It tastes like ruffles.

I am SO CLOSE to being done with the skirt I can nearly taste it. And by close I mean perhaps 3 or 4 hours out. >_<

Having cut out all three layers of circle skirt with the intention of gathering them in, I then hemmed the shit out of all of that. It ran me out of good black thread. Get at least 3 spools of black and 2 of brown for this thing...perhaps it's a bit late to be saying that now, but oh well.*

*First! I figured out I wanted to raise the hemline of the long layer in the front to about 14", and then cut another 2" off the back. Make marks with chalk at the longest and shortest points of the skirt on the circle you've cut out, and then figure out the deviation (mine went from lik 14" to 22" so had about 8" of deviation) and mark half-way points, and then halfway between the halfway points...until you get an oval kinda thing. It's like using a compass but not for a circle.

I used a rolled hemming foot and it was fabulous. Don't try it without one...only pain lies that way. Also, it is hard to get a fine curved edge--that's why they tell you to practice on straight lines first. This is true. For curved edges I futzed up a lot--ask me at Sakuracon if you want to see where. It doesn't make much difference if you're not staring at it from three inches away, but I strive for perfection. This is because I am nuts, but perhaps you are too.
The black fabric had stretch in it--just a little, but enough that with the weight and length of the fabric it pulls and I'm not sure if anything can be done about it. It makes the hemmed edge a bit wavy but...so what? It's for ruffles and doesn't matter anyway.
Go slow, be careful, and slide the edge over tiny bits constantly...this way you slowly make up for the changing width of the curving hemline.
Good luck, have patience. Unpicking it's a pain in the butt, so care is better.

Having hemmed everything, the next task was to gather them up into the right size to be sewn to the skirt.

I sewed the ends of the layers together, which in retrospect was probably not a good idea. The chiffon layer turned out to be almost a foot longer for some weird reason, so I had to cut it apart anyway. Also, working in the halves makes less fabric to drag around.

First off, figure out what lengths you want the skirt layers to be. DO NOT go crazy and sew the chiffon layer to the top skirt layer (yet) and then discover the lengths are wrong and spend an hour and a half unpicking the two apart.
DO NOT do that. It sucks.

DO sew the chiffon layer to the top black satin layer when you have the lengths right. This will keep the two from shifting around when you gather them in the next step. Yay for stability!

DO set the sewing machine on a big zigzag stitch. DO buy some embroidery thread (thicker, whatever color) and pin it to the fabric in a spot directly behind where the zigzag stitch will be. Pull the embroidery thread through and under the foot...(it's a C foot on my Viking) The idea is that the zigzag crosses over the embroidery thread and then at the end you pull on the pinned thread and VOILA! Shit is gathered. AND you can futz with the gathering to make it as much or little as you like. Fabulous.

So I've done that to the bottom layer. Tonight I'll go RE-sew the top two layers together and gather them again, and THEN sew some stuff to the skirt!!

So close.
~Raiphin

Afternoon in Fabric, a photostory.

Today was something of a reconnaissance mission. I've lost 9 pounds since I started this fun, but still have 6-11 to my goal weight. I'm having visible changes now, and need to buy all new pants. Sigh. But while I can't start patterning or cutting fabric quite yet, it does give me time to research what fabric I want to use for the costume.

If you scroll down and stare at Haruhi's costume, you'll see I've got several different kinds of fabric I need to work with, and I need the colors (shades of black, mostly) to be friendly with each other.

There's the bra part of the top, which is white and needs to be gathered top and bottom and be able to have little buttonholes where the black rope will pass through in the top. I'm thinking white suiting for this, and basing it all on a white bra I need to buy but again can't until I'm the right size and all.

There's the base black fabric for the top and the part of the skirt which is not a ruffle. I think these should be the same fabric to sync the two pieces together. I was thinking of thick swimsuit fabric--slick and with a bit of stretch--for the skirt but I realized I don't want that much stretch in the top--I need to get that to fit right and stay put. I want a little 2-way stretch, but I don't want to play with much I found this today, but it was WAY too stretchy...

I may end up just using black suiting for these portions...it's thick and 8$/yard, has a bit of stretch and irons like a dream. We'll see.

I knew what I wanted to use as the top fluffy transparent layer for the skirt, and that's smoky chiffon. I'd like to find one that's brown/black but smoky seems to be what's available. I found this but wasn't sure how much I needed. I just get a foot for my sewing machine last week that finishes chiffon and other things nice and neatly which I'm kind of exciting about getting to break out when the time comes.
Snap, I lied, this is organza. But I'll probably end up with chiffon.


I'm torn on the big ruffly part of the skirt. I looked at duchess satin, (more structured but heavier) and taffeta (lighter and stiff, but too light? would it look silly?) but couldn't pick one to be really good. I'm considering the possibility of doubling the taffeta, and putting a stichery row along the edge of the ruffles and running cord or wire through it to make the ends heavier and maybe sway when I walk....not sure.

I also found satin taffeta at another store, which looked pretty good:


this was a cheap black satin that was 50% off, but there wasn't enough to get to play with. For 3.50/yrd I'd just like to have seen how it did, you know?


in the end I bought 10 yrds of the cheapest muslin I could find and will be playing with draping that on my dress form when I can get the right dimensions on it. I'll take pictures of that amateur hilarity when it happens.

So, the other part of the costume which I've been thinking about is the belt. It looks like an impossibly wide belt that will probably need to be in 2 pieces and glued together to get the angles right. It's got two layers, a gunmetal gray or silver layer on the bottom and a slightly smaller black layer on top that has diamond cut-outs every few inches along the middle. Those are going to be a bitch.

I looked at 2 helpful things today, a thick cord thing that vinyl in the right colors cold be wrapped around, and a thick silver belt-looking thing that is probably too thin, but looks really cool.



The last thing I found may actually be super cool. I found it in the fabric store closest to me which is awesome, but there were a million people in the store and didn't want to deal with it twice (once for the muslin before I found this.)
One of the things that worried me was that on the top there's black that goes up in between her boobs. What the hell is that? How does it attach?
So what I fould was a black velvet...tube. I'm thinking of ransacking an old bra for the underwire, sliding the underwire through the velvet tube, and then hand-sewing it to the top.
Should I mention now how very VERY bad I am at hand-sewing? well, it's all a learning process.


So that's what I've been up to. I'm also working on the guitar, but there's a thing in the works that will very probably fall through but would be super-awesome dance around crazy good.
That's why it probably won't happen.

~Raiphin