Time Out for Cases

Someone is coming to town next week so I'll need a new batch of pillowcases to hand off. I don't have much of the fabric she sent left anyway, so I'll go through my stash, but should be able to get enough done to be worth giving but not to fill up my whole week.

A Little Hand Sewing

I put the boning pieces in today, using catch stitches. They were attached at the side seam allowances and the front long darts as well as one just to center front. These should be stitched to the underlining, but since the test bodice wasn't made with underlining, I just tried to  keep the bite to the outer fabric to a minimum. I didn't try it on Lucy yet, but I think I will make more up for the other locations that will get boning (generally the same locations, but below the waist line and then  to the back too).

Helping Hand

More tips have been ordered, along with some more boning, while I'm paying the shipping anyway. While reading something somewhere someone said holding the boning in a vise while cutting makes it easier to use the big ass bolt cutters. Aha! I just happened to have this in a closet in the basement!

I just need a little something to put between the clamping surfaces and the table surface and I can stick this right to the desk as needed.

Boning

The skirt pattern pieces were transferred to paper, to keep a good copy for future use. I made some minor adjustments based on the fit of the muslins and will come back to them later.

To continue work on the bodice, I got the spiral steel and bolt cutters out again and started making pieces up for testing. I measured the form from the waist up, deciding on 4" sections for each side seam and center front, and 3" sections for along the vertical darts/princess lines. Technically, I should have made more pieces for below the waist and around the back, but I didn't want to use up my limited supply of boning materials before I made an actual test.

Bones need casings and per Grace Kelly, they should be made of ribbon, but the only ribbon I have is that wide green stuff from the ruffle testing. WWSKD? I consulted the old episode of Sew Much More that will forever live on my Tivo and went with these muslin casings for now. I folded over one end and pressed it. A line of stitching was run 1/4" in from the folded edge. This leaves an edge section for sewing into the garment. Another line was sewn 1/2" over from the first.

There's stitching there, really.

The piece of muslin I ripped off had a width that allowed me to get two bones in each channel, so I marked the inside ends and sewed them off. Then, I put the steel pieces in and sewed the ends closed.

I probably would have pinked these, even if Susan hadn't told me to.

Tomorrow I should get a chance to sew these in to the bodice. I need to review the video tape to see on what layer they should be sewn. The test bodice has an outer layer and an inner layer, but the inner layer represents a lining layer and the outer layer doesn't have an underlining layer. That's probably where they would go, but for testing purposes, I think the inside of the outer layer will be okay, since it's not like it's going to matter if you can see them through the muslin.

More Skirt

It occurred to me that I could work on the fit of the skirt by making a front and a back piece, just sewing the darts and then pinning them on and revising the side seams, as needed. This got me thinking about thinking about right versus wrong side. I traced off the pieces and sewed the darts on the right side. When I went to sew them, I just folded and worked on the side where the lines were drawn, for ease of working. Then, after pressing them, I started pinning them on with the darts to the inside of the pieces. Because I'm matching these to the princess lines on the form, and because the form isn't 100% symmetrical, for a second I thought I had really misplaced them. Once the pieces were flipped so the "right side" was out, it was very close, and within the realm of "operator error".

To get the test skirt on Lucy, I used the collapsable shoulder feature. If you push in her arm sockets, there's a mechanism inside that will hold the shoulders in until you push them again, which causes them to pop back out.

But... tight fitting skirt plus dress form with other things on top equals this still doesn't work.

The back will likely become two pieces with a zipper anyway, so let's make a cut in that area.

Now that it was on, I sez to myself, Self, you want to try it with the new bodice piece on too. Back off and on one more time, and note to self, need a little more room in the skirt if you're going to have stuff under it. Good enough for today though!

The next step will be to make an adjustment or two to the skirt pattern and then try making it up as an outer layer and lining layer. Also, the ruffler is going back on to test some new ideas. Pictures to follow if any of them turn out to to be good ideas.

Skirt Again

Currently I'm leaning toward making the skirt completely separate from the bodice. I don't know if this is Grace Kelly thinking appropriate, so I may throw this away again at some point, but we'll see. Theoretically I have these pieces draped and sketched out somewhere, but I wanted to try again. So I set up a line with this 1/8" cotton tape where I think I want the skirt to start. Considering how Tier 1 will fluff up from here, I think it's a reasonable starting point for this test.

This part consists of starting a piece of muslin on the form, with the grain set starting from the center line and horizontal line and then pinching in some darts to match the princess lines. Mark various points with a pencil so you can draw a pattern piece out of it later.

Working on the front

I did the back as one piece too, though I will probably end up splitting this down the center back for the opening.

You really just need the area between the style line and hip line to start.

The markings need to be cleaned up after the fact, but these things will get adjusted when I make test pieces anyway. Despite what it looks like, this post was not created with leftover pictures from a previous post!

Status: Shipped

The Garden of Words blu-ray has shipped! Now to wait the week to ten days for it to get here from HK! The second installment of the manga version came today, along with "One More Side". I made that face when I saw "Shipped" on my order history!

Oh, maybe that guy's mad?

Another Bodice Test

I tried to see if I could make the fold-over thing work on this bodice, but the combination of the two peaks and a valley, plus darts, just didn't get it for me. There might be a chance on the Grace Kelly, where the underbodice opens in the front, and would just be two individual peaks. Maybe I'll try that later.

So I just gave in to the notion of making a front, a back, sewing them together and understitching to the keep the back side from trying to get to the front. More muslin was ripped off the bolt and traced out some pattern pieces. Two front bodice pieces and four side/back pieces. Later, I would remember that if you have two front pieces, that have two sides, you might want a total of eight side/back pieces.

I went back to my pressing the fold into the darts before sewing in place of basting. Probably not a great idea for "good" work, but gets the job done here. Also as before, thin metal Ezy-Hem gets hot when you iron it.

After sewing up two bodices and pressing the darts in opposing directions, I pin right sides together this time and sew around three sides and a little of the bottom. Seams are clipped to help with the pressing. By this time, there's a good bit of curvishness sewn in. I spent a while working it over and over with the ham, the seam roll, point turner and Ezy-Hem, there's a lot of shapes here.

Yet another "I know it looks like a mess now" picture

After turning and pressing, I start to test it on Lucy. Are you not supposed to vertical steam with a gravity feed iron? I gave it a shot, cause muslin wrinkles like it wants to be linen when it grows up. There's a steamer in the basement, but this room is small enough already. On the front to the sides, I'm getting good matching with the seams on the dress form cover. The top darts and long darts hit the princess lines and the side seams hit the side seams.

Getting there

As we get around the back, here's problem number whatever. I made the side/back pieces from some draped bits that weren't made to the same size as the front bodice piece. That is, they mainly captured the shape above the waist, but for this, I needed to match the front piece all the way down. It was okay for this test, but I'll remake them later. You can see here that it  doesn't hit the form cover seam between the side and center back. The edge extending past the center back is intentional, as I'm still puzzling out what I want to do for the rear closure, and will probably want  something to overlap. It would be more obvious if there was two sides to the back.

Tiers slapped back on, I don't like the placement again, but I've got some thoughts about what I might do with that part that's going to require some new draping and ruminating.

Steel Tipped Steel

Add to the list of things to do, find the rest of the tips for the steel boning. But I put my eye protection on and tried cutting a piece off one of the rolls. I read somewhere that you can just cut one side of one spiral and the section will come right off, but I found the bolt cutters I bought weren't conducive to being that fine about it. Not that it mattered, but I'm not sure if this steel is not that hard or the cutters were just overdoing it.

Rather than using needle-nose pliers, I used the linesman's pliers for the flat sections, watching not to let things slide into the clipping section of the jaws. A quick squeeze to bring in the legs of the "U" shape and then one to across the flat side to flatten it down, and ta-dow! And add to the list, narrow ribbon to make casings.

Nooooo!!!

"We're sorry but after repeatedly checking with our suppliers, we have found that the following items in your order are not available at this time. As we are unable to source these items for you, we have removed them from your order."

So part 2 of The Garden of Words manga and the "One More Side" 5 Centimeters per Second novel shipped but no She and Her Cat. I guess I'll give figuring out ordering from Amazon JP one more chance (get it?)

Getting closer

As I work on bodice construction tests that don't produce anything worth photographing, I can now listen to the Motohiro Hata album. I also got the book version of 5 Centimeters Per Second. Can't read it, but Ima put it under my pillow and see if osmosis works.

She and Her Cat, the book

That's what I'm pretty sure this listing at yesasia is for! Release date is the 19th, maybe it will be available for pre-order before then. - Oops, at some point this morning, the Notify Me button changed to Add to Cart!

Amazon JP is showing this book too which is either the art book for Garden of Words or some kind of fan book about Shinkai? Release date is the 21st, same as the blu-ray, so I have to get searching for more information even though there's about zero chance I won't just buy it...

Ham

Back to bodices. I traced off a few upper edges and tried to think about what to do with them.

In place of basting, I just folded the lines together, hit it with the iron and then  sewed.

Since these are darts, I pressed them on the curve of the ham to give them the shape and to make it easier to get that transition from the point of the dart to the smooth fabric that should be after it.

The picture might not show it so well, but I just went ahead and sewed two together with the darts pressed to either side of the line, for general flatness. Putting the two curved pieces on the lines was a little trickier, but not too bad. If you think of the black line in three sections, you can sew from one to the next to the next with a minimum of turning. This helps to arrange it flat at each turn as you sew.

Guess who sewed wrong sides together? I could swear I had a reason at the time. Then out came the pinking shears to trim away the excess for turning.

No real reason to use them on this test, but they were there. They will probably get used on the real dresses some since there will be no serging. WWSKD?

It seems like it won't cause too much bulk to have these points here, but there's more to think about.

Looking at the piece on Lucy, I noticed the seam allowance through the muslin, and got to thinking that maybe running some petersham or something along that edge would help with the clean edge. It could also provide something to understitch to on the inside to keep the seamline out of sight.

Of course, this would probably also involve a band/facing of the outer fabric on the inside to attach the lining to.

Ideally, I would just fold over a wide allowance on the front piece to make a facing of sorts, but I just don't know if this can be done in a way that's clean looking inside and out. There should be some old clearance 4 ply silk crepe around here so maybe I'll try making up a front bodice test to see what can be done. I think the ribbon defined edge sounds like a good idea but I think the folding and mitering of the fabric is what will determine the final choice. I would trade some non-outwardly visible seaming choices to get that clean top edge I think.