Wedding Kit Continued!

I didn't just make the groom coat for the wedding.  I ran up a couple of capes, to keep myself and one of the other bridesmaids warm, sewed surprise bunting and got to indulge in my less used skills of flower arranging and hairdressing.

 The capes are brown boiled wool and lined with some leftover green polyester lining.  They were trimmed, mine in green and the other bridesmaid had gold.

All three bridesmaids

 I also made the little posies we're carrying.  Flower-wise this was a simple wedding.  For the wedding we each carried a posy and the bride had a bouquet.  For the hand fasting the bride had a slightly bigger bouquet (it needed to be throwable).

Wedding bouquet

Hand fasting bouquet.

 The bouquets were broom, jasmine, ivy, rosemary and bay.  I was quite pleased with them and they smelt wonderful!

The surprise bunting was so called because the groom didn't know about it!  Until we told him about it the day before the hand fasting anyway.  We used it to decorate the woodland glade where the ceremony took place and all the fabric was from the brides stash!

 Lastly, I did the other bridesmaids hair and the brides hair!  I am so much better at doing other peoples hair than my own, but I don't get to play as much as I'd like!

So, there you have it.  A month or so's activities ending in a truly wonderful coupe of weekends!  I've had a week of sewing and instead have been crocheting.  On Monday I hope to have a few makes to show you and a review of thing I was given the other day!

Wedding Kit!

I'm so very pleased to be able to show this off!  Two of my very good friends got married at the weekend and I was asked to make the grooms frock coat.

I've been working on this for a while.  Overall it was a lovely project and I really enjoyed making it, but it came with a few issues along the way.

First up was ordering the pattern.  We decided on an 1830s frock coat pattern, but I couldn't find an English supplier.  So I ordered it from America.  The company weren't very helpful and they forgot to post my order so instead of having the pattern when I needed it I actually ended up with it mid March.

Then I struggled with the pattern on the mock up as several of the lines were missing and the pieces just didn't fit together so I ended up redrafting the skirt and more or less ignoring the pattern directions as they made little to no sense.

 

This is the mock up.  The first attempt was marginally too small, so I sized up and then it was too big!  Eventually I got it fitted properly and we looked at fabrics for the real thing.

The inspiration is Tristan's coat from Star Dust so we looked at linens.  I did find some lovely ones in Bath but eventually we settled on a lovely Irish linen from my favourite online retailer Herts Specialist Fabrics.  We also got the lining from there, choosing a cream silk.

Several fittings later and it was going well! 

The coat has no interfacing and is mostly shaped by pleats and lots of steaming when it's pressed!  It's a very light and floaty garment.  The buttons are wood and front ones button, but the collar ones are just stitched on top.

Lastly,  here are a few pics of the coat in action!

On Thursday I'll show off a few of the other things I made for the wedding!

The best laid plans...

Sometimes go awry.  As mine did recently.  Larp is a contact sport, which means occasionally people get injured.  Unluckily for me I fell into this small category recently and am working my way through an eye injury.  I'm fine (no really Gran/Mum/all relations) but it's taking a little while to get over. 

This has had two effects on my crafting.  One, I am working a lot slower right now as I need more breaks when my eye gets tired.   It's also meant that updating here has been less of a priority as there's a limit to the amount of screen time I can cope with as well.  Two, any projects with embroidery in them have been curtailed, in fact, hand sewing of any kind is hard right now.  It involves squinting and lots of bad language so I'm trying to avoid it where possible!

However - I have been sewing, mostly for a wedding and on Monday I plan to bombard you all with pictures of my efforts!  In the meantime have a picture of Eirlys' kit that she wears under the coat!

I made the linen tunic and the cotton trousers.  Both to my own pattern and designed so I can add under layers at need.

One last thing - is it worth me making a facebook page for this blog?

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

Am attempting to get set up on bloglovin' ready for when google reader goes away.  Ignore this post and have a happy Saturday!

Random Odds and Ends

My camera charging cable has vanished so it's going to be random odd stuff until I can locate it.  It's also the reason I didn't blog on Monday.  Too busy looking for it!

I hand made most of my Christmas presents last year.  Sadly, I was so busy sewing I forgot to take pictures of most of them, but here's a couple I did photograph!

This is an apron I made for a friend who does a lot of cooking.  Actually, a lot of my friends got aprons (as did my husband!) but this is the only one I remembered to photograph.  It's made of the softest cotton and I learnt a new thing with it as I learnt how to make my own bias binding.  It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

 This is a tiny doll replica of another friends larp character, Captain Hel.  I worked on getting as many details accurate as I could, but there are surprisingly few photos of Hel so it was mostly from memory!  The armour is tiny scraps of upholstery leather, the top is inside out chinese brocade and the poncho is green jersey scraps, luckily in the same fabric as the actual poncho!

Empire Kit

Ok, so I didn't go to Empire due a number of things (largely because I'm too chicken where large events are concerned).  However, I have friends who did and one of them gave me a black velvet doublet to play with for his kit!  The only rules were no wings and no pink.  Sadly, he knows me too well...

Stupidly I didn't think to take before pictures, but when I was first given it, it had skirt panels, sleeve caps and the sleeves were zipped on.  Oh and horrid plastic toggles!

I swapped the toggles for some shell buttons, took the skirt panels off (they became my test panels), took of the sleeve caps, and got rid of the zips.

 I picked out a selection of ribbons and eventually we decided on the green and silver look.  The other thing I did, which really pleases me but no-one else will ever know about is I took the lining out and replaced it at the end so the stitch lines don't show.

The little beads are seed pearls.  I used 3 packs and they are hand stitched on. Excellent work to do under a blanket in front of the telly when it's cold!

I felt it needed something more at that point so I found the larger beads and experimented until I liked the look of the sunbursts and instead of a centre ribbon I did a line of beading instead.

 The sleeves were reattached by the simple addition of eyelets (I now have my own eyelet punch which I love!) and a narrow silver ribbon.

So there you go.  One pretty league doublet!  It went to Empire and I'm promised it (and it's owner) had a fabulous weekend!

Little Red Riding Hood

My sisters school had a dress up day a while ago and they all had to go as a literary character so she asked me to make her a red cape.

 I've no idea what the fabric is as it was a random bolt I found in the local shop, but it's soft and drapes beautifully!

The ties are satin ribbon and it's unlined.  I over locked the seams to give a neat finish which apparently impressed my sisters pupils (those who do textiles anyway).

It has a nice baggy hood and my sister likes it so much she's debating getting a dress to go with it so she can wear it again!

I'll try an post tomorrow with a sneak peak at a very exciting project I'm working on!