Finally back up and cutting again. Got a jeans jacket underway, actually 2 but this seems to be simpler cos it doesn't need me to work out where it needs to be reinforced.

I'm needing to lay out the pieces of the source jacket and draw 5mm outlines around them to get up to the seam allowance I am comfortable with. the source jacket was apparently done on an overlocker and only has 1cm wide seam allowances which means attempting to do the flat fell seam I normally do would be a non starter. Way too fiddly.

I'm using the Strawberry Thief  William Morris fabric I was originally going to make a pair of jeans from. This was a pretty expensive fabric, selling by the half metre which meant that I was thinking I'd do another trial run experiment with the paisley babycord before I started it in this fabric.
It then transpired that using babycord had its own problems or so I believe, not having actually completed the thing. But I was wondering if the yokes  in the lighter fabric could take the  weight of the rest of the structure and whatever I was going to put in its pockets. So I think I need to work out what needs reinforcing which will take longer. & with whatever double layers it will no longer be the light jacket that was going to be as summer specific. Or so I hope.
This  Strawberry Thief is a drill fabric so I think it should be a lot more robust than the babycord.

So far I have managed to create this jacket in a cerise 8 wale cord that I bought last year. I was intending to make some kind if jacket out of it but I think I was thinking more of something based on the leather bike jackets I tend to wear in the colder months.
The jacket here is worn with a pair of jeans I made from a cotton -viscose curtaining material. I think they look ok but I think the fabric in general has more of a tendency to bag than others that I've used.  I have some of this stuff in a different colour that I'm thinking of making a jacket from. I think I bought it thinking I'd make a jeans jacket and then saw Poldark on tv so have been thinking about trying one of that eras frock coats in it.

The hat here is one that came from a renaissance pattern package. It's made in a fabric called Pizarro Spice which is also a cotton viscose but done in a more tapestry style with a couple of distinctive layers and woven or embroidered pattern instead of printed. The top of the brim is the back of the fabric the top section is made of. The bottom is in a printed cotton curtain material. It is lined with a cotton twill that I got as a curtain lining. Very useful fabric so I might buy some new for various uses..
 The shirt is shown on the previous entry and is an African Waxed cotton, here made in a Folkwear frontier style, so it's a bit of a cowboy shirt.
 Boots are a pair of engineer boots I got mailorder about 12 years ago. They're still going but I need to take better care of them and also get rid of the white residue from the last time i rubbed wax into them.

This is a cotton linen fabric that I've been looking at and thinking God I'd love to make a jeans jacket out of . I'm not sure now that it's heading out of the season. But seems to be crying out to be done.
pattern repeat is 24.5cm if that's any guide.

I keep leaving overlong intervals on here and should try to do this regularly.
I was busy for the early part of the year, made a lot of stuff which didn't finish with the frock coat. Should have gone on to another frockcoat but I thought i had the wrong size pattern, looks like I might have overdone the seam allowances, any way bought a new copy of the pattern so I could start it again,. Had had to wait for the local fabric shop to cycle through every other pattern company to have a sale on the right firm. Then found that I probably had cut the pattern to the  right size anyway, but my big push on making clothing had run out of steam or something by the time that happened so it's still in the to do pile possibly with some amendments from things I've seen in photos since.

I did make a number of shirts and jerseys though and at least a couple of pairs of jeans.
So here's a few more photos of things

 This is a shirt based on the Folkwear frontier shirt design, the same thing I made the Aztec brushed cotton one in last year. Here it's made out of that heavy cotton I've been told is similar to Oxford, which is sold by Hickey's as curtaining fabric.
It's coupled here with the jeans I made outof the other tartan I bought in London.  I hadn't previously discovered the name of the tartan but think it may be called Wallace after just googling it. I think it was pretty successful as a jean but maybe I should be looking at making at least one other type of trouser. Might help hone my craft if I incorporated technique I picked up from the variety of any type of garment I make.

 This is a pair of 8 wale cord jeans in a purple that i intend to use for that frock coat when I get around to it. I liked these when I saw them in  daylight, after having thought they were far too navy while I worked on them.
They're coupled here with another of the Frontier shirts this time in waxed cotton. I think the squares in the design are a similar purple to the jeans. Really not sure what people see when they see that shirt , if other people's reaction to colour would mean they took in the full design. I'd be interested to hear what people would describe that shirt as on first sight.I think when I chose the fabric it was actually the darkness that hit me first and now the lines seem to shimmer yellow. Actually I'm a bit intrigued as to how other people pick fabric in a shop like Meena where you're just seeing rows of fabric hanging  overlapping each other in a small amount of space.

Row of fabric that I probably chose the fabric for the  shirts above and below from. really intrigued as to how a shopper would tend to look at what they were buying. I'm about 6ft tall and I had to reach up to it and everything is crammed next to each other.
I'm buying more from my own subjective aesthetics though. So not from a background in which I have any traditional attachment to any designs or looser categorisations. Not sure how much waxed cotton designs are based on a basic traditional tribal design or whatever, I have no idea of symbolism or anything. Could as easily be that they just keep coming up with new designs that don't have a deeper context. I need to find out more. Oh & get a lot more of the fabric.

 This is another Folkwear design you've probably seen before. This is the Missouri Riverman shirt, here in a waxed cotton. I love the design on the fabric here. Think I like the colour orange quite a bit anyway so probably need to make more stuff in it.
The jeans here are babycord in a design that features several concentric circles superimposed over each other. I find it quite psychedelic but it might look a little too much like kiwi slices.
I'm finding babycord quite good for making jeans out of. I have 3 pairs in the fabric so far, with another on the way.  The fabric is light enough to be quite cool during the summer, but also doesn't seem overly cold in the winter, at least from what I remember from last year.
I'm trying to make a jeans jacket out of the fabric too but that seems to be getting tricky since I think it needs to be double layers of fabric where a heavier cord was a single layer. The fabric I'm using for that is the one from the next photo though

 These jeans are the paisley babycord I'm trying to make a matching jacket from. These were made a couple of months back and have been worn quite a bit since.
 The shirt here may be seen in earlier photos since it was done even earlier. This is a blackwatch brushed cotton version of a shirt I'm calling Doge since its based on a medieval costume. I heavily reduced the size of the garment from what it's based on and it is still extremely baggy I had to lengthen the sleeves to make them the correct length and now I'm doing the cuff pretty long, not sure if that shows here.
The shirt has a drop yoke which is not a feature you see that frequently.

NB doge was the title for the civic leader of Venice at the time.

 The paisley/tartan combination done the other way round.
This couples a lawn cotton version of the doge shirt with a Gordon dress tartan pair of jeans.
I really like lawn cotton and need to get some more it seems to be light enough to wear in summer and is generally pretty tasty.
 The Gordon Dress tartan is a design you see on people in a number of photos from the garage rock era, possibly most notably on Arthur Lee on the cover of Love's 1st lp.

Here's those jeans again, now coupled with a Hawaiian flowers 3-button long sleeve tshirt thingy.
I really like the design, It comes from a Simplicity pattern that looks really straight but if you make it in the right fabric it can look pretty groovy. I have another one in stripes and one underway in polka dots

This is a voile top based on a pattern for a pirate shirt ferom a Simplicity pattern. This shirt is about the first one I've made that doesn't have a yoke. It just has the front and back meeting at the shoulder.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. It just seemed that a yoke was what the weight of the shirt hung from so would be important. Voile isa ligt fabric so may behave somewhat differently to what a heavier one would. I was going to make one of these in a floral design of that heavy cotton curtaining fabric but was having troble working out where to position a large design on the body of the shirt so thought I'd go ahead with this more simple repetitive pattern first and hopefully see what hung where once it was made. Not sure how I would translate a flat pattern to a 3d shirt still but at least I have a working shirt.
I think may have to do something about stitching the neck facing down since this fabric is so fluid that that tends to work its way out of the hole.
I've also had some trouble with the sleeve working its way outof the bottom of jacket sleeves in a way that I haven't had from heavier fabrics.
I might need to look into working up cuff plackets in future to prevent that happening.
The shirt also has the sleeve a bit off the shoulder which might contribute to this too.

This was the first shirt I made that had a normal straight placket. I have previously made a Ukrainian style one with a weird airlock placket which is a bit different but this is the standard straightforward style.  I think I need to experiment with it a bit more.
This shirt is also the first to feature a separate neckband and collar. I'm not sure if either actually show here.
This was the shirt that came from the pattern package that included the frockcoat I made earlier this year, the more Western style one.
 I think the cuffs came out too big because I was worried I'd make them too tight. I think I've taken them in since.
I added a bit of length to the cuff too I think, and then was wondering if there was much point on a shirt that didn't have baggy sleeves. This was because it meant there wasn't enough space in the puffed out sleeve to take on the excess of the  extended length of the sleeve.
Anyway this was done in the heavy cotton I like to use so is probably more suitable to Autumn than summer. I'll probably wear it more then. It was finished in June after I took some of the excess length of the cuff back off and added the buttons taht it had been sitting around without.

 The only items I made over the middle of the summer were completing 2 already started garments .
I cut this cerise 8 wale jeans jacket about 2 or 3 months earlier and just had it sitting around waiting to be worked on while i went through a number of other items. Its based on an existing jeans jacket I got from a charity shop which I bought for the purpose of making copies from.
Making it was pretty complex and i did need to work things out withot instructions.  I think I got most of it pretty straightforwardly apart from the cosntruction of the side pocket. That does have a slightly complex nesting bunch of openings that had to be worked out, but I think where i went wrong was thinking the side facing went a different way than it does.
I have another version underway in the paisley babycord that you see in a couple of photos on here.
The other garment I finished was the striped drill jeans. I had thought i'd completed last year but they were very large around the waist so needed to be slimmed down to fitting better. That took way longer than it should have done but they're back to being wearable now.

Other than that I've had a bout of flu or something that's lasted far too long. It hasn't helped that the summer here in Ireland has been as wet as it has been. Cos it keeps on redosing me with cold/flu.

I've also had to try to find the receipt/warranty for the tv that ceased to work a couple of weeks ago. That was taken to be looked at/repaired this morning so I'm hoping it will come  back to me in working order. I've done most of my hand sewing in front of it.

An update of sorts

I haven't posted on here in a while.
I am still sewing pretty heavily so do have some things to add

 


This is a jacket I made last month based on the same pattern as the one I made out of curtains last year. This new version was made from some striped drill I bought last year with the intention of making a pair of striped Levi style jeans. When it arrived I discovered the colours weren't as described . The listing had it as 2 shades of blue and a yellow. It arrived as Black, mid grey and beige as well as white which was the only thing that came as listed.
 Since it wasn't going to be as multicoloured as I had envisioned I thought I would make it into a frockcoat instead.
It wound up being put on the backburner while I went around making a load of jeans and shirts instead. I think it has turned out ok, not sure I could have done it much better at the moment. The one thing I've been a bit self conscious about is the facing/contrast which came from a piece of what appears to be late 60s curtaining.When I got it it was made up into some form of bag of some kind, possibly a sleeping bag though I'm not 100% sure.
  I picked that up from the Curiosity Shop, the local charity shop that I was getting a lot of fabric from last year. At the time I wasn't really thinking what it would become so it sat around unused for several months. In the interim I came across some brocade which I think looks great but was shedding colour every time I washed it.  Otherwise the facing here would have been red floral brocade. I think this alternative, which only occurred to me after that seemed unusable, looks pretty good but I'm still not sure.

I also made the lining from a curtain I bought from the same shop.

I'm wearing the jacket in the 2 bookending photos here with a Missouri Riverman shirt I made in some curtaining material I bought from a reduced section in Hickey's, the one shop chain locally that sells fabric. The design is some form of vine with pods and large burgundy flowers . I really like the cartoony aspect, it looks like something from a Hanna Barbera cartoon and I think of it as the Mr Farmer shirt after The Seeds song.

The other photo was taken at a different point and features me wearing a waxed cotton shirt in a style I took from a pattern for a renaissance era top. It has been heavily reduced in the amount of fabric that has been used. Probably by at least the amount that you would need to make another straight modern shirt from.
What you don't see in this photo is that the shirt features a drop yoke which means that construction is pretty different to a normal shirt. I'm not sure if that shows any better in the shots with me in the waistcoat and the pair of jeans that I made last year and have talked about elsewhere. I will examine this shirt further at another point. I really like the design and will be making other shirts in it. I think there will be a paisley lawn fabric shirt coming in it over the next couple of weeks.

The trousers in the photos at the top are another pair cut from the model that I've used for all of my jeans up to now. This pair is done in a viscose tartan that I'm not 100% sure of the blend for. It's definitely got some polyester content but I'm not sure how much.
I would like to find out more about working with viscose since it seems to be the one fabric that you can get tartan in that is suitable for making jeans. I would probably prefer it if I could get a heavy cotton with tartan pattern but so far haven't found anything of that kind.  Not sure if there is a reason for that. I know that plaid is traditionally made from wool, but I would have thought that the design would be more widespread. I have come across brushed cotton in tartan but it isn't heavy enough for trousers. there will be more on that later since I made a shirt in it. As shown below, this is another dropped yoke one, this time with a 2 button cuff a detail I think I will probably incorporate in future having stumbled on it by accident during the cutting of this version. The jeans here are in the one form of striped drill that I could find at the time. Seems to be a striped drill drought happening for some inexplicable reason.

Just thought I'd run through some of the things I've made over the last few months
1) The cavalry shirt
This was made from a folkwear pattern for Frontier Shirts which means it is based on a 19th century design. I think Folkwear are pretty authentic in the designs they sell.
I made it from a brushed cotton in a pattern they called Aztec. I noticed that it seemed to be fading very rapidly and wasn't sure how to counter that. I'm hoping it can be stopped since I really like d the colour.
Other than that I think I failed to get the pattern for shirt and bib to line up too well so need to keep that in mind if I make another one.

This had some design features I found pretty difficult at the time like a curved pointed middle of the yoke at the back which I'm not sure shows anyway. With a bit more practise that should prove to be a bit easier to do but had me having to attempt it several times before i got it anywhere near right.
Then summer hit so I have hardly worn the thing so far.  Think I will be over the next few months though.

2) The striped jeans
These were inspired by the style of striped jeans that Levis and others were making in the late 60s and early 70s. They were made from a striped drill that has 2 alternating groups of coloured stripes. The main one that is visible here which is the group with a red/pink wide stripe on the outside and the same group of colours in a slightly different order with orange on the outside of the group.  The prevalent colour grouping is dictated by the way they are cut. I'm not sure to what extent the way they are cut is dictated to in terms of the way that the groupings lie on the uncut fabric. Anyway I think they look pretty good even if I do say so myself

I had a couple of problems in making these, mainly that the sewing machine I started them on broke down when I went to sew the bib on the cavalry shirt on the morning after I started them. That left them not being worked on for about a month at the start of the summer. Thankfully Vic came through with a sewing machine she no longer used and I got them done and wore them quite a bit over the summer.
 I've been worried that colours have appeared to be fading really fast, I noticed great patches of white appearing behind what was supposed to be a solid colour line which is obviously a great shame since the delight of  these things is the vibrancy. I've tried soaking them in distilled vinegar which was supposed to be a way of getting coloured dyes to stabilise. I'm not sure to what extent it's worked since I've spent more time in more recently made jeans since.
 I've also recently undone the belt loops which were too restrictive as they were which you can see in the photo on the right. I think Tina had told me that belt loops get sewn into the waistband as in captured under the seam. This proved to be really difficult to get belts in and out of. So on later pairs of jeans I've sewn the bottom of the belt loop has been attached to the top of the trouser leg.

3) The Dickensian jacket -Burda 2767
This was the first jacket I made with the new sewing machine. It is based on a pattern from a company called Burda, though i made some alterations to make it something I could wear practically.  These included changing where the waist pockets are located and adding pockets to the breast both outside on the left and inside.
The fabric used derived from 2 sets of curtains. I also used the lining that came with the main curtain to line it.  This was also the first garment that I seam finished to any extent.  It is my variation of a flat fell .

The jacket does still need to be hemmed but it finally got the collar topstitched and buttons put on the front over the last couple of weeks.

I was told that the jacket did come up very tight, I've been wearing it open all the time that I've been wearing it. Not sure if i can comfortably close it over the waistcoat I normally wear which tends to have things in the pockets. May need to expand the size if I make another one. But it's not exactly weather proof so may not be worn with too much more under it. Might not be worn in much worse or colder weather in other words.

4) The Cerise cords

I bought some material which arrived after some delay and when it was opened it was some of tghe softest stuff I'd ever felt. Kept wanting to pick it up and fondle it again.. Lovely stuff.

I think it was designed more for curtains and upholstery than for garments but it does feel awesome as a pair of jeans

These were again cut from the old dismantled pair of cords which I've now used about 7 times over the summer. They are really comfortable though the waist may still be cut too loose. I think I've had them slide off when they weren't worn with a belt.  Which indicates I have a lot to learn about fitting properly.
I wasn't sure how much dismantling and reconstructing the fabric could handle so I've left thenm as they were initially constructed. I think the central picture here which was in daylight is truer to the correct colour than the 2 shots bookending .
Anyway do love these things. I was interested in a colour range that included the darker shades of things like purple, pink, orange also the more chocolatey of browns . I am currently working on a pair of aubergine twill jeans which i had meant to make much earlier in the summer.

Best jeans I've ever made

I finished a pair of jeans this week in a cotton/linen blend pattern called Piccolo

They are based on a pair of cord jeans that I wore for a few years but had the seat wear thin so have had me making several pairs based on a dismantled version. I've been finding some of the previous pairs to be overly baggy, even had the waistband slide over my hips when I wasn't wearing a belt.
So I consciously slimmed these down to the extent that I was becoming worried that I'd gone too far in the other direction. Particularly if the fabric blend tended to shrink when washed. I think these have come through ok,. So now i'm just hoping that they will wear ok since the fabric wasn't designed for clothing use.

I really like the finished garment. It was inspired by seeing photos of bands from the turn of the 70s in what look to be somewhat similar strides. The photos I've seen lack the floral pattern though.
 This fabric is sold for making curtains and upholstery but I find it works really well for these. I've tried looking for other varieties of similar blends of cotton and linen on ebay etc and not really found anything as attractive. Very little in the combination in fact so I will be looking at whatever fabric emporiums I come across to see if there is anything comparable. That is before having really worn them much since i only finished them over the last week.

Trying to think about things i noticed in the construction of these.
1)  the width of the material is a factor i hadn't really taken into account. I think all previous material I've done jeans from has been 59 or 60 inches where this was 54.
This meant that trying to get the legs to be cut symmetrically didn't work perfectly. In fact I think this was 54 inches wide with a pattern repeat of 25 inches. Subsequently I don't think it is possible to have the symmetry leg to leg that I would have really liked. But then again this wasn't designed for clothing use and furthermore not to be cut for this pattern.
I still think it has come out ok, looks good even if I don't have things lined up like pattern on pocket to pattern below it or pattern on leg to pattern on yoke. Not sure how much that shows. Would have like d to have that maze line run up from bottom of leg to top below waistband in a way that looked more continuous than it does. Would also have liked the dark and light patches to be more alternating.
But I guess that's why you need to know pattern repeat & things like that will be factored into future purchases.

2) not really noticed in the construction of these, but factored into the last few pairs. The way that the pocket backing has to be lined up on the pocket to make sure that the back yoke is in the right place for the leg to attach front to back right.
Actually I think I had some problem of noticing that the way that I'd made that attachment left the front about .5cm below the back so I took it apart and reattached it. But found that it happened again. There is a 1.5cm seam allowance so if I line up the corner of the front to the corner of the back there is some space for it to  fall out of sync by the time you can see where the 2 pieces join. I think this has worked ok and been hidden by the waistband anyway.though.

3) I was worried that when I was cutting the fly part of the front section after trying to lay the backs next to the front when I was cutting,  I had made where the zip goes too vertical. It doesn't seem to have mattered in the long run. I thought the slope of that angle was shallower but I have only ever cut trousers from the one model so far. Something that I think I'm going to need to change before long so that it doesn't simply become my rote way of cutting.
I'm  now wondering if that verticality might have wound up with the single fly zip covering being twisted when I sewed it, it seems to not be quite flat so leave the top hanging slightly open. I'm not sure if this is important and at the moment i'm reluctant to take the waistband apart to be able to straighten it out.
 It does leave me thinking that I probably do need to add a topstitching step when I attach that fly, at the moment it is getting sewn right side to right side to attach it then only being held in place by the stitching attaching the zip. Might be better to do that topstitching and have the fly kept flat, may sound fernickety but may wind up looking a lot better.

4) I've added an extra footwidth of stitching to the seams around the waist to prevent the waistband from sliding down over my hips and trousers falling down. I don't know if I've misread a 2cm seam allowance on Wrangler jeans as 1.5cm or if  I lost weight. But I think maybe if I do these again from this source I need to be thinking more in terms of 2cm seam allowance at that point. Possibly 1.5 elsewhere since that seems to be what's on most things.

5) if the fabric had been any wider then I think the trouser bottoms would have been cut intentionally a little wider, more bootcut than flare. I think it's a look I need to explore since I do prefer something slightly wider, certainly to something narrower. been stuck with an extreme drain on the pair of leathers I've worn over the last few winters and they've been a pain to take off.

Currently not getting things completed since my sewing machine never recovered. Hopefully got at least one coming next week, maybe including a really robust one. But should at least be one that works.

I have been working on this jacket based on the Burda 2767 pattern. I haven't made Burda before this one and the pattern layout seems to be more complex than I'm used to. I think previous patterns I've made have been printed in English as about the sole language. That means there is more space on the page than Burda which has 3 languages sharing the page. It has been very difficult to look at what the finished product looks like since the cover picture is too dark for detail to show.
This is being made from 2 contrasting fabrics with the collar, side panels, pocket flaps and welt, underarm and yokes in one thing and the rest in another or vice versa.
It is taking me longer than I would have liked since it has all been handstitched up to  now. So looking forward to be able to get it machine stitched and the lining in.

I have also been trying to work on getting a jeans jacket made from Winifred Aldritch's pattern cutting book. I'm in the  middle of doing that. Just been doing up the initial jacket block and making a dummy based on that before I get into the jigsaw like cutting up of a copy of that block pattern into the panels that the jacket will be made of. Was hoping I'd get that done during this week I'm without a machine but my concentration is not fully on it. Maybe it has just been too summery for it.

So,, at the moment inertia due to the fact that despite it having soaked in WD 40 for a good 10 hours the hex screw on my needle bar won't move. Subsequently I can't adjust the needle bar and the sewing machine itself must remain inert.
I tried putting the metal panel that the light is attached to back on the machine only to find that it doesn't connect to the column. I guess on closer thought it wouldn't, since the needle column has to be free standing in order to move right. Had just thought wit it going back on it might steady the column and I would have greater purchase on it and thereby be able to turn the screw.
 I remember the first time I tried to turn the screw lower down that allows the needle to be changed it was very very stiff and had to sit in WD 40 for a while. I think I actually pretty much gave up on it and went down town, came home and it was able to move. No such luck so far with this damn hex key. I'm just watching the hex key nearly bend in the middle from exertion, or looks that way. maybe I just need to put more faith in it.  It's a metal hexagonal bar on a plastic handle & I'm just wondering if it might be easier to turn if it was shorter. Not sure what that means in terms of leverage though. I know that with some leverage the longer the handle/lever the greater the force applied but since this is sticking out horizontally from the fulcrum and doesn't have length in a dimension that extra force could be applied as far as I can see I don't think that applies. maybe I need a wrench or something, pair of pliers, that I could attach to the shaft and turn things that way? Is that the way it works?

Until such a time as I can get that screw to move, work with  the sewing machine is at a standstill. Maybe I need to move onto cutting things out in preparation for the thing to fix itself? Pockets which I might have been better off working on yesterday instead of that  bib, still need to be done. Really should have gone and refilled the bobbin  and finished off the buttonholes on the bib at the time I was doing them,. Think I'd been letting eating get very late, possibly even had food getting cold at the time so had placed a fullstop on the activity without finishing. Thought things had been getting good up to that, what with the tension on the stitching finally having been corrected. I'd even gone back over whatever stitching was already on the shirt yesterday morning before the problem began. Well, spilt milk doesn't really do anything but make a mess. So counting my druthers isn't going to make it any better is it?

>>>>>5 hours or so later I'm back with a set of Stanley Hex keys that are the standard shape not the straight stick with a handle type that I presumably got given in Maplin's several years ago. Those I had may have been designed for more delicate work on a computer. Whereas what I take to be the standard shape is more L shaped or rather short shaft, long handle which is more the other way round than the standard letter shape.  Not tried it yet but hoping that it will be exactly what I'm looking for.
Also hoping that something I heard about today which might turn out to be a C.E. scheme or something based in upcycling things as clothing and repairing donated clothing comes to fruition.

Also need to check up what patterns are available for men's clothing from Burda since there is a sale on the label in Hickey's. Just looked at a mid 19th century outfit that looks like something from Dickens or other costume drama before I left there earlier. Want to see if it's worthwhile though.

Recent projects in psychedelic clothing

I've been meaning to get back to this page and start actually adding input.
Recently I've been trying to make clothing, using a Silver Crest sewing machine I got from LIDL in 2012.

Been buying up material to upcycle from local charity shops and made some interesting stuff . This jacket for one, which I've been wearing around town recently.
It's based on a pattern for a western frock coat that Simplicity somehow got from Buckaro Bobbins, been wondering what the story was on that . Buckaroo Bobbins are a firm that sells patterns for pretty authentic Western wear as far as I understand it. and this pattern has things like polyester fleece used as sleeve heads. So not sure on the history there .
This was made from upcycled material which I'm really hoping to repeat.

Been wondering how much the source material shows and is obvious as to what it was originally. I found 2 items that cost me €2 each and a third item I lined it with which I'd bought new  to sleep under several years ago and then found my feet kept getting caught in so stopped using. Initially bought some purple polyester lining material but then rethought what I was using at which point I thought of this duvet cover which I'd also thought of as using for a shirt. Thought I might use the other side which had a different pattern on but think this works better as this and it's poly-cotton so may not have been the most comfortable shirt while it is at least breathable as a lining which the straight polyester wouldn't have been. This is now heading towards the middle of the summer so it is better that it is breathable at least.
It is thankfully light enough weight for this time of year and may show off its roots in the way it billows when I walk. I still need to finish off seams and the hem.

At the moment my sewing machine has decided to stop sewing and I'm waiting for WD 40 to do its work,. This will hopefully make the needle bar hex adjustment  become  movable so I can adjust it and get back to things.
This morning I was trying to finish off the Cavalry shirt I had been making earlier this week off but I think I must have had a needle smash into the Needle plate as I attempted to sew a buttonhole on the bib. So the interlocking of the threads from the bobbin and needle has been thrown off and needs to be fixed. Been told it is likely to be a problem with the needle bar timing.
I didn't notice a problem at first but when I went back to sewing a little while later, things were getting weird. At first I couldn't get the bobbin thread to catch despite several attempts, the needle just seemed to be dropping too short which seemed odd. I continued and possibly changed the direction I was turning the hand wheel which was eventually successful at least in catching the thread, then when I finally did have the end of the bobbin thread up and then tried to sew a line down a test section of the Aztec material I had used for the Cavalry shirt I discovered I was only sewing from the upper side, nothing was catching on the lower side at all.  Now looking at the column below the block where the hex adjustment opening is you can see there is a line which is presumably where the column normally sits in relation to the needle that is a cm or 2 away from where it normally sits. That means the needle could never drop low enough to catch.
So fingers crossed that I can sort this with little difficulty when that WD 40 soaks in. Now having trouble with the entire column moving when I try to move the hex key since the column isn't secured to anything.

I'm having a lot of trouble with the sewing machine, I guess so far it's just a learning curve. Up to the beginning of this week I had the tension on one side of the thread very badly sorted. I hadn't realised that adjustments needed included tightening  the bobbin screw, since it seemed more obvious to adjust the controls visible on the top of the machine. Subsequently the thread the bobbin tension  was controlling was basically just lying on the material not sewn properly with most of the actual stitching coming from the other side. It was only later that I realised that each side's tension controlled the other thread, bobbin controlling the thread from the top reel and the visible tension adjustments controlling what came from the bobbin. As my understanding stood, when I was having the thread that was coming from the reel on the top of the machine not sewing properly I was wondering why no adjustments I  was doing to the visible tension controls were having effect on the thread from that side  while the other thread mainly seemed to sew ok. But now I get it, as explained above, each tensioning device controls the thread coming from the other direction. Took a bit of googling to get that plus some help from facebook friends.
Today as I took the top section of the machine apart I scrolled the tension screw from one end to the other and saw the end section of the sewing machine go from being flat with the body to being very raised. I couldn't tell if I had just not noticed that action before because I was looking at another aspect or if that  had greater freedom of movement because an otherwise place keeping sidescrew had been removed. But very weird looking effect, seemed to rise a good couple of cm or so.

I think I need a course in sewing machine maintenance. I mainly got heavily  into sewing this year thanks to a couple of courses I did through the local community centre and a teacher called Tina O'Rourke. She is a great teacher so if you get a chance to study with her I'd take it. She is a lot of fun and has been sewing for years so can be very helpful in information she can give you. My confidence has gone up no end since the beginning of this year.
Up to January which is when  that first course started, I had this sewing machine sitting in its box since I bought it a year and a half earlier. Now when it isn't in pieces it is in use several times a day.



I'm dying to get these striped drill jeans

finished. Have wanted a pair of late 60s Levi's style jeans for years so finally making a pair. This striped drill material has 2 different ordered variations on the same colour group stripes on it, one has a pinky red around orange, blue green and white ,the other has the orange as the larger stripe. I'm wondering if I've gone the right way by going with the red as the dominant colour which I think is down to the way that I layed out what I was using as the pattern on the drill material. I'm assuming that it would have been as easy to have the orange dominated grouping as the central to the design. Not sure if that could be done with the same economy of material as what I've used but as yet I'm only doing this for about the first time with a pattern that behaves like this. The coat above might have been layed out differently with more experience too.  But it's early days yet.

Over the next while I have a number of projects that I am hoping to do. The striped material from these unfinished jeans is hopefully going to become a jeans type jacket, possibly with some amendments. I had a shirt/jacket thing when I interrailed Europe in '85 that was like a cross between a candy striped button down and a jeans jacket. I can just about remember the collar and definitely the side/back adjustment features from the thing and it makes me think I'd like to try to copy it in this material. But so far i don't really remember the full design. I'm also thinking about a short jacket that the Regal used to sell which came in a striped material but can't really remember exactly what it looked like but would like to attempt in this material.

I have worn a jeans jacket which I tie dyed and tie bleached for the last few years and fancy making a jeans jacket anyway. Also thinking of trying to run off a dummy in a curtain material since I've been buying up some of the stuff.

I have some yards of African material that I found cheap on ebay from a shop called African Diamond. I've made one Ukrainian cossack type shirt though the collar has been miscut since the pattern had the cutting line in the wrong place, looks ok though. I want to make others more successfully, preferably with a taller collar.

Also wanting to try to copy a bike jacket in something. Wish that was more original than fashion over the last few years has shown. I tend to wear a bike jacket through most of the winter which I bought in the early noughties . Think at least attempting to make one should hopefully teach me some stuff about making clothing. I'm on a learning curve which I really would have loved to be on 20 or 30 years ago, but glad to be on it. Just hoping I can remain on it, but that relies on having a sewing machine
Think I need to learn how to repair the things , hope I can get some practise in, anybody got any sewing machines they don't use lying around?

time, ambition and inertia.

This is the first post in what will  hopefully be a regular series.
 I thought that since I had some free time at the moment I might as well do as has been suggested and try to do something with this blogspot blog that I have. I first set this up in 2006 thinking that I might try and get something going on then didn't really do so.
Since then I have actually done a course in web design which should have got me back on here but hasn't until now. At the time I was thinking that this site would inevitably have been usurped by an advertising space as seemed to be happening with all the music blogs I was looking at regularly at the time. Maybe they weren't as attracted to an unused space as they would be to one that had already got some degree of traffic.
It seemed that if people didn't update for any period of time they would get back to find out that they had to fight off squatters.But this place looks as mimimal/open plan as I left it back at that time.
 So time for some extreme messing with CSS methinks.

Other than that what goes on in this life of mine. As i write I have just screwed up a 6 month course that I was taking in Autocad. I had grown to enjoy using that tool and would have liked to continue but at the moment this computer is nowhere near as powerful as I would like it for that purpose. Not to mention only receiving an offer of a work-placement when it was way too late to accept it.
 If I can find a way of doing it I think I may devote some time to attempting to do some DWGs of fantasy/custom vehicles as designed by Gerry Anderson, Ed Roth and Tom Daniels etc etc.

At the moment the season is changing from what was at times a warm summer to a so far sunny autumn. Today as I type it is pouring with rain on the plants I have on my balcony. I have grown those from seed for the main part and have been wondering what I do once the seasons change. There is for example very little protection out there from wind which has already lead to a few plants being wrecked. I think the frequency of gusty days can only increase at this time of the year. & i have a load of plants, bedded in compost in containers out there and I'm not sure what space in here.
 But it has been great watching plants grow on a balcony that i had been out on very infrequently in the 6 1/2 years since I moved in here. I think if I continue the experiment next year as I hope  to that i will have at least noted what should be avoided going into the same pot together. I thought it would be nice to have a great deal of biodiversity going on but that ignored the fact that taller plants tend to block the light of shorter ones when placed in too close proximity. & my continual desire to expand meant that I may have crammed too many things together in to small a space. I have managed to get some things I hadn't known could grow to grow. I have pomegranates, pear and apple trees all at infant stage but no sign of the kiwi plants I thought i might get.

But what I intend to write about here most is the music taht has been my main interest for years. Whether this be psychedelic rock, jazz, country, avant-noise, folk or funk . I will be trying to write reviews of a lot of material I have encountered on here plus posting images relating to that.
What interests me especially now?
Earth, Wind & Fire up to the late 70s
Waylon Jennings
Meat Puppets
CArdinal Fuzz releases
Laughing Clowns
Saints
Sonny Burgess
Panther Burns - especially with George Reinecke
James Brown 68-74
John Coltrane
Electric Miles DAvis
Sun RA - especially spaciously electric around 78-82
Jackie Wilson
The Ronettes
The Stooges
The Birthday Party
Loop
Playn Jayn
High Tide x 2 (70s & 80s - 2 entirely different bands)
Pentangle
Faust
Can
Grateful Dead
Orchestra Poly Ritmo di Cotinou
Associates
Caspar Brotzmann Massaker
Fela Kuti
The Gun Club
Hawkwind
Television
New Kingdom
Pentangle
Einsturzende Neubauten
Pretty Things
Joy Division
Tim Buckley

and several others

New Blog

Dunno what to put here. Will be back later to investigate further