So, not written on here for a while and maybe I should try to make an effort to make it something I'm doing much more frequently.If I can work out what I need to know in terms of manipulating HTML so this actually looks worthwhile it could be good.
Obviously everything is getting weird thsi year all over the world so maybe a release like this is something I would need.
That and making garments. I bought a lot of fabric over teh Xmas holidays and still have some things i've been working on fro before that.
Down the side to the left you can see some new stuff I've done being worn with some slightly older stuff. The 2 pairs of coloured jeans are what I've managed to finish so far this year. The other pair the white, red and beige striped ones were done shortly before Xmas.
I'm currently trying to finish 2 shirts I started before Xmas. I've taken the placket from the pattern for the westerns shirt I made a couple of last year, most notably the pebbles photograph thing and tried to incorporate it into other designs.
The shirt here with the brown loops is one of the first that I managed to finish with the new placket. It was a frontier shirt design that I had completed a few times with just an open neck. I put the placket where the facing went on the existing pattern and also added a collar stand.
What I didn't understand until earlier today was that the external collar is only supposed to be as deep as the collar band for the collar to look normal. It can be longer tahn normal at the front if required but adding extra width around the neck may not be ideal. Collar is a second collar band but with points at the front and a bit shorter because it doesn't have to overlap at the front.
So far I've basically been using the collar from the design I have depicted here in the purple hexagonal hive design which is something i adapted from a medieval costume design.
The Frontier shirt has it's own collar design which I've borrowed for jeans jackets I've done over the last year.
But I think these costume shirt collars incorporated something of a collar band or substitute into the actual collar design rather tahn having it separate. So if I do a collar band and then simply use the collar as previously designed it is an extra width. Subsequently I need to draft new collars.
This shirt to the left is one that i based on a folkwear Ukrainian shirt but have altered a bit . I used the same placket as I've been using elsewhere but I learnt that I have to reverse it so that it points the other way than on the more western designs.
Learnt that the hard way by messing up an earlier shirt I tried to do it on and winding up with the collar not doing up right. But closing needs to go to the left.
I think this and the other similar design one worked out ok though. & IO think I will try to finish off the shirt that I messed up.
Do love the design on this waxed cotton too.
Here's me in the wool and mohair crombie type coat I picked up from the
Curiosity Shop back in December. Lovely thing that I almost missed
because it was just before closing time. Thankfully I found out I had a few minutes more so tried it on and realised I needed it so have been wearing it pretty much daily.
I tend to wear it over the brown leather bike jacket I got mailorder back in 2003.
Not sure where i got the idea, think Bavo and people used to dress like that though.
these are various bits of fabric that I am going to use over the year.
First 2 are for making trousers out of .
I'll probably start on one of these 2 before the end of the week.
I thought the 2 that I have made so far thsi year were heavier weight so would be warmer .
Also thought that if i didn't do the orange ones first I might not get around to doing them.
Not sure if thsi top brown/green etc stripe drill is lighter than the turquoise/green that I've already done. Will be easier to work out how to do them though since the turquoise/green looked about teh same on both sides of the fabric. I had to work out which side looked more slubby so hope I got that right, and didn't just get confused by loose bits of thread that were blowing around after cutting the pieces. Think they look ok anyway.
But this top fabric looks pretty delicious so looking forward to getting a pair of jeans out of them. Do wish I could have got more of this stuff and done a jacket too. Ah well can't make everything.
I think the top one will be an ornate cowboy shirt, the one below it more in the style of the one I'm wearing under the bike jacket.
Not sure about anything else yet
I do have a pattern for a west african oversize dashiki thing, but it is more likely to be something more shirty, will wait and see.
This was deceptive. I thought it was a waxed cotton but it turned out to be a fake thing. Looks like it is reasonably good quality but not what I thought.
Closer to a decent quality cotton that looks like kente than the real thing, but it will work ok I think when I go to use it
Not sure what I'm going to do with this. Could do the placketed medieval shirt thing once i work out the best way to work that.
Will definitely be something nice.
Saeed had this in 3 colours and i had a hard time working out which one to go with. All of them were pretty trippy because of a gold motif that is in the design. The other 2 colours were a mid green and a fuschia type pink. Might go back for some of that fuschia at some point.
