available.  The smocking decreases the width by about half.  The ties are a long strip of linen folded in half with the edges tucked while sewing.
Year: 1535
Notions: yellow silk thread for smocking and white poly-cotton thread for the rest of the sewing.
How historically accurate is it? 80% or so.  While this apron is based off of a woodcut of the time period, I do not know what it would have been made out of, linen is an educated guess.  I am also unsure what the smocking would have been stitched with, silk is known in the period but may not have been available to a woman of this class.  Also, the color yellow was chosen because I had yellow silk laying around, I have no evidence that yellow would have been used for this application.  Finally, the white thread used for the construction was poly-cotton because I had it on hand, obviously this is not an historically accurate thread for the 16th century.
Hours to complete: Around 10, this was my first time doing this type of smocking and I was a bit slow at it.
First worn: not yet, hopefully I will wear it April 9th
Total cost: None, every thing was out of my stash of scraps.