December 2019

ctmidd
Dec 31, 2019
6 min read

I haven't written for ages, I haven't made much as I've been so busy doing other things. To say I haven't done anything is slightly unfair, I have been working on two projects that I can't show at the moment.

I have been mainly working and travelling about indulging my love of stand up comedy. In recent months I have been to London, Nottingham, Leicester, Dublin, Birmingham and Loughborough to watch live comedy in various clubs. I don't know how much time I will have for making in the next few months either, as I have committed spending a lot of time at Leicester Comedy Festival and I am planning to go to Machynlleth Comedy Festival in May.

My boss decided that we were going to make each other gifts for Christmas this year. I didn't know what to make for ages then decided as they all drink tea etc at work I'd make them a coaster each. I have used comics in the past to make coasters and hand mirrors so I thought I'd do that again. I looked for old comics in second hand shops and such but didn't find many. I struck gold in London one weekend when Forbidden Planet were selling off mixed packs of comic books for £1 and I bought a few packs.

I used mount board to make the base of the coasters, I cut three circles for each one, glued them together and left to dry under a weight to keep them flat. Once dry I sanded them and covered them in two layers of small strips of packing paper and wood glue. I tore out pages out of comics that I liked the images on, I chose some pages for the backgrounds then cut out the characters and items that I was drawn to. As I cut things out they started to relate to each other and I placed them onto the backgrounds to create new pictures. I used a black permanent marker to edge the coasters as I didn't want the cut outs to go to the edge. I glued the backgrounds on one side each of the coasters and added the images, I left those to dry for a day them added the pictures to the reverse. I cut long strips of paper from brightly coloured pages and glued those around the edges of the coasters. After a few days drying I started the varnishing process, One layer on one side and 24 hours to dry in between. They are not perfect, there were some areas where the glossy paper didn't stick properly, it's very annoying but not something that can be changed when spotted so late. But, I am really pleased with the look of them, I like the combination of images, and the recipients liked them so that's all that matters.

This month I also altered some clothes. Well back in November I changed a Joe Browns dress to a v-neck, I got it cheap on Ebay but I didn't like the neckline on me. I unpicked the bodice area, marked in chalk the new neckline and cut away what I didn't want, I used the excess fabric to make a new interfacing and stitched it back together. It is obviously not as tidy as if I had made it from scratch but it it looks good and it's not something I will wear often. I wore it to the works Christmas party and it was much admired.

After Christmas I went charity shop mooching with a friend of mine, he bought a few books and I bought a dress. It was a Next dress that I got from Loros for £1, it's a sort of 60's style linen dress, I have another similar shaped one in grey and black so I decided to dye this one. I got a couple of packs of dye and dyed it an olive green. It came out really nicely, I'm really pleased with it, even the white stitching looks okay, and with dye it cost me less than £8.

I got a pair of White Stuff trousers in a charity shop, I love White Stuff clothes, they use really nice fabrics, but they are expensive. These trousers still had the £55 price tag on, I think they cost me £6, but as they were wide leg I decided to taper them, I don't like wide leg trousers, they just don't suit me. I was pleased to find there was no top stitching on the trouser legs as that would have made them much harder to alter. I turned them inside out and pinned down either side of one leg and tried them on. They still looked a little baggy on the inside seam so I pinned a little more and had another look. When I was happy with the general placement of the pins I got a long ruler and drew a straight line down either side and marked out the same lines on the other leg and tacked the lines in. I had another look and was pleased with the result so I stitched it in with the machine, cut away the excess, pulled out the tacking threads and re hemmed the bottom. They are not perfect, but they are fine for work.

I also took in a dress I have had for a while that is a little big for me, I bought it on sale, it's a quite loose boxy style dress but as my back is quite narrow it always looked baggy from the back. I put it on and put a pin in the back where my waist is, from that point I marked out a dart in a basic diamond shape with a longer point going up. I marked out the same shape on the other side of the back and tacked them both in. They looked on and had the desired effect. I stitched over the tacking on the machine and took out the tacking threads. All I wanted to do was make the back of the dress less baggy, it fits much better now but still retains it's loose boxy shape.

A few months back I tested a pattern with some cheap jersey fabric I had knocking about, it didn't work well and I threw the resulting dress in a corner in a huff. This week I pulled out that dress and had another look. I decided to take the bodice up a couple of inches as I have a short body, as it was a mock cross over thing I had to re-position the pleats at the ends of the cross over sections, I just reduced the size a little and moved them up a bit. I also added a little more to the skirt, probably 1,5 inches to the base and tapering back, just to add a little more fullness. I used a heavier jersey fabric that I had bought online, I also decided to add sleeves but as the design didn't have sleeves I got a pattern piece from another dress pattern by the same company and added a little extra fabric to the end that would join under the armpit and used that. I cut the pieces out and followed the instructions to put the bodice together, then added the sleeves, I was able to cut away a lot of what I had added but it was useful to have the extra in case it hadn't fitted. I added the skirt and had a look, it's not the most flattering dress but it fits well and I can probably fiddle with the neckline to get a better finish. I found sewing with my stretch stitch fine, I only pulled it out of shape slightly on one seam but that is the short one under an arm so it doesn't notice. My edging stitch made a terrible mess stretching out a shoulder seam so I had to cut that back and do it by hand. I am pleased with the result as I'm still pretty new to stretch fabrics and it's not bad at all from that perspective I just wish it suited me better.

I got some lovely gifts for Christmas including two beautiful Kimono, the Creating Couture Embellishment book and a massive kit of leather tools. I went to Cloth House, my fave fabric shop in London and bought some lovely fabric for my mum. I found a lovely striped piece in the remnant basket and spent ages looking through the indigo ones for something slightly heavier. I also found some cool hand made safety pins on Spittlefields Market, they were all slightly different, all around 4-5 inches long and made of brass. I chose the one with the longest pin so was less likely to come undone, that was also for mum.