Not a Sewing Post

Jenny, a friend of mine who runs the quilting store Rose Hall Quilts, is hosting a Biggest Morning Tea to benefit the Australian Cancer Council.
            Jenny has spent a whole year planning this event, and it is going to be one heck of a shindig. Originally it was intended simply as a get-together-with-a-cause for the quilters of the gulf region, with a silent auction of pretty cups and saucers and old fashioned silverware (culled from estate sales and thrift stores by her quilting minions over the past months) to raise money for the council.
            And then, eight weeks ago, the morning tea exploded.

Arriving at her house for a sewing session one Wednesday morning, I found her feverishly labeling books of raffle tickets, and looking seriously harassed.
            "Tabubilgirl!"  She bellowed. "It's metastasized!  It's gone CRITICAL!  The Biggest Morning Tea is now frigging ENORMOUS!"
            I took the flyer that she thrust at me.
            "It started when Lucy told me I had to have a plant stall.  'A PLANT stall?' I said.  'This is a morning TEA!' Then she told me how much money you can make from a plant stall in this town, and then she told me she'd run it, so all right, we have a plant stall.
            Then Chrissy asked if she could be in charge of the catering.  I said 'Great!'  and asked her if I could still contribute a few boxes of Pink Ribbon Tim Tams - I LOVE Tim Tams dunked in coffee - and she got really SHIRTY and said 'NO!  I'm talking about the baked goods stall!'
           'The Baked GOODS stall?' I said.  And she said 'YES!' And she told me how much money you make from a baked good stall in Australia, so fine, she can collect people to bake for her - no worries! She can run the baked good stall. I'll do the coffee. 
            I asked her how much coffee and biscuits I should provide - I was thinking about enough for 50 people - and she told me to cater for TWO HUNDRED!! THREE HUNDRED even!!!  And now we've got trading tables, with CWA ladies sewing purses and knitting baby clothes like they're on fire, and we're having a quilt exhibition, which means I now have this huge pile of quilts insured for ten thousand dollars EACH sitting in my spare room, which makes me very uncomfortable, and now there's a raffle for another quilt (NOT a ten thousand dollar one) and travel vouchers to Adelaide and I don't even know what else, with an ARMY of ticket sellers fanning out across the entire peninsula and my wholesale suppliers have been sending me the most amazing quilting supplies as donations to the cause and the whole thing is getting out of hand and I'm starting to panic. 
            I mean, it's only being held in my back yard!! Do you reckon we can get the pool hall and the BBQ shed and the shop shed and the granny flat cleared out in time? (editors note: in the Gulf region, people LOVE their sheds. You need at least three in your backyard to be taken seriously by anyone.) There's 150 folding chairs and six portable gazebos on order, but maybe we need more space? D'you think we can move the quilting exhibition out of the house and onto the verandah? What if it rains?!?!  Where will we plug in the pie-warmer?"

In summation, I will be baking.  Lots of 'American style cookies, please!" for the baked goods stall.
            It's really quite something. Cancer is the one really democratic charity.  There's nothing political or geopolitical about it.  It's as inoffensive and feel-good as the Make a Wish Foundation.
            Everyone can get behind Cancer, and my god, they certainly have.  Jenny's suppliers are sending her hundreds of dollars worth of fabrics and threads and quilting templates as raffle prizes and local retailers and travel agencies have been getting into the act -

Saturday, May 7, 11 am, at 5 Woods Terrace, Whyalla.
It's going to be quite the shindig.
If you're in town, please do drop by.

The Great Blue Baroque Dress

This blue rococo-ish-gown is one of the first doll dresses I ever made.

The fabrics come from a wonderful little fabric shop in Boston's Chinatown.  They sold remnants of designer fabrics - not much, just a meter or two of each, but every remnant was a) Spectacular, b) just enough to make one really fabulous doll dress and c) Priced at genuine remnant prices - $5 or so.

One weekend I found this lovely crinkly polyester satin and a embroidered  black net and thought…huzzah!

And dashed off to the trim section of the store to pick up silver laces and trims...

The overskirt was originally intended to be a polonaise, which is why I made it so long.  I basted the net to the satin and cartridge pleated 54 inches of fabric into the waist, and we loved the look of it so completely that we couldn't bear to pull it up into loops.  It had gravitas.  And flow.

The Back:

 

The Front:

We made this dress the same summer The Patriot - Mel Gibson's Revolutionary War movie - came out.  I'd just made the dress so mum and I absolutely HAD to see the movie - I remember hugging her and both of us squee-ing with pleasure when we saw the ribbon necklaces that the ladies wore - they'd clearly based their costumes on MINE!

And I love the stomacher.  I really really love the stomacher.

And the hairpiece - although I don't have a proper photograph of it - it is an ostrich plume with a wired ribbon rosette and white feather tufts - and a vintage marcasite brooch pinned to the front.

The bodice front doesn't quite match up with the stomacher - chalk it up to early sewing experiences.  This dress has aged amazingly well - it's still one of my favorites - if not THE favorite.   It's exuberant!  All bright and colorful and joyful!

Yummy Details:

And once more, just for fun:

Wired Ribbon Flower Purse

Because every doll needs a handful of frou-frou when she goes to a party!

Front Side:

Back Side:

Mr Tabubil plays Papparazzo

Silk Mitts

Naturally, now that I'd made a cape and muff I needed a pair of silk mitts to match. The muffs are made from the same white tissue taffeta as the muff casing, fused to a soft woven interfacing for stability during the embroidery. (In retrospect, it would have been more sensible to embroider 'em on a hoop before I cut them out).

For fastenings I settled on corded embroidery cotton strung through eyelets. Which meant I had to learn how to sew eyelets. 

I played with awls and embroidery floss until I had it figured enough to wing it.  The first four eyelets on the left-handed mitt were reasonably scrappy, but at number 5 the technique fell into place and if the rest aren't exactly exactly oil paintings, they are perfectly serviceable and respectable enough to hold up their heads in polite company and I am extremely proud of them!

(Yes, I know she's wearing a regency era dress.  Let's not quibble, okay?)

Green Cape and Muff(s)!!!

I'm supposed to be working on my circa.Civil war projects, but everyone in the costume blogsphere has been having such FUN at the Costume Accessories Symposium at Williamsburg  that I just - couldn't. I needed an off-day.
            And 'Clear out the stash' projects are intrinsically virtuous, right?
            And I'd been meaning to make a muff for AGES.
            And then after the blog Time Traveling in Costume went and posted that AMAZING description of the muff-making workshop, things just sort of felt as if they were MEANT.
            And if you're making a muff, you need a matching cape, right?
            Something like this?

I pulled out trusty Vogue 7923 and cut it down a little to match the dimensions of my fabric remnant - and sewed the cape out of my new green cotton velveteen -with all the wretched purple piling stripped off- with Spotlight's best gold polyester crepe for the lining (I had to go and buy that.  And then go and buy it again when the first lot seized up into matte plastic immobility when I steamed it.  Sometimes I really don't appreciate living so far from a decent fabric store!)
            For the muff - white muslin and fibrefill.
            And for the muff covering - a strip of gold silk, some 3mm silk ribbons, a few roccoco-ish pieces of trim and -

C'est voila, n'est c' pas, como no? Que piensas?

One muff wasn't nearly enough so I made another -
I really loved the one that the Time Traveler made for herself with all that rococo braid, but patterns that look lovely at full scale just don't translate to a doll 18 inches high.

So I threw out my preconceptions, dug out the silk ribbons and made this instead.

And it feels very swish indeed!

From the Archives: Grey Silk Cape

The summer before Grad School I ran into Vogue 7923 -

-and it was VERY Jane Bennet goes to the Ball. Don’t you know.  Sort of.  Close Enough

And lo - in the stash I just happened to have a meter of silver silk duponi, and just enough pink silk for the ruffle and just enough gold to bind the edges - it was all sort of higgledy piggledy pastels that only mostly matched, but Jane Bennet would have liked that sort of thing.  (Well, she would have! Take another look at the video clip.)

When you cut on the grain, silk duponi frays like you can't imagine until you've tried it yourself.  Naturally, when I cut the ruffles I didn't leave any extra seam allowance to lose in the gathering process, and just as naturally I didn't serge or zigzag or fray check the edges or do anything else even vaguely sensible.

            Accordingly, Mum and I spent a tooth-clenching, nail biting day gathering meters and meters of half-inch ruffles very carefully and very VERY slowly. Actually, Mum, a veteran of more sewing stories than I've had breakfasts, gathered ruffles with calm and tranquility -  I did the teeth clenching and nail biting for both of us.

            At the end of that long  day I stitched the ruffles to the cloak, bound the raw edges with gold silk  and went over the whole perimeter of the cape with a pair of nail scissors hunting for stray threads - and managed to put the scissors right through the grey silk - an ugly jagged v-shaped tear.

            There might have been tears.

            And THAT foolish 'why didn't I leave it till tomorrow?' moment  is why there is a lovely embroidered flower on the edge of the hood, and only the tiniest HINT of fusible interfacing on the inside.  It's a couture touch.  Thank you VERY much, Mum. I owe you!!!!