I finally have photos!

My sister's the artistic type, so none of these are normal photos. But they give you the general idea.


First, here's an 'action shot' - my sister walked in while I was sitting at the computer. You can just see the toes of my boots poking out underneath my skirt - it's that long! The boots have 2" heels by the way.


Here's the top of the skirt. This photo makes me look really really skinny. Scary. I am not unhealthily thin, I just look it in photos like this!


Here's from the side with my jacket on, I hadn't realised that it doesn't make for good photos of the skirt with it on!


The side panels of the skirt


The front of the skirt


And the best photo - the back. There's pleats either side of the centre, and it's slightly longer in back to form a kind of train.


Finally, I promised you a picture of the underskirt/petticoat fabric - isn't it pretty? I love the flowers.

Sorry for those of you who are getting this twice - I clicked publish too soon. When my parents get back from elsewhere I'll get a normal photo or two, but for now these will have to do.

Sleepy

Yep, I'm tired. I haven't had a break, really, in ages. Even when I tried to have one the other day I ended up working - I cleaned (my room now looks about half as bad as it did) and I stitched...now I just need to sleep.

Unfortunately, Dad's got company in the morning, and I need to be up. So at about 10 I'll be up and presentable and eek!

On the other hand, Mali's dress is almost done. It needs hemming, and the zip put in, but those can't be done until she's tried it on. What cane be done (I think!) is the fabric rose, ribbons and rosettes adding (easy) and the sash. Shouldn't take me too long. I'm going to put the caftans and Moesha's outfit together with a different coloured thread and nice big tacking stitches, just to make sure it all fits. It's so easy to rip out and resew then, and Nikki's said she'll take me down to try them on the girls sometime soon.

And my hand hurts. Urk. So I'm going to rest it - not much, if any, stitching tomorrow. We'll see what else I can do instead.

The Orthodox Way is next to me, I got it back off of Dad for the night. Yay :) Now I get to start the process of noting it, eep.

Slowly I'm getting there. I think. :)

Edited to add: I sewed the last major seam just then (well, finished, it was half done) and you don't want to know HOW many pins I put in to get the gathers right...

And I give you (with the exception of hemming, sash and fabric rose):

Mali's dress!

*smiles*

I really can't think of anything else to title this.

Jeremy asked me in the car this morning on the way to Liturgy how I was. I responded "good" but Troy, not having heard me, said "hey, Jeremy asked you a question"
"She answered, but I was hoping for a more detailed answer!"
My response to that was to retort that it's easy when you're sick, you say how you're sick. When I'm not...well, I'm good!

I had an enjoyable day. Nikki had told me she was going to pick me up from Liturgy, but she ended up coming for half of Orthros (the service before the Divine Liturgy (think mass) itself that flows into it) and the Liturgy which was nice. We were at St Elias', and she usually attends St Nectarios' so it was good to have her come visit! We went back to her place for lunch and I measured up her nieces for baptismal gowns, Troy had fun with them in the backyard, and we went down to Fishermen's Wharf to the indoor markets to have a look around. Most enjoyable.

I got another chunk done on A Restful Night, too. I seem to have my pre-illness speed back, which is wonderful, and I've finished the first page's worth of this row plus about 100 stitches more. And maybe I'll get a few stitches done before I go to bed, too.

She looks somewhat like she's modeling for a nudie shoot as you can't see any of her low neckline or sleeves and an awful lot of bare shoulders, arms and chest! Very pretty.

So, a weekend over. Tomorrow JOB is up in the rotation, and Mum is hoping to get the house cleaned up. Goodness knows my room needs attacking, it's a disaster.

Also, I've got commissioned again. The baptismal gowns for Nikki's nieces (which she's paying me for) and another of the medieval dress for sister-creature, who is the same size so I can essentially make a carbon copy, yay. Hopefully this one will be quicker as I won't have to puzzle out the idiotic instructions!

Here is godsister-creature modelling hers (with a pinned hemline, I haven't seen it hemmed as she was taking it home to do herself)

from the front (she refused to smile:


and the back:


the photos are a bit washed out, go here to see a photo of the dress on a hanger and see the colour.

Sister-creature also wants one of these:

from here. And I want to knit one. So, a deal has been made.

Sounds like fun!

My fingers are starting to hurt from stitching

So I'll post for a while instead, give them a break before I wear a hole in them!

I forgot to mention the other day - god-sister-creature has asked me to make her a gothic-y medieval dress for a party she's going to. Ever wanting to be helpful (and also because I couldn't resist the chance to make said dress) I said yes. Well, I then had to convince her to come with me to buy a pattern and fabric, because I don't like the idea of making something that the other person doesn't like, and we got a beautiful wine red damask for the dress itself, which is a wide A-line (I think) with fitted sleeves that flare out into bells at 3/4 length, and a black satin ribbon for the trim. Very pretty. It promptly got cut out, and has been taking over our living room floor for the past few days, except for when I had to pack it up for the football yesterday when we had people over. There was 3.6m of fabric! It's nuts. Beautiful though.

I have the front done, panels sewn together and trim added, along with the loops to thread lacing through, but no neck facings yet as I'll add them when the front and back are sewn together at the shoulders. I sewed the back sections together into pairs, but then in the morning I realised I'd sewn the pieces together wrong - the right side and the wrong side on the one side, argh. So, much unpicking had to happen, and I haven't fixed it yet! Tomorrow. It's coming together well though, I think.

I misread the instructions for how to finish the sleeve edges too, but I like how it turned out so I'm keeping it. Much neater, in my opinion.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning when I wasn't feeling at all well, dragged an even more unwilling Troy out, and took my never-experienced-Orthodoxy friend Hannah (who got called Anna and Anne, much to her confusion, by everyone) to church, as Jeremy had to take his godmother.

Was worth it. Oh yes, it was worth it. We got asked to do the readings at the beginning, which was confusing as we stumbled our way through, but Jeremy came and rescued us and we settled into it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it clicked for Troy today! He read the Liturgy with me during the arabic, and listened and prayed during the english. He's been struggling with the liturgical side of things for a while, and he's always had issues focussing in church services in general. But...the joy as it all clicked in and the two of us joined in the Liturgy was just wonderful. We're home, just settling in before we can be called residents :)

Hannah enjoyed it too, almost more for aesthetics than anything else but I don't mind. I like that she didn't hate it, and she wants to visit St Nectarios' in a couple weeks, so if I can borrow a lift off a parent this weekend (Jeremy might be going to the UK, lucky) then in a fortnight maybe we can go there with her. She'll love Father Silouan, I think.

So I'm very pleased. It's been a good day - I've been working on the Historic Countries sampler again, I've finished the rice stitch block, and one of the two four-sided stitch sections, and my stag now has everything from his neck down done. This one is going much faster than the last one!

So now I've settled in to watch the news, and it's Aus Idol tonight too so I'll spend the night stitching I hope.

I'm alive, just

Whether I'll get to school tomorrow or not remains to be seen. If I still feel like I do now tomorrow morning, there is no chance.

I've been working on the mockup for my dress, and I'm definately glad I made a mockup! I'm not even sure that I'll actually wear this one, but it's been an eye-opener to sew anyway. If I still want a dress like this hand dyed when I'm done with my two winter-weight ones, I'll make it then. This one has a couple funky things...and it has holes along one sleeve where I accidetally overlocked a tuck into a sleeve. Yes, Kyrie does very silly things sometimes.

...like setting a sleeve in perfectly, overlocking and pressing it - and then finding out that she sewed it in upside down. ARGH! Thank goodness for my Hannah-friend who actually likes unpicking, for whatever crazy reason. She did that and I plonked myself down onto the floor to cut the last few pieces.

I've got quite a bit of the white cotton left over, and it's too thin to really use for much but it will make a lovely petticoat if I have enough - I think I do. So I'll cut that out and sew it up when I'm done with the dress mockup, and then I can wear it under my (good) dress when it's done.

I've never really worked from a pattern like this before - my grandmother taught me dressmaking and we make our patterns from scratch! Or basic shapes etc ie my semicircle skirts. It's been an eye-opener, but it's been fun. The second sleeve was when I realised just how much I'd learned - the cuffs are gathered and then sewn onto the sleeves, then overlocked and pressed, the bottom 1/4" pressed in, then the whole thing folded in half, pressed, and then a seam sewn across the 1/4" pressed in and the seam from before. The first one follows the instructions, but took me ages and looks a little odd, but passable - the second took me no time at all and looks really professional and neat! I cant wait to see it in the purple and caramel rather than just boring white. The proper fabric should be easier to use, too, since this fabric is so thin and flimsy its hard to use.

I've got a few stitches into From The Ashes this weekend, but nowhere near what I would like to have done. I guess that's what happens when you get sick though.

I've been toying with the idea of an hour based rotation, but for now I just want to concentrate on getting caught up with my mysteries and following my SALs. HAEDs are nice, but I really want Mystery X caught up, and Tranq sampler being caught up would be nice too.

Ive decided that when I find the last connector for my Q-snaps - it disappeared when someone cleaned up *smacks head* and have two small frames that are 8"x10" I'll use one to keep my Tranq sampler on permanently until the end of the year, and I'll use the other for whatever BAP I'm working on or the SAL pieces, if they need it. At the moment I swap my Tranq sampler for my SAL pieces and any other BAP I have the whim to work on, though I should really stop doing that. I want to get caught up, and stitching on other things is really not useful!

I slept until 4:30pm on Wednesday, so I didnt get to stitch on A Restful Night until Thursday. At which point I stitched lots on her, though it doesnt seem it to look at it. Mostly background, though I have bits of shoes now too which is quite fun. I havent actually got it kitted up, but I have a lot of other pieces kitted up that have the same colours so I'm pulling colours from them. I'm thinking very seriously about creating a master DMC folder with all the colours on stitchbows, in order, with gaps left for the ones I dont yet have, and all the spares in their respective bags for the specific projects. Then when I've got something small like a QS I dont have to 'kit' the thing I can just pull the colours I need, as I need them. It would definitely make life easier with A Restful Night!

Even if I just pulled the colours from a master set that I was working with at that point in time (I tend to stitch within a row of 10x10 blocks, or a page) and put them in a stitchbow sleeve to carry around for my QSs on Wednesday and From the Ashes on that SAL weekend - that would make sense wouldnt it?

Hmm. I'll keep musing on that one. It's very tempting.

So, tomorrow is Monday. I would very much like to do the following:

• cut out belt pieces for dress
• make belts
• sew up bodice (and belts in) for dress
• maybe sew pocket pieces onto each skirt piece
• stitch at least 4 hours on From The Ashes
• stitch at least 3 hours on Japanese Octagon Box
• get better!
• have a bath to try and soak out the aches
  

yayness for mail

I got mail yesterday!

Troy's birthday present (devil sticks (juggling toy) from threeworlds) arrived, as did the patterns I ordered from commonsense - the dress I bought fabric for a few months ago, and also a set of patterns for three different petticoats - I love ruffly ones, and full skirts don't look right in winter without them. The patterns are on huge sheets of paper though, so I need to cut them out so I can actually use them! The unfolded patterns take up half our living room floor.

So I've got the fabric for the dress mock-up, and I'll have a crack at it either this weekend or when my grandmother is here to give me a hand. Should be fun!

And I also got the fabric for my tranquility mystery restart. So I'm off to measure it up and get a few stitches in!

I really should post more often

Sorry, I know its been more than a week!

I'll list the projects I've worked on, and comment on each of them, since I can't think of any other way to do it!

Mystery X:
I got thoroughly fed up with the beading, and haven't really stitched much on it this week - bad Kyrie! I'm so close to finishing part 3, but I have other pretties to distract myself with and I haven't worked on it since that picture until today. now another of those beaded borders is almost done, and I've half frogged the one that I wasn't happy with. Frustrating, but worth it. If I work at it this afternoon and tonight, I might even get it done today! Part 4 is gorgeous and not big - mostly backstitching, with some corners in the same beading pattern as these borders, and a little bit of cross stitch. Shouldn't be hard, and will look great. I'm very curious as to what part 5 will be - Troy's mum and I reckon it will be a hedge between the corners and above the borders, but we'll have to see!

From the Ashes:

I worked on her for the SAL, which was most enjoyable until I finished the top 30 rows and discovered I didn't have a lot of the threads I needed for her wing - *sigh*. I did do a lot of the background confetti though, and filled in some of the solid colour background as well, and stitched most of the wing that I could leaving the gaps to be filled when I get the floss. This new method I've discovered for stitching her seems to be working really well, which I'm very glad of! It's sad to put her away for the time being, but hopefully I'll get a chance to work on her again before the next SAL, if when I get my threads.

Tranquility Mystery:
I've got almost all of page 2 done, except for some of that massive red thing - I like the design, I hate stitching it. I am going to have to grit my teeth and get it done too! I really need to catch up on this... the yellow motif is my favourite of all of them so far, and I love the yellow colour too!


Japanese Octagon Box:
I got my finishing kit from Judy the other day, which was very very fun, and I got the old key from Martina as well which meant that I could stitch on the grass this monday. I frogged all the incorrect stitching, and added some more, and it looks wonderful. Photos really do not do justice, but I will try.


apart from all this, I also did lots of fabric dyeing for prac 1 for craft this year too - with Peta (future MIL) and was MUCH FUN! We got dye everywhere and the acid ate the foil off her reflector thing that she puts in her car....but it was worth it, even the clean up! See?


Also, I've discovered somewhere that sells 100% cotton sheeting...white, 2.5m wide, for about $7/m which is GREAT, and I bought 4m. 2m of that got used for the dyeing, and 2m I have kept because I will use it to make the mockup of my dress, the patterns for which should be sent today by the people I ordered them from - I sent them an email inquiring and they're sending them *now*, about 3 weeks later!!! grr. Oh well. I will get them and then have fun making the dress. What Peta and I have decided is that I'll make a proper mockup, with long sleeves, then cut the sleeves short, make an underdress, and dye both. I want the underdress a solid colour, but the overdress dark at the bottom shading up to light at the top, thinking a turquois-y blue with a dark blue underdress or a deep pink with a purple underdress, and then stitch cutwork dragonflies all over it. Sounds like fun! I can't see the point of making a dress, even a mockup, that I wouldn't be able to wear, so I'll get a nice summer dress out of it too. And dyes mean that if I buy some nice ribbon we can dye the ribbon too to match the dress...*grins*

I also want to use the sheeting to make underthings for the doll I've been meaning to dress for years. It's cotton, so it should be good! It's also good for petticoats, which I may have to do something about. I love the rustle and feel of petticoats, and they look good under full skirts.

Oh, and if you're wondering what I look like while stitching, here I am:


I was putting a hoop on the aida for the samurai that Troy has just started stitching. He's almost finished something else too (just needs to finish the backstitching) and when he does I'll post it :) it looks really good!


EDITED: to add photos

2 Dresses in Potentia...

Okay, so I went to spotlight.

And spent way too much money.

I don't use spotlight usually, except for dress fabric - I like to support LNS's but where on earth do you buy dress fabric other than spotlight!?!

So, I bought that black flannel. And it looks like this:
(a little washed out, thanks to the flash)

And after much calculation, we got 3 metres of it, and measured it so I can cut the sleeves with the edge of the detail for the cuffs. Going to look gorgeous. Here's the detail:
(a little blurry - no flash!)

And I also bought another dress...inspired by the photo I posted in the last entry. Here are my colour choices - this one was much cheaper! 2m-ish total between the two fabrics, but the fabric is much wider, and it's a heavy calico. The pale colour is for the hem and cuffs.


I also bought zips, flannelette for a petticoat (pale purple) and thread, but it's the boring kind of thread so I'm not taking photos of all that. You can see it when I post pictures of the in progress - or finished! dresses.

My grandmother's coming over soon, so fingers crossed I get my pattern soon, and can make them!

Wheee stitching!

Okay, I did a lot today.

Basically, I've had a basket in the corner of our living room with in progress projects that aren't cross stitch in it for years. This has included clothes that need altering, most of a quilt that just needs the blocks sewn up and borders added, varying small cross stitch projects/pre-discovering linen projects, doll clothes, etc etc.

We're getting a floating floor to replace the carpet that the mould ate. It's going to look beautiful. But we had to take the skirting boards off so that they can put the floating floor in, because they wouldn't do it for us. So that's what dad did today, while Troy knocked the nails out of them once he'd prised them off. And I organised this 'basket' - really a basket, a large box, and the surrounding floor.

Here's what I got done today:

• Put cloak (made, needs hem stitched - on panne velvet (both sides) so will take a while) away in room to be done later
• Decided that beautiful full white skirt with gold leaf design on it that rats got to is not ruined, even though i thought it was 12 months ago when i first put it in the basket. Hung it back in wardrobe, to be worn soon - I LOVE this skirt! It has a few holes, a bit moth eaten, but it's *so* full that you can't see them unless you look.
  
• Ripped a ragged hem on blue dress that got eaten by the rats about 5cm from the bottom because mum moved my rat cage over near the wardrobe - I'd never worn the dress, and she was so apologetic that she went out and bought me a new one - different though. Ripped a ragged hem on the underskirt too, to match. It looks great over jeans (a little short for me to wear it otherwise, comfortably) and I will take photos.
• Finally gave up on altering the bodice on a white tiered dress with bands of crochered lace between the tiers with drawstring at neck and waist. Basically, it looked like a nice skirt that fit my waist well, and a sack up top. Pinned and pinned and pinned and finally decided there was no way of altering it, so cut the bodice off and am now wearing it as a beautiful white skirt. Will also take photos.
  
• Dug up a beautiful Australian sampler that I stitched on 14ct aida back a couple years ago - beautiful, but I never finished stitching the backstitched border. It's 3/4 done! However, I can't find the thread so I'll go to cherubs tomorrow and pick up a skein of 988 to finish it with, then wash it and show it as a happy dance *grin* It really is gorgeous, even if I *did* have to unpick and restitch those parrots and trees a thousand times...
• Folded and repacked large amounts of fabric that I've collected - silly things, like a large rectangle of bright blue panne velvet that I was given but have no use for, and a huge (like 3m) piece of sheer mottled blue fabric - originally curtain fabric, that I bought at spotlight a couple years ago for $1/m and I always meant to use it as overlay on a dress but never got around to it.
• Fit everything left over into my basket and threw out the extra box!

So now what is left in my basket is:

• The aforementioned fabric
• All the pieces cut for a victorian dress for a doll I made forever ago *except* the bodice and a sleeve, which are currently somewhere - location unknown. Last I knew it had been washed because someone got pie on it - dont ask, but after that I havent seen it in a while. It will turn up. Or I will buy new fabric. One of the above.
• The blocks, and a few rows sewn up of a quilt called Moonshadow that I started two and a bit years ago, all grey and black fabric but with jewel tones that leap out. Looks stunning, just needs some dedicated space to lay it out in and a couple spare days to sew it together in. Maybe in the holidays after easter? Might be able to ring in a few family members to help me!
• Random felt that is there for goodness knows what reason
• Stencils of bugs that I bought a couple years ago for a specific project and am keeping, for reasons unknown - I guess in the off chance that I might want to use them again.
  
• A pair of harem pants that are missing the bells that tied one of the cords - mum found them when washing but they've since disappeared and I'm not throwing them out until it's been a year since they were lost.

The sampler that I did ages ago (the year on it says 2005) is hanging up to try and hang the creases out, and I'll wash it with orvus very carefully when I've finished the border. It's white, but it got carted around a fair amount and so it's grubby. I nicknamed it my teatowel while I was working on it, since the dimensions are about the same! It's actually part of a pair of samplers - they were supposed to be stitched on the same piece of fabric but it would have looked horrible, and I started the matching one but never finished it. I dug it out too. I might try and finish it - make it a requirement to work on it for five hours every time I finish a milestone on one of my other projects maybe or something. I'm getting the first one framed anyway, since it looks fine on its own, and when I finish the other one it will be framed to match. It's all cross and back stitch, but the charting is magnificent - especially in this one section that has four trees in it, all different kinds - one looks like red autumn lace! Beautiful, even on aida.

I went to spotlight the other day looking for fabric for a dress pattern that I ordered - I wanted to make a simple, old style dress - long skirt, fitted waist with ties at the back, button/zip down the back, square neckline and long sleeves but moderned-ed up a bit. But do you know how hard it is to find dress fabric these days? Out of everything in that store, there was *one* bolt of fabric that would be warm enough for a dress, that wasn't hideous or obviously designed to be mens pants fabric. And it was on a rack that said $7.70/m which isn't too bad. Black flannel, with an embroidered detail around the hem about 30-40cm wide in autumn variegated colours, and plenty more in the plain black above where I'd have to cut it for the skirt to make the bodice and sleeves out of.

...get to the counter and ask for 3m of it, which should be plenty, and the assistant said 'you do realise that this is $27/m' don't you?

$27/m!!!!

*dies*

needless to say, I didnt buy the fabric.

*but* on the radio I heard that they have a sale on on tuesday, so I might go back if they still have the fabric. They should. I hope anyway...

It still ends up being $64.8 for the fabric, but I guess I could live with that. I've bought dresses for that amount before, and they were summer, cotton ones. It's just so frustrating that there is no decent dressmaking fabric around anymore, and when you find it it's so expensive.

Here's one version of the dress, though I won't have the contrasting colours on cuffs and hem:




I plan to make it with the black fabric, and ask Troy's mum to dye me some ribbon to match the colours in the embroidery to use on the cuffs and waistband, and maybe the collar if it needs it, to break up the black.

Seeing it done in the calico makes me want to do one in a lighter fabric too, with a flannelette petticoat underneath to keep warm with or something. It's gorgeous!
I just realised that this post was enormous, so I should probably shut up now.