Blue and SIlver and Virgo All Over

For the Virgo swap I joined, my partner specified that she wanted a flowing silvery dress. I was at a loss for a design. My swap partner was kind enough to send me a photo of her girl, but it didn't provide me the spark of inspiration I was hoping for. After much poking around the internet, I found the picture of an empire style jumper with a big inverted pleat down the center front.

The other trouble was finding a proper fabric. I have two silvery materials, but one is an expensive satin and a length of lining fabric. I'm not yet brave enough to cut into the satin, and it's not the easiest thing to work with, being slippery and prone to revealing wrinkles. However, I have a lovely blue fabric that I was itching to use, so the logical compromise to me was to use the shiny blue, give the pleat an inset of the lining fabric, and decorate the rest of the skirt with embroidery.
Sigh.

Choosing the embroidery pattern and marking it out was time consuming, but not too bad. It really helped that I chose a simple design. The trouble came with how the marking pen I used showed up poorly against the blue, meaning I'd have to rely on soap slivers, which rub out quite fast. Silver embroidery floss, I soon found out, frays like no one's business. These two factors made the skirt a project I could not carry around as I pleased, and made progress slow considerably.

Due to time constraints, I went with a kimono sleeved bodice for the top. I cut it so that the sleeve hems went on the selvedge, and fronts were connected to backs to save me a few seams. I even bit the bullet and machine sewed seams that I normally do by hand as they're so short. The neckline is still hand stitched on account of the tricky neckline.

More photos below.

An Idea and the Hunt

Some months ago, I saw the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Ever since, the themes of the show and relationships between the characters have been rolling around in my head, helped by me poking around the internet to read more about the ideas behind the franchise. A couple of weeks ago, I took a look at Madoka cosplay, which gave me the urge to make dolly cosplay. Deciding what clothes I wanted to make was simple, I'd make the school clothes and Homura's magical girl outfit. The former as I have a fondness for uniforms, and the latter as i liked how simple it was compared to the other magical girl outfits. Also, I think it has a strong resemblance to the school uniform.

With those choices out of the way, it was time to find reference pictures. Much to my vexation, the Madoka wiki wasn't the easiest site to access, it would often show an error page if I clicked on it. I resorted to Google image searches, which are far from efficient and took multiple tries to find everything I needed. Full frontal photos were easy enough, closeups not so much, and pictures of the back were decidedly tricky. Also making things complicated was trying to find official rather than fan art in order to get a more accurate look. Hardest of all was getting a decent image of Homura's inner collar. Some pictures and cosplays made it look like it was standing, but as it turns out the collar lies flat.

Here are the pictures I found, in case others want the references.

The Joy of Fluff

This is something I made Linnea a while ago, when I was on a 1838-1840 kick. I'm aware that this is painfully specific, but I was intrigued by the sleeves that were in vogue at the time. The bodice decorations can be fascinating too.

This is the second dress of this time period I made. The first dress didn't have the delightfully puffy sleeves I was hoping for, so I hoped to make up for it in this one. The sleeves are cut into four pieces, tight upper sleeves, a cuff, big full lower sleeves and a ruffle to hide the join. It backfired a little in that the lower sleeves are too long and collapse upon themselves. Not the sort of look I wanted. Oh well.

The bodice has dropped shoulder and six pieces, with center back and side back pieces, and two parts in front. For this I added a box pleated ruffle. The skirt is plain and fluffs out wonderfully.

Beneath is a petticoat of plain white mystery fabric filled out with gathered panels of lace. By now I am fairly certain that tiered ruffled petticoats weren't period to this time, but it does the job well.

The Art of Pillaging

This was an interesting outfit to make. My swap partner had a long list of things she would like to receive. The short of it was an East Indian influenced steampunk pirate set of clothes. Other details included lots of brown, not much black, with maybe a hint of red and orange. The cut should be loose and baggy to allow for movement, hats and scarves, with pockets and pouches aplenty for storage. Gears, buckles, embroidery, steampunk style squids and octopi, and prop knives were also welcome.

As I don't have much brown fabric on hand, I bit the bullet and bought a yard of brown synthetic. After looking at some Victorian and Edwardian era East Indian clothes, I had a rough idea of how the designs should be, which was thankfully geometric. That made patterning and assembly much simpler.

In a Day

This skirt is a little something I whipped up with some self striping yarn the summer before I started graduate school. As the title suggests, it was much quicker than I anticipated. I whipped it up using the Hey Mickey pattern found on Knitty.

A hodgepodge

This is a picture I took back in graduate school. All of the girls here are wearing homemade clothes, with the exception of Mariko's green dress.

Yu Lian, who you can't see so well, is in a white dress with grey embroidery and pintucks down the front. Yu Wei is wearing a pinafore with a great many tucks down the front  and around the skirt.

All the tinies are wearing sweaters based off of the same pattern on Den of Angels. What Mariko was wearing was meant for Calla and Nurit, but the yarn was so thin it ended up too small and went to her. Nurit has a cap sleeved sweater due to me running out of yarn, but that makes it nice and spring like. Calla has her top decorate with rows of hot pink running stitches.

Calla and Nurit are also wearing skirts knitted from the same Bleuette pattern, but with different yarns.

From the Early Days

This is one of the first things I made for Anthea, cut from a torn velveteen pair of my pants and trimmed with homemade trim made from yarn.

The skirt is dead simple, made from two trapezoids, a triangle, and a hook and eye. There's no waistband, I just turned down both ends and hemmed. It largely exists to preserve her modesty when she wears the top half of the outfit. The overgown is the star of the show.

What makes the outfit is the contrast of the white on black. The trim inspired by a gown from Patterns of Fashion 3, particularly the curved back and the borders. For make it, I simply made crochet chains until I got the lengths I wanted. The frog balls are also crocheted, and the loops are bits of plain yarn with knots at the end.

Here, she also sports a cap and shawl. As a girl who hates the cold, layers are adored. The cap is called a sortie, and comes from the Godey's Ladies Book, by way of Koshka the Cat. To make it her scale, I did trial and error until it looked right. The shawl is a rectangle of knitted cotton in a basket weave stitch, with fringes at the ends.