So I’ve been working a lot lately, which is great because paychecks basically rock. I’m really lucky to have several of the best jobs ever right now – the costume shop, which is the coolest place on earth, and I started doing some backstage stuff for shows that come through the college.
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I love what I do. Normally, I bop around my little workshop like Hammy – with about the same attention span. But sometimes things get me down, like working on serious things (websites) and that gosh-darned eleventh century shmata which continues to defy me, and I start to lose my Joy. And then I was get email from people, and they had they Joy. And it’s making me sad. Laura has the joy, Rebecca has the joy, Mo-geek has the joy…. I decided to take my Joy back, by force if necessary.
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We all know how to make a corset, right? Take a bodice pattern that’s too small, sew a lot of boning channels in it, a little jiggery-pokery to get the boning in, seal the edges, and presto change-o, corset. And that’s great, but it’s not the only way to make a corset. Well, ok, if you want to get all technical, then that is the only way to make a corset, but it’s not the only way to make a pair of stiffened bodies capable of supporting the body and forming it onto a conical shape. Here’s another method that relies on stiff sheets of interlining, rather than multiple thin bones.
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I got to spend last week working a preview show by Hubbard Street Dance at the college. It was fantastic! I was technically just there as wardrobe, but they let help with the load-in and setup, and I learned 62,458,371 new things, which is always super-great. Yesterday I slept. No, really, that’s most of what I did. But I also got a little dolly sewing done….
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Crazy things resembling Honest Work(tm) have put me a million years behind on posting stuff from the last week. I don’t know about anyone else, but stress makes me totally ADD, and I decided that what I really need is a project to take my mind off work, websites, and that other project. I had an idea while making little chemises and corset mockups for Tyler and Piggy that it would be really adorable to do them up as the young Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor. So, I went digging through my fabric bins….
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I’ve been playing a lot with the Pfalzgrafin corset lately. One of the things I said in the original post was that this type of corset is rather uncomfortably on bodies that aren’t relatively straight, and is a total failure on more extreme hourglass shapes. But I wanted to make it work on Tyler, so I started thinking about two basic assumptions we make about corsetry: that the corset supports the bust, and that the corset has negative ease which allows it to reshape the body and make it smaller. What happens with the Pfalzgrafin block if we throw those assumptions out the window?
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So, there’s some sort of mysterious rule of small business that says that the second you get into some sort of flow with the business plan you’ve committed to (my eBookies and patterns), a side job will pop up to tempt you with money. So you take it, because you need some of that, and then another side job pops up. So you take that too, because you’ve been living off savings trying to make a business and you’re worried that your bank doesn’t think you know how to use a deposit slip. And then another side job pops up, but this one promises to be regular income and the other two are one time gigs, and, I gotta tell you guys, regular income kinda rocks, so you take that too. So now I’m stupid busy with side jobs, but I have a plan for getting things done….
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If you’ve ever tried to get more than a couple yards of trim onto a sewing project, then you know the hard part isn’t sewing straight, it’s keeping all that trim under control while sewing straight. At the workshop I normally put it on the chair behind me and run it over my shoulder. At home I have a stool, so I hauled out a few tools and made myself an impromptu spool holder….
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Sometimes, you want to know if dye is going to bleed (or shift) in the wash. This is particularly good to know if you don’t plan to prewash your fabric. What? Missa, you blasphemous cheat! I know, we always want to prewash the bejizzies out of everything, but there are times when you don’t want to, either because you know it shouldn’t bleed but it’s red and you’re using it for bias on a white blouse or because you’re making something that you don’t want any possibility of pre-shrink stretch-out in (like a corset) or whatever, and you just want to know if it’s safe. Here’s a quick test.
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Making bias tape is shockingly easy. Sure, it’s a little tedious, but it’s really easy. The question is, why would you make bias tape when the fabric store sells it? Maybe you want bias made out of something other than a poly-cotton blend. (Honestly, once you see real silk bias binding, there’s no going back.) Or maybe you found yourself in some sort of silly situation that requires 20 or more yards of bias tape, and payng 3.59$ for every 3 yards of the stuff just failed to look like a good idea. Whatever your reason, here’s how you do it….
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