Desucon Fantasy

100%  cool and comfy.

I shared a stand with leechdreams, who makes the prettiest flower crowns and fairy accessories. Because the mere thought of dressing up in victorian clothes and using an hour applying fancy makeup made me go nope, I wore my viking garb instead and was 100% comfier than anyone else.

I loved selling at the convention, mostly because I escaped having sore feet at the end of the day!

I made these stays last summer, just to have something to do. It used up the fabric left over from my own stays eget snøreliv. It was the first thing I sold and the person who bought it put it on and walked aroundwearing it! I was so amazed and excited about it, it's a bit embarrassing, but person! Wearing thing! I MADE THING!

Amulets with icelandic magical staves and bindrunes.

Cute armwarmers.

I finished my second pair of viking corgies during the day. They're a tiny bit bigger and way more dangerous than the first pair.

I didn't buy anything geeky, but what I bought is as nerdy as can get. Gudbrandsongarden had a stand at the marketplace outside the convention hall, and I bought this beautiful yarn made from spælsheep, the kinda sheep the vikings had. New viking socks, here I come! 

Viking corgies #2

If anyone's tired of seeing my embroidery they're on the wrong blog cause I started another pair of viking corgies. Wool yarn on linen.

HSM Challenge #2: Something Blue

Historical Sew Monthly is the same thing I sorta participated in last year, except this year there's only one challenge a month. (Despite having more time to do each project, I'm still almost two months behind on this post...)

I made a pair of tie-on pockets for Carlotta, cause a girl needs pockets. Since I have a lot of sewing to do for school, I don't have much time to make things outside school. So to qualify for the "something blue" challenge I snuck a blue ribbon into the embroidery. I used the pocket pattern from Simplicity 3536 without any changes.

My last embroidery projects (viking corgies and contortionist wolves) have been successful, so I leapt headfirst into this one hoping it should be easy. Shouldn't have done that, hubris and all that. I switched to cotton mouline embroidery yarn after getting used to wool thread, and I found the cotton is rather unwilling to cooperate.

I used hours on Pinterest trying to find the perfect motif, only to sketch down my own design. I learnt to do french knots and then did about 150 of them for practice.

The pockets were sewn together by hand, with silk thread because that was the only pink thread I had lying around. They're tied around the waist with pink organza ribbon.


Challenge #2: Something Blue 
Fabric: Cotton canvas.
Pattern: Simplicity 3536.
Year: Rococo
Notions: Silk thread, cotton mouline embroidery thread.
How historically accurate is it? 75%
Hours to complete: 7
First worn: Not worn yet.
Total cost: 30 NOK.

Rag quilt

I repaired a shirt for my grandfather and fitted some pants for my grandmother and as thanks, the sewing machine was welcome in their living room just a few days after Christmas Eve. (Normally, it's banished until the Christmas decorations come down in early January.).

So naturally, I grabbed the chance to do some sewing. I started on a skirt, but ran out of white thread in the middle of a storm. So I started another project - until I ran out of black thread and the stores weren't open. And a few projects later I sat there with a half-finished skirt, some corset-belt thingies and pieces for three vests, unable to continue on anything. Aughhh.

Luckily I remembered seeing this rag quilt. Since it's a rag quilt, it doesn't really matter what fabric or thread I use, and I found use for scrap fabric and some of the fabric I've held onto for far too long without having any tangible plans on what to do with it. (While I made a pillow from most of it, I had a few scraps from the Hobbit-inspired morning gown I started last year.)

My teachers (both professional seamstresses) would probably have had something to say about these raw edges. Hopefully it'll look better after washing and fraying.

For once, the wrong side looks pretty.

It's half-finished now and I'm hoping to finish it next time I'm home. I've sworn to myself that this will not turn into one of those projects I start when I'm at home and then forget/throw away/take apart/redesign/give away next time I'm back. (So if you could keep an eye on me during Easter so that I can't be sneaky and do any of those things, that would be very much appreciated.)

Viking embroidery: wolf contortionist

The wolf contortionists have been finished for a while. As this project was small enough to fit in my bag, I've taken it with me to school and embroidered in breaks or when taking the metro into town. (When I was going home one day, there was an elderly lady who sat down beside me to talk about embroidery.)

As usual, I've used woolen thread. The wheat-coloured thread comes from Skaar Tekstil, the rest is vintage, a gift from my grandmother. She had a lot of remnant thread lying around from when she embroidered national costumes in the 90's.

The motif is upside down in this pic. Oops.

The hardest part of an embroidery project is choosing colours. The vikings were colourful people, and personally I'm not. I think I should have chosen a stronger colour for the contouring?

I like keeping things tidy and this is acceptable. Later, I'm going to try another type of stitch,
that in theory will make the motif look the same on both sides.

Finished.

Mockingjay: Capitol Couture

Went to see Mockingjay with friends and had to dress up for the occasion. I'm with the districts, of course, but costume-wise I find it a lot more tempting to dress up as an overpriveleged child-murderer exquisitely dressed Capitol fashionista.

In the movies, Capitol clothing is very sculptural and extravagant, tailored deliciosusly close to the body. I wanted to keep a sense of haute couture instead of making a costume, so I aimed for something tightfitting with unusual details.

I bought a black organza skirt and a tight, tight velvet dress second hand and combined them. The dress was very tight, so I had to add a gore to be able to fit it over my hips. Look closely under the organza - the gore fabric is a rubbery pleather type thing that stands out against the red velvet. (I thought it a nice detail, even if it barely shows. 

While I was working, I realised having a mannequin is the best thing ever. It's not always easy to fit anything when you're wearing it.

Here I've pinned the dress onto one of the mannequins at school, just playing around with different details.

I was in love with the hip-detail from the left picture, but when I removed the dress from the mannequin, the needles fell out and after three failed attempts at recreating it, I decided to go for some big fucking rosettes instead. (More is more.)

Pinterest was life-saving while searching for inspiration. I found these tights, and made a sort-of copy with flatbacked rhinestones and beads. The best way to get the rhinestones on was to glue them on while wearing the tights. Glue+hairy legs is not the best combination on any day, and the textile adhesive I used didn't wash off with water, so I walked around with glue on my legs for a few days. Very much haute couture.

I'll post better pics when I get them.

In addition to the dress and tights, I forced my feet into shoes without heels from Bianco, wrangled my hair into submission, used more makeup than I usually go through in six months and even bothered with fake eyelashes (without gluing my eyes shut, go me). I painted my hands black seeing as some Capitol people dye their skin,. (Using waterbased makeup for my hands was not the best idea ever, when we stepped outside, it started raining.)

But so much worth it. The dress doubled as Christmas dress and the movie - just fantastic.

La Carlotta: ROCOCO GOWN O'DOOM

All t3h pink.

One of my next projects would have made fourteen year old goth me reach for matches to kill the thing with fire. If anyone's wondering what costume the pink garters are for, here's the answer.

The gown is used by Carlotta Guidicelli in the 2004 movie Phantom of the Opera, while they're performing the fictional opera Il Muto.

I'm going to build this monster slowly, because with all the sewing I do for school, I'm pretty sure I won't have much time for my own projects. (If anyone sees my crying in a corner I'm 110% sure this is gonna be the reason.)