montmartre-parapluie reblogged
superfidge-deactivated20230619
Recently got back into crocheting and decided to make a textile craft alignment chart. Idk if anyone else will get this but it makes me giggle.
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Little tutorial on how I make Belle's Ballgown Skirt. 💛
Folks have been asking me for sewing tutorials for years and it's always a little overwhelming to try and breakdown the process, but if you all like this, I'll keep making more when I can.
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Upsizing clothes! There are a million upcycling tutorials for clothes that are too big, but so few on how to make too small clothes you still love bigger!
Thank you for your suggestion! We all go through weight fluctuations in life, so it stands to reason our clothes should be able to fluctuate with us.
Resizing your clothes used to be a very common practice before the advent of fast fashion. Fast fashion sizing is extremely flawed, especially when it comes to plus size fashion, and we're stuck with a lot of vanity sizing, so it's a good skill to have regardless of whether you're looking to mend something old or buy something new.
How to upsize clothes:
Introduction:
There are many different ways to make a garment larger. The following list is not exhaustive, just a few ideas to get you started.
Grading patterns:
If you're making your own clothes, it's always useful to know how to modify a sewing pattern. The easiest way to adjust a pre-existing pattern to your size is slash and spread grading. First, you need to define which spots on the pattern need extra space. You then cut your pattern in that spot, and slide the resulting pattern pieces away from each other until you've got the size you need. Use paper to fill in the gaps. To ensure the resulting pattern makes for well-fitting clothes, make a mock-up and add, move, or remove darts where necessary to adapt it to your body type.
The image below shows potential slashing lines on pattern blocks for an AFAB body. Unfortunately this was the only diagram I could find, but know that other types of patterns use similar line placements. Each line is a spot that allows you to add extra space. To read more about this process, check out the corresponding article by Threads Magazine.
To make your clothes easier to let out in the future, make sure to provide ample seam allowance when cutting out your pattern pieces. This surplus fabric has several different uses, including giving you some wiggle room for when you need to size up your garment.
Now, let's take a look at pre-made garments.
Lengthening clothes:
A garment that's too short on you is easy to modify. Just add more material!
If it's a skirt or a dress, add ruffles to the bottom. Ruffles are easy to make by hand or with a sewing machine. You could also add lace, or wear the item with an underskirt.
For pants, let down your hem or sew on a new cuff. If this isn't enough, maybe consider turning your trousers into capri pants or shorts.
As for shirts, sewing an extra layer to the bottom edge is the easiest way to go, too. You could even combine two shirts into one to get an extra long shirt.
Another option is to cut your item in two and insert extra fabric between your separated garment parts.
Letting out seams/darts:
Remember how we made sure to have ample seam allowance earlier? When a garment has surplus fabric in the seams and you only need a little extra space, you can undo the seams of your garment and sew them back together again, this time with a smaller seam allowance than before. The Spruce Crafts has a pretty good tutorial on how to let out seams. You won't be able to make major size changes using this technique, but if you only need a few centimetres, this is a good way to go.
A lot of garments also have darts. Darts are fabric folds that are sewn down in strategic places to help the fabric follow the body's curves. If a dart doesn't fit you the way you want it to, then unpick the dart and try on the garment. Either leave the dart open, or pin the dart in place however you want it, then take off the garment again and sew the dart back together.
Be careful not to rip the fabric when using a seam ripper. Also note that removing entire darts may change the garment's fit.
You can also add custom darts to achieve a better fit, but that's a topic for another time.
Adding extra fabric to your garment:
If we need to add more room than seam allowance or darts can provide us with, we need to add extra material. Remember those slashing lines we looked at earlier? If you're working with a pre-existing garment rather than a pattern, those are the perfect places to chop up your clothes and add in extra fabric.
Check your sewing stash for fabric that's similar in weight and material to your original garment, or go thrift shopping for an item you could use to upsize your garment. Long skirts and maxi dresses are a great source of fabric for alterations like these!
Lace inserts are also a fun choice to add some room, and if you're working with a knit item, you could even knit or crochet your own custom insert.
Define the area where you want to add extra fabric on your item, and measure how much you need. Draw a straight line on your garment with chalk/soap. Make sure the line doesn't cross any important structural or functional parts of your garment like darts or button holes: refer to the slashing diagram we saw earlier if you're not sure what spot to pick. Cut the line open (or unpick the seam if it's situated on a seam), and add in your extra fabric. Finish off your new seams so they don't unravel later on, and you're done!
You can add straight strips of fabric for extra width or length, or you could use flared panels or even godets to make your item flair out.
Want to see this technique in action? Check out this video by Break n Remake:
Some ideas:
This Pinterest user cut a straight line down the front of a t-shirt and inserted a lace panel to add extra width in the front of the garment.
Busy Geemaw cut open the side seams of a shirt and used flared panels to add some extra width in the bust and hip area.
This person added a panel to the sides of a pair of jeans to give them more space in the hip area. You could easily use a long straight panel or a panel that flares at the bottom to resize the entire garment instead of just the hips, or use a wide piece of elastic for extra stretch.
This person added a godet in the back of their shirt in order to get more space in the back.
Blue Corduroy enlarged a pair of shorts by opening up the side seams and adding in strips of fabric.
You don't need to resize the entire garment if you don't want to. For example, One Brown Mom turned this ankle-length skirt with a too small waistband into a well-fitting knee-length skirt by taking advantage of the skirt's flared shape.
Conclusion:
Throughout our lives, our weight will fluctuate and our bodies will change. There's no shame in this: it's just a fact of life. Therefore, knowing how to upsize an item that is too small for you is a useful skill to learn.
If you want more inspiration, check out these projects by Confessions of a Refashionista, One Brown Mom, and Thriftanista in the City.
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Got some shots of the stays and bum pad being worn. Please excuse the uneven lacing gap lol
Oh @bennyssewingblog , these are GREAT! Love the back-lacing stays (that smooth front!) and the bum and hip pads look great! plus I love the neautral cream shades of your stays, with the crochet details - it’s so simple and elegant. if you ever make a chemise gown, that is going to look so freaking good! It’s my one regret about having patterned stays myself.
really love this, will follow your beautiful sewing with lots of interest!
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Made some tiny little pride flags for my pincushion! I cut small strips of paper and drew stripes on them with pencil crayons, laid a piece of clear tape over them to protect them, spread glue on them, folded them around a large pin, and trimmed the ends after they dried.
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
bustle era gown - work in progress
OH wow! That is absolutely breathtaking work! @missgreyunicorn. The sharp tailoring is just to die for! And the use of colour... I swear I’m looking at one of the boating dresses from a James Tissot painting...
really well done! I can’t wait to see how it progresses!!
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
WHY YOU IRON WHILE YOU SEW!!!
Left shirt: no ironing
Right shirt: lots of ironing
picture from: Threads’ sewing guide
Friendly reminder to please press your seams every time you make a new seam.
Bringing this back since it’s been a while
Also clip your curved seams!!!
Okay but HOW do I do what you’re telling me to do?
By searching “how to press seams” on YouTube and google.
Please check out this persons channel as they have a ton of short but informative videos. I haven’t reviewed them, but if you’re not finding the answer you’re wanting, there are plenty of others if you just look
Also about clipped seams:
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
dont make me tap the sign
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
#Repost @fmblystone ・・・ Working Women of Colonial Williamsburg—June 21, 2016
Working in the Margaret Hunter Shop during a “Gown in a Day” program.
#americasfirstmakers #Historictrades #WorkingwomenofColonialWilliamsburg #18thcenturydress #margarethuntershop #18thcenturyfashion #18thcenturysewing #18thcenturyfashion #handsewn #18thcentury #18thCenturyhistory #cwhistorictrades #colonialamerica #18thcenturyamerica https://instagr.am/p/CKhH4J2AZSc/
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Urged to embroider clothing and furniture, encouraged to see it as the natural expression of their nature, women were still accused of vanity when they embroidered for themselves. The stereotype of embroidery as a vain and frivolous occupation, like the stereotype of the silent, seductive needlewoman, controls and undermines the power and pleasure women have found in embroidery, representing it to us negatively.
Nevertheless, women have found gratification in the activity. Olive Schreiner conveys the immense creative satisfaction it provides […] She also perceived the bond that embroidery forged between women; sewing allowed women to sit together without feeling they were neglecting their families, wasting time or betraying their husbands by maintaining independent social bonds […]
Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (via mimicofmodes)
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
18th century stay: Part 1 - Materials
Yup it is happening!😉
My eternal gratitude to @montmartre-parapluie @tockamybeloved and @oenothera5 who have already given me a lot of good advice and tips! It has helped me immensely.❤️
The pattern that I'm going to do is the Butterick 4254 A (thank you for the recommendation @montmartre-parapluie ), with a closed front and open back because I want to make lacing myself as difficult as possible :) for funsies. :))) I've already ordered the pattern but I haven't ordered the fabrics yet. However, I think I have finally figured out the look and found the best materials to bring it to life.
My first plan was to keep everything quite low-key and plain since I love the simplicity of natural linen, but then I got sick and had no energy to do anything but look at fabrics 😂 So that idea went out of the window quite quickly when I found this G. O. R. G. E. O. U. S. brocade (189gsm) at Sartor.cz.😍
I'm not really a pink type of person, I usually prefer burgundy red. But we can't always choose what we fall in love with and this reminds me of the whimsicality of fairytales. I mean is it just me who's seeing dragons and mermaids in the pattern? I don't even care if the colours of the fabric won't suit me because LOOK AT IT!!😍🤤 It's so beautiful that my complexion won't matter.
Did someone say...?
✨Mermaid Stay✨
My idea is to use this brocade in the front panel piece so that it's kind of like a "stomacher" but wider. (We aren't really going for historical accuracy here anyways). I guess I could also sew on a piece of the brocade in a stomacher shape to create a "fake stomacher kind of effect"?🤔 I will have to think on it.
On the sides of the corset I'm putting this lovely light coral linen (198gsm).🧜♀️💗 (Complete coincidence but clearly the Norns want this corset too) Some corset coutil (280gsm) as interlining and natural coloured linen (116gsm) as lining.
Noooowwww for decorations...
Some pink cotton bias tape, double-faced 16mm cream satin ribbon (614), double-faced 3mm pink satin ribbon, a light gold 3mm cord and a rose pink 6mm flat cord.
If the cream ribbon is too large to tie the shoulder straps properly, I will fake it and add them above the "real shoulder strap ribbon" which would be the 3mm pink ribbon. The light gold cord is for lacing the stay and the flat cord is for strengthening the places where I've put the stay together. Also adds a bit of decoration.☺️
I think that was all.🤔 This will either work or be a complete mess but I've tried my best to match and contrast the colours with what I have. :)
Gonna order the fabrics tomorrow when my brain works. I want to go through everything again in my mind to ensure that I have everything. (I have not shown all materials here, e.g. 6mm boning, just the interesting ones.)
Until next time,
Sigge
Literally my face at tempting another person into historical costuming....
oh, @captainsigge , those FABRICS!! That pink silk damask! (AND you ordered from Sartor.cz?! JEALOUS. I’ve been lusting after their fabrics for YEARS, hoping they visit the UK for the re-enactment markets) You aren’t wrong- I started to look and I can absolutely see royal mermaids with ornate tails in there with the dragons. And that coral fabric will go beautifully! You’ve got a great eye for colour and what goes great together already. These stays are going to be STUNNING. ( and damn it, you’re making me side-eye my stays wondering if I can justify making another set in silk....
I can’t wait to see how this progresses!
The Green Gown Try-On!
More a ‘Hey, look how far I’ve come since my first try in 2018!’ post than anything else, but I took a bunch of pictures posing awkwardly in my bedroom and I’m going to dang well use them SOMEWHERE. And this is my favourite gown to date that ISN’T an Elizabeth Swann recreation, so... here I am again inflicting my creations on you all!
I have to say, I’m a LOT happier with the fit than when I first made this up. Granted, I was slanted more towards re-enactment then, so i had different goals in mind, but...I definitely needed time to develop my sewing skills before I could get it to the level I wanted. And having little accessories to make it look like its something I “wear”, like the fichu/neckerchief, cap and bodice ribbon really make it look SO much better.
Self-reminder for myself: keep making things and keep improving! It pays off in the long run!
The ‘A Girl For All Time’ Doll Fanpost
I originally started a sideblog for my mini-sewing projects, as I like to call them - buuuuut, in true Tumblr fashion I tend to forget it exists. and it’s basically a cobweb-haunted empty digital cupboard. So, New Year’s Resolution: no sideblogs, we blog all our interests in one confused mass!
As you’ll know from some of my early posts like the Mini-Simcoe and Sylvia projects , I DO enjoy using my sewing scraps to provide historical wardrobes for dolls - they’ve obligingly modelled many things for me over the years since I started out! I didn’t have the AG dolls growing up (for some reason, they didn’t take off in the 90s over here in the UK) so this is probably my way of working through my doll-deprivation or something.
Luckily for modern kids, there’s a great British-based company alternative these days!
The ‘A Girl For All Time’ range was actually started by a wonderful American lady who moved to England. She was disappointed at the lack of fun historical toys for girls around, so she started her own company, ‘The Daughters of History’, and set about changing that. I’m guessing she was inspired by how fun and educational the AG dolls are!
Although these dolls work on a slightly different premise: The girls in the historical range are all different generations from one family. Beginning with early Tudor Matilda, there’s then red-headed Elizabethan Elinor, Georgian (brunette) Lydia, Victorian (blonde) Amelia , little red-headed WW2 evacuee Clementine, before we finally finish up with Sam, the 1960s brunette mod girl.
There’s even tie-in books, which is very much a homage to the popularity of the American Girl stories.
In addition to this, the three dolls you see at the end are part of their newly created modern range - Maya and her best friends Nisha and Bex. The creator’s just added a new boy doll to the range too.
I do like their proportions - and personally I love how wistful and thoughtful their faces are. They’re solid plastic bodied dolls rather than cloth-bodied like the AG girls, and nicely poseable. They’re also a little smaller and slimmer at 16 inches high, but they really seem to have struck a chord with adult collectors as well as kids.
This may be because they’re a little bit expensive for the average parent’s budget (well, around the same price as an AG doll from the store) and they’re not readily available in many places outside their own website and Amazon (although they do have a US store here!). The creator mostly relies on pre-orders and crowd-funding to gauge interest for new dolls and accessories, but they’ve manage to carry on despite the challenges the past year’s thrown at it - so they’re definitely a worthwhile small doll business to support!
They’re also super-fun to sew for. There’s a bunch of really good historical patterns out there for them that I absolutely LOVE to use. PemberleyThreads & PixieFaire are a few of my guilty pleasures, mostly for their stunning 18th century and 1830s patterns.
(I may or may not have a huuuge backlog of pictures of my doll sewing on my tablet. I should really get around to doing something with those.
But in conclusion: Definitely worth a look for anyone seeking something a little different in the doll world!
Elizabeth Swann Project: Final Gowns!
Here we have - the Peach Gown, taken from the online auction! I have fabric, trim, and materials already lined up for this baby, including the pretty little straw hat, so I’m looking forward to this one!
And the project that will probably kill me, or at least see good old Covid-19 out the door - Elizabeth Swanns’ wedding gown from Dead Man’s Chest!!
I swear it’s not just so I have an excuse to buy pretty embroidered silk and trim everything to within an inch of its life....
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
Sew..well I -
Yes. A bit. And continually encouraged by @montmartre-parapluie and her own dedication to seemly complete the entire Elizabeth Swann wardrobe I dusted off my sewing machine and last month decided to pick up needle and thread again. (although currently my hands are wearing the marks of battle!) I feel I should mention this is a hobby. It’s 100% done for fun. While I admire the dedication of those who want to be historically accurate maybe someday I will do that with ONE outfit. Not everything.
Below cut line are a few things I’ve been working on.
AAAAAAAAH *runs around dizzily in circles* This is wonderful, @tockamybeloved!!!
I will freely admit to being a baaaad influence when it comes to sewing projects, but heck, I’m not going to apologise if it results in this beauty we see here! And you are a wonderful talented madgenius when it comes to stays and corset-making! I give you my word people, I did a five minute sketch for an imaginary set of stays based on the colour scheme of La Maria on Friday- and not only did Tocka here have them finished by SUNDAY, but she took a simple felt tip and biro sketch. Did and made it REALITY. I have never felt more honoured or proud to have such awesome talented friends!
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
A very sweet pep talk for anyone who sews or has an interest in it 💖🌿
montmartre-parapluie reblogged
American Duchess recently posted a free pattern for this, along with instructions, if anyone’s looking to sew it!
Hhhhhnnn I need it!