In the spirit of #FallFinishAlong, 3 days ago (3 days??? just 3 days???) i posted about a #YarnChicken victory at the middle of the shawl I'm knitting.
Pictured here, because I'm slow at moving pictures over from the camera to the pc :D
Anyway, the whole shawl is made of 4 balls of yarn, I started it in mid June, finished #knitting the second ball 3 months later. and now I've almost finished working the third ball, and I'm ready to attach the last one.
The last quarter of the work is probably going to go significantly slower, because it's no longer garter stitch, but still. I wasn't sure this would have been ready for December, but now it's starting to look realistic.
I'm #knitting a shawl in two colours, and according to the precision scale I have exactly the amount of yarn I need to knit another two rows with the first colour before moving on to the next one.I've added a lifeline, in case I lose this round of #yarnChicken.
And now, I should really stop knitting and have my breakfast, but that would delay *knowing*.
Non-e (Note)Book
Posted on September 18, 2023
Some time ago our LUG bought some things from soldered.com and while browsing around the website my SO and I decided to add a junk box to the order and see what we would get.
Other than a few useful things, there were two mostly unpopulated boards for the inkplate 10 which would have been pretty hard to reuse as electronics.
On the other hand, at 23 cm × 18 cm they are a size that is reasonable for a book, and the slit near a long edge made them look suitable for the cover plates of a coptic bound book.
Since the size isn’t a standard one, I used some paper I already had in big (A1) sheet: Clairefontaine Dessin Croquis Blanc at 120 g/m², and cut 32 sheet 466 mm × 182 mm big, to have room to trim the excess at the end and straighten the edges. This would make 8 signatures of 4 sheet each, for a total of 128 pages.
The paper will make it suitable both as a notebook (where I’ll write with liquid ink, of course, not ballpoints) or as a sketchbook for pencil (but not wet techniques).
I could have added a few more signatures, but this felt already good enough, and the risk to end up with an half-empty notebook was non-trivial (I will already have to force myself to actually use it, rather than keep it for a good topic that will never be).
First we finished depopulating the boards, using it as a desoldering exercise and trying (and not always succeeding) to save as many components as possible, even if most of them were too tiny for our current soldiering skills.
And then I only had to sew the book, which was done mostly while watching the DebConf streams.
And a couple of days later, trim and sand the pages, which as usual I could have done better, but, well, it works.
The next time I do something like this I think I will have to add a couple more mm also to the height, to be able to trim also those edges.
And now of course the Big Question is: what should I dedicate this notebook to? Will I actually use it? This year? This decade?
@devrtz :debian: ,
btw, I think I need a t-shirt with these words. or a patch on my backpack. Yeah, I think a patch for my backpack will happen in the near future. And if anybody wants to print stickers or anything else, I will submit this to the usual places :D
(And until I've submitted it to the right places, the source can be found on eoval.org/YFf9WaTC#debian_phon… , under the same license as the debian logo)
@Fabio , @Diego Roversi and the other locals: if you also want something with these words, we can talk about it :)
Nella categoria: messaggi contradditori.
E rimane il mistero: con quale dei due metodi gestiscono il prato?
(È l'area all'aperto di un museo, dove il pubblico deve camminare per raggiungere gli aeroplani esposti, per cui è necessario tenere l'erba abbastanza corta da non essere un pericolo)
Filed under: conflicting messages
The mystery remains: how are they managing the grass in that area?
(it's the outdoor area of a museum, where the public is supposed to walk to reach the planes on display, so they have to keep the grass short enough that it's not a danger)
Banners and Signs
Posted on September 8, 2023
I forgot to write down the details back when it happened, but now that the surprise has been delivered I can write about it.
Some time ago, I decided to make a small banner with the GL-Como penguin for a friend, because reasons.
However, this friend has a big problem, he, well, is from Pisa (no, I’m not from Leghorn, why do you ask?), and I had a screen printing kit, openclipart and no inhibitions.
So, with the encouragement of a few friends who were in the secret, this happened. In two copies, because the first attempt at the print had issues.
And yesterday we finally met that friend again, gave him all of the banners, and no violence happened, but he liked them :D
If somebody is interested, the source image I used is on openclipart, with links to all of the sources I’ve used.
I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but when I was working on the Pisani sign I also stumbled on the “no dogs” sign and decided that the world needed a “mandatory cat” sign, and well, here is the full set (all images are a link to the openclipart page).
La foto
E quello spazio vicino alla tasca? è più grande degli altri, ma troppo piccolo perché ci stia un'altro occhiello, e non ho segnato un'occhiello lì in mezzo.
E quindi ci sono 30 occhielli, non 31.
E chissene. Funziona ugualmente. E di sicuro non sentirò la mancanza di un bottone da allacciare tutte le volte che indosso la giacca.
Comunque, al momento tutti gli occhielli sono fatti, mancano da attaccare buona parte dei bottoni.
The picture
And you see that space close to the pocket? it's a bit bigger than the regular spacing, but smaller than a space that would fit another buttonhole, and I didn't actually mark a buttonhole in it.
And now the front only has 30 buttons, not 31.
Whatever. It will work anyway. And it's not like I'm going to miss closing another button when I wear this jacket :D
Anyway, all of the buttonholes are done, now I have to attach the buttons.
(too lazy to add English, sorry, it's shitposting)
Questa cosa era in un paio di jeans da uomo (non comprati da me :D )
è un segno che la profondità delle #tasche è un surrogato della lunghezza del pene, vero?
non ho (ancora) controllato se i cm del righello sono corretti, o se son stati accorciati un pochettino
@More Than This @LaVi 🕊️📚🐈 beh, sia interlingua che esperanto sono delle realità: sono lingue parlate regolarmente da comunità di dimensioni ampiamente sufficienti a mantenerle in vita.
Perché possano diventare *la* lingua internazionale parlata da tutti, beh, innanzitutto ci si dovrebbe mettere d'accordo su quale delle millemila proposte di lingua internazionale adottare, e poi…
Origami Document Folder
Posted on August 1, 2023
A long time ago, around the turn of the century, I was looking at some Useful Origami website and found a pattern for a document folder with a lot of pockets.
And by a lot of pockets I really mean a lot! I immediately had to fold one, and then another one, and then a few others, both in a size suitable for business cards and as a folder for A4 sheets of paper.
And then, a few years ago I needed a new document folder, and looked for these instructions, and couldn’t find them anywhere. Luckily I still had some of the folders I had made, and the model was simple enough that I could unfold those and reconstruct the instructions.
I tried to show them around to see if anybody knew where it came from, but had no results.
Now that I’ve prepared a new website for patterns for non-fiber crafts (and that I needed a new folder :D ) I’ve decided to post those instructions on it, so that they will have a stable place to live on.
And now that the #origami crowd on the fediverse has grown, maybe somebody will stumble on them and will remember where they come from: if you do, please let me know, with a comment if you’re reading this on the fediverse, or through one of my contacts if you’re reading the blog directly.
Elastic Neck Top
Posted on July 26, 2023
Since some time I’ve been thinking about making myself a top or a dress with a wide gathered neckline that can be work at different widths, including off-the-shoulders.
A few years ago I’ve been gifted a cut of nice, thin white fabric with a print of lines and lozenges that isn’t uniform along the fabric, but looks like it was designed for some specific garment, and it was waiting in my stash for a suitable pattern.
And a few days ago, during a Sunday lunch, there was an off-hand mention of a dress from the late 1970s which had an elastic in the neckline, so that it could be optionally worn off-the-shoulders.
And something snapped in place.
I had plans for that afternoon, but they were scrapped, and I started to draw, measure, cut rectangles of fabric, pin and measure again, cut more fabric.
two rectangular tubes for the sleeves laid so that they meet the body just at the corners, and a triangle (a square gusset folded on the diagonal) joins them to the body.
I decided on a pattern made of rectangles to be able to use as much fabric as possible, with the size of each rectangle based mostly on the various sections on the print of the fabric.
I’ve made the typical sleeves from a rectangle and a square gusset, and then attached them to the body just from the gusset to keep the neckline wide and low.
The part of the fabric with large vertical stripes had two different widths: I could have made the back narrower, but I decided to just keep a strip with narrower lines to one side.
The fabric also didn’t have a full second strip of lozenges, so I had to hem it halfway through it.
The casing for the elastic was pieced from various scraps, but at least I was able to match the lines on the center front and back, even if they are different. Not that it matters a lot, since it’s all hidden in the gathering, but I would have known.
And since I was working on something definitely modern, even if made out of squares and rectangles, of course I decided to hand-sew everything, mostly to be able to use quite small sewing allowances, since the fabric was pretty thin.
In my stash I had a piece of swimsuit elastic that feels nice, looks nice and makes a knot that doesn’t slip, so I used it. It’s a perfect match, except for the neon yellow colour, which I do like, but maybe is a bit too high visibility? I will see if the haberdasher has the same elastic in dark blue, but right now this will do.
It was a quick project anyway: by the end of the working week the top was finished; I think that on a sewing machine it would be easy to make it in a day.
And it can be worn off the shoulders! Which is something I will probably never do in public (and definitely not outdoors), but now if I wanted I could! :D
As usual, the pattern (for what pattern there is) and instructions are on my pattern website under a #FreeSoftWear license, and I’ve also added to the site a tip on how I use electrician fish tape to thread things through long casings
@Elikorokoros non che con la macchina vera si veda molto meglio
una delle righe verticali non è una piega, ma una cucitura piatta, ma si indovina appena ingrandendo l'immagine
@Katy B. :debian:📚 🥛 @Tappello
una foto brutta, no, non è troppo sbattimento, l'ho ritrovata facilmente :D
In realtà rispetto a quando ho fatto quella foto adesso c'è una specie di copertina di stoffa (e mylar) tutto attorno ai lati di legno, per isolare, e al posto dei barattoli di vetro con sopra della stoffa nera di solito uso un pentolino antiaderente di colore scuro (sia dentro che fuori) con coperchio di vetro e manici di metallo (adatto ad andare in forno, e quindi anche qui)
Project #linocut steampunk #piecepack is under way!
Quite a few months ago I started the project by making this
and buying some supplies (such as non-black linocut ink :D ), and then procrastination happened and I got quite stuck.
Today I've actually drawn all most of the pieces on tracing paper, I need to add the smaller suites, trace everything from the reverse, and then finally carve the linoleum.
And then maybe I'll start procrastinating again, or maybe I'll actually do some test prints in the weekend?
I may also be thinking of regular piecepack suites and playing card suites in the same style, but first I need to actually assemble a piecepack and discover whether it will work.
I may have accidentally a thing.
This came from wikimedia commons
openclipart.org/detail/342614/…
And it was remixed as:
openclipart.org/detail/342615/…
which isn't a sign that is very useful, but was needed for
openclipart.org/detail/342616/…
and since I was already working on this, I decided I might as well
openclipart.org/detail/342617/…
(if you're reading this on mastodon you probably can't see that the images are in the middle of the text, before the URLs).
Correspondence Book
Posted on May 26, 2023
I write letters. The kind that are written on paper with a dip pen 1 and ink, stamped and sent through the post, spend a few days or weeks maturing like good wine in a depot somewhere2, and then get delivered to the recipient.
Some of them (mostly cards) are to people who will receive them and thank me via xmpp (that sounds odd, but actually works out nicely), but others are proper letters with long texts that I exchange with penpals.
Most of those are fountain pen frea^Wenthusiasts, so I usually use a different ink each time, and try to vary the paper, and I need to keep track of what I’ve used.
Some time ago, I’ve read a Victorian book3 which recommended keeping a correspondence book to register all mail received and sent, the topics and whether it had been replied or otherwise acted upon. I don’t have the mail traffic of a Victorian lady (or even middle class woman), but this looked like something fun to do, and if I added fields for the inks and paper used it would also have useful side effect.
So I headed over to the obvious program anybody would use for these things (XeLaTeX, of course) and quickly designed a page with fields for the basic thinks I want to record; it was a bit hurried, and I may improve on it the next time I make one, but I expect this one to last me two or three years, and it is good enough.
I’ve decided to make it A6 sized, so that it doesn’t require a lot of space on my busy desktop, and it could be carried inside a portable desktop, if I ever decide to finish the one for which I’ve made a mockup years ago :)
I’ve also added a few pages for the addresses of my correspondents (and an index of the letters I’ve exchanged with them), and a few empty pages for other notes.
Then I’ve used my a6_book.py script to rearrange the A6 pages into signatures and impress them on A4; to reduce later effort I’ve added an option to order the pages in such a way that if I then cut four A4 sheet in half at a time (the limit of my rotary cutter) the signatures are ready to be folded. It’s not the default because it requires that the pages are a multiple of 32 rather than just 16 (and they are padded up with empty pages if they aren’t).
If you’re also interested in making one, here are the files:
After printing (an older version where some of the pages are repeated. whoops, but it only happened 4 times, and it’s not a big deal), it was time for binding this into a book.
I’ve opted for Coptic stitch, so that the book will open completely flat and writing on it will be easier and the covers are 2 mm cardboard covered in linen-look bookbinding paper (sadly I no longer have a source for bookbinding cloth made from actual cloth).
I tried to screenprint a simple design on the cover: the first attempt was unusable (the paper was smaller than the screen, so I couldn’t keep it in the right place and moved as I was screenprinting); on the second attempt I used some masking tape to keep the paper in place, and they were a bit better, but I need more practice with the technique.
Finally, I decided that for such a Victorian thing I will use an Iron-gall ink, but it’s Rohrer & Knlingner Scabiosa, with a purple undertone, because life’s too short to use blue-black ink :D
And now, I’m off to write an actual letter, rather than writing online about things that are related to letter writing.
- not a quill! I’m a modern person who uses steel nibs!↩︎
- Milano Roserio, I’m looking at you. a month to deliver a postcard from Lombardy to Ticino? not even a letter, which could have hidden contraband, a postcard.↩︎
- I think. I’ve looked at some plausible candidates and couldn’t find the source.↩︎
Late Victorian Combinations
Posted on May 26, 2023
Some time ago, on an early Friday afternoon our internet connection died. After a reasonable time had passed we called the customer service, they told us that they would look into it and then call us back.
On Friday evening we had not heard from them, and I was starting to get worried. At the time in the evening when I would have been relaxing online I grabbed the first Victorian sewing-related book I found on my hard disk and started to read it.
For the record, it wasn’t actually Victorian, it was Margaret J. Blair. System of Sewing and Garment Drafting. from 1904, but I also had available for comparison the earlier and smaller Margaret Blair. System of Garment Drafting. from 1897.
Anyway, this book had a system to draft a pair of combinations (chemise top + drawers); and months ago I had already tried to draft a pair from another system, but they didn’t really fit and they were dropped low on the priority list, so on a whim I decided to try and draft them again with this new-to-me system.
Around 23:00 in the night the pattern was ready, and I realized that my SO had gone to sleep without waiting for me, as I looked too busy to be interrupted.
The next few days were quite stressful (we didn’t get our internet back until Wednesday) and while I couldn’t work at my day job I didn’t sew as much as I could have done, but by the end of the week I had an almost complete mockup from an old sheet, and could see that it wasn’t great, but it was a good start.
One reason why the mockup took a whole week is that of course I started to sew by machine, but then I wanted flat-felled seams, and felling them by hand is so much neater, isn’t it?
And let me just say, I’m grateful for the fact that I don’t depend on streaming services for media, but I have a healthy mix of DVDs and stuff I had already temporary downloaded to watch later, because handsewing and being stressed out without watching something is not really great.
Anyway, the mockup was a bit short on the crotch, but by the time I could try it on and be sure I was invested enough in it that I decided to work around the issue by inserting a strip of lace around the waist.
And then I went back to the pattern to fix it properly, and found out that I had drafted the back of the drawers completely wrong, making a seam shorter rather than longer as it should have been. ooops.
I fixed the pattern, and then decided that YOLO and cut the new version directly on some lightweight linen fabric I had originally planned to use in this project.
The result is still not perfect, but good enough, and I finished it with a very restrained amount of lace at the neckline and hems, wore it one day when the weather was warm (loved the linen on the skin) and it’s ready to be worn again when the weather will be back to being warm (hopefully not too soon).
The last problem was taking pictures of this underwear in a way that preserves the decency (and it even had to be outdoors, for the light!).
This was solved by wearing leggings and a matched long sleeved shirt under the combinations, and then promptly forgetting everything about decency and, well, you can see what happened.
The pattern is, as usual, published on my pattern website as #FreeSoftWear.
And then, I started thinking about knits.
In the late Victorian and Edwardian eras knit underwear was a thing, also thanks to the influence of various aspects of the rational dress movement; reformers such as Gustav Jäger advocated for wool underwear, but mail order catalogues from the era such as archive.org/details/cataloguef… (starting from page 67) have listings for both cotton and wool ones.
From what I could find, back then they would have been either handknit at home or made to shape on industrial knitting machines; patterns for the former are available online, but the latter would probably require a knitting machine that I don’t currently1 have.
However, this is underwear that is not going to be seen by anybody2, and I believe that by using flat knit fabric one can get a decent functional approximation.
In The Stash I have a few meters of a worked cotton jersey with a pretty comfy feel, and to make a long story short: this happened.
I suspect that the linen one will get worn a lot this summer (linen on the skin. nothing else need to be said), while the cotton one will be stored away for winter. And then maybe I may make a couple more, if I find out that I’m using it enough.
- cue ominous music. But first I would need space to actually keep and use it :)↩︎
- other than me, my SO, any costuming friend I may happen to change in the presence of, and everybody on the internet in these pictures.↩︎
@oɔiƚɘᴎ @Zand :arch: :terminal: @Yaku 🐗 e niente, ieri sera non sono riuscita a dormire¹ fino a che non ho fatto questa cosa
¹ il fatto che fossero ancora tipo le settemmezzaotto non ha assolutamente influito sull'insonnia :D
@Sini Tuulia no, I was thinking this kind:
picture from thesewingdirectory.co.uk/how-t… (first searx result), which has more pictures.
What this is making are really pleats, but it can be setup to make short pleats every stitch for a more gathered-like look.
Hiking Slippers
Posted on May 5, 2023
When I travel for a few days I don’t usually1 bring any other shoe than the ones I’m wearing, plus some kind of slippers for use inside hotel / B&B rooms.
It’s good for not carrying useless weight, but it always leave me with a vague feeling of “what if my only shoes break”, followed by “on a Sunday, when the shops are closed”.
So I started to think in the general direction of hiking sandals, shoes that are designed to be worn when resting, and lightweight to carry, but are a passable substitute for regular shoes in case of an accident to the main ones, maybe with the help of an extra pair of socks2 (or when crossing fords, but that’s not really a usecase I have).
My requirements are easier than the ones for real hiking sandals, since I’m only going to be walking on paved streets (or at most easy unpaved ones), and the weight considerations are a thing, but not as strict as if I had to carry these on my back while hiking many hours in a day.
My first attempt was a pair of hiking sandals from things I already had in my stash, with vibram soles, neoprene padding and polyester webbing. After a couple fixes they sort of worked, but they had a few big issues.
- While comfortable when worn, the neoprene made the sandals hard to make, as it tended to deform while being assembled.
- Polyester webbing is slippery. Some strips of hot glue in strategical places helped, but they weren’t perfect and in time they are peeling off.
- Most importantly, to make the sandals stable enough to wear while walking I had to add a strap around the ankle that needs closing: this makes it a bit of a hassle to use the sandals, say, when waking up in the middle of the night for metabolic reasons.
And then, one day I made my linen slippers, and that lead me to think again about the problem: what if I made a pair of slippers with a rubber sole, technical materials and maybe uppers made of net, so that they would be lightweight, breathable and possibly even still suitable in case I ever need to cross a ford.
This was also readily attainable from the stash: some polycotton for the sole lining, elastic mesh for the uppers, EVA foam for padding and vibram soles.
I decided to assemble most of them by machine, and it was quick and painless (possibly also thanks to the elasticity of the mesh)
For the soles I may have gone a bit overboard with the vibram claw, but:
- I already had it in the stash;
- if I need to wear them on an unpaved road, they are going to be suitable;
- why not?
The soles were glued to the slippers rather than being sewn, as I don’t think there is a reasonable way to sew these soles; I hope it won’t cause durability issues later on (if it does, there will be an update)
As for the finished weight, at 235 g for the pair I thought I could do better, but apparently shoes are considered ultralight if they are around 500 g? Using just one layer of mesh rather than two would probably help, but it would have required a few changes to the pattern, and anyway I don’t really to carry them around all day.
I’ve also added a loop of fabric (polycotton) to the centre back to be able to hang the slippers to the backpack when wet or dirty; a bit of narrow webbing may have been better, but I didn’t have any in my stash.
The pattern is the same as that used for the linen slippers, and of course it’s released as #FreeSoftWear.
I’ve worn these for a few days around the home and they worked just fine, except for the fact that I had to re-glue the sole in a few places (but I suspect it was glued badly in the first place, since the other sole had no issues).
Right now I have no plans to travel, so I don’t know how much I will be able to test these in the next few months, but sooner or later I will (or I’ll keep wearing them at home after I’ve thoroughly tested the linen ones), and if there are issues I will post them here on the blog (and add a link to this post).
- the exception would be when I’m also bringing some kind of costume, and even there it’s not always true.↩︎
- and one should always carry an extra pair of clean socks, as they are useful for so many things, as Pratchett reminds us.↩︎
Linen Slippers
Posted on May 4, 2023
I hate going out to buy shoes. Even more so I hate buying home shoes, which is what I spend most of my life in, also because no matter what I buy they seem to disintegrate after a season or so. So, obviously, I’ve been on a quest to make my own.
As a side note, going barefoot (with socks) would only move the wear issue to the socks, so it’s not really a solution, and going bare barefoot on ceramic floors is not going to happen, kaythanksbye.
For the winter I’m trying to make knit and felted slippers; I’ve had partial success, and they should be pretty easy to mend (I’ve just had to do the first mend, with darning and needle felting, and it seems to have worked nicely).
For the summer, I’ve been thinking of something sewn, and with the warm season approaching (and the winter slippers needing urgent repairs) I decided it was time to work on them.
I already had a shaped (left/right) pattern for a sole from my hiking sandals attempts (a topic for another post), so I started by drafting a front upper, and then I started to have espadrille feeling and decided that a heel guard was needed.
As for fabric, looking around in the most easily accessible part of the Stash I’ve found the nice heavyweight linen I’m using for my Augusta Stays, of which I still have a lot and which looked almost perfect except for one small detail: it’s very white.
I briefly thought about dyeing, but I wanted to start sewing NOW to test the pattern, so, yeah, maybe it will happen one day, or maybe I’ll have patchy dust-grey slippers. If I’ll ever have a place where I can do woad dyeing a blue pair will happen, however.
Contrary to the typical espadrillas I decided to have a full lining, and some padding between the lining and the sole, using cotton padding leftovers from my ironing board.
To add some structure I also decided to add a few rows of cording (and thus make the uppers in two layers of fabric), to help prevent everything from collapsing flat.
As for the sole, that’s something that is still causing me woes: I do have some rubber sole sheets (see “hiking sandals” above), but I suspect that they require glueing, which I’m not sure would work well with the natural fabric uppers and will probably make repairs harder to do.
In the past I tried to make some crocheted rope soles and they were a big failure: they felt really nice on the foot, but they also self-destroyed in a matter of weeks, which is not really the kind of sole I’m looking for.
Now I have some ~ 3 mm twine that feels much harsher on the hands while working it (and would probably feel harsher on the feet, but that’s what the lining and padding are for), so I hope it may be a bit more resistant, and I tried to make a braided rope sole.
Of course, I have published the pattern and instructions for the slippers as well as those for the braided rope sole as #FreeSoftWear.
Now what is left is trying everything under daily use, and I hope I will have updates on this at the end of the season, rather than soon :D
@WelshPixie, ShadowFigure you were too fast!
Sennelier Abstract acrylic ink (917 purple), brause n°180 1 mm (in retrospect the 0.75 mm would have been better), Fabriano EcoQua paper.
@Sabrina Web :privacypride: @Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua
Sulle stradine attorno al castello di Massa io ho trovato questo
I'd say any of them is fine, but maybe not the teal?
(credits for the technique to pallia.net/en/blog , right now I can't find the precise post)
Conta come #origamiSegreti se non arriva da livellosegreto e non è neanche chissà che origami? Avevo bisogno di una scatolina per evitare di perdere in giro degli aghi, e mi serviva *ora*.
Ho seguito le istruzioni di youtube.com/watch?v=7u-4G1lkx4… ma credo che sia un modello tradizionale.
Fitting Top and Camisole
Posted on April 5, 2023
For this summer, I’ve just made a nice sleeveless dress, but that doesn’t mean that I’m planning to go around with bare arms like, I don’t know, a peasant or even somebody with no health issues, perish the thought!
Instead, at the end of last season I’ve bought a remnant of white ramie / viscose jersey that is a bit too transparent to be decent when worn on its own, but should still give some protection from the sun without being unconfortable in the heat, with the intent to make myself a new top.
Because of the transparency I wasn’t sure whether to actually use it for a top, or just to make camisoles, but with the decency preserved by the dress the choice was made: I had enough fabric for a top, a camisole and maybe something small.
I already have a trusted pattern for the top and camisole, but they still had to be published, so I took care to write down instructions and take step-by-step pictures; maybe the white fabric isn’t the best, but it’s better than nothing, and I can still take better pictures the next time I’ll do another make. They are of course on my pattern webiste: top and camisole.
Since the fabric was bought online as a remnant, I didn’t exactly know what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised by how soft it is: it feels like touching a cloud.
This however means that it felt like working with a cloud, and, well, let’s just say I’m happy that both patterns were quite simple and I didn’t have to deal with fiddly bits.
I was also not so pleasantly surprised by the fact that part of the fabric had a few small holes as if the end of the roll had been caught on something; I was able to cut everything around the holes, other than a small bit that I hadn’t noticed and had to be mended. It’s not a big deal, but I suspect it’s a sign that this fabric may not be as sturdy as it could have been, and that there will be more mending in the future as I wear it.
And then, when I had finished the set I was faced with another problem: taking pictures. For one thing, worn on their own they aren’t exactly decent, and then there was the fact that after a week of late spring weather in March, as I was working on summer clothing the temperature dropped and there was even a hint of rain.
I solved this by wearing the new set on top of another set of fitting top and camisole, with matching leggings. Not exactly something I would wear on the regular streets, but good enough for a picture of underwear.
Still, the pictures were taken in quite a hurry, because I wasn’t completely freezing, but still pretty cold.
Anyway, I’m off to find some other piece of summer wear to make, hoping that it will bring proper rain. :)
Swiss Embroidery Princess Petticoat
Posted on March 16, 2023
A few years ago a friend told me that her usual fabric shop was closing down and had a sale on all remaining stock.
While being sad for yet another brick and mortar shop that was going to be missed (at least it was because the owners were retiring, not because it wasn’t sustainable anymore), of course I couldn’t miss the opportunity.
So we drove a few hundred km, had some nice time with a friend that (because of said few hundred km) we rarely see, and spent a few hours looting the corps… er… helping the shop owner getting rid of stock before their retirement.
Among other things there was a cut of lightweight swiss embroidery cotton in blue which may or may not have been enthusiastically grabbed with plans of victorian underwear.
It was too nice to be buried under layers and layers of fabric (and I suspect that the embroidery wouldn’t feel great directly on the skin under a corset), so the natural fit was something at the corset cover layer, and the fabric was enough for a combination garment of the kind often worn in the later Victorian age to prevent the accumulation of bulk at the waist.
It also has the nice advantage that in this time of corrupted morals it is perfectly suitable as outerwear as a nice summer dress.
Then life happened, the fabric remained in my stash for a long while, but finally this year I have a good late victorian block that I can adapt, and with spring coming it was a good time to start working on the summer wardrobe.
The block I’ve used comes from The Cutters’ Practical Guide to the Cutting of Ladies Garments and is for a jacket, rather than a bodice, but the bodice block from the same book had a 4 part back, which was too much for this garment. I reduced the ease around the bust a bit, which I believe worked just fine.
The main pattern was easy enough to prepare, I just had to add skirt panels with a straight side towards the front and flaring out towards the back, and I did a quick mockup from an old sheet to check the fit (good) and the swish and volume of the skirt (just right at the first attempt!).
The mockup was also used to get an idea of a few possible necklines, and I opted for a relatively deep V, and a front opening with a partial placket down to halfway between the waist and the hips. I also opted for a self-fabric ruffle at the hem and armscyes.
The only design choice left was the pocket situation: I wanted to wear this garment both as underwear (where pockets aren’t needed, and add unwanted bulk) and outerwear (where no pockets is not an option), and the fabric felt too thin to support the weight of the contents of a full pocket. So I decided to add slits into the seams, with just a modesty placket, and wear pockets under the dress as needed.
I decided to put the slits between the side and side back panels for two reasons: one is that this way the pockets can sit towards the back, where the fullness of the skirt is supposed to be, rather than under the flat front, and the other one is to keep the seams around the front panel clean, since they are the first ones to be changed when altering a garment for fit.
For the same reason, I didn’t trim the excess allowance from that seam: it means that it is a bit more bulky, but the fabric is thin enought that it’s not really noticeable, and it gives an additional cm for future alterations.
Then, as the garment was getting close to being finished I was measuring and storing some old cotton lace I had received as a gift, and there was a length of relatively small lace, and the finish on the neckline was pretty simple and called for embellishment, and who am I to deny embellishment to victorian inspired clothing?
First I had to finish attaching the ruffles, however, and this is when I cursed myself for not using the ruffler foot I have (it would have meant not having selvedges on all seams of the ruffle), and for pleating the ruffle rather than gathering it (I prefer the look of handsewn gathers, but here I’m sewing everything by machine, and that’s faster, right? (it probably wasn’t)).
Also, this is where I started to get low on pins, and I had to use the ones from the vintage1 box I’ve been keeping as decoration in the sewing room.
A few long sessions of pinning later, the ruffle was sewn and I could add the lace; I used white thread so that it would be hidden on the right side, but easily visible inside the garment in case I’ll decide to remove or change it later.
A few buttons and buttonholes later, the garment was ready, and the only thing left was to edit the step-by-step pictures and publish the pattern: it’s now available as #FreeSoftWear on my patterns website.
And Of course, I had to do a proper swish test of the finished dress with the ruffle, and I’m happy to announce that it was fully passed.
Except, maybe I shouldn’t carry heavy items in my pockets when doing it? Oh, well.
I have other plans for the same pattern, but they involve making some crochet lace, so I expect I can aim at making them wearable in summer 2024.
Now I just have to wait for the weather to be a bit warmer, and then I can start enjoing this one.
- ok, even more vintage, since my usual pins come from a plastic box that has been probably bought in the 1980s.↩︎
swish test:
passed. uooops, it seems that the pocket was also swishing out.
stability test:
I didn't fall. I didn't faint. At my age that's a success, right? :D
Bookbinding: photo album
Posted on March 6, 2023
When I paint postcards I tend to start with a draft (usually on lightweight (250 g/m²) watercolour paper, then trace1 the drawing on blank postcards and paint it again.
I keep the drafts for a number of reasons; for the views / architectural ones I’m using a landscape photo album that I bought many years ago, but lately I’ve also sent a few cards with my historical outfits to people who like to be kept updated on that, and I wanted a different book for those, both for better organization and to be able to keep them in the portrait direction.
If you know me, you can easily guess that buying one wasn’t considered as an option.
Since I’m not going to be writing on the pages, I decided to use a relatively cheap 200 g / m² linoprint paper with a nice feel, and I’ve settled on a B6 size (before trimming) to hold A6 postcard drafts.
For the binding I’ve decided to use a technique I’ve learned from a craft book ages ago that doesn’t use tapes, and added a full hard cover in dark grey linen-feel2 paper. For the end-papers I’ve used some random sheets of light blue paper (probably around 100-something g / m²), and that’s the thing where I could have done better, but they work.
Up to now there isn’t anything I hadn’t done before, what was new was the fact that this book was meant to hold things between the pages, and I needed to provide space for them.
After looking on the internet for solutions, I settled on adding spacers by making a signature composed of paper - spacer - paper - spacer, with the spacers being 2 cm wide, folded in half.
And then, between finishing binding the book and making the cover I utterly forgot to add the head bands. Argh. It’s not the first time I make this error.
I’m happy enough with the result. There are things that are easy to improve on in the next iteration (endpapers and head bands), and something in me is not 100% happy with the fact that the spacers aren’t placed between every sheet, but there are places with no spacer and places with two of them, but I can’t think of (and couldn’t find) a way to make them otherwise with a sewn book, unless I sew each individual sheet, which sounds way too bulky (the album I’m using for the landscapes was glued, but I didn’t really want to go that way).
The size is smaller than the other one I was using and doesn’t leave a lot of room around the paintings, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it also means less wasted space.
I believe that one of my next project will be another similar book in a landscape format, for those postcard drafts that aren’t landscapes nor clothing related.
And then maybe another? or two? or…
Traceback (most recent call last):
TooManyProjectsError: project queue is full- yes, trace. I can’t draw. I have too many hobbies to spend the required amount of time every day to practice it. I’m going to fake it. 85% of the time I’m tracing from a photo I took myself, so I’m not even going to consider it cheating.↩︎
- the description of which, on the online shop, made it look like fabric, even if the price was suspiciously low, so I bought a sheet to see what it was. It wasn’t fabric. It feels and looks nice, but I’m not sure how sturdy it’s going to be.↩︎
Cernit Sets for the Royal Game of UR
Posted on February 13, 2023
Some months ago I stumbled on the video where Irving Finkel teaches Tom Scott how to play the Royal Game of Ur and my takeout was:
- Irving Finkel is Gandalf or something;
- the game sounded quite fun!;
so I did the almost sensible thing, quickly drew a board with inkscape, printed it on 160 g/m² paper and used my piecepack pieces to try a few games.
I say almost sensible, because rather than drawing the rosettes with inkscape I decided to carve a rubber stamp and use that to print them on the board (which is why the svgs on this page are missing them: if you print them you’ll have to add the rosettes in some way).
And if I had been a sensible person, that’s where I would have stopped, since that’s perfectly enough to play games and find out that it actually is quite a fun game, and one of our staples.
As some of you probably know, I’m not a sensible person.
I also have quite a few blocks and half-blocks of cernit, and one day after I’ve had used some, my hands were still moving and accidentally made some pyramidal dice, and a handful of tokens.
And after baking and trying them I liked them, but they had not been planned in any way, and they were a bit too small for the board, so the next time I was using cernit I tried to make a new set.
And while I was doing that I tried a new shape for the dice, as coins marked with a dot in the middle of one of the sides, because I don’t really like tetrahedral dice.
And now, I realized this wasn’t going to be my last set, and urgently felt the need for some container to keep them in and avoid missing pieces.
(Yes, in the picture above one piece was already missing. While taking it I didn’t realize it, and neither I did when picking up everything to put it away, getting the missing piece and storing it safely together with the rest of the set. It must have been hiding in plain sight nearby, but I will never know where.)
Anyway, back to Inkscape, and to a board printed on scrap paper that I tried to fold up until I came up with a layout that folded up in a small drawer, and then I added a case to wrap around it to keep it closed.
I played around with the case until it was big enough to actually slide around the folded board, and this is the result, ready to be printed out on A4 paper, cut, folded and glued. (This takes most of the sheet, and I’m not sure that the case would still fit around the board/drawer if printed with scaling, so if you want to print it on Letter paper I’d recommend to move the pieces around.)
Now, the only problem left was that green isn’t really my colour, and while I did like the stone effect of this set, I wasn’t exactly pleased by the colour scheme. (why did I do it this way in the first place? probably because I was trying to use up old cernit blocks before opening new ones.)
So, the only possible way out was to make yet another set, right?
I still used stone effect cernit, but this time in a red/grey scheme that knew I would have liked more, and while I was doing it I tried a few improvements on the randomization devices.
The tetrahedral dice are still the same: they work, it’s what they use in the replica sets, so I keep making them even if they’re not my first choice.
I’ve changed the coins to make them almost square for two reasons, however: one is that the round one tended to roll away into inconvenient places when throwing them with emphasis, and the other one is to make it easier to recognise them from the tokens with no need to flip each one around before starting the game.
The lozenges were a bit of a failure, instead. They work fine when thrown, but I don’t think that there is a self-evident way to decide which side should be counted, and the only intuitive way I can think of (count the ones in the player’s colour) would be unbalanced.
Speaking of balance issues: of course the hand-modelled dice and coins aren’t perfectly balanced but:
- they don’t feel obviously unbalanced;
- both players use the same set, so any subtle unbalance isn’t going to affect the chance of winning in an uneven way.
Maybe one day I will find a way to easily roll them a statistically significant number of times, collect data and analyze it to find out how imbalanced they are, but that’s not going to happen with manual data collecting, and I’m not really ready to go down the yak shaving filled road to automatize it.
To wrap up: is it going to be the last set I make for the Royal Game of Ur? lol. Is it going to be the last cernit set I make this month? definitely yes, I now have one I’m happy with, I’m routinely playing with it and I’m currently doing other crafts rather than cernit.