Night Out
Jenny, Emily and I have decided to conduct our Cookie-fest meet up on a monthly basis and work our way through their menu.
In the spirit of extending the socialising awesomeness to anyone else that sews and likes wining and dining (non-bloggers and sewing newbies totally welcome) I’d like to propose a monthly get together over food and wine (or coffee and cake or some awe-tastic combination of all of the above) where we hang out as a group and socialise (swaps and trades welcome for fabric, notions, patterns and tools).
All you have to do is show up (hopefully with a smile) dressed up (high-end jeans are fine* by me. I don’t care if it’s something you’ve made or re-fashioned or altered or bought).
-or killed. Haha.
In the interests of making it easy on everyone (transport-wise) the event will be held at one (or more) of the fine establishments in the city-off the top of my head: Cookie/ The Toff, Gin Palace, The Seamstress (oh yes), or for a small gathering Blue Chillies probably on a Friday or Saturday night.
Sadly, that is not an iron.
I will put together a list of interested parties and send you a calender invite + reminder. Car pooling should be doable.
If you’d like a warm up to test the waters, the three of us will be attending the Hollywood Costume exhibit at ACMI next Sunday-send me a note and I’ll let you know where and when you can meet us (either for the exhibit or for lunch/tea after or both).
Can’t promise it’ll end this way but I will try almost anything once.
Expressions of interest below – *please* use a gmail address if you have one, invites are via Calendar which does not play well with other email types (if you’re reading this in Feedly, click on ‘Preview’ or on the title of this post):
*You spend $800 on a pair of jeans you better be wearin’ ‘em to someone’s wedding is all I’m sayin’.
Disclaimer: All images remain copyright of their original owners and are used here (under an attribution, non-commercial license) for purposes of illustration and/or humour. All images link to source.
Sewing in the Media: The Great British Sewing Bee S1/E1Reviewed
i.e. Aunty Beeb ‘discovers’ that home sewing is a big deal.
I forced Carl to sit through this with me. Good to have a civilian present to help document the bloodshed. It was fairly entertaining.
Episode 1: The stage is set, some entertainment occurs.
Some of the contestants: charity worker Michelle-gorgeous, extra points for hubby attempting to feed the kid on camera (amateur feeder?). Extra, extra points for shoes-off machine operation. Sandra’s a sweetheart (the trauma of all having to wear the same curtain dress at the same time without the benefit of being actual triplets=learning to sew for yourself from an early age). Mark the lovable pirate (BBC2 seem to think Steampunk is an actual historical era. Carl: they obviously spend too much time on Etsy). Ann- her 75 years of sewing experience is going to kick everyone else in the centre back seam. Lauren: Best accent ever (Carl agrees).
Stuart. He’s in a class of his own. My heart says Stuart for the win. My head disagrees.
The Judges
May Martin, Sewing Expert with 40 years of teaching experience (100% bullsh*t-free) the submissives are gonna be lining up for her sewing classes.
Suave talking-beard and Saville Row businessman Patrick Grant (described as a ‘brilliant tailor’ by the host who seems cute and all but I have trouble taking orange people seriously-given time I suspect she’ll grow on me. Much like a fungus).
Total desaturation is an unfortunate effect of adjusting out the deadly orange hue..
Challenge 1: A-line skirt
Oh the men are going to rock at this..
I’ve never made a skirt before, Claudia. A-line or otherwise.
Lovely to have you here Stuart.
British drama.
Sandra-puckering at seams and zipper, Jane-obvious pattern mismatch at seams and darts, Stuart-uneven top-stitching, puckering everywhere (Patrick: You seem to have issues with moving fabric through the machine). Mark-concealed zipper fail, Michelle apparently has puckering on the trim (what?), Tilly-puckering at dart ends and seams, general bagginess of silhouette, concealed zipper mismatch and uh.. those pockets..
Carl: Oh g*d it looks like a private part. With flowers on it.
Patrick: If you are going to add something make sure it doesn’t detract from the overall impression of the garment.
Yea. That. I’ve said this before: seam-line pockets are lazy and look messy. I’ve had (majorly irritating) personal experience with their presence in commercial patterns (the big four are major offenders in this area but Patrones does it too). I don’t include pockets of this sort in my makes anymore: they gape and add bulk at the worst possible place. Yes, contrast facings and linings are awesome (and a great way to use up scraps) but the insides of pockets are meant to be concealed (Claire Schaffer and any number of vintage sewing books agree with me on this).
Anyhoo Patrick concludes that the men suck at making skirts (and it only took him 3 hours to figure it out) first place goes to the person that used a lining and did it well. Sandra eff yea.
Sandra: my daughter’s ‘ll be like balls a pop.
Whatever tickles their fancy dahling. Edit: she meant bottles of pop-possibly the first time since the 1770s that carbonated beverages have been a big deal. Or any sort of deal at all.
This was followed by a short feature on historic aspects of the home-sewing pattern industry.
Yo Aunty Beeb that’s not British-it’s a copyright expired piece of Simplicity propaganda from the USofA
That’s better. The pug in the gas mask is an added bonus.
Challenge II was a garment refashion titled, changing the neckline on a high-street top.
Sandra sewed on the facing back to front then cut off the seam to fix it. (I saw this on the teaser clip and was overwhelmed by the desire to smack her across the back of her head with a laptop-others had a more measured response).
Patrick: In tailoring we call that ‘a bit of pork’. Read:in tailoring Patty gets a special sandbox to play in, keeping him well and truly out of the way of the real tailors (amateurs, on the other hand, get to suck it up and act like they love it).
Except Ann.
Because Ann is awesome. She will cut you (with a dull rusty pair of snips) and you will thank her politely as you stagger out of the room clutching your innards.
Tilly:..just gonna draft a collar..
*Make bloody sure it’s not a PeterPan then.*
Aaand-it’s a PeterPan collar.
Too short for the neckline so there’s a raw edge where it doesn’t meet at centre front. Everyone sucked at this. Michelle’s version sucked least of all. And Ann’s. Because Ann is awesome.
Patrick to Jane: It’s good from afar but far from good.
Ha! Fully redeemed. I see his function now. Angry gay guy. Love it. Welcome, Cowell junior.
Edit: He’s ostensibly straight *the twittersphere groans collectively and goes back to looking at cat videos*.
May to Tilly: You’ve actually got to stand back and say, what can I do in the time-what can I do well.
Challenge III-Dressmaking for (and fitting onto) a regular human being
Patrick to the host: I’m not a lover of the scallop-even if it’s done well. You have good taste Sir.
Lauren appears to have omitted the zipper from her Colette Macaron. Or something. Tilly’s making a scallop-necked vintage dress-right after the main judge said he’s not into scallops. Tilly for the win.
Ann-pretty good fit (some puckering at the sleeve-head), weird 80s colour combo. The model seems to love it. Lauren-over fitted, stress-lines and tightness everywhere. Bust darts are pointing someplace weird. Mark-some puckering at the princess seam curve, but otherwise awesome especially in the arrangement of the dot print and especially considering this is his first dress. Ever. Michelle-stretched out neckline (should’ve seam taped the silk immediately after cutting. At least she used a rotary cutter instead of the dressmakers shears everyone else was rockin’. Work it, lady). Sandra-frumpy as all heck but well made. Stuart-combined a massive repeat pattern fabric with a sectioned dress pattern. Every single seam has obvious glaring pattern mis-matches and the fit is hideous. His poor model looks pregnant but not in a good way. Tilly-um…
May wants to burn it. I suggest using it for the next refashion. Aunty Beeb (i.e taxpayers) paid for the fabric afterall.
Neckline not laying flat, weird poofiness all over the bodice, weird lumping at the waist seam and wonky hem. During the actual sewing session Patrick passed by Tilly and told her to remove the excess fabric at the bust using darts.
He’s a judge and he solved fitting issues for a contestant. Thanks Patty. Welcome back to the wasting-all-the-Oxygen-in-the-room-train. You’ll be riding it solo for the rest of the season.
Tilly’s response: No idea where the other dart’s needed.
Uh.. it goes where the excess fabric is. He just gave you the answer. Make an armhole to bust point dart and be done with it.
Then the contestants went away and the judges discussed their decision with the host. And this happened:
Aaand Patty’s locked to Oxygen-wasting mode for the rest of the season.
Patty, sweetheart, fitting to the shape of the model was point of the last challenge. Do not blame the model. She is perfect as she is.
See? Perfect.
And so Michelle got sent home. She messed up one out of three challenges and got sent home. The end of this episode was like every American movie where the black guy dies first. Except this time it was totally unexpected.
My recap:
| Contestant | A-line skirt | Top Re-fashion | Dressmaking and Fitting |
| Ann | Technically well executed. | Technically well executed. | Not bad, but I’m not crazy about it. |
| Jane | Good-o | Junior serial-killer clown costume. | N/A |
| Lauren | Not bad. | Not bad. | Booby-fitting breakdown. Anne Hathaway’s Chanel blooper? Erased. |
| Mark | WTF. Bollocks’d it | Oh g*d the pain, make it stop. | WoW. Ladies, control yourselves he’s a married man. |
| Michelle | Nice | Not bad. | Wrap-front bloop. |
| Sandra | Yay it’s lined. Win. | Noob stuff-up-bollocks’d it. | Frumpalicious but well fitted. Gets the 1850s violin. |
| Stuart | WTF my eyes are screaming. | Eh. | Tornado of mis-matched seams+instant preggo silhouette. |
| Tilly | Wha? Bollocks’d it | Bollocks’d it again. | Crikey. 3/3 eff’d |
Conclusion: Somewhat entertaining. I wasn’t happy with the decision to cut Michelle and have adjusted my expectations accordingly (Carl went and signed up to their website so he could comment on the idiocy he’d just witnessed).
Hopefully this series doesn’t have the Yay-let’s buy a shitty plastic POC sewing machine then ditch it when we realise the work involved effect that Project Runway had on the general viewing public.
Previously, on Sewing in the Media.
Disclaimer: All images remain property of their original owners and are used here for the purposes of discussion and review.
Consensus: Burdastyle Special added to Pattern Pyramid
All comments point to binning (the print-out pattern from the Pattern Pyramid set) which means I can now fit a Burdastyle in there instead of the two knit patterns I’d added earlier. Which means should you decide to enter, you now have 18 more patterns* to choose from instead of just two.
Here’s a selection of my favourites (scroll for pattern summary/line diagrams):
The car coat is just luxe. The empire waist dress is similar to burdastyle’s Danielle (but way more elegant) so you should be able to make all sorts of variations out of it.
I’m not big on fur** but they’ve dialed down the trash setting with this version; also the pattern’s pretty simple and sweet and could easily be used for heavy boucle or something more furniture-y if that’s your thing.
Right: Claire Underwood eff yea
Independent, modern, minimalist, high achiever. I’ll take that over vintage-airhead any day. I could sing Claire’s praises here but it’s already been done. And yes. I have traced off that blouse.
* I don’t count ‘variations’ as patterns. The size range is between 34-48 or 34-50 for most of the patterns.
**I have no issues with the humane killing of introduced pests for ‘eco-fur’ i.e. rabbits in Australia and Australian possums in New Zealand.
Disclaimer: All images remain copyright of their original owners and are used here for the purposes of illustration, discussion and review.
Pattern Pyramid le nth
I’m coming down with the flu so I’ll keep this short (my sewing machine’s out of the running as well, so at least I don’t feel like I’m wasting sewing time by being sick harhar).
Won this Pattern Pyramid parcel off the Curious kiwi blog (the rules are in that post-read ‘em) kept the Patrones (8 patterns to trace+flu=I’m not gonna get this traced before the giveaway ends) replaced it with two knit patterns and it’s bagged, tagged and ready to be swagged by the next recipient.
All patterns are multi-sized except for the McCall’s 8269 (I’ve enlarged size numbers on some of the patterns for clarity). I’ve made a modified version of the Jalie 2682 here. There’s also a print-out of the paperbag dress in size 36. Ladies, why are we blowing postage on a single-size print-out of a free pattern that anyone can download and print for themselves? I ask because the thing is heavy, thick, unwieldy and in its absence I could’ve fit a Patrones/ Burda in the envelope instead of the two knit patterns I added.
Seriously, does anyone actually want this thing? It’s a sh*tload of unnecessary (and totally avoidable) cost in international postage. EDIT: I chucked the print-out and added a burdastyle special.
Right, on to the details: anyone, anywhere with a blog can enter. Tell me where you are, what the weather there’s like, which of these you want and (optional) whether the paperbag dress print-out should join its paper bag friends in my recycling bin.
Giveaway ends Sunday 7 April, 2013. On a totally separate note Groupon Melbourne has a boylesque deal that looks like hilariously cheesy awesomeness (the description says classy and vintage, click on ‘already registered’ if the annoying popup pops up). Drop me a line if you’d like to join me for a good laugh (otherwise it’s just going to be me and a bunch of gay guys-still hilarious but neither vintage nor classy).
Disclaimer: All images remain copyright of their original owners and are used here for purposes of illustration, discussion and review.
Midori + Meetup Awesomeness
Spent the better part of yesterday (‘course it was the better part!) with Jenny and Emily. Prepare to have your retinas seared by hideous iphone images. But first, here’s the dress I wore:
Standout moment of the day: walking through Myers department store and being approached by two buff, shirtless, hunks in low waisted jeans.
Hunk 1: Moisturiser?
Me: What, to put on you?
Hunk 1: *pause* -it’s a sample…
Me: Sure, why not (in my defence, it was men’s moisturiser and he did consider my offer).
I believe Emily’s response to Hunk 2′s offer was, ‘Sure. Squirt some on, I’ll rub it in for ya’.
What was that thing about great minds thinking alike?
Emily, deconstructing the work of art that was the top tier of our high tea.
The lads were very tolerant given it was 5:40 PM and they’d probably been putting up with cheeky comments for 4-6 hours by then. Oh well, presumably Biotherm paid them for their time and their calendars are now booked solid for the next decade, so all’s well.
Structured wool clothing from Woolmark International’s Australian winner Dion Lee. Images of other finalists’ creations here, my favourites here (that cross-stitched dress..*o0*). Apologies for the lack of hunk shots, I was completely distracted-they should put them in the women’s lingerie section next time.
Emily and I had La Terre Sucree High Tea at the NGV tea room (24 hours later my pores are still oozing sugar. Sofi’s lounge next time-I prefer savouries) then browsed Cleggs Fabric store and the Magnation store (they have the September and October 2013 issues of burdastyle andthis issue of La Mia Boutique on the ‘Crafts’ shelf at the moment-jump on it).
We then made our way through Myers department store, got our moisturiser samples (hawhawhaw) and walked to Cookie where we met a fabulous lady in a completely self-drafted wiggle dress (with an awesome zipper in the back) and had dinner and cocktails together.
Emily’s wearing a skirt from an Oona swap, Jenny’s in a self-drafted wiggle dress. The waiter was so distracted by our hand-made awesomeness he brought us water twice and blurred every photo he took of us. The rest were taken by a helpful waitress.
Emily and I discussed pattern drafting the last time we met, so Emily brought along some drafting books for me: a Mrs. Stylebook and a vintage drafting textbook she’d used to teach herself drafting. I spent the tram ride home excitedly flipping through the books.
Mrs. Stylebook essentially gives you the directions for turning your personal bodice, skirt and pant blocks into contemporary wearable garments (much like the Pattern Drafting for Dressmaking/ Kamakura-Shobo books used to in the 60s, 70s and 80s). There’s another, similar, magazine called Lady Boutique with more ‘grown up clothes’ but I’ve never seen one of those in Australia.
Here’s a couple of my favourites from the Mrs. Stylebook:
I love both these tunics. The one on the left is such a simple, modern silhouette and the sleeve treatment on it is just elegant. The one on the right should work well as a day shirt/ silk blouse too.
MSB often includes designer patterns but I’ve only ever seen them feature Japanese designer patterns before, bit of a surprise to see an Anne Klein number. I really like the shirt dress on the left, it gives the impression of a narrower waist without any physical cinching involved.
I need to check on the copyright status of the other one (low hopes, it’s from 1970) to see if I can scan it for Friday Freebies.
When I got home Carl was in the middle of a whiskey tasting session with one of his programmer friends.
C: What do you mean hunks?
Friend: We’re hunks mate.
Me: Oh good, you’ll need this moisturiser then.
He left it behind. But not before having an interesting discussion with me on making a proper pattern/fabric catalogue app for mobile devices. Coolcoolcool.
Pattern: Patrones 306, dress 23 H&M
Fabric: Double sided silk (the wrong side is black)-a birthday gift from Carl (I wore it the day we were in the live audience for Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell show and the audience prepper asked about it. When I said I’d made it from fabric Carl gave me the whole audience went awwwww).
Modifications: I (cold) machine-washed the silk, line-dried it, and pressed it before use. Shortened the pattern 2 cm at the waist and 3 cm at the hem. The armholes are on the bias at centre points so I’d suggest basting through inside the seam lines or bias covering them first. I didn’t, and there was bit of stretching while I sewed so I actually had the take in the shoulders about half a cm front and back (either that or it just has larger sleeve openings than normal). All inner seams finished with a narrow hem presser foot.
Tights from Galstern.
Disclaimer: All non-self generated images remain property of their owners and are used here for purposes of illustration, discussion and review.
Google Reader is Dead*. Long live everything else.
I’m trialling Feedly at the moment.
The Feedly interface. Clean and minimalist. To a point. Which is followed by ads.
The good
- Sign in via Google and all your feeds auto-magically transfer to Feedly.
- The Feedly iphone app (and presumably its counterpart for Android devices) syncs everything across all my devices so I can read my feeds whenever, wherever
The bad
- I can’t seem to alphabetise my feeds at the moment
- Feedly lacks a Chrome bookmarklet – I’d like to just click something in the dropdown bookmark bar in Chrome to subscribe when I come across a blog I want to follow
- The *($%&%feckin ads-they’re only at the very top right of the feed and disappear as you scroll but heck ads just make me wanna kick punch the perpetrator in the head-I used paid versions for all my apps because I can’t stand any ‘buy this sh*t’ messages encroaching on my peaceful existance (and if it’s well made then it’s worth paying for)
Keep scrolling and they disappear but that horrible advertisement aftertaste lingers..
I’ll be testing a couple of other web-based RSS aggregators over the coming week (in so much as Uni and social commitments will allow):
- Google Currents-I don’t want to use this because I no longer feel Google deserves my time. Cutting off Reader while shitty things like Google plus and Orkut (don’t ask) still exist is just plain shite, I don’t care what their excuse is. I would’ve paid to keep using Reader, too bad that option was never on the table. However, I value functionality (and design) above all so if this works I’m ready to be pragmatic and eat a little crow.
- Pulse: looks beautiful but I don’t know if I’m ready for magazine format yet. I subscribe to a lot of very different feeds and having all those disparate images crowded together magazine-style will just give me the heebiejeebies. I’m also worried it’ll be a b*tch to use on mobile devices (download allowance-wise).
- Newsblur: Looks like the most promising of the non-Feedly set. $1 for the full version and it if works well I will jump on it ($12 a year for pain-free blog reading seems well worth the cost).
- Flipboard: That dreaded magazine format again, combined with ‘social’ extras (I have a blog and I’m on twitter. I don’t need any more social interaction, particularly during reading time-I wanna read my stories in peace goddammit).
- Netvibes: The website looks a tad too ‘oriented to attract business users‘-the cost for the ‘full deal’ supports that hypothesis. Givin’ this one a miss.
If you’re trying out any of these or know of other acceptable alternatives (yes I know bloglovin’ exists I’m just not a fan of the interface), give me a holler.
EDIT: Digg is building a Reader replacement. Please request feature requests and suggestions in the comments to that article or tweet them @digg.
And now for some light relief (video of some old movie of Hitler getting pissed off at getting his @$$ kicked by the Allied Forces with the Reader fiasco parodied over it-avoid if this sort of thing pisses you off. Or if you’re at work. I loved the two crying ladies. “Don’t worry he can still export the feed as an XML file“).
This is me (right after a hair cut).
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