Friday 25 June 2010

Progress, and old new fabric (1)

Still working on the chemise. It still seems the French seaming will work.

I decided against lining the Regency dress. Instead, I'll wear a bodiced petticoat underneath if necessary. I feel that a lined dress would be a bother to wear in summer, and that would defy the point in using Indian cotton (= saree). Which I do not want to defy.

Also, I wanted to get rid of some fabric (particularly, a friend wanted to get rid of some fabric) and helped organise a collection of fabric for charity.
I should have known better. I ended up taking some of the fabric home, and of course there was much more of it than I got rid of.
The moral of the story: When you have the sewing bug, it's no use trying to get rid of fabric. Your stash always multiplies.
The good thing is, I got rid of fabric I wasn't likely to use, and brought home fabric I'm more likely to use, colour-wise and type-wise. Except for a Very Pink Poplin of a "What was I thinking?" kind. (I actually know what I was thinking. It's just that what I was thinking doesn't explain what I'm going to do with the whole length of it.)

It started with this lovely flowered seersucker (supposing it's still called seersucker when it's flowered):



Which begged me to become another incarnation of my Andrea Blouse pattern.

And I went downhill from there. You know how that goes, don't you?



Yellow plainweave cotton, destined to become something in our kitchen.



Thick orange cotton canvas, destined to become a shoulder bag, if I can figure that out.



A square piece of lovely vintage-y print which will, hopefully, with some careful planning become a summer skirt.



A pretty yellow sweatshirting which I wanted to turn into a clone of my favourite hoodie, except that it has less body to it and is more... um... it pulls more, if that makes sense.
I also have some blue-grey sweatshirting and some dark blue, but there's just that amount of solid colour sweatshirting you could bear to see, I think. Those blue ones are "firmer" than the yellow one, so perhaps I'll use one of those for the hoodie clone in the end.



Beige corduroy. A disclaimer: I do not answer for my behaviour around beige corduroy. It equals someone else's behaviour around, say, Prada shoes. I do not care for Prada shoes one bit. I do care for beige corduroy. A lot.



The Very Pink Poplin Of Doom. The thing I was thinking was that this would make lovely piping for the flowered seersucker Andrea. Except that after that is done I'll still be left with about 2 metres of Very Pink Poplin.
If I were a bold-statement-kind-of-person, I'd sew a Very Pink Duster out of it and call it ironic. But my irony is usually much more subtle (like, I have an idea of making a polka-dotted babydoll-y dress in Regency style, grande-aissettes and all - see my point?), so that would not work for me. Not to mention that a proper duster of OUATITW type would probably require more fabric.
So, until next post, I'm left with a Very Pink Poplin Of Doom. The next post will feature some real treasures, to defeat the Doom of the Very Pink Poplin.

4 comments:

  1. Is the Very Pink Poplin made of cotton? If so, once you're done with the piping you could always dye it...

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  2. I haven't figured that out yet. I ought to today.
    Although, there are dyes that work even for artificial fibres, so that really seems like the best thing to try. Thanks.

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  3. What´s a "duster"...? Please explain to not-so-good-in-english me :)
    I like your new fabric! You could also use the pink one for some sort of lining... maybe? It would be great in a bag, I think.
    Jana

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  4. A duster is something like a trench coat, called duster because its original purpose was to shield the clothes underneath from dust. :-)
    The OUATITW type of duster I'm speaking about is this: http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/5971/021fr5.png
    http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/7201/039kl3.png

    Yes. As much as I like the idea of dyeing it and using it as something sensible, home-dyed fabrics usually demand special care, so in the end I decided to use smallish bits of it here and there. Another idea I had was making a pencil case (the roll type) for my coloured pencils, so that I can travel with them easier. Maybe - MAYBE - also some book covers or so. If I can find a book that needs a cover and can survive this pinkness.

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