Maren's Stuff

Prettyprettypretty ...

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:23:18 GMT

I'm drooling over the new pattern from Truly Victorian - a late bustle coat:

http://www.trulyvictorian.com/catalog/560.html

This one is definitely on my wish list for Christmas. Not that I ever get anything that's on my Christmas wish list, but one can hope, right?

Because I have nothing important to say.

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:20:47 GMT

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open the book to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

"But early modernism's dismissal of Victorian realism is itself a historical phenomenon that, in the interest of developing a new kind of art, missed the imaginative power and the historical novelty of the Victorians."

Levine, How to Read the Victorian Novel

(Have I mentioned how glad I am that this semester's M.A. exam is on the Victorian period? I actually find all this stuff interesting. Well ... most of it. Also convenient that I saw this meme while studying English literature and not German linguistics - that's the other exam. That would have been an interesting sentence.)

Stupid question. Help please.

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:26:38 GMT

Obviously I'm not getting anything done (surprise!), but tomorrow is sewing night with friends, and I want to set in the sleeves.
So, here's the stupid question of the day: Are bishop sleeves gathered all around at the armhole, or are they set in with the bottom part smooth and only the top portion gathered (like e.g. sleeves on bustle bodices or modern clothing)?

The only reference I have is a Simplicity pattern, and according to this, only the top is gathered. That might be right, but I don't trust Simplicity when it comes to historical sewing. I've read Elizabeth Stewart Clark's message board forwards and backwards, but couldn't find anything on this.

Any input?

So much for sewing.

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:05:47 GMT

The only progress I made was basting the piping to the armholes. Hooray.
My first attempt at making bishop sleeves failed, the second is better, but I'm having issues with the cuff. I wanted to make cuffs with buttons and buttonholes, but I can't get them to look right - to small, to bulky, whatever. Just not right. So yesterday, after sewing cuffs to the sleeves for the third time and still hating the look of them, I found out that it's actually period correct to gather bishop sleeves into a closed band that fits over the hand instead of a buttoned cuff. D'oh. Would make the white baste-in cuffs so much easier as well.
So now I'm probably going to cut out new sleeves instead of taking the half-finished ones apart again.
Sigh. I love sewing, but only if it works on the first try ...

The buttonholes for the front closure were equally unsuccessful, but that is another story.

Can't wait until it's 8 and I can continue fighting with the sleeves. But now I have to go back to work and finish reading 'Middlemarch'. Wow, that is one ... wordy book. 83 pages to go. Which leads to the question: What am I doing in front of my Mac?

Well, I'm back.

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:59:46 GMT

I know I haven't posted anything in an eternity, but I've been reading the friends list every day. Thesis was handed in on June the 12th, still no results. I've started studying for finals, but I'm taking the evenings off, so there will be sewing.

In costume-related news, the spring costume is nearly completed, I made a Regency shift and short stays, and 1860s underpinnings (chemise, drawers, two wonderfully fluffy petticoats). I also sewed a few skirts for modern wear, and knitted. So I wasn't lazy per se, I was just too lazy to take pictures and write something *hangs head in shame*.

So, in an attempt to fill a gap of almost five months ... This is what I'm currently working on - a blue 1860s dress.

I used the Past Patterns darted bodice as a base, but had to alter it so much that this is probably the tenth reincarnation of the pattern. It was too long and too wide in the bust, and by the time it fitted, the armhole was too small and I had to reposition the seams. And I added a waistband.
Since cotton dresses were gathered most of the time, I darted the lining and gathered the fabric where the darts would go in the top layer. It worked just fine. The neckline was my first attempt at piping, but it was easier than I had expected and is a nice finish. Pity it will be covered by a collar.

More to come when I made up my mind about the closure and sleeves, and hopefully I'll also take pictures of the other stuff during the next days.

Wooohooooooo!!!!

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:03:56 GMT

The main part of my thesis is written and revised. I finished this afternoon and cycled to the other end of the city (in glorious summer weather) to give it to a friend for an objective opinion. I hope it doesn't suck too much. If it does, I'm going to cry. Printing those 80+ pages (which will be 100+ once I added the correct margin) was strangely satisfying.

The next week is reserved for writing introduction, conclusion and the bibliography, but for tonight:

Screw university, I'm sewing!

Sleep is overrated anway.

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:20:24 GMT

I know I've been MIA (sorry for being such a boring LJ-friend), but this is most likely going to continue for a while. I've officially entered the night shift phase of thesis writing, which worked well until last week when the summer semester started. I am SO not a morning person! And getting up at seven after five hours of sleep doesn't make me a happy student. ;) I just don't fuction before 10 a.m..

You know, from time to time, this is actually quite fun. In a weird, Hermione Granger kind of way. But then the pressure of the grades hits again. They will be relevant when it comes to job hunting, and I really don't want to end up as a taxi driver. So most of the time I feel more like a scared rabbit (or rather like that stressed white bunny from Alice in Wonderland ;) ). I even started dreaming about uni stuff. What a pitty; without all that pressure, my topic would have potential for getting all obsessed about it. Right now it just feels superficial, despite all the work I've already invested.

And somehow, my iPod keeps playing Christmas songs when set on random (again!). Um, yeah. Wrong season.

ETA: Almost choked on coffee because of this:

Maybe that's the punishment for drinking coffee after midnight.

Gaaaaahh!

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:05:41 GMT

Dear thesis,

could you at least try to make sense? Because right now I feel the only way to revise you is with some gasoline and a match.

Your very frustrated writer,
Maren

Pretty things

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:43:54 GMT

I had a great day on Wednesday, even though I must have been out of my mind, because I did go to the library and worked from 11-5. But I managed to write two pages, and feeling accomplished is never a bad thing.

I also managed to stay away from the self-bought presents after they arrived and opened them Wednesday morning:

Love the lace yarn. I forgot to add the winding service to the shopping cart, so now I have to do that myself, which is going to be an adventure without ball winder and swift. The other yarn was a 'real' present - it was the yarn shop's anniversary and they sent surprise lace yarn with every order. The color is a nice milky coffee brown - pretty! I cast on the Lace Dream shawl (and frogged it again because the needle size was too small). The book is wonderful, and I can't wait to try all the beautiful shawls. Same goes for the dress pattern. I need more time - and I really miss my hobbies lately.

A friend, my partner in crime at the library, gave me Lindt chocolate eggs which are almost too pretty to eat (but of course I'll do it anyway) and a white chocolate easter bunny (which lost its life while I was writing page 64 and 65 of the thesis).

All in all, best birthday in a long time.

My brother is going to pick me up in a few hours to spend the Easter weekend at my dad's place. I'm looking forward to it, because normally the only time all three of us are together is Christmas.

WTF?

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:52:10 GMT

It's snowing. No snow all winter, and now, a few days before it's oficially spring, it's snowing. A lot.

This is weird. And I maybesortakinda like it.

Shopping

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:59:22 GMT

I did some online birthday shopping for myself. In other words: I spent money I don't really have on things I don't really need. Then again, 'need' is such a relative term.
I more or less ignored my birthday the last couple of years, but I could do with a diversion from the MA-related stuff. And since I never, ever get presents that have anything to do with my hobbies, I just bought them myself this time.

The first thing is the Knitter's Magazine's 'Shawls & Scarves' book, since shawls and scarves seem to be all I knit anyway. I've drooled over the designs from that book on Ravelry, so into the shopping cart it went.

Then I bought pretty, pretty lace yarn which I plan on using for the Sea & Shells stole. I might change my mind when I browse through aforementioned book.

And the last item is a Simplicity pattern - it was love on first sight (I say that now, wait till I try to sew it):

A new dress or two would be great, my modern wardrobe is abysmal.

This is the first time in ... maybe eight years that I can't wait for my birthday.

Pictures!

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:28:21 GMT

Everyone loved this one! It's actually midnight blue, not black:

One of the dresses worn by Romy Schneider (there were a few of them from different movies). She must have been so tiny! The dress form modelling the dress was about the size of a six-year-old. No kidding.

See, that's what I meant. All these costumes - they need to get them out of there!

Another very pretty dress - the bodice is burgundy red.

Lucky me

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:38:00 GMT

I didn't have any problems on saturday (except the getting up early part), but apparently the line was closed after I reached Hamburg. Whew.
The exhibition was pretty small, but there were some nice dresses. Unfortunately, many of them were stuffed away on clothes racks, while a lot of space was taken up by not-so-interesting things like messages to the employees of a film company, scolding them for using the phone too much. Err ... yeah, whatever. They definitely should have used that space for the dresses. After all, it was supposed to be a costume exhibition.
Pictures were allowed, but due to the low lighting and the no flash rule, they didn't turn out too well. I'll post them anway, as soon as I find the time - hopefully this century.

This time it took only three steps out of the doorway to get the first comments. Stupid me, thinking I was wearing a late bustle dress. It's from "Gone With The Wind"! =) Well, at least it's the same century; a friend who was wearing the Tia Dalma dress from PotC with matching makeup and hairstyle was compared to Elizabeth of Austria. Good times.
But I have to say I'm almost disappointed that I didn't get a single 'middle ages' all day. In Germany, everything that is not modern clothing, usually is medieval.

The internet is a dangerous place for me to be lately. Too many knitting/sewing ideas to keep me away from work. But I really want to finish the first draft of my thesis by Easter, which means something like three pages a day, including the weekends. So I unplugged the sewing machine and put the knitting stuff away in boxes. Sigh.
However, it's my birthday on the 19th, and I'm SO not spending that day in the library. My goal is to finish the spring costume that day - we'll see ...

Please keep your fingers crossed.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:31:50 GMT

I'm going to Hamburg tomorrow - there is a movie costume exhibit that I want to visit along with a few girls from a costuming message board.
This is my first opportunity to wear a costume in one and a half years, so I'm super exited. The thing is, it's a four-hour train ride to Hamburg, and there are storm warnings for the northern half of Germany for - you guessed it - tomorrow. I can already see trees lying around on the tracks and me getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. So please, wish me luck.

And how come there's always this last minute stress with costumes? The exhibition has been planned for weeks, but here I am, sewing closures to skirts, bias binding to the corset and trying to get my hairpiece into wearable shape. I'm also trying to ignore the fact that it's half past five in the afternoon, and I have to iron the dress and pack my stuff and get up at five in the morning.

The Dreadful Skirt ™, not dreadful anymore.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:29:59 GMT

The solution to the problem was so simple that I just didn't think of it.

First, I added a drawstring, which was an improvement (and maybe it's not that incorrect after all - I think I've seen drawstrings used in the back panels of natural form skirts).

Then I stitched the inside folds of the box pleats together. This way the pleats stay in place, but still have more movement than they would have stitched to tapes. The skirt still has a slight A-form because I sewed the front edges of the pleated panel down so that they follow the seam of the front panel. Ta-da!

(By the way, the brown pleated thingy hanging from the wardrobe in the background? Unfinished project number 3.)

And this monstrosity is the panel for the back drapery and in desperate need of ironing. So that's what I'm going to do now.

Bunny slippers. With bunny.

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:01:37 GMT

Somehow Paula doesn't look too thrilled.

Here they are, all done. Just looking at them makes me grin, and I love the way the ears flap around when I'm walking.

Side view:

I might add a felt sole or something like that. The pink is bound to get dirty really fast, and I don't think washing the slippers is a good idea, with the pompons and eyes & noses.

Even more pictures. Spot the real bunny! ;)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/marendietrich/bustlearound/IMG_0128.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/marendietrich/bustlearound/IMG_0127.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/marendietrich/bustlearound/IMG_0126.jpg

And thank you for your ideas on the skirt. I hope I'm ready for another try tonight.

The Dreadful Skirt™

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:23:54 GMT

Okay, here it is. It's the TV 1885 skirt, which probably wasn't the best choice, but too late. I like the front so far:

Now, the back is a completely different issue, specifically the pleated panel.

(Again, the fashion plate: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/marendietrich/bustlearound/springcostume.jpg )
The seam you can see on the top half is where I gathered the back panel to a narrow tape - this is also the line where I sewed the pleats to the skirt. It's probably not right, but I couldn't think of any other way. The back panel of the skirt alone is longer than the whole pleated section.
Anyway, after some struggle sewing the pleats to the skirt worked. BUT. It looked horrible. The volume of the skirt in the lower half pushed the box pleats out, so it looked like some sort of crinkly mess. I took it apart again.

The easiest thing would have been to make the pleated panel wider and curve them in at the top. Too late for that as well (and the pleats look straight in the fashion plate). Now I'm stitching tapes to the back of the pleats to keep them in place (takes ages). But I don't think that will be enough if the skirt keeps pressing against them. So I thought about adding something like a drawstring and a casing to the back panel to reduce the bulk. But I guess that's not the proper way to do it either.

I'm really unhappy with this skirt - it feels so patched up. Pitty, because I love the frills and the bodice very much.

Uhm - did any of this make sense? I felt my English vocabulary leaving my brain while typing.

Unfinished project number two

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:39:07 GMT

After the winter dress is finished, there are two other dresses screaming for my attention. Next in row is the spring costume, the dress on the right on this 1883 fashion plate.

The fabrics are sand-colored poplin for the skirt and a lightweight chocolate brown linen-cotton blend for the bodice. I started the whole thing about a year ago, and ironically the lovely little frills on the front panel turned out to be the easiest thing about the dress. Skirt and bodice are both halfway done, but some things are really not right. Especially the skirt just doesn't behave how I want it to. So I'll try to figure it out one step at a time, and hopefully posting here will keep me motivated.

Yesterday I finished the bunny slippers and was going to embroider the eyes and noses, only to find I don't have any matching thread. Great. Since eyeless bunny slippers don't look half as charming, pictures will have to wait.

Small things

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:51:57 GMT

First, a progress picture of the bunny slippers. The first slipper and the ears took almost exactly two skeins, so I bought two more yesterday. It's a cotton-microfiber blend. I had to experiment with the number of stitches and rows, because I'm using a different needle size, but I think they'll turn out fine.

And then there is a belated birthday present for a friend. Dark red cotton yarn and number 2 (3 mm) needles. I used this pattern with only one repeat.

I knitted it while staying with my dad, and in the evenings the dog took the opportunity to occupy my bed. Sheesh, pets. No help. ;)

I'm iPod-less. My iPod Video, Rufus, has been doing funny things (skipping songs and reacting veeeeeryyyy sloooowlyyyy), so I decided to take him to the Mac shop. Turns out something's wrong with the hard drive. I'm getting a new iPod (yay!), but they had to order it since it's an older model.
Ironically I'm almost glad it kicked the bucket now, during the one year warranty. Unlike my iBook. And the PowerBook we bought as a replacement. Which also died, was repaired and died again. There's a history of my Apple stuff dying on me about two months after the warranty ends, and no, it's not me. I'm the girl who gets made fun of for being overly careful with laptops and the like.
I love Apple (at least the OS), but their customer (ha-ha, I wrote 'costumer' first) service is beyond bad, and the hardware went downhill after they got that cultish image. Somewhere in my cupboard is a 14 year old PowerBook - and guess what, it's working.

No news whatsoever.

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:46:12 GMT

I'm sorry there's nothing happening here. Apparently I'm not getting anything done this week either.

This semester's lectures ended on friday, now it's just me and the thesis for the next two and a half months. Um ... yay?
I collected my laptop and my gazillions of books and retreated to my dad's place for a change of scenery. And because he's living in the middle of nowhere, there is not much I can do except write.
I packed some knitting stuff for the evenings, but I'm not making any progress worth mentioning. Hopefully there'll be more to say costume-wise once I'm back home next week.

Now I really need some coffee.

Argh!

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:56:01 GMT

I'm not getting anything done this week. With lectures, the thesis of doom and an exam (German-Danish translation) coming up on thursday, I don't even need to think about sewing.

However, I was a bad student and blocked my shawl tonight, which I finished two days ago (except for the lace border).

It is huge! The upper edge measures 1,60 m (5'2"), which is my height (not that I'm particularly tall). Anyway, the size made it an adventure to block the thing in my 25 square meter apartment. I have to jump over it in order to get to the wardrobe - but a little exercise can't hurt.

I found the pattern for the shawl (including instructions on how to shape it and the pattern for the lace border) in a German book on needlework. But I also ran across the same lace on Ravelry, where it's called 'birch'.

Oh, and this is the border which is later sewed on. It's quick to knit, as it's only between 4 and 8 stitches wide, but I'm gonna need a lot of it ...

It's raining like mad.

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:34:34 GMT

The perfect weather for knitting.

I couldn't resist buying yarn for the slippers, so

Sorry about the flash. Two skeins in a nice pink. I thought about using fluffy yarn, but didn't like the shade of pink - it was almost neon pink.
Also, more yarn for the leaf shawl. Fingers crossed that it's enough this time - including these four I'm up to 14 skeins (700 g).

Since I couldn't finish one project before starting another if my life depended on it,

It knits up easily; I cast on some more stitches, because the needles are smaller than suggested by the pattern, and also because I have hobbit feet.

Time for pictures

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:25:52 GMT

Since my last dress was almost bubblegum pink, I went for 'simple & elegant' this time.

Side and back view of the dress. Please ignore the wrinkled skirt. I couldn't be bothered to iron it.
I used the TV Waterfall Overskirt; the bodice is the standard TV late bustle bodice with the back pleats from the French Vest Bodice and a self-constructed front part.

A better view of the bodice front. All twenty buttons are functional; the 'vest' is a seperate piece held in place by the buttons (obviously) as well as hooks and thread loops.

Some details -
Pleating in the back. Did you notice how I put buttons everywhere?

Button close-up!

The almost-matching lining of the overskirt which took me ages to find.

The purse. I'm not really sure how I like it. It looks a little too modern, but it'll do, I guess.

Now all I need is an opportunity to wear the dress ...

... because every girl needs fluffy pink bunny slippers

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:59:21 GMT

I've been wanting some forever, and now I finally found a pattern for knitted (not crotcheted, because I'm too stupid for that) bunny slippers.

http://woodvaleknits.blogspot.com/2007/11/pink-bunny-slippers.html

Thanks, Ravelry! I have to go to the yarn store to buy more yarn fo the leaf shawl some time this week. Guess what I'll be buying besides that?

It's a dress!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:03:11 GMT

The winter bustle is finished. Well, technically the skirts are lacking closures, but I don't want to sew on the hooks and eyes before the new corset is done.

Anway, there is nothing else to be done, and I even managed to sew a matching purse, which took me pretty much the exact running time of 'Titanic' (yes, I'm a nerd). By the time Celine Dion started howling during the credits, I sewed down the button as a closure. Yay!

Now I really need some sleep. Which could be difficult, since I almost finished a 1,5 l-bottle of diet coke tonight. Hmmmm.