New Year - New Look Blog; news of one big change, and news of something amazing from last year

Hello again lovelies,

Well any regular readers will spot that I have had a bit of a spring clean through the old space, and one of the main things you might notice is that the hats have vanished, along with vintage sewing!!!

The Mad Hatter

Now don't get me wrong, I still love a hat, but I have decided to concentrate on the dolls this year, so in tiding up I now have a new banner and dress making has been removed from my side panels, it may be back, who knows, but for now I'm all about the dolls. (Dolls in hats may well be quite popular still though, and dolls with turbans and even crowns)

Historical Sew Monthly - April : War and Peace

Hi Folks,

Ok so the theme for the Historical Sew Monthly for April is:

April – War & Peace: the extremes of conflict and long periods of peacetime both

 influence what people wear.  Make something that shows the effects of war, 

or of extended peace.

Update on the year so far

Hello I'm still alive,

Just thought I best let you know.

After writing 2 or 3 blog posts a week, this feels like a very prolonged absence, mainly due to family life, custom orders, technical issues and a very large case of procrastination (or is that just couldn't be bothered), But I would like to thank all new readers. It quite amazing really, although I haven't posted a blog since the beginning of March, I am still getting new readers and my stats have been ticking along very nicely, much to my surprise, so Thank You all.

a little cocktail hat

Good Morning all

You may have notice that there wasn't a post at the end of last week, well mini apologies, but in truth I'm not really sorry, you see the weather here was lovely and I chose to sit outside and so I needed to be able to do something portable, small and visible in the sun.  The screen on the laptop would not have been up to the task I'm afraid, so I went with sunshine and not blogging, it's not like this is a job, I am suppose to do it for fun, so what the hell.  And I had a lovely time sitting with my head in the shade and my legs up on a chair and in the sun.  Although the garden still has no grass and looks like a building site, I pretended and it was lovely. The dog loved it too and insisted on joining me on the chair, although she is not the right size for a lap dog anymore. I tried to get a photo with her looking at me but she insisted on turning round as soon as I clicked.
And here one of the things I did out there, a mini little veil for the cake topper we will have, told you I wanted to get all the things I could get done as early as possible to make sure there isn't a big rush at the last minute. It has 5 little roses made with bullion stitch. cute heh.

Well what should I have blogged about last week, it might have been about this lovely little hat that I made to go with my flowery dress for challenge 8 of the HSF, or might might have been some new steampunk creation, or about underwear, which would you have prefered? Well since I can't hear you, we will go with the hat and next time I will tell you all about how the 1910s corset is coming along or more steampunk stuff.

 I believe I am really lucky to live where I live, within a really short walking distance we have areas of green in which you can walk for ages without seeing a house, especially when the tree are full of leaves and a short walk the other way takes me to shops and pubs and a thriving community centre. Best of both worlds.

 And these areas are still in the middle of the suburbs of Birmingham.

Anyway all this greenery often inspires me and I love the colours, the pinky/purple hue of the grass, so with my flowery dress being the same colours, and my needing a hat to wear with it, I was off.

I'm afraid that I forgot to take any picture before this one, to show the embroidery in more detail, you think I'd be use to this blogging life style by now. But here it is pinned on to the buckram base.

And a close up of the embroidery.

I had to stabilise the material to start with as it is a thin stretchy lycra fabric, so I simply ironed on some interfacing and that's why the underneath is white. Here you can see the underneath, the buckham base with the millinery wire sewn around the edge and the lining material which I attached with spray on fusible adhesive (not very well as you can see its coming off at that point).

.

 Once I had turned the fabric over the edge to the underside and sewn it down I attached a bit of bias binding to cover the raw edges, sewed on a comb and attached some feathers in matching colours.

And finally with the dress, you can see the trim on the dress which I used to make the hat. Well I think it looked quite sweet, and I wore it to a work's cocktail party with Dr J. which was a very nice affair with pimms and canapes.   

Well that will do for today. This Saturday coming is 'Tiffin in the Park', a steampunk fair, I have a stall at so I'm off to create.  I have to say I am enjoying my life.  I hope you are all happy too.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

steampunking a mini topper without using gears

Morning All

Just thought I would take one of my little top hats and give it a steampunk makeover today, but not by adding any gears.  There's a song I've heard on youtube called 'Just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk)' by Reginald Pikedevant that's quite appt in this point, I don't want to create something that is just jumping on the bandwagon and not really creative.

So gears are good but only when productive, that is to say there is a viable use for them on an object so how do I get a steampunk look without them?  Well what does Steampunk mean to me? that is to say what does it make me visualise? ok ladies in lovely corseted gowns, Victorian or the like, decorated in lace and pretty things, but practical, able to go adventuring in any deep dark forests or alien landscape without breaking a heel or tearing a hem, and even if they did they would soon find a way of mending the forsaid item.

So I am going for elegant but maybe slightly over-the-top as most of what I do veers that way, I'm not and have never been a wallflower in dress. And I think that anyone going for in for steampunk will be looking for something to show off, not hide away, they will be people used to being looked at and commented on.

But anyway, on with the decorating;

I decided that a bit of fleur de lis would look rather grand and got out an old lump of polymer clay and a fleur de lis rubber mold.  Rubber molds are great, most of mine came from when I was decorating cakes more regularly, but are now in the polymer box, and there is no going back.  If you do use something with polymer clay it can't be used for food stuff again.  Nasty stuff if you eat it or bake it too hot, poisonous either way.  So if I wanted to mold icing, the original reason I bought most of these molds, I would have to go and get new ones. This is unlikely though, apart from my own, I can't see me making anyones wedding cake in the near future.  So after preparing your clay, push it into the mold

and gently using a sharp blade cut off the excess 

So you get something like this, don't worry if it's not too neat

and then with the beauty of rubber molds you can just flex the mold and pop the clay out.

Because I was planning on decorating a round hat with these I wanted to bake them with a curve to their backs so put them on the outside of a bowl, if you just gently press they should stick down easily.

Then came painting, I do love blue. Obviously you could just use clay the colour you want, but I was just using up old scrap clay, I used metallic acrylic paint in 'sapphire'  

and just a touch of rub'n buff in antique gold to highlight the edges, the one on the left before rub'n buff and the one on the right is after, so you can see it's just a light touch.

Then I stuck them round the base of the hat crown and decided not to put them on the opposite end but around the top instead, so those ones could have been flat baked, but still looked ok.

These lovely little birds started off white too, I think they might be for weddings, but now they can sit pride of place on this hat.

And as a last touch, a small homage to my favourite book, Alice through the looking glass, a polymer clay clock with a twist, if you look closely you will see that the numbers go the wrong way, and I know the mad hatter was down the rabbit hole in wonderland, but there is a competition running at the moment in a facebook group called the mad hatter's society:
'2014 MHS Mad Hatter's Hat Interpretation Contest'

take a look if you fancy getting involved, it needs to be a top hat of any size, that is an interpretation of the Mad Hatter's. And you can enter up to 3 hats, so you will be seeing more from this. I will put up a post in the future about the clock if anyone is interested.

Well there we go the finished article, hope you like it, and it will be going up in the shop shortly.
So that's all for now.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

A big thank you to Honor

Good Morning all

and what a change from Tuesday's blue skies, today sees this being written next to a window covered in rain and by the look of those clouds it could stay like that all day. Although who knows?, I don't know what it's like where you are but here in the middle of England the weather has been rather erratic lately changing very fast from downpours to sun and back again.

But enough of my English preoccupation with the weather, (why are we like that?); today I want to say an enormous thank you to a lovely lady, who I don't know all that well, we go to the same dances and chat a bit. But I have found myself overwhelmed by her generosity. Another case of someone hearing what I'm up to and saying, 'I've got some ... in the back of a cupboard do you want it?'

Well in Honor's case it was feathers, and some other bits and pieces, she had dabbled at hat making awhile back and as all crafty people seemed to amassed 'some' bits and pieces.  I obviously said yes please and the other day she brought them along to a dance we were at. At the time I couldn't really see what was involved in the stash, but now having got it all out I am so lucky to know such wonderful generous people.  Honor, if you ever want a hat for anything please just ask and I would be delighted to make you one.

There was so much stuff here, loads of different types of feathers, hat bases, combs, ribbons, beads etc. Thank you Honor.

One of my favourite are goose biot feathers.

There were several different colours of these wonderful feathers which I love as they make such a dramatic impact to a hat. To take them from looking kinda dull to wow is as simple as curling a ribbon and just the same process. The feather has been striped on one side so if you drag a pair of scissors down that side it will curl or for a more dramatic curl you can use curling tongs and another technique is to attach the top and the bottom with gives a lovely look.

And here's some in a finished plume on a lovely mini-tricorn hat I am almost finished, just need to line this one now.

Well that's all for today, more next week
Hugs and Kisses

Ally

Historical Sew Fortnight challenge 7: Tops and Toes

Well I can't quite believe it, another challenge has rolled round, and in fact this is a little late as the due date was 15th and I decided to wait a day to coincide with my blog post, couldn't go earlier as I needed to launch the 'Giveaway' in Monday's Blog Post.

have to say I was quite surprised at all the colour out there

So what's this one all about? Well its called #7: Tops & Toes and that just about sums it up; something for your head or feet.  
Ok so what to do, well as I am trying to do each challenge about hats, this could be a little too easy and I could just list a hat I was working on anyway.  No as it should be a little bit of a challenge I decided to do tops AND toes.  I have a pair of old shoes that I love, now they weren't expensive and they're not leather, only very cheap on Ebay, but I loved them for their shape and their straps and just how comfy they have been. And actually considering how cheap they were, they have lasted quite well really, but now they are at the stage when I just don't feel happy going out in them as they look so shabby, but I can't throw them out, I love them.  
Well there they have languished at the bottom of the shoe box for a few years now until looking for inspiration for this project I stumbled open them again and inspired from the brilliant challenges others have been doing in this group, I knew I had my project, make these shoes good again.  Just what era now? well looking at them they had a bit of a 30s vibe, and I seem to be wearing more 30s style lately.

 So first step cover the areas not to be painted in cling film, not really necessary as they were going to be covered anyway but saves mess.

 And 4 coats of black shoe dye in total, could have done with more but I was bored by then.

I kinda held the felt in place to get the right shape and cut bits off and then glued lots, using pins and clothes pegs to hold in place whilst drying.

It did start to look like something out of Hellraiser at one point, and I had quite sore fingers as I kept stabbing myself.

Lastly I glued on some lace flowers I had cut out of the lace fabric. 

and viola..

The inside is messy and i did get glue where it shouldn't be, but you can't really see that when you wear them.

And a hat to go with them......well I found this on Etsy just the other day and its a pattern from a 1938 newspaper so right era and done in the same colours I decided it would do very nicely. It's from a very nice seller called knittydebby.

Basically a circle made into a cone with a band added to hold it in place. I think the measurements included have made it a bit bigger than the illustration so I intend to make a smaller one to see what that looks like. Oh and I added a bit of lace to finish it off.

I also had a bag I had already made out of the same green felt that really complemented the whole affair,  so I popped that into some of the photos too.

Well hope you like and heres that details:

The Challenge: #7 Tops and Toes 

Fabric:     100%Wool felt, small amount of lace for decoration

Pattern:   hat 1938 newspaper pattern from Etsy, see above for more details, shoes just cut felt around shoes.

Year:       1938 for hat, 30s for shoes

Notions: buckram, millinery wire, merry widow net, black shoe dye and glue

How historically accurate is it? quite good, I'd say a fair 7 /10

Hours to complete: approx 5 not including a bit of glue and paint drying time on the shoes

First worn: may be this Sunday coming at a burlesque I have a stall at or July for Hepcats, a weekender full of dancing.

Total cost: 1/2 meter of felt £9.00, netting £2.50 rest in stock.

well that's another one wrapped up, till next week

Hugs and Kisses

Ally