Month: May 2014

A Shout Out and a Few Accomplishments

~ Michelle

I’m one of those people who LOVES gifts. Just ask my dear hubby. Our first year married, he got confused because my birthday and a former long-time girlfriend both had our birthdays on the 15th – just different months. It was a lovely fall day, and he was heading into the room I was in with a card in hand and something behind his back. His Mum realized what he was doing, and stopped him. I had no problem with it at all. I just told him I wanted my gift. I didn’t care what the occasion was. I was good with the mix up – just hand over the gift. He made me wait. But that tells you a little of my personality there. I love gifts!

So, I want to say a big ‘Thank You’ to a couple of wonderful fellow bra-makers (whom I met on Amy’s Sew Along) who have sent me the loveliest gifts. Thank you Ginny and Naomi!

A while back, Ginny sent me these lovely laces and elastics.

Laces and elastics from Ginny

I’ve dipped into these elastics on more than one occasion. Elastics have become a valued item here. I hate using precious elastic on something that ends up not fitting! And I have plans for one of these laces on a bra I’ve got all cut out. But not the one I’m working on right now – I ran out of strap elastic for the cut out one.

Ginny also sent some adorable earrings she’d made – which didn’t make it into the shot here. You can see some of her hand-made creations here in her Etsy shop.

These are the laces I just got from Naomi. I love that beige. I’ve always been a beige or black girl. But there are too many laces out there that are so pretty to stick with that. Pretty colors, here I come!

Laces from Naomi

And a bunch of elastics, straps, upper cup elastic and more. Oh, that dark purple… such a beautiful color.

Elastics from Naomi

So a really big Thank You to both ladies.

And those accomplishments I mentioned? I finished my moulage AND my sloper. Both patterns are packaged away for the time being. I have to sew something now and I’ll pull the sloper out after I get my sewing fix.

moulage done

Here’s the final moulage. I found this great material in the clearance area and it worked better than the printed one I’d used previously. It is such a relief to be done this. Naomi sent me a great idea to transform my dress form using the moulage. Take a look at how Mary did it in her blog Cloning Couture. I’m definitely mulling this idea over. It’s a great idea!

And lastly, here’s an idea I got from Sigrid’s blog. And I looked and looked for this posting from her, and could not find it. Here’s what she said, “Pin (or baste) the cup over a well fitting bra, using the seam allowances for the pinning.”

Testing Bra Cup size

This is a new pattern for me. It’s Kwik Sew’s 3300, and I had to guess which size I was going to be. I did pretty well. This is a great starting point. I’ll have to change it from a partial band to a full band, but I can do that fairly easily knowing the basic cup pattern will fit so well.

Standard alteration to fit in smaller wires

This isn’t the easiest to see, but there’s a pin there at the bottom of the cup where there is excess material. That’s about a standard amount I need to take out to account for the smaller wires I need. So this is on it’s way to being pretty good already. Off to work on some pattern alterations now.

Happy Creating!

Moulage III and a Hair Update

~ Michelle ~ 2 Comments

Oh my! I’m on moulage number III in numbered ones, but I crumpled up the real number one, so this is actually my forth. The instructor assures us it is worthwhile to be picky. And I’m being picky.

I got a better picture this week. I changed the paper I’m using and the lines show up better.

Moulage III

I’ve just re-drawn it and cut that out to use as my pattern. This one should be perfect. Oh, fingers crossed!

Other than that I haven’t been doing much creatively, and I’m getting restless. I like quick projects. Bras only take at most a couple of days, and I have some wonderful new materials I want to get going on; but I am determined to finish this and use that basic pattern/sloper to make the cardigan pattern I bought.

Yesterday I was looking on my blog stats. It’s always fun to see what part of the world is reading about what I’m doing. I always share with my hubby some of the different countries and he’s always amazed. I think bra-making and other creative projects are alive and well on planet earth!

One thing I noticed yesterday when I was looking, was that someone had clicked on a link for the henna website I’d posted a while ago. I thought, oh, I need to update that. I’m still using henna for my hair, but not from the same company as before.

I love that henna is natural, and so is indigo, but there were a couple of things I didn’t love. It took about an hour and a half to do my hair, and even though I used the indigo with the henna, my hair was getting redder and redder – not a good color combination with my skin. So it was time to look for something else.

I was in the health food store and found just what I was looking for. Surya Brasil Henna Cream. I tried the dark brown first, but it took too well, and my hair looked black. Now I mix the light brown and dark brown together and I love the color – it’s so close to my own natural color.

Here’s my hair first thing this morning – in need of some loving touching up.

Hair before

You can see, that after a month, the grey isn’t really grey still – it’s a light brown. It does fade a bit over a month’s time, but no so much that it bothers me. It’s the little slivers of silver that I’m not so fond of! And I tried to not get leaves growing out of my head, but as you’ll see in each of the photos, I failed. So, let’s call them creative placement, or a decorative backdrop.

Hair During

And here’s the in between stage. One I brush the henna cream on, I cover it with plastic wrap to keep the moisture in, and then put a pretty shower cap on. This is time for me to just sit down and relax for 45 minutes. It’s not the five or ten minutes the commercials promise for hair dye, but it’s natural and doesn’t bother my skin at all. It’s worth it to me.

Hair After

And here I am after.  I’m all happy because I can’t see that silver stripe anymore. Have I mentioned that in my blog before? I have a Cruella DeVille stripe. Oh, and see the artistic placement of the leaves coming out of my hair? A nice touch I think.

Hair Close Up

And another close up showing all that grey and even the light brown gone. It’s all nice and dark again.

Hopefully, next week I will be done my moulage, AND my sloper and onto a fun project!

Happy creating!

Moulage 2 And 3

~ Michelle

You might be wondering about that title. What happened to 1? I went through the whole process of measuring myself, having my hubby measure me, putting all those numbers onto the form that comes with the class, drawing out a basic moulage with the instructor, and then drawing out my own. And I was so sure I had done it incorrectly that I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.

When I was done my second moulage, I realized what I had thought was wrong on the first one, hadn’t been wrong. I decided to wrap it up to more practice was good for me!

Moulage 1

Here is the first sewn moulage on my dress form. On this you can see where I pinned the shoulders to take them in. I also decided to move the bust width together more, and the waist was loose on me.

I wish I had taped the audio from that second moulage being pinned on me. I thought we sounded like a comedy routine. First, my hubby was sure pinning the moulage on me would take hours. I have no idea why he thought this, but he was convinced it would. I finally had to tell him to be quiet and pin me up.

The moulage was to be pinned up the back, and I had explained to my hubby that it would be tight-fitting. He kept saying, ‘This is pretty tight.’ And I’d assure him it was supposed to be tight. I told him it was to fit like a second skin even. But he must have commented four or five times on how tight it was.

Once it was all pinned up the back, I told him to pin the extra out of the shoulders and he did. With no give, I couldn’t pin myself.

I think five minutes have passed by now, if that. At this point I’m done what I needed to do – I’ve seen how it fit and where I needed to adjust it. So I tell my hubby to go ahead and unpin me. ‘What? Why? Didn’t I just pin you up? Why do you want to be unpinned now?’

Well, I didn’t want to wear it forever! My poor dear hubby really had no idea what we’d accomplished in this not-hours-long endeavor.

On my next one, I decided to take some of the drama out of the fitting and left the center front open and sewed up the back seam.

Moulage on dress form

You can see this one is a little more fitted around the waist. Not a huge difference, but this one is snug around the waist, whereas the first sewn up one wasn’t.

And here it is on me.

IMAGE_451

See. Definitely snug. But I’m told this is exactly what I’m wanting. Amazingly, making moulage two and three took a couple of days each! I had hoped to have the sloper done by now too, but that will have to be later this week.

Happy creating!