Hey! A New Top!

 So I didn't think I would be doing ANY sewing for myself any time soon.  The church choir has dropped the 'seasonal color' thing we've done for so long and are just wearing, well, Janice Rigg's 'Common Wardrobe'...without realizing it, lol.  Denim with neutrals.  So, I figured...no more choir-driving sewing.

But.  Turned out that only sorta applies.  We got word early this week that for Easter we are to wear kind of a salmony pink or a turquoise/aquaish blue, with the neutrals.

Thought I had something that would work, but the scales have crept up a bit over the last year and...it was too snug.

So, what to do, what to do.  I had a sweater the right color in the closet, but I needed a top to go under it.

Dug around in the stash and found a stripy knit print that I got for the Hydrangea wardrobe.  

Timestamp on this photo is 1:26 PM

Time stamp on this photo is 4:08.

Of course, if this had been The Great British Sewing Bee I would have had about an hour and a half to do that, but I went carefully and did a couple of extra steps to hopefully keep things humming along.  Something hosed up in the tension on the double needle hem so it's a wee bit tunneled, but that'll be our secret.  At least the pinks match...

I need something I can get on and off quickly because I will have about 15 minutes to change into my bible costume after the choir leaves the platform before I have to be in place for the mini-production we're doing this year.  And then, when that's done...change back to the choir clothes to repeat the process for second service. 

I will take a mesh bag to put over my head so I don't smear the makeup.  Hopefully. LOL.

But at least I have made SOMETHING for myself this year...

Up late but done

 So, this is the last bit of sewing that I have to sew for the Easter production; dress rehearsal is tomorrow so I had to finish tonight.

I told myself I had to be done by midnight; I have a whole hour to spare, lol.

Another lady is making black costumes for the two Pharisees in our cast, but we needed something resembling the prayer shawls that peek out from under the head drapes.  As I mentioned in the last post, we had some from when we had blue and white Pharisee costumes and at first we thought we'd just sew black ribbon over the blue ribbon.

But, you know, ya never really know what might be useful in the future and we might need those blue-ribboned drapes, since we still have the blue-and-white costumes they go with, so I just decided to make new ones with the black ribbon..

Now, I want to say right up front that these are in no way intended to replicate an actual tallit.  This is stage costuming and is meant to suggest it only.  Despite my usual over-the-top dedication to being authentic, this is something I think is better served by suggestion.  Using an actual tallit with an otherwise inaccurate costume just seems ....wrong.  So we have reasonable facsimiles, not actual replicas.

That includes the tassels.  In the older ones, I just used purchased tassels but sewing notion availability being what it is nowadays, the only tassels I could find in the right size (and price, lol) were red and black, which wouldn't do.  So I bought several skeins of ecru embroidery floss and set about making my own.

And I made tassels, not proper tzitzit, because...well, the whole cultural appropriation thing, and I had no idea how to actually make tzitzit and I didn't really have time to research it.  I had made tassels before, as part of a project with my jr high girls class back in the day,  so I at least had an idea of where to start.

And I took a shortcut.  The instructions I'd had on making tassels began with wrapping the floss around a card...and, you know, those skeins are really already looped around.

So I just cut 'em in half.  Carefully.

Then I cut a length from the extra skein I'd bought  and tied off the looped end of the half-skein, after draping a bit of blue floss over it (the blue thread is specified in Numbers, so I used it, even though it's not proper tzitzit)

I tied it tightly , then cut another bit of floss and tied it off just below the bend.

I wrapped the ends of that second piece around and tied it, then wrapped them around to the other side and tied again...several times... and finished it by pulling the ends down through the middle.  This looks rather muddled, but you can see the large darning needle I used to pull those ends through.

Then I trimmed off the ends even

Sewed them onto the corners of the drapes.

And here's the finished product. 

 I don't think it will show much; I think there's a black head drape that will be over it. But I haven't seen the new costumes, just the inspiration picture, so I'm just going off of that.

Now I need to go collect my old costume and head drapes and such to take to church tomorrow.  It's a short production...only about 25 ish minutes...so we will have regular choir first and I'll have to change from church clothes to the bible costume pretty quickly.  Without smearing the makeup, lol.  Gonna try the mesh-bag-over-the-head trick; hopefully that will work.

I have more bible costumes to sew this spring, but they are for the kids ministry at the church where my two younger kids are on staff so they can wait until after things settle down a bit.

Another costume out the door...

 So, here were are at the end of March, and I have not made a single thing for my closet yet this year.  Oh, I've putzed around on the Velvet Hippie Earth Mother Skirt, but it is really kind of a tedious thing to do and my heart is not in making a velvet skirt whilst the azaleas are blooming and the birds are singing and spring is calling.  I want to sew nice linen things.

But, first, the Easter Production.  This costume isn't going in the costume wardrobe, it's for a friend who is on staff at church and is, by default, going to be in all the productions.  He's borrowed one of my personal extra costumes and he's borrowed my son's costume in the past, so I thought I'd just make him his own.

The fabric came from a sale at Fabric Mart...the under robe is made of a wool/ poly/ lycra blend and it's really nice.  I did not make NEARLY as many bone-headed mistakes this go round; I guess I just needed to clean the cobwebs out of the bible costume skills, lol.

I got it to him today; I hadn't told him I was doing it but he'd figured it out, lol.  ETA  a couple of days later:  He thought I was just making a costume for him to wear, LOL.  He didn't realize until we were talking about it at dress rehearsal that this costume is for him to OWN.  

I have a couple of small pieces to make for the new Pharisee costumes that another lady is making.  We had white and blue costumes from years ago, with tasseled shawls, but thanks to The Chosen (you are watching it, right?) we need to put our Pharisees in black costumes, lol.  At first, I was just going to sew black ribbon over the blue ribbon on our existing shawls but, after I thought about it I decided we migh want the blue ones so I found some cotton/ linen fabric on sale at Jo Ann's (the only game in town, now, although who knows how much longer that'll hold) to make new ones.  It's surprisingly nice; I think it will work well.  But I can't find any tassels.  So I got several skeins of embroidery floss and I'm just going to make 'em.  

Dress rehearsal is Thursday; I'm behind, lol.  I will probably go in to work late; I have several hours in over my allotment already this pay period so I can  afford to use a couple of hours to sew in the morning.

Maybe I can squeeze in a bit of me-sewing next week...lol...but it will be a squeeze.  The calendar really doesn't let up until  mid April...and that's only for a couple of weeks.  I don't get an extended period of 'nothing on the calendar' until June...but I'm going to get a new hip that first week, so it's a good thing I have some time with no out-of-the-ordinary demands...  hopefully I can get recuperated enough that when things start ramping up again in the fall I'll be back to normal.  And able to put on socks and tie my shoes, lol.  It's day surgery, believe it or not.  Out patient.  Medical technology is truly amazing.

A little reminiscing....

 So, yeah, I am procrastinating.  I popped my knee a bit this evening and it hurts, so I'm sitting at the computer instead of putzing around the cutting table on the next costume...

I poked around on the blog a bit, looking at old posts, and I stumbled across one from 2007 in which I asked all my readers where they were from.

Saw a lot of names I hadn't seen in a long, long time.  I don't think I'll try it again; I had about 30 folks comment on that post and I'm sure I'd get nowhere near that now.  I don't think people comment like they used to.  I know I don't, lol.  Back in the day, there weren't feedburners and we read everyone's post right on the source.  Now most of the blog reading is done on something like Feedly and it takes an extra three or four clicks to get to the 'leave a comment' box.  I'm just as guilty as anyone else of reading right by...sometimes I think I'll go back and leave a comment but I almost always forget.  So I'm not whining about the lack of comments...just kind of wistfully remembering when it was different, lol.

But I did get a bit nostalgic for the community that we had back in those days; we all sewed and wrote it up and commented.  It was a real treat.  We even had some meet ups on shopping road trips and expo dinners, lol.  It was an amazing thing to see how we all connected via the web.

These days...folks are youtubing instead of blogging.  I do have a youtube channel; I think I got it when I made an account back in something like 2009.  I had no idea it was even there until fairly recently.  But, lawd have mercy, I don't think I could come up with enough content to make the youtube channel a thing.  I'm having enough trouble keeping two blogs active.

Maybe I'll fiddle with it in retirement, lol.  Be a cheesy old lady youtuber. Keep the brain sharp by learning video editing.....

Yeah, right, lol.

So anyway this is kinda pointless except to say that I had a love burst for all my friends...those I've met and those I haven't ...who pop by and read the sporadic posts and sometimes even leave a comment.  I appreciate all of you more than I could say.

I will hopefully be back shortly with another costume to show ;-)

Oof...a rough weekend in the sewing room....

 Good for humility, I guess.  This shoulda been something I could do in my sleep.

It's Bible costume season again.  This is not for the current church production...I am not really involved in that again, too much travel at the wrong time this year for me to be part of that team.  But I did have a friend who is participating in a walk-through program as John the Beloved and he needed a costume.  He purchased the fabric from JoAnns and Hobby Lobby and brought it to me to sew up.

First is the coat... It's a very pretty piece of upholstery fabric that has a sprayed-on interfacing.  I washed it and it softend up considerably but that backing was icky and it's going to start flaking off before long.  The coat will hang much better once it DOES rub off, I think, but it's going to be messy.  He decided he wanted sleeves, so I planned to make a Bog Coat; however, the fabric was only 54" wide and my friend is a strapping 6'4" fellow and, since the width of the fabric is the finished circumference of the coat, I didn't think that would be roomy enough.  So I altered up my trusty McCall's Bible costume...cutting the front open and the back on the fold and adding slits to the sides.  I had to cut everything on the cross - grain because he really only got enough to make a sleeveless vest. So in my humble opinion, between the bulk of the fabric, the spray on interfacing and the cross-grain cut, it doesn't hang as nicely as I would like.  I did manage to get that tried on him this morning, though, and he is pleased so that's all that matters.  I bought it back home to hem up the sleeves.

I already had the under gown cut out and, once I had the coat sleeves hemmed, proceeded to work on the gown.  Shoulda been a piece of cake.

But the right side and the wrong side are nearly indistinguishable, and that bit me.  I added self-drafted pockets and put the right one on too high, gauging off of the notch that marked the sleeve front instead of the notch that marked the waist line.  I'd already trimmed, turned and pressed the pocket facing before I realized my error.  

Cut it back, unstitched it, patched the hole in the seam allowance, cut a new pocket and tried again.

And noticed when I started to pin up the sideseams that the finished pocket bag was on the OUTSIDE of the robe.

I unpicked it, filled in the hole in the seam allowance and gave up.  He's got one pocket on the left side.

If you click on that to embiggen it you will see my hasty patch jobs.  The edge didn't really waver that much...that's just the unstable fabric showing it's tricks.

The fabric, while it appears to be a woven, behaves like a knit. A very unstable knit.  It wasn't nice to sew as it kept shifting and stretching in odd places.  The neckband (I elected to put a band rather than a facing) twisted oddly on one side.  Didn't want to risk damaging the picky fabric so I left it; I don't think it's going to be terribly noticeable but I'm not happy with it.

The whole thing is VERY heavy; my plastic hanger was threatening to buckle when I took the picture.

I have about 3 more costumes to make in the next couple of weeks...one IS for the Easter mini-production...so that's what my sewing is gong to be for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully the next ones will be more cooperative.  And I won't be stupid.

See Blog Two...

 I write two blogs, for a number of reasons, and most folks don't read the second one.

But, in the interest of not typing the same thing twice...here's a link...

Beer Lahai Roi 2/12/24

Hopefully sewing will happen later this week...

Whittling the WIP Stack --- the Velvet Hippie Earth Mother Skirt

It's been too long since I actually sat down at the sewing machine and made a thing to wear, lol.  

But, as it happens, I have a stack of things I have started ...some really an embarrassingly long time ago...and I just need to clear the Work In Progress stack.

So I started with the velvet earth mother skirt. When I left it...just a little under 11 months ago, gulp, I had finished the yoke with the pockets.  I decided to cut out each tier, sew it up, and then cut the next one, to avoid mixing the pieces up (one of the previous Hippie Earth Mother Skirts may have had that problem...).  

So, today I finished cutting the first gathered tier, and sewed it on, then I cut and assembled the second tier and have it sewn on, although I do need to serge the seam to finish the edges.

I did tackle my cutting schematic to see if I could do wider, and fewer, tiers, but my fabric was 2" too narrow for that to work.  I have to use the narrow tiers to be able to use up the fabric efficiently.

Which means...5 tiers, with each tier 1.5 times the volume of the one above it...the hem is going to be something like 330" around.  Yeesh. Fortunately, for a velvet, the fabric is fairly light.

I made a casing for a drawstring, just in case it's too heavy for the elastic, just the same.

So, anyway, I shall be gathering for a bit, lol.

When doing something so bodacious and hefty, I use dental floss to gather ... Zigzag over it, 

Then pull the dental floss and secure the ends.  This is waxed, which means the gathers aren't terribly inclined to slip once I've got them arranged...but it's kinda stiff, so I do pull it out after the seaming is all done.

That's just a little tedious, lol.

Not sure when I will finish this; likely not in time to wear it this season as 1) all the fancy events are behind us and 2) even though our high was in the teens today, we'll be pushing 70 in a week.  We're likely done with winter at that point, based on historical trends.  But I'll be ready for  any holiday parties that arise in 2024, lol.