I made my vest! Mostly! I finished my sloper and transfered it onto tracing paper. I put out my new pattern on my beautiful satin fabric and got to sewing! I had more than enough extra fabric so I decided to make the lining out of the satin as well. I reversed the pattern to make two vests that I then sewed together! I finished the sleeves and attached the pom poms and snaps to the vest!
I also made a tie! I took a tie I already have that I liked the shape of and outlined it with chalk directly onto the fabric. I wanted the stripes moving in a particular direction so I needed to break the tie up into smaller sections that I lined up and stitched together. I added a seam allowance, cut it out and added some interfacing on the inside to stiffen it up. I hand stitched the tie into its shape so I could have complete control and ensure that we can't see the stitching on the outside.
I made my pants! I was quite nervous working with the organza becuase the fabric is so delicate and if a mistake is make there is essentially is no going back. And guess what I did!
I made two left pant legs.
Grrrrr.
There isn't any coming back from that with organza and french seams. I spent a lot of time trying to make this upsetting realization work for me. I pinned and tucked and twisted and stitched the pant legs until you couldn't really tell that each pant leg was meant for the left side. This was a struggle. Because of this, the rise of the pants is shorter than I intended. But sometimes that happens! We must adapt!
At the bottom of each pant leg is a strip of horsehair in a hoop so that the legs stick out straight. I really struggled with this section, it required a lot of trial an error. Many thanks to Pamela and Kendall for helping me with this section. The horsehair kept twisting under itself, but, adding the feather boa weighed down the horsehair just enough that it could keep its shape but still maintain flexibility while moving.
My hat! I made the entire hat on Saturday. My first attempt a couple weeks ago was a bust unfortunately. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong the first time, but this time around was a much bigger success. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome, and I may be insane for doing the exact same process over again, but I got the exact outcome I desired this time sooooooo... maybe they need to revise that definition!
I took a plastic bag and some tape to create a mold of my head. I cut the mold into several flat pieces. I took those flat pieces and used them as pattern pieces. I traced them onto muslin and cut each new piece out and sewed them all together. It was beautiful! Then, I measured where I wanted the antennae to go and cut out holes on either side of the head. My next task was reinforcing the inside of the hat because the weight of the antennae. I took some horsehair and a hot glue gun and hot glued the horsehair onto the inside to act as boning. Once it had been reinforced enough, I started attaching the fur to the outside. This was a long, tedious process because this fur was in strips. I spent quite a few hours stitching each strip onto the hat, being mindful of the direction the fur was going in. I stitched some black ribbon onto either side of the ears so the hat would stay on and viola!