Red Waistcoat

This has been mostly done for months, and I've finally finished it! Hopefully I will finish a reasonable amount of other things this summer.

 I've doodled a few variations of this waistcoat in my sketchbook.

 I think I must have started this late last year, since it was traced from the top of Nax's robe pattern. I really like the built up collar on that robe, and wanted something with the same collar for me to wear. I don't have any pictures of the pattern, but it's basically the top part of the robe minus the sleeves, and with a bit added to some of the seams because he's a little bit smaller than me.

 I don't appear to have taken any photos of it early in construction, but it's just sewn and lined normally. I slipstitched the bottom edge of the lining because I wanted it to line up nicely, and I bound the armholes with bias strips of red cotton.

 I used red & gold cotton for the facing, bemberg for the lining, and red & black dupioni for the rest. The bemberg and dupioni were both left over from my line.

 For the trim I wanted to use ribbon, but I couldn't find a suitable one in my stash, so I cut a piece of the selvedge off my black dupioni yardage and used that. In hindsight, I probably should have done something different, because it was very lumpy and is fraying a bit on one side.

 I folded it in a zig-zag way and then folded it in half to make triangles, which is an awfully vague description, so I hope it shows up alright in the photo.

 I stitched along the edge of them by hand to make sure they stayed folded, and hand sewed them to the inside edge of the collar.

My nails matching the the facing in this picture was actually a coincidence.

 I spent ages trying to decide what to do for the front closures. The robe closes with hooks and eyes, but that seemed a little plain for this waistcoat. After a lot of sketching I decided upon button loops with 2 rows of diamond things.
The diamonds are interfaced bits of black dupioni with the edges very carefully turned under, and stitched down along the edges by machine.

Before sewing the loose ends on and adding the buttons.

Buttons attached!

The lining and facings.

Done!

 Annoyingly, the collar which I liked so much is mostly hidden by my hair when I wear it.

 I'm not completely happy with the fit. I suspect it's from interfacing too much and not cutting the shoulder piece on the bias. And possibly from not allowing enough space in the collar for a cravat.

 The tiny buttons are surprisingly difficult to do up! Though I doubt they would be for someone with short fingernails.

 I prefer the way it looks unbuttoned anyways.

 Hopefully the next incarnation of this pattern will be better.

2015 in review

Whoops, I keep forgetting to update this blog. I used to post here every week. How did I manage that?
Anyhow, here is what I made in 2015!

My line. It feels like this was ages ago.

 I feel like I didn't do much sewing at all last year, but I did do these 6 outfits for the College fashion show. More pictures of them here. (As well as the image sources because I didn't take any of these.)

 For the most part, I'm quite happy with my fashion show outfits, and 2 waistcoats, 4 shirts, and a pair of pants from my line ended up fitting me well enough to wear!

 Naxius's Jupiter Ascending robe and pants commission!

(source)

It is ridiculously huge and beautiful and sparkly and I love it.
I don't love the fact that I still have sequin fragments in my carpet after more than 3 months, but I'm doing my best to stick as many sequins as I can to Nax whenever he comes over in the hopes that they'll infest his house too.

(More photos here.)
I still have more square sequins to sew on the outside, plus a few other things to fix up.

 My ace flag sash. A pretty simple project, but I like it.

 My weird blue wool waistcoat. I haven't worn this much because I think it needs a big bunch of Other Stuff in order to work right. It just doesn't work with my solid black garments. It needs to be accompanied by blue and grey garments that have texture, and possibly a large floaty distressed cape thing.

 A shirt. It is a good shirt and I must make more. I did start another linen one, but haven't finished it.

 Two fabulous unfinished waistcoats! I need to finish these! I don't think I've posted either of them here. The above one is black silk with sage greyish green embroidery in a Beardsley inspired swirly pattern. It's about 90% done.

 One day I decided to pick all the dark blue sequins out of my jar of sequins and now I have a glittery half finished waistcoat. The sleeves and back are a whole lot of anachronistic nonsense and I'm really looking forward to wearing it.

I also did a bunch of non sewing things. Last school year I took a bookbinding course.

Holy crap my nails are so short here.

 I made a coffin book, and an octopus book, among others. I want to make more coffin books!

Look at how tiny and stumpy that thumbnail is! Poor thing!

 I also painted some space fabric and made this book as a Christmas present for my friend Rhys.

 And I made a necklace for Nax.

I made a lot of friends in 2015! Unfortunately I didn't do much sewing for most of the later part of the year, and what I did sew was mainly more unfinished projects. I guess I sort of crashed after the fashion show and just didn't get back to sewing regularly. I also completely fell off the Historical Sew Fortnightly wagon. Oops.

But this year I will try to do more stuff! I'm making an effort to draw more, and so far I've filled at least one sketchbook page everyday this year (with the exception of the day a whole bunch of water leaked into my room).
And I really, really need to sew more clothes for myself. Especially pants. I've been saying that for a couple of years now, haven't I?

Balem Abrasax robe commission

I recently completed my first big commission!

It's a robe worn by the character Balem Abrasax in the film Jupiter Ascending, which I highly recommend watching because the visuals are stunning.

This particular costume doesn't get much screen time, and you can't see it very well in the movie, but the promotional pictures are amazing.

Evil space capitalists are always well dressed.

My friend Naxius is the one who commissioned the costume, and I've been working on it for about 3 months. (If you're from the maritimes you may recognize him as the guy who cosplays Loki.)

So, so many sequins.

(All 3 of the above images are from the lookbook website linked earlier in the post.)

Source.

I didn't take a picture of all the fabrics together but it's made of a gold sequined material with black chiffon over top of it. The lining is a dark gold satin.

The partly finished robe bits all in a pile.

This isn't even all of the sequin debris that came from cutting out the fabric.
I will never be able to vacuum it completely out of my carpet.

I drafted a basic block and had a workable pattern after 3 mockups. It's got these weird shoulder pieces, and the collar comes up from the tops of the panels instead of being a separate piece.

Weird shoulder bits without the chiffon. The gold sequin fabric is blinding.

The lines of stitching pictured here are stabilizing lines because the sequin fabric is, unfortunately, a one way stretch knit. It was the best looking gold sequin fabric he could find, so we had to make do. The satin for the lining also has a bit of stretch to it, and all 3 fabrics are synthetic. (And yes, I am still friends with this person.)

After I sewed a million parallel lines on the 8 panels, 2 shoulder pieces, and 2 gargantuan sleeves we basted the pieces of chiffon over them. Nax helped a lot with the basting because it's so time consuming, and I think he actually ended up doing more of it than I did.

Nax tries on the unlined and sleeveless robe to see how it looks.
The sequins are perfect in this lighting!

I interfaced the bodice with fusible interfacing, ending it a bit below the waist. I added another layer around the collar but I wish now that I had put even more layers of interfacing in the collar & shoulder areas.

It's so huge. So ridiculously huge.

I didn't get pictures of the lining but it looks pretty good for being made of such an evil fabric. I covered the centre front panels and the tops of the collar bits with a layer of chiffon to act as a facing. I also added 2 pockets for him to keep his cellphone and money in.

Welt pockets in very thin satin are not fun.

Nax tries on the unfinished robe again because we are both overexcited to see what it looks like.

Balem wears a fantastically intricate gold collar throughout the film, and here you can see Nax's half finished thermoplastic version. I'll do another post on this costume sometime in the future and it'll have a good picture of the finished collar.

It looks much better now. Also, look at the pleated organza trim!

Because the original costume has a sprinkling of gold square sequins on the outer layer, I sewed a whole bunch of individual square sequins on with invisible thread. I didn't have time to do the whole thing but it'll be evenly covered eventually. Nax is planning to help with this.

So many tedious individual sequins. They look amazing though!

Because the fabric doesn't iron very well, especially when you have to use a low heat setting to avoid warping the sequins, I whip stitched the seam allowances down in the bodice part of the robe. Once again I didn't have time to do the rest, and will have to go back and finish it later.

I also sewed some cotton batting into the shoulder area to act as a slight shoulder pad. I wish I had used heavier synthetic batting, but I didn't realize I had any of that until after. I'll probably end up re doing the shoulders anyways.

I sewed the lining in place, serged around the collar edge to reduce the bulk of the seam allowances as much as possible, and tried my very best to make the ridiculous sleeves cooperate.

I was so busy that I didn't take as many in progress pictures as I usually do, but I'll try to photograph more of it when I go back and make corrections. Despite having started 3 months before the deadline we ran out of time, and some things had to be rushed. Besides stitching the rest of the loose sequins and seam allowances I need to do a better hem, probably reinforce the shoulders more, replace a row of trim on one of the sleeves because it has 2 factory flaws in it (which I didn't notice in time. Grr), and fix the sleeve caps because what the hell do you do with the lining when sewing in a sleeve with a slit?

Edit: I have since realized that what you do is simply put all the sleeve seam allowance in towards the body, just like you do in 18th century tailoring.

The serged inside edge of the collar.

I'm probably forgetting something but anyways, here are some photos of him wearing it at Hal-Con! Taken by Akemi Productions.

Those sleeves barely fit on my cutting table.

These pants are very, very last minute. I patterned them at the same time as I did the robe but didn't sew them up until the night before the con. We didn't have time to put the pyramid studs on the waistband. Oh well.

He looks grouchy because he's a villain, and evil overlords don't generally smile for photos.

Someday the whole costume will be finished and perfect and then we'll have a photoshoot! I'm not looking at those sequins for at least another week though.

Update: More photos!