Wednesday, April 27, 2011

And Now For Something Completely Different

I've made a lot of interesting things for people to wear to faire, none so interesting as the sunshine yellow pirate shirt with ruffles.... but quite a few other interesting ones.

I have a friend; his name is Sergio. Sergio likes to design things for me to make for him and I love making the things he designs, they are always a challenge, but in a good way. He is the reason I have a hakama pattern (and his measurements are marked on it permanently) and he is the reason I figured out how to make "ninja" socks.
My first project for him... bondage hakama pants!
 (did I mention Sergio is hawt? well he is)

all those spots are attachment rings for chains and stuff.
The second time I took on the challenge of sewing for Sergio he wanted a full outfit, instead of just pants.
He also wanted applique work done on the sleeves and trim worked into the hem... ooooh I loved the challenge of it! And he made it look good.




I love how this one turned out!
And the third presented yet another challenge for me. He wanted the scarf and the belt to have the two colors mixed together in a non-uniform way (it involved *gasp* MATH) Here is what I came up with.


I call it a success! and I love these colors on him.

Sergio has a friend who is also into the not quite traditional Japanese manner of dress and commissioned me to make him a full outfit as well.





I seriously love how the sleeves turned out, it is applique, I used a base picture and made it into what I wanted (appliqueing circles is hard!) and the trim right next to it sets it off just right. I love it when projects turn out awesome!

Well that's all except for the atrocity I mentioned at the beginning of this post..
honestly I hated making this shirt, it was bright and it hurt my eyes. The things I will do for my friends. ack!

That is all for today, no Spartan since I've been busy sewing or cross stitching. Hopefully I'll get back to them soon.
Have a good day all!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Sometimes I Even Amaze Myself

Sorry this is a day late, I got side tracked by beer yesterday...

Monday before last (4/11/11) I set out to do the impossible; to create a leather battle dress to wear at faire the coming weekend (that's right, I wanted to design and make a leather dress in 4 days), working at the Monster Museum. I planned out what I wanted to make, keeping it all in my brain and not bothering with the time it would take to put it on paper.

Tuesday after work I picked up a few materials and went to my parent's house to pick out the leather and begin working on how the hell I was going to pull this off.
I picked out the leather I wanted and then trimmed the pattern and reshaped part of it before I had to call it a night.

Wednesday after work I figured up how many hides I would need to cut out all the pieces to make the battle dress, each piece was going to take 2 hides sewn together to get the length I wanted and there were 8 pieces to be cut out... holy hell I'll be wearing 16 deer hides (obviously not the whole hides, but still...) that's like Bambi and his whole herd!
I got all 16 pieces sewn together and then started cutting out everything. Have you ever tried to cut something out of leather? It's kind of a pain because you can't use pins. I got all but the 2 back pieces cut out.

Thursday after work I cut out the last 2 pieces and then it was time for ZOMG SEW LIKE THE WIND!!! until I had to dash out the door to go to dinner with friend.

Friday I went to the zoo! It was my very bestest friend's (second to Matt) birthday and he wanted to go to the zoo, so we did. After we left the zoo I came back to my parent's place and resumed the ZOMG SEW FOREVARS!!!
After some tweaking and altering I finished with the machine sewing and moved on to the hand sewing (read as BUTTONS) Matt gave me some gorgeous pewter buttons that he had used on garb several years ago (they are perfect for this!)
Here it is, my (not so) impossible leather battle dress.

I am making a face in this picture, don't be mistaken by it, I really am happy...


yes, I'm wearing a turban (don't judge me)

 AND I have finally finished Spartan #8!!! (seriously, I wasn't sure I'd get to...) This one belongs to Aleena and his name is Perticus.
I probably won't get another Spartan done until I finish the commission I'm working on, just so you know.

Now off and away to cross stitch like a crazy woman.
Good night everybody!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

It All Started With Dinner Napkins

To continue on the Things I Have Made For Faire trend, I give you the Evolution of Tweeter.
For those of you who don't know Tweeter is my faerie character, she is the first character I ever brought out to play.

I started off just wanting something cute to wear at faire...

the outfit is made out of dinner napkins that my grandmother gave me at some point. It was the only fabric I had on hand and I think it turned out well enough for what it was and I had a lot of fun running around and doing stuff.
 The group that went, small but good.
 Our mothers really did teach us not to play with sharp pointy things... honest
 Faerie in a tree! So many pictures were taken and my EX was such an ass about it too.
Lots of fun was had that day, so much so in fact that I bought a season pass.
And then I got crafty...

The next step was making something that looked less like, well, dinner napkins. So I went to the clearance section of my fabric store and found some awesome, woodsy colored, wonderfully textured fabrics, went home and came up with this...

 I found a heavy duty velvet in brown and a moleskin in green, remarkably both have held up well.
The tights were a Target find, oddly enough.

The hat didn't come until later

Showing off (like ya do)


Then came the wings, which turned out lovely and heavy as hell
 shaped copper wire, covered with fabric and painted. They are like sails attached to my back on windy days.

 The slingshot is functional and has quite a rang on it.
Funny story about making that slingshot; I had bee looking around for an already cut Y branch, so I didn't have to go chop up a tree, and I came across a pile of branches in someone's yard to be hauled off. I knocked on the door to ask if it was ok if I dug through it and no one answered, so I went about finding and sawing off a bit of branch, when the owner of the house comes out to ask what I'm doing (they were home but I guess didn't want to answer the door. I wasn't even holding the saw at the time...) I explained what I was doing, asked if it was ok and then had an entire family helping me dig through their branches for the perfect slingshot base. It was kind of awesome.

 One of my favorite pictures of Bert (he "caught" me all day with that tiny net (miss you dearly my friend))

And once again... I'm in a tree.

Alas, I still do not have a Spartan for you. I have started a job and I'm trying to get some garb done for this weekend (because I don't have enough already...) to wear at my faire job... sooooo yea, 2 jobs and sewing for me. I'll have another little guy for you soon, I promise.

Until next week!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Are You Going To Scarborough Faire

Opening weekend of my home faire, Scarborough Faire, is coming up! So I thought I'd do a set of Things I've Made For Faire, because really, why not?

I decided I'd start with my most common garb, it even occasionally has a character to go with it, but often if I'm wearing this I've lost my Give A Damn for staying in character.
The pictures were taken by my dear friend Roland (may he rest in peace)

Any time I make a costume I like to use textures and layers, I rarely ever half-ass a project (look at my Spartan project... definitely not a half-assed project) so starting with the base of this costume.
I had the strangest urge to put bows on my bloomers...

My second bodice. Really don't have a handle on bodice making, I leave that for people who actually know how.


whole get up with the Skirt Of DOOM. Seriously that skirt has more material in it than I care to admit to, it also weighs more than my dog...

goofing around

A look at the size of the skirt, though it really is much bigger than that.

This is also the skirt that tried to kill me.
I was camping out at Texas Renaissance Festival and it was cold at night, so cold in fact that I did something I had never done... I put a propane heater in my tent with me. It was a huge 2 room tent, so I moved all my stuff to one side and left the heater in the middle of the other side, far away from anything, even the sides of the tent. It had also been damp during the day and as you can see my skirt is long, so I hung it across the bar in the middle of my tent to try to dry the hem some. I wanted to wear it the next day as well and Large skirt + wet hem = very very heavy and pulling on my hips. At some point while I slept the skirt fell off the bar I had hung it on and instead of falling straight down, as it's weight suggests it might, it managed to fall onto the heater in my tent, just the top layer, and caught on the metal covering for the heater. I, in my wisdom, chose a fabric for this skirt that would not go up in flames, just melt and smolder and create a lot of smoke. I woke up with my throat burning and scratchy and my tent full of smoke and it took me several moments to realize what was going on. I grabbed my skirt off the heater and got out of the tent, dropped my skirt and opened both door flaps to my tent to let the smoke out. The cotton cord I had in the waistband of the skirt was acting like a wick and took pouring water on it to put it out. The top tier of the skirt was a complete loss but the rest of it was salvageable and I had to borrow garb to wear the next day. It took me a while to get to it but I have repaired the skirt and will be wearing it this weekend.

I'm pretty sure I used up one of my 9 lives that night... just sayin.

Alas, I have no Spartan for you today, only an excuse. I have been horribly sick since right before leaving NY and I've been on 3 different meds, all of which make me loopy, so I have chosen not to crochet right now because of the possibility of a Picasso Spartan. I am slowly getting better and I'm down to just 2 of the meds now, I will hopefully have a Spartan for you the next time I post which will likely be next Wednesday and really for the next 8 weeks only Wednesdays, because of the fact that I will be working every weekend at faire.

Have a good week everybody!