Category Archives: dressmaking

Tweedy Jacket

Since Wednesday I have been working on a new jacket using the felt tweed technique Galina posted a link to on the Forum, after making a couple of samples last week, I dove in, designing a template from an old coat. Even using dress-making paper, it was a struggle to get the expanded template to fit on the sheet.

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Laying out 2 layers of merino over a resist for the torso:

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Adding the yarns, this was quite a challenge, especially when I came to flip it over and had all the long lengths from the back, that would be used to decorate the front, got into a bit of a tangled mess. After some patient de-tangling it all came good in the end…

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The sleeves were somewhat easier (no resist involved).

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And the (nearly) finished jacket, all sewn up. It just needs a couple of buttons (nothing in my button tin suits this jacket) and possibly straightening the bottom edge; currently the front right hand side (left hand side of the photo) hangs slightly lower than the left. What do you think? Asymmetrical clothing appears to be back in fashion but I’m not sure this qualifies, does it just look a bit untidy?

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Given that all the yarns I used were synthetic (mostly acrylic) I was impressed by how well they embedded into the felt, there a just a handful of small loops that I will stitch down by hand.

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A close up of all the lovely textures!

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Easter Weekend

I love the long holiday weekends and Easter, with both the Friday and the Monday off is the best of all, a whole 4 days to do with as I please, and invariably that means textiles!

I’ve had my fingers in lots of different textile pies this week:

A new nuno dress (photos of that later – it is nearly finished so won’t be too long to wait).

My first attempt at a tailored jacket, I love everything about it except for the collar reveal, it’s all lumpy and misshapen and I can’t figure out why… it will be accompanying me to my dress-making class, hopefully the tutor can explain what I have done wrong and, more importantly, how to put it right.

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Back in the felt world, I made a new lacy scarf and, while I was dyeing this, I put in a few pieces of prefelt, I’m debating on cutting up the prefelt to make nuno scarves with geometric designs.

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I am finding myself drawn back into the beauty of the microscopic world (in part thanks to pinterest) and have been developing an idea for a 3D representation of a carpet of cells. I am thinking a series of small pods, the interiors will be black so that when I cut an opening they will appear to have nuclei. The question is, how to join them together? I have 3 or 4 ideas on how I might achieve this. This is my first test piece…

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I’m ashamed to say I have been procrastinating terribly over posting my work on Etsy for the last few of months to the point where I have a box full of work now waiting to be listed. However, I have been making amends this weekend and photographed 80% of it, now I  just need to make myself sit down and write the descriptions and titles. Definitely a job to be done in front of the TV with a glass of wine in hand! 🙂

What have you been up to this weekend?