Bullion Roses...

If you've been reading this blog for anytime now, you'll know I teach sewing to adults.  As I learn new techniques, I pass them onto my students.  Well I'm just crazy over bullion roses, especially when done in buttons.  I've been recommending a book "A-Z of Bullion Embroidery" from Inspiration Books, Country Bumpkin Publications, Australia.  They publish a whole series of books on fine/heirloom sewing. 

It appears the above book is getting very hard to find.  I don't know if they aren't publishing it any longer or what.  There are very few people who have published tutorials on bullion embroidery but I follow another blog La Sewista! aka Bunny, who does wonderful heirloom sewing and she has many tutorials on her blog site.  I found one for the bullion stitch which might help those of you who couldn't find the book.  Here is her addy  http://lasewist.blogspot.com/2009/08/hints-for-bullions.html

Now my bullion's aren't perfect; they are a work in progress but I figure if you get that close to me to see they aren't perfect - YOUR TOO DANG CLOSE!   LOL.

They can be a beautiful, unexpected touch on an otherwise plain shirt or blouse.  You would be surprised how many women have asked where they can purchase the embroidery design so they can machine embroider it.  LOL

You'll have hours of wonderful reading on Bunny's site.  I know I did.  Check it out!

Heirloom Chemise/Cami

First, I'd like to thank you for your comments on my Ruana shawl.  I love hearing from you all.

Warning:  this post is very photo intensive! LOL.

Okay.  Now I know I've been promising this for a couple weeks and I'm finally getting around to posting it.  LOL.  I'll say this one more time.  I've no children or grand children but love heirloom techniques and try to translate some of them into grown up garments.  The following garment is really pretty simple.  I started with New Look pattern #6104 view D - the sleeveless one in violet. 

Any fairly simple pattern will do; this one caught my eye when I got the Simplicity email announcing new patterns for spring.   This pattern is deceptive.  I found it to be rather on the large side.  I cut my usual 16 at the neck, shoulder & bust blending out to a 20 at the hip.  I wound up making 1 inch seams at the bust and tapering down to normal at the hips.  Using some lightweight off-white linen (because quite frankly $30 a yard for Irish handkerchief linen is more than I want to pay) from Fabric-store.com.  They will send you a swatch card of their different weights and colors of linen which I find invaluable for planning.  This particular linen is IL20, in white, was just under $8 a yard.

First thing I did was layout the front pattern piece & mark all around it with an iron-away marker.  After marking where the darts were on the fabric, I plotted out an embroidery design to go the length of the front.  This particular design was repeated 3 times and you see the results above.

After the embroidery on both front pieces was complete, I sewed in 3 - 1/8 inch tucks with my edge-join foot.  Above is the second tuck being sewn.

 The second tuck sewn but not yet pressed.

Both fronts sewn and pressed.  Remember when pressing your tucks each side is pressed a different direction.

Now the really fun part!  Lace!  What you see above is called insertion lace.  Insertion has 2 straight sides.  Also pictured above to the left of the lace is entredeaux which I had to tea dye.  I tea dyed it because I only had white on-hand and it was a brighter white than my linen.  And since I was using ecru lace I dyed it to match.  Then I starched and pressed the "you know what" out of both the lace and entredeaux.  The starch give it enough body so you can sew it easily.   I trimmed the fabric header from one side of the entredeaux.  Using the edge-join foot, I start to sew the lace to the trimmed side of the entredeaux with a tiny zigzag stitch. 

 These are the zigzag settings on my Babylock Ellegante.

 Here I've trimmed the second piece of entredeaux and am sewing them together.

The completed piece of lace and entredeaux.  One piece like this will be inserted between the embroidery and tucks on each side of the chemise.

 

After trimming the entredeaux header down to a fat 1/8" and cutting the tucks and lace apart (take a deep breath here because a lot of work goes down the drain if you don't measure and cut correctly) I've pinned the two pieces together.

 First sewing with a straight stitch.

 Then with a tiny zigzag.

Viola! Completed fronts and the pattern pieces cut out, darts sewn.  I mocked up what it would look like on Ruby.  Ruby is a little perkier than I am in the boob department.  LOL.

Done!

 

 And the side view.

I used my embroidery machine to sew the buttonholes on the front.  I get perfect buttonholes every time using this method.  Then I hand embroidered golden bullion roses with pale green leaves into the buttons.

A close-up of the front.

That's all I have for today.  Next up will be a T-shirt for Alan.

It's That Time Again...

What time is that you say?  LOL.  I mentioned last year that I'm a member of the Tulsa Smocking and Heirloom Sewing Guild.  Every year we purchase an American Girl doll, make a wardrobe of clothes for her and raffle the whole shebang off to some lucky mom or grandmother to give to their little darling.  The money we make from the process goes into our treasury so that we can bring in a great educator for the group.  Two years ago we had Michie' Mooney and this last year we had Wendy Schoen

I'm going to make a couple of outfits for our doll and I also volunteered to create a doll bed with all of the accompanying bed clothes to go with it.  Here's a pic of it so far.

Forgive the lighting.  It was evening when I took the shot.  I got the idea of making the bed from www.dollclothespatterns.net/ 

The bed itself is made from a wicker basket turned upside down and painted white inside and out.  The cute headboard is made from decorative garden edging also painted white.  The headboard is wired and hotglued to the back of the bed.

I made a bed-skirt with 2 rows of eyelet ruffles, 2 flat sheets, a pillow and pillowcase and finally, a reversible quilt.  I'm in the process of making a little rag rug to go by the bedside and a little knitted throw for the end of the bed.

I think it turning out so cute!

Creating your own fabric - an heirloom technique

Have you ever thought about creating your own fabric?  You know, just something a little different?  I've done it with embroidery; machine candlewick white-on-white embroidery for the bib & cuff area on my candlewick & roses blouse.  But this time I realized I haven't done an heirloom technique in awhile.  I received this month's Sew Beautiful magazine (issue #135) and there was the inspiration  for my next garment staring at me from the front cover!  LOL.

I have to explain.  I don't have any children or grandchildren.  So there are no little ones to sew cute little heirloom outfits.   And I like heirloom sewing.  Soooooo, I have a tendency to translate any heirloom techniques into adult clothing.  For me.  LOL.

Back to Sew Beautiful; on page 24, there is a lovely article by Nancy Sipple about a pulled-thread replacement technique.  I just love what she did.  So now I'm starting a sleeveless blouse with my TNT Simplicity 2339.  I've acquired 2.5 yards of a really nice silk broadcloth in black from my friend Sylvia of Delicate Stitches.  I also purchased a pkg of Madeira silk embroidery thread in a deep red and a nice leafy green.  My plans are to use the pulled-thread replacement in the red silk on a pocket, one side of the front band and possibly the collar.  I'm going to further complicate matters by cutting the front band on the bias.  LOL.  Also I'm planning on hand embroidering red bullion roses into the buttons.  Now you realize that since I chose black, its going to be very hard to photograph.  So I'll probably have to do some lightening up of the pictures to show the technique.

I'll have a couple of pictures tomorrow!