Ribbon Embroidered Reticule

A few weeks ago I had a rummage in my fabric stash, and I found a piece of soft peach silk dupioni. Unfolding it, I saw that at some point I'd begun embroidering wild roses. It took a bit of remembering, but eventually I worked out I'd started this piece back in High School.  That's quite a while ago now.  Why on earth had I abandoned it?

I decided I'd finish it.  Going back to the stash, I pulled out a frame, my silk ribbons, a box of silk threads -

Oh boy.  It was pretty quickly VERY clear why I'd abandoned the project the first time round. I use dupioni often for ribbon embroidery as I find that silk ribbons pass very cleanly through the fabric - far more easily than they do through a silk taffeta.
  But this particular  soft-and-supple-seeming dupioni was so tightly woven and so tough that I could hardly get a needle through it.  To drag a ribbon through it, I had to pull the needle through the fabric with a pair of pliers.

 

The mystery now wasn't why I'd abandoned the project the first time round - it was why I hadn't burned it in a fire and salted the earth afterwards.

Presumably I was as much a stubborn idiot then as I am now.  The roses were pretty. I would not waste them.I abandoned my first plan -  to unpick the rather-badly-laid-out stems and start the composition over, and instead stuck to a few simple rose leaves. 

Leaf by leaf, I dragged the thin ribbon through the blasted silk.  The resulting tension issues mean that my little rose bush is not the healthiest-looking rose bush in embroidered history - in fact I'm pretty sure some of the leaves have sawfly.
But I pressed on, swearing ineffectually, until there was a nasty snap, and only the front half of the needle came through.  Yep.  My, soft and supple silk had actually broken a tapestry needle in half.  

 

Dropping plans for any  further leaves, I tied off and threaded up the smallest needle I could get away with and started embroidering rose thorns instead.  Lots of rose thorns. This was NOT a FRIENDLY rose bush.

Once I'd wrestled the embroidery into submission, turning it into something I could show off was practically a walk in the park. I needed a regency reticule, so I made that.  

I figured out some dimensions, cut out a template, marked it up, cut it out, and stitched it up.

 

A hand-stitched drawstring channel was next.

 

Then a pair of ribbon drawstrings to match the roses, and lastly, I used up a hank of green silk thread making a set of little silk tassels for the corners.

And voila - a reticule!

 

 
The embroidery might not be perfectly accurate to the period, but it is very pretty and photogenic, and I never need to sew this AWFUL silk again.

So there.

 

 

Elephants

 

All of our friends seem to be having babies right now.
I've been knee-deep in elephants.

 

A pair of batik elephants for two babies in Sydney:

 

A pink-and-green fella for a little one in Whyalla:

A rather bizarre floral dude for a new one here in Santiago - (hiding in the first photo)

And a psychedelic number heading up to California:

 

I used the "Tilly and Tommy" pattern from retromama on etsy, which whips up neatly and quickly and looks pretty cute to boot.
Mostly. The pink-and-green elephant is a little cockeyed.   

I marked both eyes at once, but it was late, and I was cross-eyed, and somehow the elephant turned out drunk.
"Mr Tabubil!" I wailed.  "It looks home-made!"
Mr Tabubil said that no one couldn't care less. Those floppy ears are designed for chewing, and that's what counts with a 5 month old baby.

 

A Breezy Summer Hat

Christmas Tote Bags

Not long before I left Whyalla, the ladies from my Wednesday Sewing Group had a conclave and discussed a problem- every single one of them had a stash of Christmas prints that they'd never be using again - on account of having children and grandchildren already plastered with very same holly-and-snowman prints. (Crafters have no self-control at all around holidays.)
            Pretty soon, J's cutting table was buried beneath a 55 liter lucky-dip tub overflowing with red and green and white cotton scraps in all grades of sparkly - the glitter sort of oozing out under the lid and on the floor all around the chest and turning the carpet was twinkly gold.
             The stash was intended as a 'if-you-need-it-it-will-sparkle' group resource for holiday-ifs-and-whens, but when sewers are in the same room as free fabric they have all the restraint of magpies.  And somehow, by a natural progression, we were all making Christmas tote bags.

Lots of Christmas tote bags.

I didn't get them all finished before we left Whallya - my old Elna choked on the wool batting and before I could get it fixed we were knee-deep in packing to leave.  Last week I picked them up again. 

           

Themed bags take care of half your Christmas gift-wrapping needs in one fell swoop (add one cellophane bag of home-made cookies and you're good to go!) and using up other peoples fabric feels like virtuous thrift.
             And that's a nice feeling when I'm spending my free time hunting down vintage ecru valenciennes on etsy.
            Here's a lovely tutorial, if you've too much seasonal fabric glittering up your sewing stash. When I left Whyalla there was still half a tub of christmas cheer left. The ladies were talking about table runners... 

Summer

Aniline Halloween

Aside from making a pair of Zombie Monkeys, I thought it would be nice to do something American-Girl-dollish for Halloween.

Addy doesn't do zombie, so we compromised with a fashion plate or two.

Like the skirt trim in this one -

Image via

La Mode Illustrée

And the bodice in this one -

Image via

La Mode Illustrée

I used the American Girl Addy School Outfit for the base pattern.

 I sewed the blouse from Swiss cotton, and  mixed it up a little with embroidery down the front.  A Halloween skull earring made a seasonally appropriate brooch.

The skirt and bretelles were sewn from a chequered orange silk - a pair of fabulous trousers my sister wore in the mid-90s - and trimmed in a soft satin ribbon. 

I wanted a longer jacket, like this one -

Image via

La Mode Illustrée

Unfortunately, my velvet had been stored folded. Between the creases I had just enough bits to eke out the regular zouave jacket from the AG pattern.

The electric orange soutache is what I could find in the Wyalla Spotlight store before we left Australia.
Sure, it's only just on the demure side of neon, but it simply screams Halloween.

As for the hat - behold the rehabilitated cracktastic hat of 80's doom!

 All it took were a crystal spider and a gold skull and we've gone from horror to October chic.

Tutankhamonkey and Monktenkahmum

Meet Tutankhamonkey and Monktenkahmum. 
They lurched their way into the house around about Halloween and decided to stay.

Tutankhamonkey is a birthday present for Mr Tabubil (last year's birthday.  Don't judge.)
Monktenkahamum is a farewell present for a friend who adores Halloween with an almost unholy passion. She left Chile well before he was finished, but he will get to her by New Year, even if he's got to lurch the whole way.

I used the Monkenottukhamun pattern by q.D.PatOOties.  Her own link appears to be down, but her etsy store is HERE and you can find the pattern HERE if you would like to make one of your own.

As you can see, the pattern is pretty simple.  But those bandages - 

Grubbying up the fabric was a headache and a half.
I didn't have any paints on hand, which really didn't matter because I wanted an organic sort of stain.  Basically, I was a twit.
I tried coffee. I tried tea.  I tried soy sauce.  I tried fish sauce and oyster sauce -
Everything washed out clean.
I let the stains dry - for days.  They washed out. 
I set them with salt.  They washed out. 
I set them with vinegar.  They washed out. 
I can't get a damned sauce stain out of a single shirt ever, but could I get one to stay when I actually wanted it to?

I could not.

In desperation, I wet the cloth and dragged it across our balcony railings to sop up the greasy Santiago dust, because this dust sticks.  We have a couple of pillowslips that were left to dry on the backs of balcony chairs that hadn't been dusted in four days, and those pillowslips are streaked and grubby forever - the sorts of linens you hope like hell don't accidentally slip onto the pillows in the spare bedroom before your guests arrived.

This time round, the dust washed out.
I wet the cloth again and used it to swab the grotty bits around the bottom of our outdoor flowerpots.
The dirt. Washed. Out.

After two weeks of moaning, hair-shredding and an increasingly befuddled Mr Tabubil ("Yes, I'm swearing in harmony with myself.  No, you don't need to know why.") I achieved a fabric that was mildly dingy, and at that point, I gave up.  Marking the grimiest spots with chalk, I cut the most careful casually-raveled bandages you've ever seen.

And draped.  

The draping was rather a lot of fun, actually.

The monkeys rewarded me with a matching set of musty grins (seriously, antique drains were nothing to it) and Mr Tabubil thinks they're awesome.