Four brown suits

This post is a bit overdue, as I finished these things at the beginning of the month.
Some time ago I was hired (by my teacher, who does a lot of theatre commissions but doesn't sew) to make 4 brown suits for Satellite Theatre.
They were for a play called Grum, and I don't know much at all about it besides the fact that it's about a guy named Grum, and it's all miming with no dialogue.

Grum wearing one of the suits. (Source)

The theatre had been rehearsing with this worn out and icky old suit, and they wanted a really close copy of it.

The old suit from the outside. Both buttons are missing and there's a hole in the collar.

The nasty old lining with stretchy patch pockets added at some point by someone who can't sew.

The matching pants, which were quite literally coming apart at the seams.

I took a pattern from the old suit, and was very lucky to get a fairly similar brown striped polyester suiting. (Apparently it's a really bad year to look for anything menswear related and brown.)

The character starts seeing multiple versions of himself at some point in the play, so they needed a suit for him, and 3 more for the other cast members. They also needed an extra pair of pants for the main suit.

The 2 actors and 2 actresses are all different sizes, and I've never met any of these people in person because they live in a different city. I had to adjust the patterns by referencing their measurement sheets (which weren't even complete! No shoulder measurements!!!) and a photo of each person in tight fitting clothes so I had an idea of their proportions.

"Shit, shit, uhhh I think this'll fit??"

Thankfully the suits all ended up fitting reasonably well.

I sewed them at the college on one of the industrial machines, which was nice. I like the industrial sewing machines very much.

Here are a few of my patterns. I had to cut the last 3 suits all in one weekend
because the fashion room with the big cutting tables was about to be renovated.

They aren't the most high quality of suits, as I was working on a budget, and to a very strict deadline. But all 6 pockets in each jacket are functional, and 2 pockets in the 3 duplicate pairs of pants, and 5 pockets in each of the main characters 2 pairs of pants.
The shoulders are a tad droopy, because there's only fusible interfacing and no shoulder pads, but that's ok.

Original suit in front, 3 of my 4 copies in back.

I didn't take any photos of the first suit, for it was sent off as soon as I finished it, but I got some photos of the 3 duplicates.

Original suit on the left, 3 of my 4 copies on the right, plus the extra pair of pants.

I made some dumb mistakes on a few occasions, but it was a learning experience, and good practice.

Original on the left, duplicate on the right.

A couple more photos of the actors, taken from here.

I made this night cap too. Another student made the 4 other hats.

After I was done the suits I also had to make a pillowcase, a night cap, hem a sheet, and make a tiny hat and jacket for a puppet version of Grum.
I don't have any photos of the puppet, but it was really good. My teacher made the puppet, and did the curtains & wallpaper for the set, and made the ridiculous latex noses, and a lot of other stuff.

And here is a shitty dinosaur gif I made of me frantically sewing these suits.

I am very glad to have finished these darn things, and will post some good old historical sewing very soon, I promise!

Stays with nobody to wear them

Hello! It has been far too long since I've posted, but I have been very busy up until last week. More on that in my next post.
Another Unfinished Thing has been removed from the pile!

 I started these vaguely mid- 18th century stays more than 2 years ago. They were supposed to be my final project for the corseting class in second year fashion, but I didn't finish them in time.
I based my pattern on this pair from The Met, but it didn't turn out quite the same. I definitely made a few foolish mistakes, including somehow putting the straps on the wrong sides, so they point more inwards instead of outwards.

 It's made of two layers of cotton canvas with steel boning in between. The outside fabric is a mottled grey quilting cotton. As this was a school project, I wasn't too concerned with historical accuracy.

The bulky and annoying seam allowances, all graded and tacked open.

I stuck a plain black cotton lining in and bound the edges in silvery grey silk bias strips.

  It was a pain to do all those tabs, but with pliers to help I eventually got it done.

 Somewhere in the construction I slightly screwed up the alignment of the pieces, and sadly didn't notice until all the binding was done. The bases of the tabs do not form a nice smooth semi-circle, alas!

I stuck that godet in too low. Or perhaps didn't cut the tabs high enough.

 I used the grommet machine at school to do the eyelets, and they were done! I haven't tried them on a real human yet, but I got some photos of them on one of the school dressforms.

Sadly, they stays are a bit too big for her, and the foam is so firm it didn't compress well at all.

 I also need to get some proper lacing for them. They need so much that none of my nicer cord bits were long enough, and I had to use polyester ribbon.

 They were originally fitted to me, but I'm not sure they'd fit me well now. And even if they did I'd have no cause to wear them, but hopefully someday I'll get a real human of the right size to model them for some better pictures!

Good riddance to one more Unfinished Thing!

Nightgown alteration + hem monsters

I altered a nightgown!

It's one of those old fashioned fine cotton ones with very long pintucks.

Before.

It had these stupid 3/4 length sleeves with button cuffs on them. What's the point of cuffs there?? They were way too short to reach my wrist, and so tiny that buttoning them around my arm was impossible.

Bad and foolish sleeves, so I cut them off. I turned one of them into bias binding for the armholes, and the other I used as a collar ruffle. I was very indecisive about the collar, but eventually went with a stand collar and put a ruffle along the top. There wasn't quite enough sleeve material for the collar itself, so I used a different scrap of white cotton.

After.

I wanted to put monsters all around the hem, just because.

 I drew a bunch of them in my sketchbook and used the ones I liked best on the nightgown.

I did some practice monsters on a scrap of sleeve. (Which turned out blurry after steaming because I didn't rinse it in dye set solution.)

I drew out my monsters all around the hem with a fabric marker, which I got recently and I like very much! It's the sort that disappears when you put water on it.

In the textiles studio we use these delightful little pointy tipped squeezy bottles for drawing with resist on silk scarves, and I used my finest tipped one to draw my monsters on with black dye paste. (Which is a thing we mix up in the textiles studio, and I shan't get into the particulars of it now)

Always, always wear gloves when working with PRO MX fiber reactive dyes.

My monsters turned out so nice! With proper setting and washing they didn't blur at all.

Front.

Back.

And here are some detail shots of them.

This one is my favorite:

I have decided that her name is Elyse, and have drawn a few more pictures of her.

She enjoys rollerskating, gardening, and is working on her masters degree in architecture.

And she does have a lower jaw, it's just very thin.

Here's the nightgown worn with the ruffly bed jacket, which goes very comfortably over sleeveless nightgowns.

I need to make more sleeveless nightgowns, so I can wear this jacket more. It's comfortable and I like it.

I also made a dressing gown for my mother a few weeks ago, which is pretty simple so I'm sticking it onto the end of this post instead of doing a separate one.

Old gown on the left, new one on the right.

She had this other dressing gown that was very worn out, and I just made a copy of this. All the pieces are rectangles, except the main piece, which is a rectangle with a big slit halfway down it that's rounded at the end for the neck.

And here she is wearing it! Photo taken by my father.

It was supposed to be a mothers day present but it was a bit late.

Ruffled bed jacket

I made a short, ruffly jacket to wear over sleeveless nightgowns. I was inspired by the one from The Secret of Moonacre, which I think is very cute and just the right length to wear while sitting up in bed reading.

 The pattern was pretty simple. I traced the sleeve of my frock coat and the top part of a waistcoat pattern with the front edge trimmed down a bit.
This started out as just a test run of the pattern, but I decided to make it wearable. I will make another version soon, with a bit more ease added to the shoulders.
It's sewn up in a fine blue cotton stripe fabric, with a floral print lining.

For the ruffles I cut strips along the width of the fabric. The cuffs were half a width each, the bottom ruffle was 2 widths, and the front & neck hole ruffle was 3.

It's all machine sewn, except for the lining armholes.

Unfortunately, this is not my colour at all. It was waaaay too light and bright of a blue, and it looked terrible on me.

So I dyed it with 50/50 grey and teal, and now it's much better!

I suspect the lining may be a poly/cotton blend, because it didn't take the dye as well. But that's ok, it came out a nice grey.

The polyester thread I used is still bright blue, but it's not too noticeable.

Here I am wearing it over a shirt, which is a bit bulky and difficult to get into cotton lined sleeves. I'll wear it properly over a nightgown in a later post.

Oh! And here's something I forgot to mention in the "smallish things" post!

I did a trade with a friend at school who is in pottery. I printed 2 sad dinosaur shirts for Chase Benjamin Ceramics and he put a decal on a mug for me!

It's my own drawing, that I did specifically for this mug. I love my bird mug very much.