Rescued and Resurrected #2

EXPERIMENTS WITH MORI KEI

Another insanely productive and demanding year in college is finished and I've finally landed from all the stress and press alas there are lust and time for blogging again. I've created lots of thing during my schoolyear, but I will show you, dear readers, all about them in later posts. This post is about my first try of adding even one more style to my eclectic style palette, mori kei! 

I've been attracted to the whimsical mori kei style since I stumbled across it last summer, but I had a hard time handling the rather loose fitting silhouette, being a full busted curvy viking woman, not a tiny little waify asian girl. But when I and M was in Spain last summer during a massive heat wave, I bought a linen dress at the market, in white from an Italian lagenlook brand. It was a huge step for me, I've never attempted dressing in all white/light colours and loose fit before. But I realised that it wasn't so unflattering as I first thought. And in 40 degrees Celsius and blasting sun, it was really comfortable to wear something that actually allowed air to circulate along my body. 

A rather blurry photo of me in the lagenlook dress, taken late in the evening. I think I'm trying to give M directions about something...

 

 

 When I got home, I found myself pairing it with longsleeve tops, knitted sweaters and boleros, grey thick tights and a white petticoat, still loving it all autumn and winter.  Loose fit and light colours wasn't so dangerous!

So when I stumbled across this tunic in a recent thrifting spree, I decided it was time to add more breezy, loose clothing to my wardrobe:

The thrifted tunic on the right, a broken blouse from my RR-stash on the left.

Close up of the fabrics

The tunic looked cute as it was but I decided that I wanted to make it mine by adding to it. I used material from the chequered blouse and added pockets and a bow at the back. I also added a ruffle at the bottom, made from a broderie anglaise duvet cover I found at yet another thrifting spree last summer.The broderie anglaise trim was also rescued from the same duvet cover. The pockets and the bows was made from the sleeves of the blouse and those had a button tabs that kept them rolled up. I looked at those tabs, they were so cute somehow,  and decided that I wanted too use them on the tunic. I played around with placement and finally decided to use one as a whimsical detail at the front and the other as the center piece on the bow. To top it all off I aded som mother of pearl buttons I had in the stash. And I love the final result!

But now I was on a roll. I decided that I needed something to wear under the tunic, I tried with my white petticoat but I didn't like the look, so I made a pair of pants/bloomers of the remaining broderie anglise from the duvet cover. They are Plinka pants, a pattern designed by Tina Givens (can be downloaded for free if you register to her site). I've modified the pattern in the crotch area, the original is super baggy drop crotch, something I hate so I used my standard loose fit trouser crotch instead. I also made the bottom ruffle wider than specified in the pattern, skipped the bottom facing due to thickness of the material (the serger is a saviour in those situations) added a separate elasticated waistband and omitted the pockets and the little patch. And gosh, I love these pants. They are super comfy and I love that if I stand with my legs together it looks like I'm wearing a skirt.

The tunic and pants together? It's an outfit to be happy,giddy and whimsical in. I feel like putting on rubber boots and jump in water puddles :P
M, my trusty photographer,had a hard time capturing these following photos, because yours truly was feeling so giddy that I couldn't stand still ;)

Clickning at the photos makes them bigger, as usual.

Oops, should have smoothed out the bodice after all that exercising ;)

Now I'm off to work on the unicorn dress I found earlier...

Hope to see you all soon!

/L

Thrifting spree

Last Friday I had a day off. That doesn't happen often for me so I decided to celebrate it by going sale shopping and thrifting in Uppsala, the town that's closest to me (I live in the countryside). I went to the lingerie shop, five thrift stores, the fabric shop, my favourite clothing chain Indiska and IKEA. A busy day but I found lots of treasures.

Like this little gem, curious to know what it is? Find out after the jump:

A post that's long over due...

So, in my last post I was almost finished with my outfit for the May event and then I went AWOL from the blog, again. The last trebmling months of spring and the first month of summer has kept me busy,busy, busy. But now I've chiselled out some time for the blog and finally can show off my Edwardian outfit, that I'm very pleased with. Lots of images and more info after the jump, as usual.

An edwardian blouse

I'm making progress on my Edwardian outfit, albeit a bit too slow, but this upcoming weekend I hope I'll have the corset ad the corset cover in wearable condition. 

The corset have been a real hassle, I've lost count on how many times I've ripped out the boning channels on the back pieces. But today I've finally figured out in which order to sew them so hopefully the rest of the sewing progress will go better. I hope I will ha a corset to show you on Sunday :)

Now on to the subject of this blog post, the blouse.

HSM #3 Stashbusting - Edwardian hat

My plan was to try to participate in The Historical Sew Monthly Challenges this year but my schedule and my planned Edwardian event in the end of May has made it hard. My planned stash busting project, an Edwardian blouse  isn't finished yet (needs buttonholes and the cuffs fixed) and my HSM#1 Foundations project, an Edwardian corset is still in the works too. But I'll guess I've just have to suck it up and post things when they get ready...any ways. I finished this hat yesterday and realized that all the materials in it came from my huge stash, so it is qualified to be entered in this challenge.

The Challenge: HSM #3  Stashbusting,  An Edwardian hat
Fabric:Scraps of acetate duchess satin in two shades of purple
A sun bleached and worn sun hat made of paper straw
Pattern: None, made things up as I went along, looking at fashion sketches and photos from the period.

Year: circa 1905
Notions: Home made ostrich plumes, four purple ostrich drabs, two candle rings with mauve roses, some rather thick steel wire, sewing thread in black and purple and some home made black spray paint.

How historically accurate is it? My materials is 100% modern but the look is accurate so I would say 50%?

Hours to complete: 24 hours

First worn: Will be worn at the event in the end of May

Total cost: Most of the materials are scraps from other projects but I think I once paid about 0.5$ for the candle rings and about 5$ for the hat.

This hat started it's life as a regular sun hat. I used it a lot. It got sun bleached. It started to look worn. It got thrown in my stash for hat base use and I forgot about it. Then last spring I was invited to a suffragett luncheon. I very hastily threw togheter and outfit and made a super quick make over to the hat by makeing a sash out of some duchesse satin fastening it to the hat with osme sticheds and a brooch. Threw in some black plumes that I've made earlier for a 18th century masked ball and scurried away to the lucnheon. This is how the hat (and the rest of my outfit) looked:

I was never 100% happy with either the outfit or the hat. So when the May event came up, I decided that they both needed at make over. My biggest quarry with the hat was it's color, the flimsy brim and the high round hat crown. I started out by solving the color problem. I mixed rubbing alcohol with some artist quality black aceylic paint in a spray bottle and gave the hat a couple of thin coats on both the outside and inside. When it dried, it was even in color (not stark black but even) and it was matte instead of the horrible lustre it had before.

To lover the crown I followed this excellent tutorial, It worked really well but I think I accidentally made the flat crown piece a tad to big so my crown isn't 100% flat, but I decided that I could live with that.

To take care of the flimsiness of the brim I zig zaged a length of wire around it on the under side. Since this kind of hat needs to look good on both sides of the brim I covered the wire with some bias tape that I made from another duchess satin scrap. Then I started to play around with decorations, I just gathered all the materials I could find in the stash that matched in colour. I quickly realised that I somehow needed to make the brim a bit wider and I also needed to get more of the purple shade that I used for wire covering into the decorations. But how? Extend the edge with bias?

No, just plain bias satin would ble too flimsy...than I tried boxpleating a scarp to the edge...and it looked great! So I quickly made a 5-6 cm wide length of bias strip as long as I could squeeze out of all the scraps (I had to piece several small lengths together) folded it in half, pressed it down and ran a straight stitch a long whole it's length about 7 mm from the edge. Then I took my pinking shears to the sewn edge to get a prettier edge and stop it from fraying. Then the hat rested for a couple of weeks...until yesterday when me and a couple of other costumers met up for hat making day.

Then the brim got it's box pleated trim and the rest of the decorations sewn on. And here are the final result. (I'm madly in love with this hat and I cant wait to wear it!)

Highlights from five months of slöjd

So my last post was in September, and I had high hopes of getting back into blogging a bit more often. Well, that didn't happen. My slöjd course in school literary drained me, my days mostly looked like this:

05:00 Sound of the alarm clock

06:19 Off to school

09:00 - 16:00 Official school hours

16:49 Hop on the train to start journey home

18:50 Arriving at home, time to cook dinner, doing housework and collapising in the sofa

22:00 Time to go to bed

Repeat this schedule five times a week, with some added hours here and there for working late in school to get projects done. Also add in worknig 11-17 every two weekends as a personal care assistant and we have the reason to my blogging absence pretty clear.

But even if last semester was hard I learned a lot. And I created a lot. I can't show you guys everything I made because then this post would get like a kilometre long but I will show you the artefacts I'm most proud of after the jump. Warning, image bonanza coming your way!

Vintage fusion wardrobe #1

A felted atomic hat in the making...

 A couple of weeks ago I scored a cute atomic print dress on etsy. It arrived just before this weekend and as soon as I tried it on, I felt a desperate need to acquire some matching accessories (Yup, I one of those matchy matchy types. I love to go all in with kitschy details in my outfits). A picture of me in the dress will be posted as soon as I have the proper undergarments. A black bra and girdle showing through a pink dress is not pretty.

Close up of fabric curtesey of etsy seller sheandhervintage

Today in school we worked with different wool felting techniques and while the teacher demonstrated them in the beginning of the class, inspiration hit me like a bomb. Of course I should make a hat! A wool atomic hat.

I started out with wet felting a base in roughly the same shape as the white "rockets" in the print. Then I needle felted on the black spots and the pink circle. Tomorrow I will add some millinery wire to the edge to help the hat maintain it's shape and also to help me mould it after the curve of my head. I will also wet felt some black wool on the wires that are lying on top of the hat in the image below and try figure out a good way to add the green "leaves"... or maybe I should leave them out? We will see tomorrow night...

Atomic hat WIP, the colours are a bit skewed, but you can see the general idea.

I'm so excited about this!

/L