The Prettiest Princess, Part 1

Greetings Blogosphere! After a bit of a hiatus (which will henceforth be known as Laziest Summer Ever), I am back to bring you news of a brand new sewing project for me. This September, I'll be participating in the first session of an ongoing campaign LARP featuring canon characters from a wide variety of sources. Happily, I will be playing one of my favorite characters of all time: San, better known as Mononoke Hime or Princess Mononoke.

Fierce.

Princess Mononoke is one of my favorite movies of all time, and you can probably expect a Film Friday entry in the near future outlining why. Needless to say, it has been a long-time dream of mine to be a badass anime warrior princess, so I jumped at the opportunity to pitch this character for the game. It was also the perfect chance to try my hand at Cosplay, utilizing my new sewing skills. So what will this costume entail?

1. The Dress & The Vest

I think the sewing for this project will be pretty simple, and I'm looking forward to the chance to experiment a little and make things look rough and natural. I'm not sure precisely why San's dress is purple, but this is an anime from 1997 so you have to cut it some slack for unusual costume choices.

So, I found a relatively simple sundress sort of pattern at Jo-Ann, and I'll be using the one I circled for the dress. It's not perfect, but it's sleeveless and frill-free, and the skirt seems to billow in an an appropriate way. San's dress is actually a little shorter than this, but I'll need to chop up the bottom anyway to get that ragged leather look, so it's good that the pattern will give me extra room. For the vest, I'm basically just going to wing it. It looks to me as though it's just two rectangles with shoulder straps, and I think I can manage that easily enough without a pattern. For fabric, I chose polyester Microsuede, which has a nice suede texture without the exorbitant price tag or merciless care needs. It also feels a lot lighter than I imagine real suede does, so I think it will have the proper expressive flow that any Miyazaki character's costuming (and hair) absolutely demand.

2. The Cloak & The Mask

Here we have pretty much the defining items of a Mononoke cosplay. Without the epic, iconic white wolf cloak and mask, San is just a loopy girl who lives in the woods. When it comes to sewing, the cloak is pretty much a no-brainer. It's just a big, roughly cut piece of faux fur. But! When it comes to attaching it to the rest of the outfit, things get tricky. If you look closely, you'll see that the cloak appears to be attached at two places: The back of the mask, and the necklace. Apparently, it's actually two separate pieces of fur: one hanging off her back, and one hanging off the back of the mask. Cloak to mask should just be a simple matter of hot glue, but if I'm feeling ambitious and I have extra time I may try to fashion some little straps to attach the two pieces in a more naturalistic way. The trick with the necklace seems to be in balancing the two so the cloak doesn't just pull down your back and choke you to death. I think I'll try putting some weights in the beads to hold it down, but I may end up having to attach it in some other way. Ideally, I'd like to be able to wear the dress and vest without the cloak, but Miyazaki does not seem to have given enough thought to the actual practicalities of how this thing is supposed to work as a garment. As for the mask, I've found a pretty solid guide here that involved paper mache, a bowl, and some napkin rings. I don't really have any of those things yet, but once I realized that I had everything to make the dress and vest, I decided I'd make those first instead of the mask. I foresee a trip to Target in the near future!

3. The Accessories

Finally, there's everything else: The knife, the earrings, the toothy necklace, the armbands, the headband, and the shoes. Accessories are, of course, very important, so I've armed myself with clay and paint and glue and knives and clip-on earring backs and so forth:

I think I'll probably end up needing some more clay in various colors, but I intend to get the "big stuff" done as soon as possible so that I have lots of time to play around with accessories and putting the outfit together. Anyway, today is my first sewing day, so wish me luck on my new project, and look forward to more updates soon!

Windfall

Hello, friends! It's been a wacky couple of weeks for me. I've been working on lining up an assistant teaching job for next year at an elementary school near my house (my first full-time salaried job... ever!) and simultaneously been offered a keyholder position at my current workplace. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to turn the latter down, because I can't really picture myself balancing a full-time job, a part-time managerial position, classes, and sanity/creative output, although the part of me that worries about things like credit card bills tells me I should try it.

Anyway, a minor technical glitch with my sewing machine sent me off the rails for a few weeks. I'm a little disheartened by how easily I lose momentum for things - I certainly had no real excuse to stop sewing, but I guess I needed a little time off for my brain! In any case, I'm starting work on my mom's tiered skirt very soon, and I'll be trying some little creative side-projects soon as well. I got an unexpected "bonus" from work the other day, in the form of a bunch of defective dresses that had to be destroyed and thrown out:

Fortunately for me, "destroyed" apparently just means their tags are removed and they get a big slice up the back, meaning a fair bit of fabric is still intact. So when I saw these little beauties sitting sadly at the bottom of a trash bag in the back office, I rang up my manager ASAP and asked if I could take them home.

All in all, I ended up with nine of these gorgeous little patriotic treasures, so my mind is racing with possibilities for a lot of relatively small pieces of fabric. Unfortunately, the red strips on the bottom are the defective part: the color bleeds in the wash. My plan is to slice the red trim off first, and then see if I can wash it sufficiently on its own to set the color. One of my coworkers suggested vinegar as a way to make the color fast - does anyone else have any suggestions?

Did you say you wanted some fabric eye-candy photos? Because I took a bunch for you, so.

Any thoughts on what to do with all this stripey goodness? My mind went first to applique - I've been meaning to experiment with it on some other knit fabric I got, and I think I'll cut out some pieces and give it a whirl in the next few days. I also really like the idea of mixing up stripes into some kind of bizarre patchwork pattern, but I'm not sure what I'd do with it.

Mmmm.... visual disorientation...

One quirk about knit fabric that really intrigues me is its directionality - what would happen if I stitched two pieces of jersey together with their grains running perpendicular to one another? Or at a bias? Suffice it to say that I am excited by the idea of just having a bunch of free, pretty, high-contrast fabric to screw around with. This is where the "sewing" and "visual art" parts of my brain get to play in the sandbox together.

Also, these buttons. So many buttons!

Anyway, I'd love to hear your ideas for my special windfall. My mind is in a very creative place right now, so it's like that my next few sewing sessions will just be me messing around on the machine and making weird things before I really dig into my mom's skirt. So look forward to that, if you want!

Fashion Distraction: Say No to the Dress

Hi folks! Sorry about the lack of updates lately. My sewing machine is on the fritz, and my life has been loopy with figuring out a new potential job and getting back into a lot of creative projects. Anyway, I will hopefully have the machine fixed soon so I can get back to sewing and showing you pictures of it, but for now I just wanted to pop in to comment on a silly little fashion thing I've noticed lately:

On the right, we have Marc Jacobs in a Comme des Garcons dress, some pretty badass black shoes with what appear to be diamond-studded buckles, and for some strange reason big ugly white boxer shorts. On the left, we have Seth Meyers appropriately making fun of this outfit by, you know, wearing it.

I love it when guys wear dresses.

I love it when they get attention for it.

I get it, Andrej, you're the most gorgeous person in the world. Stop lording it over me.

 But yeah, that look is just hideous. The dress is kind of cool, if not particularly flattering to the male figure. The white boxers just make it seem like a joke. Is it a joke? That would disappoint me, Marc Jacobs. Anyway, I guess part of a fashion choice (guys in dresses) becoming more acceptable, at least in the edgiest circles of taste, is that fashion choice being executed pretty poorly from time to time. I just hope that this look is an honest-to-goodness poor decision on the part of Mr. Jacobs, and not some kind of laugh at the expense of fashion freedom. If it's the former, at the very least, we'll have people looking at this hot mess and attempting to do a better job of it in the future!

Film Friday: El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)

Today, I'd like to get rolling on a new feature I've been planning for this blog since day one: Film Friday! On the occasional Friday on which I have the free time and the wherewithal to cobble together a big post, I want to investigate one of my favorite artistic mediums, focusing on the visual beauty and sartorial majesty contained therein. To start off this little project, I could not think of a better choice than one of my two all-time favorite movies (it's so hard to choose between it and Spirited Away): El Laberinto del Fauno, better known to American audience's as Pan's Labyrinth.

For those who have not yet borne witness this this truly incredible film, it is about a young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who moves with her mother into the home of her new stepfather, the brutal fascist Captain Vidal (Sergi López), in 1944 in northern Spain. Naturally seeking an outlet for all the misery that surrounds her in this new place, Ofelia finds herself drawn into a world of fantasy in the form of a mysterious fawn (Doug Jones, with Guillermo del Toro's inimitable creature design) who assures her that she is truly a fairy princess, and that to be reunited with her parents she must complete three tasks to prove she has not become "mortal."

No pressure, though.

While basically everything in this movie is perfect in every way (I could go on at length about the music, the set design, the strength and complexity of its female characters, the way it toys with traditional fairy tale narratives, its historical context, etc. etc. etc.), I think it hinges primarily on its two greatest strengths: its overall visual coherence, and the performances of its three principal actors: Baquero as Ofelia, Lopez as Vidal, and Maribel Verdú as Vidal's maid Mercedes, whose struggles against him mirror Ofelia's "fantasy" adventures in ways that are at once as straightforward and iconic as a fairy tale plot device should be and so subtle and nuanced that I didn't even start to pick up on them until my third or fourth viewing. Needless to say, you have to go watch this movie right now.

Mercedes and Ofelia share some forbidden literature

But this is a fashion blog, so you want to hear about clothes, right? I shall now proceed to post screenshots of all the outfits I love from this film, along with a brief discussion of how each one fits into the larger visual motifs of the movie. Although I've really enjoyed browsing my DVD's collection of Guillermo del Toro's explanations of his various choices, his real brilliance shines through in the fact that you really don't need to listen to him to feel their impact. There are two worlds in this film: "reality" and "fantasy," and del Toro contrasts the two through color palette, costuming, lighting, etc. such that it is impossible to miss what sets them apart. So let's begin...

Here is the first time we see Ofelia, looking like a little poet with her beret and her book. The "real" and "fantasy" worlds in Pan's Labyrinth are distinguished with a simple color duality: warm (fantasy) and cool (reality). While this is a particularly warm shot for the "real world," I still think that little sliver of green from Ofelia's dress is meant to read very powerfully as a slice of warmth in a cold place. At the very least, it is the most saturated color on screen right now, and when we see green juxtaposed against a grey coat here and later against the blue outfits of the soldiers, I think it's meant to read as the warmest color in an otherwise cool palette. It also ties Ofelia to her adult counterpart, Mercedes:

I think this shawl is a brilliant piece of costuming. It 1) ties Mercedes to Ofelia, 2) distinguishes her from everyone else with its comparatively bright color, 3) is ratty as hell, indicating her "low status" in the Vidal household, and 4) is very maternal and nurturing, signaling her as an important caretaker for several characters. The only thing it doesn't do is reveal her downright ferocity and incredible strength in moments of adversity, but I think that it's probably intentional that we don't see that side of her yet. Anyway, here's Captain Vidal, whose sharp uniform sets him apart:

Now, although I think Vidal is one of the most loathsome movie villains in history, I do also think he's a stone-cold badass. Everything about him is meticulous and precise and intense, and there is no mistaking the fact that he is in control of every situation he's a part of. That cold grey color of his uniform? That's probably the most abundant hue in the entire film, and it's because he basically owns reality. Also, just for fun, here are two shots of the most villainous hands ever captured on film:

Do you hate him yet?

How about now?

Anyway, probably the most iconic outfit in the film is what Guillermo del Toro calls Ofelia's "Alice in Wonderland dress," and it is indeed a wonderful addition to the great canon of dresses worn by little girls in fantasy masterpieces:

Instant Classic!

So this is a beautiful dress, and very classy, but what I love most about it is the ways in which it (and the story that surrounds it) is not perfect. First of all, I think she looks kind of awkward in it, don't you? Almost as if she's just a little bit too old (10) to be wearing a little girl's dress. I know for a fact that Guillermo del Toro had to age up the character a little bit after casting Baquero, and I think that is ultimately a very happy accident. It creates just a little tiny bit of age-related tension every time we're asked not to think too hard about the fact that Ofelia is more a young woman than a little girl. Second, I think the most brilliant use of the dress as a costume piece is the fact that Ofelia takes it off before her first big adventure, transitioning to this:

And that, my friends, is how you make a movie.

Guillermo del Toro talks at length in the commentary about how the iconic green dress is silly, in his mind. It's frivolous and decorative, a symbol of the kind of inactive but beautiful "princess" that her mother wants her to be. Ofelia, on the other hand, has the good sense to take off this pretty nonsense before embarking on a quest that will make her very, very dirty. For me this is one of the film's most brilliant moves, playing with the traditional idea of the girl as someone merely to be looked at even in a story that is ostensibly about her. Ofelia's wardrobe choices are her own, and they eventually make her parents rather mad.

In any case, Ofelia has one more knockout costume piece. I won't reveal the plot surrounding how she comes to wear it, but even seeing it could be a bit spoiling, so here's your warning!

Wow!

So, this is what the film looks like in full-fledged fantasy mode: golden, warm, red, round, etc. I think Ofelia's outfit here is amazing! It's otherworldly, timeless, and whimsical without sacrificing any of the dire seriousness of the scene that it's in and the movie as a whole. If you needed any further convincing that Guillermo del Toro (and the people with whom he chooses to collaborate - props to Lala Huete, the costume designer) is a sublime visual artist, look no further.

Anyway, that was a long entry! Thoughts about the film? Its costumes? Anything? Would you like to see more Film Fridays in the future?

That's a Wrap Skirt!

Sorry for the brief absence! This weekend was a whirlwind of expected and unexpected adventures. I've got a lot to discuss now, and I bet you're just dying to hear it! First thing's first, though: all of the pajama pants are now DONE! Here is SM, modeling the scorpion pants we all know he needs now:

Now his legs are protected by a swarm of venomous arachnids!

My pants are also done, and I really like them, but I'm not great at taking photos of myself so you will have to wait a bit to see them! In lieu of a finished product, here is a random photo of my pincushion sitting on top of the fabric:

Artsy!

Now, once I was done with those pants, I scurried right along to my next sewing project, that flowery pink wrap skirt from the Sew Everything Workshop. Because I wanted to wear it to a party on Saturday night, this was my first sewing project ON A DEADLINE. I work well under pressure, and I can happily say that this was no exception. I tackled a few major new concepts with this project: darts, easestitching, and a sewn pull-through hole for the waistband ties. I also took a lot of pictures, because I *loved* how the fabric looked in the morning light from the window in my sewing room.

This is my first practice dart on a spare piece of fabric. Gorgeous, no?

I'll happily admit that I fell right in love with this fabric from the moment I saw it. A few weeks ago I got it into my head that I needed a flowy white skirt with a pink floral pattern on it, but I also didn't want it to be too busy. The color on this print was exactly what I wanted, and that unique white silhouette pattern seems like the ideal way to balance fancy with subtle. I adore patterns of all kinds, but they're hard to wear, and I'm always looking for ways to look interesting and unique without smacking people in the face with loudness. Anyway, I was happy to learn to sew darts on a fabric I loved, and here is the final, pressed result in the skirt:

Crisp!

After sewing the skirt's four darts and hemming the sides, it was time to add the waistband. I'll admit that I would've liked the ties to be a little longer, and they don't look perfect on the ends, but overall I think they turned out OK. The most interesting part was sewing a little hole for the ties to go through on the side. I had a little trouble translating the instructions to what was actually going on in the garment, because the hole was stitched at the seam of two pieces that would eventually be folded in half. Once I realized that the stitch that created the hole was the seam between the two pieces, I figured it out pretty quickly, and here is the result:

After this, I had to attach the waistband/ties to the body of the skirt, but the seams didn't quite match up the way they were supposed to:

 I have helpfully illustrated the seams that are supposed to align. Given this little conundrum, I decided to try out a technique that the pattern didn't explicitly call for, but which seemed appropriate: easestitching. I used the method recommended elsewhere in the Sew Everything Workshop, and put a single stitch with a very long thread about 1/2" from the edge of the "longer" piece (the the skirt body). I then tugged on these threads and used them to evenly distribute the wrinkles in the skirt body until the seams roughly lined up:

 I pinned it here and stitched, and... Voila!

Semi-Victory!!!!

The seams... Sort of lined up! Anyway, they are even, and it looks fine in the finished piece, even if it's not picture perfect. I made the very silly mistake of pinning the wrong side of the waistband to the right side of the body the first time around, and I didn't figure it out until halfway through the seam. Aside pulling that out and starting over, the rest of the project was relatively simple. Putting in the VERY LONG stitches along the top and bottom of the skirt and through the waistline was kind of a pain, because the fabric tended to get a little bunched up and wrinkled, and this got worse the longer I sewed continuously. Because of this, the tail end of the stitch, around the end of one of the waist ties, does look a little wonky. Does anyone know how to prevent or alleviate this problem? Pressing the finished product helped a lot, and it looks pretty flat and tidy in the end.

So, all in all, I'm very proud of this garment. It's the first thing that I chose and made completely for myself, and I wore it to that party Saturday night and got a lot of compliments! I'm still sorting through photos of my outfit from Saturday night, but here's a sneak peek to give you an idea of the finished skirt:

Glamorous!

Cozy

Friends, I like to keep things neat. I really do! The only problem is that neatness relies on having a lot of extra space, and I do not have always have that. Take, for example, my bedroom:

That's Audrey in the corner, being shy. Hi Audrey!

What you see here is a lot of stuff that really ought to be in a closet somewhere: boxes of old junk, trunks full of costumes, clothes and drawings and notebooks piled up on the floor, and even my bed, ideally. As you might imagine, that means there's really not room for a viable sewing space here. That means I had to start occupying a portion of our apartment's common space, and while I love being out in the open with my work, I hate claiming as my own a space that should belong to everyone. My roommates are kind enough to allow me to work on the dining-room table (probably only because I bribe them with pajamas), but I'd like to keep the space I take up as tidy as possible.

Thus, the sewing machine cozy, today's one-day sewing project! Diana Rupp says that one ought to keep one's machine covered to prevent dust build-up, and I made a promise to myself to heed her words and maintain this fancy new piece of machinery. For a while, this was my sewing machine cozy:

Get down from that table, bedsheet. You do not belong on the table, you are a bedsheet.

Ew! As you can see, this is not a friendly way to occupy a communal space. It is ugly and sprawly. So I set about making a new one from oilcloth. Finally putting my old math skills to work, I even measured my machine and adapted the Sew Everything Workshop pattern to fit its somewhat different proportions (note to self: teach kids how to add and subtract fractions by giving them a sewing project.) The whole process went relatively smoothly, and was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed sewing bias tape around the edge of the whole thing, and I can foresee wanting to affix bias tape to a lot of things in the future.

The one area that caused me some perplexity was in sewing the top of the thing on. According to the pattern, I sewed all four sides together and then was supposed to "Stitch around all four sides of the top edge, pivoting at corners." That sounded all well and good until I actually got to a corner:

Pivot who in the what now?

When it came time to pivot, I found that I had a whole bunch of fabric under there that didn't really want to go anywhere, and frankly I'm still not sure what I was supposed to do with it. I managed to fold it under and through and kind of out of the way, awkwardly, but that resulted in a few God-awful messes:

So... yeah, still not really sure what was supposed to happen there. Anyway, I trimmed and hacked my way out of those little disasters and ended up with a reasonably good-looking stitch around the top, although I'm pretty sure a few good tugs at the corners might sour things up a bit.

Please be gentle!

In the end, I managed to craft a rather neat little rectangular prism, and my space is looking a lot cleaner these days.

Hooray rectangles! (To the right you can see my new cutting mat. No more cardboard for me!)

Misaligned

Happy Monday, everyone! The pajama pants are almost all done: PS's are complete, SM's simply await hemming, and mine should be done by the end of the day. Soon I'll post a bunch of eye-candy (hopefully) of the finished products, but for today I want to talk about something that has consistently gone wrong in this project: alignment! No matter how hard I try to do everything right, cut every piece precisely, etc, I keep ending up with these sad little errors:

ARGLE
BARGLE
TOOMANY
PHOTOS










OK, let's break this down.

PROBLEM #1: PIECES DO NOT END IN THE SAME PLACE

Awkward

So this has happened every time: The inside of the front and back pieces of the pants are not the same length. For a while I puzzled over how to line them up, given this problem, and I decided it would be best to match the notches and let the ends line up how they might. This always resulted in what's going on in the above photo: the top corners are like a centimeter apart! What is going on? Is the pattern screwy? Am I doing something terrible with my cutting? Unfortunately, I only have a varnished wood dining-room table to cut on, so I put down a flat sheet of cardboard underneath the part I'm cutting so my scissors don't carve up the finish. I hope the little elevation off the table isn't doing this... Anyway, This eventually leads to the front and back edges being lined up wrong when it comes to sewing the crotch seam. I try to even it out as best as I can, and trim of the extra. But it makes me sad! So... any tips?

PROBLEM #2: SEAMS DON'T LINE UP RIGHT UGHHHHH

"Join us. JOOOIIIINN USSSSSS. LOOOOOOVE UUUSSSSSSSS."

See how the seam goes all zig-zag in the middle there? That is supposed to be a continuous vertical line, because it is the inside seams of the legs. They should meet up in the middle, but they do not. I don't know what to do about that, except... sew better? Again, I am lining up by notches, and I'm pretty sure those seams were closer together or correctly aligned when I pinned them, so at least a part of this problem comes from the way I'm sewing. Sometimes I catch myself pushing the fabric a little bit, so I know I need to check that bad instinct. But if anyone's got any more specific advice, I'd love to hear it. The worst part about this problem is I'm not even getting better about it! The above shot is my pants, which I made third. And here are SM's pants, which I made second:

See? Much better. So. Yeah! I'm getting worse. Or just fluctuating randomly.

ANYWAY, I don't want to be too much of a downer. For the most part, everything is going well and I'm SUPER DUPER THRILLED that the things I am making are turning into wearable garments. Here is a sneak-peak at the "Project Finished" entry:

YAY FEET!

BUT WHAT'S NEXT?????


Good question! Yesterday, I went out shopping again with my mom, and got all sorts of things for my next three projects. The first is a late mother's-day present for that same mom:

Yes, my mom liked the skirt I was wearing in my first OOTD so much that she wanted me to make her one just like it (shape-wise, not color-wise). I think I've mentioned before that we are cute people. Anyway, I'll be making view A up there on the upper-left of the pattern. Although View E intrigues me, and I may tackle it for myself in the near future. When this skirt is done, my mother has requested her own photo-shoot for this blog, so look forward to that!

Project #2 is a Sewing-Machine Cozy from the Sew Everything Workshop. Oilcloth seems to only be available in patterns best described as "mad tacky," but this is the one I liked the most. So there you go! I'm going to try to whip this one up pretty quick, so expect pictures in the near future.

I don't think I can fully explain why or how much I like the cat in this photo. LOOK AT THAT CAT!?

Project #3 is the "Breezy Easy Wrap Skirt," also from the Sew Everything Workshop. At some point I had a magical vision of making a skirt for myself in basically the exact fabric I managed to find, so I'm pretty excited about that.
If you have any tips for making these projects (which include gathering! and darts!), leave them in the comments. These will probably keep me busy for the next few weeks of spare-time-crammed-in-between-work-that-actually-pays-me-money. Have I mentioned that if you'd like me to sew you something, you should definitely ask me right away? I have ideas for myself, but I really want challenges and reasons to make all sorts of things. So please let me know if you want something. ALSO, since I really want to make kids' clothes, do tell me if you have children and would like me to sew something for them. It would make me super happy!