Trying My Hand at Cut Work

Aaaaahhh...to be back home!  I love going on vacations or getting out of town for long weekends...but I really love coming back home.  After I got the house set right again and all the laundry done, I had a bit of time on my hands today.  I have three projects that need to be started here in short order, but don't have a couple key elements to begin them, so I decided to try and do some embroidery for cut work on my regular sewing machine.  One of the projects on my to do list for this year is a 1950s summer dress and I have of course been doing more than my fair share of research.  Quite a few of the dresses I have seen and fell in love with have cut work worked into the details.  Since I am not one for much simplicity, I have decided that when I make my 1950s dress, it too shall have this lovely cut work!  

After reading several entries in sewing blogs that have "how to's" for cut work, I finally got the chance to put that "how to" information to work today.  Here are a couple of the sites that I encountered....Oh and may I just add that I will most definitely be using my sewing machine and I most definitely will NOT be doing this by hand.  Just wanted to be clear on this point...

Hibiscus cutwork lace border

 Burda Style

Many of the blogs I encountered were geared towards those lucky ones who have an embroidery machine.  I do not have one, but found that using the zig-zag stitch on my machine worked just fine!

Lovely blue dresses with lace cut work from Whitaker Auctions

Madeira Lace cut work dress from Etsy

Gorgeous dress from V&A.

  This dress is so fabulous!!  Lots of medallions and swags!!

I used a piece of shock pink dupioni silk for my trial run.  I figured that since my fabric for my 50s dress was dupioni, I could see how the fabric would hands.  I lined the back with wonder under and a very thin piece cotton for stability and just free handed a design that I thought would be challenging.

I used a zig-zag stitch set on a very low stitch length and went to work!

After stitching, the cutting begins...being very careful not to cut the stitching....but I did catch a few...

Finished product.  I am pretty pleased with this first go and think that I will be happy with a dress made with this addition.  Can't wait!!

Breathing New Life Into Vintage Flowers....

Since I am on a hiatus from sewing until mid to late January and going absolutely crazy because of it, I thought I would go through my stashes of various things that I use in my sewing and hat making to clean, sort, toss and inventory.  Today, I decided to breathe new life into some of my vintage millinery flowers.  These came to me all smashed up and sad looking, but with a little steam and patience, these sad little flowers can once again be the lovely creations they were when they were new! 

Here are the sad little darlings....smashed from years of being stored in a box.

Seriously smooshed...

I started a kettle of water on to boil and held the flower over the steam about 5-6 inches above the pot...

In only a few seconds, you can already see the velvet and organza petals starting to flex and open.  There is a very interesting kind of hissing sound that emanates from the flower, but not to worry...nothing will explode!  

After about a minute, turn the flower over and you can see it open!

If the flower is having problems opening, just take the still warm petals and coax them to whatever shape you desire!!

Sad little pink flower....

Again, hold the flower about 5-6 inches over the pot in the steam....

Ta Da!!!  A lovely flower appears!!

Last one.  This one was just all smooshed to heck.  The velvet and organza petals were really messed up...

This one took a while as it didn't feel inclined to cooperate..

Here we see the petals opening up a little.  I had to work with it on the counter while it was still warm and manipulate the petals until I got it the way I wanted it to look...you will see the finished product below...

Refreshed vintage flowers!  All you need is steam and a little patience and sad little flowers can become gorgeous ones once again!  I actually did this with flowers that were already on a hat.  My huge Titanic poppy hat that I wear with the Ruth DeWitt Bukater tea dress got caught in the rain during a parade.  The flowers folded over from the wet and then dried in that shape.  When I got the hat back, I started some water to boiling and re-fluffed the poppies!  Worked like a charm!

DIY Frog Tutorial.....

The closures on the fabulous wool suit are really neat-o frogs.  I want to keep to the spirit of this outfit as closely as I can, so I need the frogs to be in the same color scheme as the rest of the suit.  Looking at the frogs in the picture and letting my mind ruminate on how I would go about making the frogs, I came up with an idea!!

Frogs on the original suit.  I love these!  They are really neat...except the straight pieces sticking out to the sides of them....

To start things off, I folded a piece of paper in half and copied half the design.

Flipping the paper over, I traced the half design to make a whole design.  This way, my design would be relatively equal on both sides.

I have had this piece of florists Styrofoam laying around forever, and I totally found a use for it!!!

After pinning the design to the foam, I began arranging the soutache.

After fiddling with the soutache for a while and not being happy with the outcome...it kept twisting and turning on me...I looked up on line how to work with soutache, and found this from "Threads Magazine"...

Threads Magazine

Ohmygosh!!  This technique totally made the soutache workable!!  I was so excited, and nobody was at home to share my excitement with me!

I folded the soutache in half, found the center and began working at the top of the design.

I first did one side of the design, pinning at various points as I went...

Then arranged the other side.

Now it was time to sew the frog together.  I had noticed on the back side of frogs that there is an over abundance of stitching.  All the better to hold the frog together!  Everywhere the soutache met, I whip stitched the pieces together.

After the sewing was complete, I unpinned the frog from the foam and flipped it over...WOW!!  It worked!!!

After making a loop on one side, I sewed a button on the other side!  Voila!  A custom dyed frog!  Sweet!

Two Toned Self Covered Buttons Tutorial

 I got a lot done today by way of trim for the Merlot suit.  First off was buttons.  The original has really cool two toned self covered buttons.  The color of the trim in the center and the color of the suit on the outside.  I pondered at great length as to how I would accomplish this feat of button engineering and came up with a solution that I think will work. 

The buttons on the original.  I am sure that the makers of these buttons had some fabulous machine to make them look this awesome.  I just have my hands, a pair of scissors and the self covering buttons from JoAnn's.

First off, I cut small pieces of the twill trim and glued them to the top of the button.

I took a straight pin and marked where the very center of the button was.

If you look real close, you can see the minuscule whole the pin made.  I cut a whole in the center of a piece of the wool, then glued all the way around it, making sure the get very close to the inner edge.

Very carefully, I laid the wool over the twill and waited patiently for the glue to dry ALL THE WAY.  I am not kidding in the least when I say I waited for the glue to dry all the way.  Well, at lease I did on the second button I made....

Because this is what happens when the glue is not dry all the way.  The wool, which just so happens to be a tad bit stretchy, gapes wide open at the whole!  Super!

After completely dry, I used two of the button covering methods.  This first try I used the above kit.  The button mold on the left, where the button is now placed was the actual size that came with the 5/8" buttons.  Unfortunately, it was too small a fit for the wool covered button and started the whole stretching process, even though it was completely dry.

I used the mold that was the next size up and it worked just fine.

This method is the one where the button top has the teeth all the way around the under side and you use a hammer to pound the bottom onto the top....

Place covered and "toothed" button on the mold.  Cover the button with the bottom part.

Here you can see the "sticky up" part of the thing I am holding...WOW great terminology, but I can't think of better words.  That part fits into the groove of the button bottom.

Like so.

The the part that you hammer goes on top of the big round thing!!  hahahahahaha!!!  Sorry!  Then you hammer the pieces together!!

The final buttons....They look different sizes here, but they aren't...weird.

So, there you have it!  Two tone, self covered buttons!!  Laaaaaaaa!!!

Curl Up and Dye! A Dyeing Tutorial.

Ok, so yes, I am a matchy, matchy freak when it comes to my costuming.  And I live in a veritable wasteland of fabulous sewing trims.  I adore my local JoAnn's, Hancock's, Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Craft Warehouse, and Home Fabrics, but sometimes, they just don't want to cooperate with my sewing endeavors.  What do I do when this happens?  Why I DIY!!!  Sometimes my DIY experience is a fabulous one.  One that leaves me singing like a robin over the first day of spring!  Sometimes, my experience causes me to want to curl up with my blankie, suck  my thumb and cry.  So, it is with mixed feelings that I write this tutorial.  I don't want to scare anyone off from dyeing as it was not that hard to do.  I guess it is the first born, OCD, A type personality that gave me grief during this process.  In any case, let the tutorial begin!!!

For my 1910 Winter Wool suit, I decided to dye the items I needed for the trim.  As I mentioned above I live in a wasteland of trim.  I wish I could fly to the famed LA garment district so I could shop til I dropped for all manner of fabric and trim, but I can't.  Enter a bottle of Wine Rit dye.  Easy Peasy...right?  Sure!  If you aren't my personality type!!!

The instructions said that for a sink dye, to fill the sink with 3 gallons of HOT water, salt (I used 1/2 a cup), the wet materials, and stir CONSTANTLY for half an hour to 1 hour.  Armed with a spatula and Netflix, I did just that. 

After the hour had passed, I did again as the instructions instructed!  "Rinse until water runs clear."  As you can see, after much rinsing and rinsing, the water was not running clear.  Not one for wasting water or time, I just stopped.  If you were to get my trim wet right at this moment, it would bleed a lovely merlot color.  Thank God I am putting said trim on a darker material.

Here is my trim drying over my shower.

In the morning, this is the color that the trim ended up being.  Meh.....I was not happy with it at all.  It was too light.  I tried soaking it in strong tea and it only helped is slightly.  Grrrrrrrrrr and frustration!  So, to Hobby Lobby I went to purchase another bottle of Rit.  After consulting some lovely costuming friends, I found out that I needed to use the WHOLE bottle of dye and hotter water than I did the first time...

Right...so here is the result of the second dyeing.  It is dark and lovely and soooooo not the right shade.  (my costuming friends were so incredibly helpful, and they were very correct.  After using the whole bottle it did make the color darker....I believe that the use of tea tweeked the color a bit in the wrong spectrum......)

Upon the advice of my husband and son, I decided to slowly bleach the trim....a little bit of Clorox at a time. Slowly, ever so slowly, I added bleach to a warm bath and slowly, ever so slowly, the color began to bleed out of the trim.  "Perfect", I thought!!!  Until I dried the trim.  It again was waaaay too light!!  UGH!!!  Seriously?  I forgot that it dries to a lighter color.  So the perfect color I had when it was wet...and I mean PERFECT...was NOT the same color I ended up with!  POOOOP!!!

Ok, last chance trim and dye!!!  I had a little bit of dye left from the first bottle...idiot that I was I drained the sink after every dying session.  Filled the sink with HOT water, salt and the rest of the dye.  I put the trim in the dye bath for 15 minutes, got it to a shade a little darker than what I wanted, rang out the trim, put it in the dryer that wasn't in use at the time and waited.  Warily, I removed the trim, took it out to my fabric and laid it down.  Low and behold it looked great!!!  Hahahahahahaha!!!  I felt like the crazed scientist whose loony experiment finally works and can now hold his head high in victory!!!

So, I guess I can call this a tutorial in what NOT to do while dying!!!  Here are some things that I think I will remember next time.  

1.  The finished product will be LIGHTER when dry than it is when it is wet.

2.  DO NOT drain your dye bath until you are sure you have the color you want.

3.  Do this on a day when you patience level is at its highest.  Impatience is your enemy here.

4.  Understand that if you are dyeing weird or off colors, you are going to have to be real creative and forgiving with your dye and fabric!

Over all the dyeing itself was easy.  Just follow the instructions and you will have the effect you want.  If you are like me.....drink a glass of wine and turn off your OCD!!!