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Ikat Shirt

9/13/2019

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When I saw an indigo-dyed cotton at the Mill End Store, I liked it a lot.  This fabric is an ikat (say "EEE-kat"), which is a textile art I find fascinating.  The basic design is as follows: the warp threads are arranged in stripes of solid color (black or deep indigo) and stripes of resist-dyed yarns.  (Or maybe they're dip-dyed; I can't know for sure how they dyed them.)  The dyed threads are dark blue and pale gray, and the gray spots alternate.  The weft threads are both a solid color and a smaller diameter than the warp threads, so the warp-pattern really pops. 

So what'll I do with it?  I decide to make another shirt for my brother!  I mean, the one I just made him won't fill the box for shipping, so I might as well make another and fill the box!  I wouldn't want to waste my shipping money!  ;) 


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Blue Linen Shirt

9/4/2019

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The same linen sale that led me to make pillowcases also saw me going home with 2.333 yards of nice hankie-weight linen in blue (60" wide).  I knew right away what it would be: another camp shirt for my brother!  You may recall my previous work for him.  Well, I have the same pattern and it still fits, so I'm off to the races! 

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Leather Costume - Spray Painted Cape

4/30/2018

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The leather album art project, first pants from scratch, then a modified jacket, was finished with a cape.  I had several yards of dark red ponte knit to work with, and I merely rounded the corners to make the shape I liked.  Feeling inspired by the idea of old brocade curtains and lace, but faded and worn, I decided to spray-paint the cape with lacy stencils!  I bought an outdoor fabric spray paint from JoAnn's, in brown. 

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Leather Costume - Modified Jacket

4/26/2018

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The next part of the leather costume was the leather jacket.  I suggested starting with an existing jacket and modifying it, so we went to Goodwill and picked up a black leather jacket.  Being a motorcycle jacket, it had the following features:
  • leather, to protect against road rash in case of fall
  • tight snaps at wrists and elastic at the waist to prevent wind from getting in and ballooning the coat
  • double closures: a CF zipper to close the coat, and a double-breasted snapped closure to keep wind from getting in at the zipper.
It was very 1980s style, with raglan sleeves.  Since my client is big boned, the cuffs were too tight to snap shut on him, but the rest fit. 
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the jacket after I removed the elastic at the waist Some chalk marks on the shoulders, from the first fitting. He's wearing the pants.

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Leather Costume - Pants

4/23/2018

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My favorite kind of project is when someone gives me an idea or assignment, and then lets me make it how I want.  If the idea is unusual enough, I am stretched by trying to make it, and I learn new techniques.  One repeat customer of mine always gives me such projects*.  In October 2017, he approached me with a new idea, for album cover art, and as always, it was my favorite kind of project. 
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* One time his inspiration was "the nineteen-eighties, super-artificial, and kind of Japanese".  I combined this with "Neelix from Star Trek Voyager" and came up with a red vinyl jacket that closed diagonally across the chest with red pleather details reminiscent of a Japanese fan.  I had never worked with vinyl or pleather before, so that was new!  Nor had I ever altered a pattern like that, or made anything like it.

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Aloha Shirts - Finally done!

11/13/2017

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It has been so long since I've worked on this gift for my brother that it's no wonder if you've forgotten all about it!  (My brother probably thought I'd forgotten about it!)  Allow me to refresh your memory.

In Fall, 2016, I came up with the idea of making a camp shirt for my brother, using the Islander #208 pattern and a Robert Kaufman batik in my brother's preferred colors.  He was enthusiastic. 

So I made a mock-up and sent it to him, only to find that, like many commercial patterns, the shirt had far too much ease.  Though the pattern envelope said my brother's measurements were a Medium (with a Large neck!), in reality, he was probably a small.  At any rate, it was a ton of work with a disappointment at the end, so the wind was taken right out of my sails.  The project slipped to the bottom of the pile until...

April 2017, when I found an older Aloha shirt at a vintage shop and rubbed off its pattern.  I sent the original to my brother, and he confirmed that the fit was good, so I cut out the batik pieces...
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And got distracted by other, paying, work, until August 2017, when I gave myself a stern talking to and put the shirt project back on the top of my to-do list for the fall! 

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Aloha Shirt - doing a rub-off

6/12/2017

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I conceived the aloha shirt project for my brother in fall 2016, but when the first muslin was a dud, I put the project on hold for a while.  Then in April 2017, when I saw this aloha shirt in a local vintage shop, my enthusiasm returned!  If this ready-to-wear (RTW) shirt fit my brother, I could use it for my template, instead of using the Islander shirt pattern from before. 

My brother is only a little heavier than I am, so I tried the shirt on.  When the RTW shirt fit me pretty well, only a little tight over the bosom, I thought it should fit my bosom-less brother fairly well, too.  I bought it ($16) in order to take a pattern from it.  Taking a pattern from an existing garment without dis-assembing it is called doing a rub-off. 

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Aloha Shirt - first muslin

5/25/2017

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I developed the urge to make an aloha shirt after seeing this pattern at my local fabric store.  It appealed to me, and I thought making my brother a shirt would be a nice gift.  My dominant love language is Quality Time, followed by Acts of Service, so making people things feels loving*.  And, as it happens, Acts of Service is one of my brother's dominant love languages, and he loves clothes, so I knew he'd appreciate a Karen Roy original!  

*There's some overlap, and debate-about-said-overlap, when it comes to love languages.  The shirt is an item, so this might seem like Gift-Giving, but for me, the act of making it is a mix of quality time and service.  Now my sister's dominant love language is Gift-Giving, so when I send her clothes, she feels the love of the gift while I feel the love of the work I put in. 

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Mono-butt!

3/13/2017

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Picture by Alex-501, used by Creative Commons license. A good example of mono-butt (as well as poor fit all around).
​Think hard... when was the last time you heard anyone say they were happy with their jeans?  I can't remember, myself.  If the topic of jeans comes up, everyone always has a litany of complaints.  Here are mine:
  1. I hate low-rise.
  2. I hate skinny thighs.
  3. Not a fan of spandex.
  4. What's up with mono-butt?   
​So if we all complain, why do we all live in jeans?  Because we've all had at least one perfect pair, and we remember how it felt.  We're in love with a fantasy of jeans, a platonic ideal of them. 
But the American obsession with denim is not my topic today; mono-butt is the subject du jour.  Mono-butt is when the seat of the jeans is ill-defined, like a bubble instead of buttocks.  This means that the crack is bridged by fabric (making a cave-like sauna inside), the legs have limited range of motion (you can't lift your leg without pulling the fabric from the other leg), and the fabric gets stressed on the center back seam.  And this look seems to be everywhere, on men's jeans and women's.  So unattractive.  "Buttocks" is plural for a reason, people!  I'm not asking for an extreme wedgie or anything, just a subtle bifurcation to make me feel like a woman instead of a baby in a diaper. 

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Charcoal Jeans

3/9/2017

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A repeat client of mine always surprises me with interesting challenges.  When he told me he wanted high-waisted jeans, the request plunged me into a world of patterns, construction methods, rivets, and body-types that were all new to me.  Here is the tale of the first pair I've made him, which I call the charcoal jeans because of their color. 

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    Karen Roy

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