Blog Update

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I've unfortunately had to delay my posts for another week. I hate to do this, but I've really no other choice due to my parents' visit.

One of the kittens died on Sunday (my birthday). We buried her in the back yard and named her Samantha - I didn't think it would be right to bury her without a name...

We planted a flower on Samantha's grave

The other kittens are alive and well, thank goodness. Here they are right after their bath yesterday:

I also made a sling so I could keep the kittens warm when they're out of the box. This also helps with bonding, since they have no real mother to sleep against.

Très chic, non?

If you're wondering how I made it, I'll explain. I took an old an old t-shirt and the straps to my guitar case - they have snap hooks on each end.

With the t-shirt and snap hooks facing me, I snapped the hooks onto the edges of the t-shirt, one at the collar and one at the hem (A). Then, I pulled the straps around to the front, letting the fabric edges fold over themselves (B).

I placed one strap over your shoulder like a messenger bag and draped the other over my arm, letting the excess fabric hang like a canopy. I tucked one sleeve into the collar of the shirt I was wearing and used the second to cover the kittens once in the sling. Voilà!

More soon, I promise!
Nostalgically Yours


PS: You'll notice I've added buttons for you bloggers to grab and add to your website. I'd be more than happy to create a custom button for any website, just e-mail me at nostalgically_yours@hotmail.com or leave a comment below.

PPS: Read how I obtained these little dears here.

Sewing Tips Series #2 - How to Let Out a Blouse

One of the most common complaints amongst my friends when it comes to finding clothes that fit in stores is a lack of accommodation for women who are anything over an A cup. Well, if you're one of these women, and if you've got a sewing machine and a basic understanding of sewing, then I've got a solution that's relatively easy and minimally invasive.

In my posts on the Medieval Gown (Part I, Part II, Part III), I mention a popular feature of clothing in this period: the gusset.

For those of you that didn't read the Medieval Gown articles, a gusset is a piece of fabric cut on the bias that is usually shaped as a triangle or a variation thereof. This piece of fabric is then inserted into a seam wherever extra breadth is necessary. In modern times, gussets are most commonly used in the crotch of a pair of pants.

The gusset should not be confused with the godet. Though they are cousins, two major differences separate them:

1. Gussets serve a fitting purpose, whereas godets only add flare and are more decorative.
2. Gussets are cut as a variation of a triangle, whereas godets are always a circular sector.

On with the show. My aunt had a similar complaint to ones I mentioned at the beginning of the article. A blouse she loved was too tight in the arm and the bust and when she saw how I solved the problem for the Medieval Gown, she wondered if I might do the same for her blouse. The first thing I needed to do was to find extra fabric to use for the gussets. Here are some ideas:

Use a duplicate. For instance, if the blouses were on clearance for dirt cheap. Then you can convert one of the tops into something else.

Buy some fabric. It can either match the rest of the garment or act as an accent for it.

Use part of the existing garment. This is what I did with my aunt's blouse.

The first thing I did was to take out the side seam and the underarm seam, while keeping the sleeve attached to the bodice. Luckily, most manufacturers attach the sleeve before closing the side-seam, so this shouldn't be too much of a problem. You might have to take out the hem of the sleeve, as I did, and you may have to mess with the hem on the bottom of the garment. Remember, if you're doing this to a dress, especially at the waist, you don't necessarily need to take out the entire side-seam.

Next, I cut out the section of the sleeve I was going to use for the gusset. I used my grid ruler to cut out the shape, and to ensure both gussets were the same size:

Just make sure you true everything before you finish, to avoid having to rip seams:

That's it, really. Once you've cut out the gusset, it's simply a matter of placing it correctly and sewing it in. I give more specific instructions for insertion in my Medieval Gown Post.

Also, just a quick tip: when using kite gussets it's important, though not imperative, to make sure every corner touches or meets a seam. This avoids bunching and gaping that can occur if you put a corner into a smooth seam. If you have to put a gusset where it does not intersect a seam, then use a softer oblong shape instead:

Hope this helps!

Nostalgically Yours

Summer Project #1 - Medieval Dress - Part III

Well, it's been a while since I wrote about this, so if you need a refresher or you haven't read the first two parts, please see Part I and Part II.

So the cutting was going to be a challenge. I had a very limited amount of fabric and a set number of pattern pieces that I absolutely needed to cut. Since I wanted to waste as little fabric as possible, I decided to create a marker. If you don't know what that is, and/or you wanted a detailed explanation of how I went about making my own makers, you can read that post here. Here's what I ended up with:

Creating my own marker helped me see that I had enough room for five godets!

So I cut out all the pieces and started sewing them together. I first attached the godets to the dress panels, aligning the bottoms (which would later turn out to be a mistake). After the godet was inserted into the open seam, I pinned up from the point of the godet up the rest of the seam, like so:

1) Lay out the godet within the seam, not forgetting to true your pieces so the ends all match up nicely.

2) Pin and sew the godet to one side of your seam, right sides together

3) Now do the same with the opposite side.

4) Finally, close the rest of the seam - if you're ambitious you can combine steps 3 and 4.

Of course, I managed to forget to true the seams, so I ended up with this:

Neither of my seams matched up...

So after I re-finishing all the seams and godets, I cut the sleeves and inserted them. I decided the gown needed something more, though, so I went out to my local fabric store to pick an elegant lining for the sleeves. I was very lucky to find the perfect fabric on sale for $5/yard. It had an elegant border which I decided to use to my advantage.

By placing the sleeve pattern right against the decorative border, once I set the sleeve in, I would be able to wrap the border around to the exterior side. I also used some of the border along the open top seam of the sleeves and around the collar. Here is the end result:

The wrapping of the sleeve border is clearer in this picture.

This detail of the sleeve shows what the border looks like on the outside of the sleeve.

Once that was done I had my cousin come over for a fitting. Unfortunately the chemise was too tight around the bust, and she couldn't easily lift her arms - which was a problem considering she needed to dance in this costume. So, back to the drawing board... After careful consideration I decided not to re-cut the bodice. Instead, I chose to rely on a good old Medieval friend again: the gusset.
As I will explain in my main article tomorrow, gussets can be used in a variety of ways to expand seams where extra movement or give is necessary. These are not to be confused with the godets mentioned above (more here).

Side view of chemise with arm raised, before expansion...

...and after the expansion.

Before I added the gusset, the area pulled and tugged around her bust and bicep. After adding the gusset, it fit quite well. I think it's clear from my illustration exactly why it is called a kite gusset.

Once I finished fitting the chemise the second time, I had only to finish the neck. I decided to use bias for that. I made two eyelets near the center of the front bias, then wrapped this around the front of the chemise, where I had already attached the two pieces of cording.

I think the whole thing turned out pretty well, and I heard the dress received nothing but compliments at her Medieval Fair. She was the only one there with a home-made costume.

Stay tuned for the final installment in this exciting series: Pictures!


Nostalgically Yours

Summer Project #1 - Medieval Dress - Part II

If you haven't read the first part of this project, you can do so here.

So, now it was on with the pattern! Thanks to the book I won with my Senior Thesis collection at my High School vocational program, Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong, I have a valuable resource on modern pattern making for all of my sewing projects. However, I really wanted to do some research on authentic patterns of the Medieval period in order to get the fit of a real medieval gown. The internet gave me lots of great information, including some stuff I already knew like the popularity of godets. In retrospect I would have liked to have drafted the whole pattern from some similarly-shaped gowns I found online, but after measuring my cousin I noticed she would fit right into a shortened version of the size 6 block I had made in my Sewing Class at AAU last semester.

Can we just let that sink in for a second? My 11-year-old cousin fits into an industry standard size 6. What exactly does that say about our standards of beauty? Moving on...

Since I was using my block, I reverted to HJA's book for a silhouette that mimicked the Medieval look. I definitely wanted no darts in the dress, but she needed enough space to dance in it, too. Conveniently enough, there is an entire section in the book dedicated to "Dresses without Waistline Seams", all based on the torso foundation. First I started on the chemise. I decided on a box fit dress: A non-fitted shift without any fish-eye darts. The problem here was what to do with the bust dart, which is still required for the dress to actually contour the bust. Here's where I got clever. Having read that drawstrings were a very common closure in Medieval tailoring, I decided to transfer the bust dart upwards, create added fullness, and have a drawstring across the center front. Brilliant, I know. Here are some illustrations to show my work:

Here I show where I transferred the dart.

Here I've transferred the bust dart upwards, closing the one on the side. I've also eliminated the back shoulder dart, ensuring the shoulder seam is trued. Finally, as per the directions in the book, I added a half inch to the waistlines, blending to zero on the hip and side seams.

Here I re-drafted the necklines. The front is curved to allow for the bust fullness - once drawn in with string it will lie straight.

For the gown I knew I wanted a lot of fullness, and the fitting wasn't important anywhere but the arms and shoulder, so I went with a tent dress. This is the same basic principle as a flared skirt, except instead of converting just the skirt darts to flare at the hem, one converts all of the darts on the torso foundation to flare by slashing like so:

First I cut along these slash-lines...

...and opened the darts downward, widening the body and the hem...

...and finally I redrafted the neckline to match the chemise.

Don't forget the sleeves! For the chemise I simply redrew the block without the elbow dart. Above you can see what I did for the gown: I redrafted the outer lines to make the long opening at the wrist that was so fashionable back then. Also, I slashed the sleeve down the middle to create an opening along the top of the arm. Here I intended to put in more lacing so the sleeve could be worn open or closed!

As I mentioned, I had done much research in terms of Medieval construction. So none of the gown's pattern pieces were on the fold. "Why?" you might ask. Simple: four seams instead of two allows more room for godets. Also, the closure was intended to be lacing up the front of the gown, so that required an open seam.

Now that I had my patterns designed, my next step was to cut everything out. Some of you might be noticing by now that I have omitted the pattern for the sideless surcote. As it happens I was running very short of time at this point, so I decided instead to make a somewhat more elaborate gown.

More later.
Nostalgically Yours

Read Part III