laundry day

 After the summer it is time for a big costuming laundry day. That means washing a lot of historical costumes and prewashing the fabrics that I have bought during the summer. In my apartment building with have a laundry room in the basement, and the best thing is the room for drying clothes, with an electric fan and heater.

kirtle, shift, wams/doublet and several meters of fabrics in the drying room

The shirts, shift, aprons and everything that is done in linen, cotton and hemp goes in the washing machine. That includes my blackwork shift. It is so old now that I don't consider it a "fine" shirt anymore. I wash them on a regular setting, but I hang them to dry instead of going into the tumbler. My experience is that the linen only gets softer with every wash. For my large apron, that had quite a few soot stains after cooking in Visby, I first sprayed it the stains with stain remover and that worked fine. The same goes for my wulsthaube that takes up red dye from my hair. For the wulsthaube I remove the wulst before washing, it is only tacked on in a few places, so I can simply wash the cap part of it.

Wool clothes are best taken care of by simply airing them. I live in an apartment without balcony though. I used to bring them home to my mother and hand them in her garden, but she is getting old and her short time memory is lapsing. That means that I am still missing some of my linen stuff from last year's airing that I had in her garden, I am pretty sure that some time in the future I will find them among her handkerchiefs or bedlinen, so I don't dare to do it any more. After shorter events I leave the clothes hanging in my living room, but now after the summer and a long event where I've been sweating and standing in smoke it is time to clean them. I simply use the wool setting on the washing machine together with a wool/silk detergent. I also only wash one item at the time. So far I have not had anything happen to the clothes.

For David's landsknecht outfit I was worried, the red fabric was bleeding a lot. His shirt that he had worn under it when it was raining had a lot of pink stains. That shirt was his cheap cotton shirt and it worked fine with stain remover and then a wash in the washing machine on the cotton setting. I was worried that the red would bleed and stain the pink part though. I did an experiment where I started with his socks, since one is red and one is pink. I threw them in the washing machine together with colour cather paper. 

When the socks came out fine, except for a slight stain on the heel, I decided to try the hose. For the hose I put stain remover on the pink stains on the lining and then I added three colour catcher papers to the wasching machine. I also removed all the loose ribbons and ties. When that worked fine I dared to do the same with the doublet/wams as well, adding four colour catcher papers.

The colour catcher paper after the doublet/wams washing

I was happy that I could wash the landsknecht outfit, and that means that I will probably do it at least once a year, after single day events I am happy with just airing the clothes. A reason why I dare use the washing machine is also that I have prewashed all fabrics, and if they survive the prewash they should survive washing as well. So during this washing day I also washed the wool that I bought at Medeltidsveckan and the fabrics that I am going to use for my female Tusken, so that they are ready to get some dye.

A quick note about velvet

I'm hoping to soon start on my 1520's court gown. For that I'm going to use the wonderful silk velvet that I failed to dye correctly for the Gold Handmaiden gown.  It's been a couple of years and the pieces of velvet has been in my stash, just waiting for the right project.

Today I took them out of the stash, and of course they were really wrinkly. You can save wrinkled silk velvet though. After having read this info note about dyeing from Naergi, I'm no longer afraid of washing or drying my silk fabric. Silk velvet gets back to life by first being washed and then you throw it in the tumbler and let it tumble dry. I used the lowest heat setting, but had it go until the fabric was totally dry.

The fabric is wrinkle free, and I have now rolled up the pieces on a cardboard tube to hopefully prevent too much wrinkling until it's time to actually use the fabric.

I have not tried to do this with cotton velvet, so I don't know how that would work.

18th century fabric find

At work we are renovating our old restaurant, and that also means getting rid of the all the curtains that used to be there. Turns out all the curtains are 18th century reproduction fabrics, and of course I couldn't say no to the chance of getting hold of fabrics like that.

Most of the fabric is this with fabric with a brown print on it.

This is actually quite a unique fabric, printed by a local textile studio that isn't working anymore. It as a family business run by two sisters that started in the 1950s. The text on the selvage says "18th century pattern from Dalarna" - "Blomrike" (name of the print) and Westmans is the name of the studio.

There are a lot of curtains, but some of them are quite worn and sunbleached in places. I'm going to use the worst places to make neckerchiefs and aprons for our little costume wardrobe that we have at work, but the rest is all mine.

The other is a print from Ljungbergs textil. I wasn't the only one interested in these curtains, so I didn't get quite as much of this fabric.

The text on the selvage says "East Indian printed cotton 1760-1770".

I don't have any clear ideas on what I want to make out of these fabrics, since I'm not really into the 18th century at the moment. I would love to make a saque gown with matching petticoat from the Ljungberg textile, but I don't think there is enough of it. I might be able to make a jacket and a petticoat, or maybe an English gown. 

For now they will go into my stash though.

Gorgeous and glorious fabric for TLJ Leia

I haven't done anything about TLJ Leia since the premiere. One of the main issues for me would be to find a new and better coat fabric. Still even if I haven't prioritized it, I have casually browsed from fabric from time to time. And this week I couldn't help myself, I just had to buy this fabric, and when it arrived it was better than I could have dreamt of.

Now actually getting the fabric was a bit of a quest. I saw the fabric on an online store on Tuesday, but decided to wait until payday to buy it. When I then checked up on it again on Sunday it was sold out, and I was devastated. One of my Facebook friends, who knew the store, told me to send an email and ask them though, and so I did.

The fabric was sold out, and they were not going to get more of it, but they did find two remnants of it and offered to put them in the webshop for me. I didn't hesitate but bought it all. There were two remnants one 2,5 m and one 1,6 m, so in total 4,1 m. That will be tricky, for the premiere coat I used around 4,8 meters. I will have to measure very carefully before cutting, and possibly make another mock up with the changes from the premiere coat.

Still I am so happy about this fabric and I can't wait to make a final version of this costume. I hae set a goal to have it finished for Nordsken in early May.

A quilt of future past

For a long time I have dreamt of making a beautiful quilt as a bedspread for my bed. I think it started when I got one of my first books about sewing and half of it was about making quilts. At first I thought it would be simple to make a quilt. It couldn't be much harder than seeing what fabric you have at home, cut them up and make a quilt. Right? Then I started to understand that you need a lot of fabric to make a quilt, and if you want to make a full bedspread, well that's going to be a lot of squares to measure and cut.  Also it felt wrong to buy fabric in order to just cut it up for a quilt, when to me a quilt is something you make to reuse or at least repurpose old fabric. Then of course it would involve a lot of thinking about what colours and patterns to combine into the quilt. The laziness in me made it clear that I would probably never make a quilt.

Then last spring I came up with an idea. What if I cut out a piece of fabric from every sewing project I make and save them to make a quilt one day. This would mean that I wouldn't be buying fabric just for the quilt. I wouldn't have to plan the colours and patterns in advance, it would simply be a matter of what I end up with. I am also curious if I have a preference to work with certain colours and if there will be a dominating colour in the quilt.  I also really like the idea that by making a quilt out of scraps from my costume projects it will be a very personal quilt with a special story. Today when I took out the squares that I have made I definitely feel nostalgic about some of them.

These are my squares so far. I try to get two squares out of every fabric, but sometimes more if I really like the fabric, and sometimes I only get one square. I also don't cut squares from linen and cotton that I use for underwear or linings. I still have a long way to go before I can make a big bedspread quilt, but it gives me a bit of satisfaction every time I add a new square to the pile.

As for the size of the squares, it's quite random. I made a square from paper that just fit the first fabric that I cut, and then I use that square as a pattern for all the other pieces. I haven't even measured the size of them.

My New York trip, from a sewing point of view

If you wonder why I didn't post much the last weeks, well it's because me and my mother went to New York together. It's been a trip that we've talked about  for a really long time, and now it was finally time. To be honest I didn't do much costuming or sewing related things, no museums or exhibits and just a very short visit to the fabric district.

There was a short visit to the fabric district, and just looking at what the info points looked like made me happy

 Then there were shop after shop with just fabrics and trims. To be honest I got overwhelmed. I'm not used to even going into a fabric store, and there there were so many of them.

It was amazing to go into a store and not just having to look after colour and hope you could get something of a decent quality, but here you could actually go in and the shelves were sorted first by type of fabric, and then in colour. As I said I was a bit overwhelmed, and both me and my mother were quite tired after a long day of doing other things, so when I had found 4 yards of black silk taffeta for $20 I decided that that was enough. I wouldn't be able to get more fabric with me, and I didn't have any more specific fabrics that I was after.

I didn't even go to Mood's.

In the end this was my costume/sewing haul. I found a gorgeous beauty box at Century 21 that I'm going to use as a sewing box, the 4 yards of silk taffeta and a little Elsa figure. I figured that since try to buy action figures with the SW costumes that I make, then I should have a little mini-me of my Elsa costume as well.

If you read Swedish you can read more about my New York trip here:
Mat i New York
Besök på Metropolitan Opera
Museer i New York

Me and my stash

A discussion on whether the fabrics that you have in your stash is free or no, and how they should be calculated into the costs of projects over at the HSF facebook group made me think about what I have in my stash.

I'm quite happy with my stash, after I cleared out a lot of it earlier this spring. My stash contains mainly of four categories of fabrics.

1. Leftovers from older projects.

Since I do most of my fabric shopping online I tend to order a bit extra, just to be on the safe side That means that when a project is finished, I usually have around one meter of fabric left. Another drawback with ordering things online is that you don't always get exactly the quality or colour that it looked to be on the screen, for some projects that doesn't matter so much, but for other it does. I have quite a lot of pink/purple fabrics still left after my Queen Amidala travel gown since I ordered fabrics that when they arrived simply weren't the right colour.

A good thing with leftovers is though that they are usually of quite a nice quality, since for the last few years I have tried to save up and do fewer, but more expensive projects. The HSF challenges have been a good way of reducing this part of the stash, and the reticule in the picture is a good example of small pieces of leftover fabrics that were too nice to throw away, but also too small to make anything big out of.

2. Planned projects that never came to be
This is the dark spot in my stash, and I'm not too happy about it. A couple of years ago I planned to make more "normal" clothes and bought quite a few fabrics to make skirts and dresses out of. Well that has never happened, and I also must question my judgement when it comes to the look of the fabrics. This part of the stash is mostly filled with knits and pin stripes, but in colours that won't be usable for historical projects. Also I don't like working with knits, so I'm not sure when I'm going to make something out of those.
3. "natural fibres"
Since I started with historical costuming I've come to realize that it's always good to have some white/natural linen and cotton around. I always need something to line with, or make a petticoat or chemise. These kinds of fabrics are also great for tusken, jawas, jedis and other Star Wars costumes. This is the one part of my stash that I'm actively refilling, without having proper plans for it. It's usually comes down to me ordering a couple of meters of cotton voile or linen when I order other things from Stoff och Stil, since I love their voile.

4. Given fabrics

 These are the truly free fabrics, the ones that I have been given as a gift. Ironically quite a lot of these fabrics would probably be very expensive. In the early 1990's my father went on business trips to China, this was before it was opened up to the West like today. He brought with him quite a few really nice silks and brocades that he gave to the family In later years when members of the family have been to Asia they have usually come back with fabrics, since I like sewing I will appreciate fabrics after all. Many of these fabrics are gorgeous, but it's hard to find a use for them. They are usually modern patterns, or in colours that I don't really know how I should use. Also since they usually carry some emotional meaning and connection to the person who gave it to me, I'm hesitant to cut them up.

A good example of when I was able to use a fabric like this was for these pair of stays. That's a fabric that I feel very connected to, due to family history, but it was great to be able to squeeze the last remaining piece into something that I can use. The outfit that I'm making for myself for my sister's wedding is also a fabric from this part of the stash.

The rest though...

I have other fabrics in the stash, but those are fabrics that have been bought for specific projects that I'm planning to make in the near future. That includes fabric for a new Princess Leia white gown, two new 18th century jackets and so on. Since these fabrics are earmarked for these projects I don't count them as part of my stash, since I can't just grab them and make something out of them or use them for other projects.

This is not the current state of the stash, I have filled it with some more fabrics and removed some, but I have decided that I'm not allowed to fill up more space than I have here. Except for the "natural fibre" part of the stash I am trying to not buy more fabrics, unless I have a certain project in mind for it, and hopefully that will keep the stash in check so it doesn't start overflowing too much.

In all though I must say that I really haven't got a clue about the value of my stash, or the cost of individual fabrics. Once they are in my stash and up for grabs for non-specific purposes they are "free" in my mind. I have bought these fabrics because I could afford it at the time, so it doesn't cost me anything now. I try to estimate when I'm doing the HSF challenges, but those are just estimates.

Costume plans

So working on a project for someone else, like my sister's wedding dress, has made my head starting to spin about future projects. I'm also definitely feeling a bit of trooping abstinence, so even if I had a nice time in Sala I would love to do a larger costuming event. Well it looks like the next one might be the new ComicComic that is starting up in Stockholm in the first weekend of November. I have decided that I want to be part of the cosplay competition, and I have started to gather supplies for that project. I'm going to hold back on it until I'm ready to commit to it.

So I promised myself that I wouldn't buy fabric unless I had a plan for it, but I've already broken that. I was in town and passed by the only decent fabric store, and they had a sale. Unfortunately the sale is because it's closing down. I've tried to make my best to make it profitable, but it is a shop for home textiles so except for some quilting cottons with historical prints I haven't been able to buy anything but ribbons, threads and beads, and that's not exactly large sums of money.

I picked up 3 meters of this fabric, even with a sale it was still $18/m. I guess I'm going to add it into the pile of fabrics suitable for 18th century jackets. I would love to make it into a pet en l'air, but it's really narrow so I'm not sure if it's enough for that.

Some things I picked up

I was only supposed to buy some red sewing thread so that I could finish my hat, but on the way to the fabric shop I went in to the second hand store and found a nice pair of shoes. Then I decided to go to the quilt shop, rather than the more central curtain store. I'm calling them the quilt store and the fabric store since that's basically the kind of fabrics that they carry. The quilt shop doesn't claim to be anything else either. What I don't like with these shops is that it's impossible to buy any fabrics that are actually usable for making clothes. In the quilt shop there is quite a nice selections of quilting cottons though, including cottons with nice historical prints. When I went there it also happened that a large section was on sale, and even if it's not super cheap compared to when I read posts from other people,  the cost was around $10/m, which is cheap around here.

For the shoes I'm going to try and dye them red, I've already bought the leather dye. I really want a pair of bright red shoes for my revolutionary dress, and I dream about a pair of red Kensingtons from American Duchess, but since they aren't available at the moment I will try with these. They are a bit on the big side, but that means that I shouldn't have any problems wearing a thin knitted stocking with them.

The fabric is screaming pierrot jacket towards me, but I only have two meters so I'm not sure that will be enough to make that kind of jacket. I could have bought another meter of the fabric, but I want to challenge myself and actually make things that doesn't need so much fabric. We will so, for now it goes into the stash.

Fabric shopping in London

I've just come home from a short holiday in London. Since I had most of the days just by myself, and since I have already seen most of the "must sees" in London, I had decided that it was time to do some fabric hunting. I first went to the Swedish sewing forum sysidan.se and found this thread about fabric stores in London I also found the blog Tilly and the Buttons, and her recommendations for fabric shopping. Both places recommended Liberty, Goldhawk Road and Walthamstow.

I spent the first day in London in the shopping district around Oxford Cirkus, so of course I went to Liberty. Since my focus is mainly on finding fabrics for historical costuming, or Star Wars, I didn't find anything that caught my eyes there. It's mostly prints, so it must be a heaven for quilters, but not my kind of fabric store. On my last day I decided to visit Goldhawk Road. It was mostly because I was quite tired and it's closer to central London. It's still in zone 2 on the Tube so I could go there on my daypass, unlike Walthamstow that's further out at the end of the Victoria line.

Goldhawk Road was great. A full street with little shops with Sikh owners that were really friendly, but not pushy when I went into their shops. Most of the fabrics were really shiny and glitzy poly satins, there were some shops that had a lot of prints as well. Once again I'm not really into fabrics with small flowery prints, or African inspired prints. The poly fabrics were cheap, at least compared to what I'm used to, but there were also at least one shop with quality, natural fibres. It was filled with nice tweeds, wools and linens. I of course ended up there and spent most of my cash in just one shop.

The one thing that is so great about being able to go to a physical store is just the inspiration that you get by seeing the bolts of fabric, and being able to feel them and compare them. That is nothing you can do on ebay. In the end I bought three different fabrics.

The two top fabrics are good example of me just getting floored when I saw them. They are a very fine and pure wool, great draping. I hadn't planned on buying anything like that, but the bolts were on top of each other and the yellow and blue/dark green colous just looked so great together that I knew that I wanted to use one fabric for something, and to trim it with the other. Now this wasn't a cheap fabric, it cost £20/m, but I'm pretty sure that I would still have to pay the double if I found anything like it around here. My thought definitely goes toward a little 18th century jacket in the blue/green fabric with yellow trimmings.

The third fabric was a changeant poly chiffon. This one was really cheap though, £2,5/m. I've been on the lookout for a changeant chiffon to make a new veil for my Amidala Purple Travel gown, and this might be it. I have to see if it's a tad too dark though, I guess I have to see it compared to the rest of the gown and in different lights. Otherwise I'm thinking about doing a simple bias cut party dress out of it. I have a vogue pattern for that kind of dress that I haven't tried.

It was definitely fun going on a fabric safari, and maybe next time in London I might even go to Walthamstow.