I have a problem...

This problem happens with literally every blog I have ever started, and I'm sorry to those of you following me because I am terrible. I think I've made four posts on this blog this year, and I've got to tell you....I have 5 half written posts sitting in my drafts. FIVE. And they aren't like, half baked idea posts, they are mostly written thought out posts. They are just missing pictures or something extra I felt was necessary.

In sewing news I'm still a slacker, but trying to get better. I completed my mock up for my teens corset and figured out its issues. I cut out the size indicated on the pattern for my measurements, but decided in the end to cut out a size smaller to fix some of the gap issues in the lacing. I got some wonderful advice from the pattern designer on the placement of my bones, which was off because apparently I don't know how to read a pattern. I used the handy dandy eyelet hole feature on my sewing machine for the lacing eyelets on my mock up, but I have grommets for the real thing. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they actually work and don't get all wonky when I try to install them on the actual corset. If anyone has any tips for setting grommets, please comment and let me know. I need all the help I can get.

Last night I cut the pattern out of my actual corset fabric and began pinning it together. Here's hoping I can finish the whole corset this weekend and begin work on the dress.

My deadline for the teens dress is still April 14th, so we'll see if I can hold to it. If I can finish the corset this weekend that will give me just under 2 weeks to finish the dress. It's a crunch, for sure, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm both excited and terrified to sew the actual dress. I definitely want to see my sketch come to life, but I read through the pattern instructions and...gulp. I'll have to do a little bit of altering to the pattern because I'm making the under bodice strapless, so we'll see how that goes. I'll try to keep you posted!

Slacker

I've literally gotten nothing done in the last week and I'm freaking out a little bit. I'm way behind on the goals I set for myself. I had a goal to be finished with my Outlander dress by the end of February and it's March 5th and I haven't even started the redraw of the bodice pieces let alone cut out a mock up.

My next deadline is to have my teens dress finished by the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. So that gives me roughly no time to sew the corset AND the dress.

Not to mention I've added another project to my pile of projects, because I needed another creative project like I need a hole in the head.

This past week my husband and I bought a vintage pop up camper that we plan to renovate. Meet our 1977 Apache Ranger hardsided pop up camper:

At least it's vintage, right?

Guys, it's so 70s inside it hurts. Like, who decided the en vogue colors for the 1970s were brown, baby shit yellow, the ugliest shade of green I've ever seen in my life, and orange? A little known fact about me is that I pretty much hate brown. When I was little we moved from California to Colorado and rented a mobile home, in a trailer park, that I'm pretty sure was built in the 1970s because it was like living inside a giant turd. The carpet was brown, the walls were brown, I'm fairly certain the ceiling was brown. It was just a shrine to the color brown and it made me hate it. So the inside of this camper is going to get a total overhaul so I can hopefully remove much of the 70s influence.

Now, you might be thinking, "But Megan, you're all about vintage stuff! Isn't that why you sew old clothes and watch movies set in decades that you don't belong in?" Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is that my love for vintage pretty much extends to the mid-late 50's at best. The 60s are not my thing, and neither are the 70s. As a child who was born in the last year of the 1980s I'm all about good 80s movies, but the fashion is meh and the design style is even worse (though not nearly as bad as the 70s). Maybe some day that will change, but for now I'll be modernizing my camper.

Maybe I'll include some updates as we renovate, in addition to trying to stick to at least a rough deadline for my CoCo projects.

One step forward...

Well crap...it's been a while, hasn't it?

I've had to take a small break in working on my Outlander dress due to waiting on some supplies to arrive. I decided to alter the Simplicity pattern according to some of the American Duchess hacks to make it more historically accurate, but the large paper I have doesn't lend itself to tracing very well. So, I turned to my good friend Amazon to see what I could find, and ended up ordering a roll of tracing paper. I expected it last week but there was a delay at Amazon so I'm stuck waiting.

In the meantime I decided not to idle (surprise!) and got to work on drafting my underwear for my 19teens dress. Normally, I'm not very comfortable drafting my own patterns, but I decided to wing it since this will be underwear and no one will see it but me. I mean that in a manner of speaking of course because I will obviously share it with you.

I had a lovely 3-day weekend and quickly got to work drafting my pattern. I decided to make things difficult for myself because, let's be honest, who doesn't love a challenge? I wanted my Edwardian underwear to be simple and delicate, but have some unique features as well. I've always loved the tiny little pin tucks in Edwardian shirts and decided to do some on the shirt front.

I designed the combinations to be a one piece that buttons up the front, with eyelet lace at the top and the waist with ribbon inserts to cinch each section a bit. It will have ribbon shoulder straps that can be untied and tucked in if needed.

I got my bust, waist, top of bust to waist, and waist to groin measurements for everything. Figuring out how to draw it out was fairly simple for the top. I simply halved my bust measurement and added seam allowance to figure out how long each rectangle of fabric needed to be (front & back). Things got a little tricky for the front piece as I knew I wanted it to button up the front and there would have to be some extra seam allowance for the button and buttonhole placement, and then allowance for some overlap when buttoned. Also, since I was adding pin tucks I needed extra length to account for the folds in the fabric. Because I have a visual brain I drew the pattern out on paper, folded it up so it would look like the finished product, match it against my design and then unfolded everything, measured the paper and VIOLA! measurements for the front sections.

After that things came together pretty easily. Since everything was straight lines I just measured and drew out all the lines with water soluble pen and then folded and sewed until I couldn't any more. It looked great but it all really started to come together when I added the lace trim to the top.

Adding eyelet lace trim to top of bodice, buttons and pin tucks visible!

Since the raw edges would be covered by the lace I simply folded the raw edges toward the right side of the fabric about 1/4" and then matched the folded edge with the bottom edge of the ribbon channel in the lace. I used the handy designs in the lace as a guide when sewing on my machine. And yes, it is machine sewn. Technically we're talking about the 1910s so sewing machines were most definitely in use and period appropriate. I always say that even before sewing machines were household appliances, our ancestors would have used them had they had access.

Things got much trickier when I started patterning the legs. I knew I wanted a bit of a flare to the leg, but I also wanted to be pretty accurate to extant combinations and have the open crotch pattern. I had to sketch out what I was thinking they should look like on small scraps of fabric and then pin it together to make sure the larger pattern would be functional. They are oddly shaped and not at all on any sort of grain line that would make sense in this universe, but they work.

Tada! Done-ish

I'm not quite finished with them yet. I have some eyelet lace ruffle to sew on the legs, but they are a bit long already so I've got to take them up a bit, and then add the ruffle. And my shoulder straps need added as well. So, stay tuned. An actually, truly, 100% finished photo is still to come.