Colorful Kasuri

This is one of a set of dresses I made for a doll I planned for, but who didn't work out. The clothes are now for the red-headed sisters. The pattern is another Bleuette, and i don't remember why I eventually chose to enlarge it.

The point of the outfit is to show off the material. One vacation, I bought a scrap of vintage kasuri and wanted to show it off in something. There's not very much of it, so it needed to be an accent rather then the whole thing. Hence, it became the vest, waistband and the sleeve cuffs.

Most of the outfit comes from fabric older than me. The light blue is from my mom's old stash, and I needed to cut carefully in order to have enough for the gathered yoke front and have enough left over for the skirt. As it so happened, the skirt was so narrow it made the whole thing look unbalanced, and I didn't have enough to piece in a fuller skirt. I took some triangles of cotton teal and used those as gores to make the skirt wider. I think the brightness of the teal goes well with the kasuri.

Front bodice detail

As a last note, since I ran out of blue toned thread and I am in no mood to get more, for the hem I decided to machine sew it in black, and then add another row to make a decorative edging.

A Serbian Outfit

This outfit was an exercise is using old cloth. The materials used were antique silk, and I didn't have much of it.

The challenges of the dress portion was how to make a skirt long enough to go past the knees. This was a bit tricky as the pattern I chose, Bleuette's Serbian ensemble, has a rather high waist. The cloth also had a fair amount of holes, so in cutting around the damaged portions, I might have had enough for a shirt. Instead, I opted to embroider flowers over the holes.

Cosplay Complete

This was for a cosplay swap. My partner wanted one of two outfits, and I chose the one that seemed less complicated. It still took a fair amount of work. 

I'm not familiar with what this character is from, though I'm guessing a visual novel.

I made the choice to convey the idea of the outfit rather than work myself into a tizzy trying to get the exact fabrics and do fine work outside of my familiarity. Mostly I didn't want to make a lace up bustier with exact scale eyelets. Finding something that could stand in for a belt buckle was tricky enough.

The bustier is mostly hand stitched. It hooks up the back (because I forgot to add allowance for snaps,) was hemmed with ribbon pleated and sewn on the edges. The center has some ribbon appliqued and sewing thread crocheted into a string and tacked on to mimic lacing.

The stockings are made from bias cut material edged with bias tape, the necktie came from this pattern (link) and the hat was a bit of a cock up. I cut the hat a little too small to it looked funny sitting on the head. I fixed it with some quilt binding, though it now looks like a cadet cap instead of a newsboy.

The belt gave me some grief. Once I finally found some buttons that could work as a buckle, I tried threading ribbon through it belt style. Pulling the loose end through the last time was a tug of war I barely won. The skirt was much easier, consisting of a loose hanging lining in white edged with lace, the black main part, and three purple ruffles over a third of the skirt. The waistband was purposefully cut wide as the skirt is supposed to be barely there and low on the hips.

Here it is. The necktie wasn't included in the picture, as I don't know how to knot one.

 

...Also, it wasn't until now that I realized that the skirt ruffles are barely visible in this picture. Oh well, I still like how the overall outfit turned out.

Lace and Knit

This is a blend of stuff I made ages ago. The tube top is made from a rib pattern from Knitting on the Edge, the skirt is Hey Mickey! from Knitty, and the sleeves are supposed to be a Regency spencer but didn't look right over the gowns.

A Study in White

I rather like this photograph and color combination. The petticoat is part of Kozu's original outfit, the tube top was made by me in college, I don't remember when.