A couple of these things that I created recently. This was something I saw other people creating a couple of years ago. Quite a nice way of tabulating  musical tastes in a certain way. I've been trying to come up with things taht are semi coherent at least.
Also meant to sit down and give a wider reasoning for why the choices were made and what they mean to me. Why they're placed in the spot they're in, like there is a semi mathematical reasoning for some of these though the associations may not be as clear to another person who was not familiar with the record or maybe my experience of it.
Anyway, hopefully turning people onto new musics.

Both of these took a while with intervals which wasn't the way I was doingthis before. Bottom one had several months interval, top one was done over a few days.

 3 shirts i made over the last few weeks after having started 2 of them before Xmas and one last summer.
The top 2 were started before Xmas but I was feeling really tired because of the flu or something . Anyway only thing i got done then was the pair of striped jeans in the 3rd photo here down.
Top shirt here was based on the shirt that came in the same set of patterns as the western frock coat I did last year. I changed the collar on it.  This was the last one i completed before realising that the depth of the collar in the pattern included a collar band substitute.

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 I started a lot earlier this year than last year which is one positive but I'm also far more shit scared of losing everything this year. Fucking idiots in politics. Subsequently thinking that there will be an unspecified end point some time this year. So probably ought to try getting things done as regularly as possible.

 These next fabrics are waxed cottons that will become shirts at some point this year hopefully.
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

The blue in the chain design is only on one side of this fabric.

Fireworks

Undersea menace

13 FE, get me?

This is a dashiki design. Not sure what i'm going to do with it though.
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 is textured black cotton. I think you can just about see the design in the photo. Will be interesting to work in this but i think I'm going to be working my way up to it.

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

This last thing is a paisley lawn cotton.
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.

 This is a really annoying  design fault in some fabric I bought recently.
Babycord which comes with Text boxes with the name of teh design and washing instructions at regular intervals down the side.
Fabric is 145cm wide and has some really nice designs on. But this wretched text box means that attempting to make clothing that fits me winds up looking weird.

 I don't know if it's intended tobe avoided because whatever garments are made out of the fabric would tend to be smaller so the box would be avoided.
But it does make using the full 145cm width really difficult.
Why they can't move the text box further over to the side I don't know. If they did that it would disappear into the seam

This is the left leg of one pair of jeans I was in the middle of making. So I have the text box appearing from my hip before it disappears into the seam. I may need to take the leg in slightly still but I can't see how to avoid having some of it appear.
I was making another pair at the same time so cut it with the fabric the other way round and now have similar just below the pocket on the front.
Very frustrating.

I don't know if i can embroider over it or anything.

Me at 14

I got in contact with a friend whose brother I was at school with in the wake of the Brexit vote. Over the course of a facebook communication he sent me this photo which was taken in his bedroom when I was about 14.
It shows me dressed in Regal gear shirt and hipsters at least. I'd been wondering what the paisley on thsoe hipsters looked like. I gave them away about 22 years back to a girl I'd been seeing around the time.
 I'm now  much bigger than i was at the time. I was a very skinny teen.
 So shirt, hipsters and hat are all Regal.
I think I picked up the jacket at Mr Byrite near Oxford Circus in the early 80s. & the boots were the really pointy type of Shelly's chelsea  boots. I went through several pairs of chelsea and Beatle boots. I'sd already had a pair of the more round-toed type and talked Graham in the Regal into getting spats in  because teh elastic on the side had gone. These pointed pair were stolen from under my bed when I was boarding for a year around this time.
I probably spent more time in the Beatles boots both a 60s pair I picked up from the Carnaby Market and a pair I got from Melanddi which were more chunky.

I'm now more likely to be seen in a pair of bike boots i picked up mailorder from CAboots in Texas or a pair of harness boots I got from a US mailorder place called LeatherUp.

I'm currently working on a new jeans jacket based on that basic design but it's going to have a more |Western collar. it's going to be in this fabric.

Which is a cotton curtain thing called Lavender Maine. I have it about half cut out. I need to work out if there is a way of telling if there is an outside and an inside since the Fabric has the design on both sides.
I was thinking of making jeans in it too but it may be a bit stiff. Jacket should be good hopefully though.
 I still need to really work out how to do trousers. I'm still having trouble with getting the waist right and having to continually pull them up.
Got a new pair cut in this fabric, but the reality is more vivd than the photo.

It reminds me of when Hanna Barbera cartoons were trying to be with it in the late 60s. So kind of  corny but will look really cool I think.
So far I've just been cutting things while the table's been clear and it took me ages to get the table back to clear so I've made far less clothing than I would have liked this year. I still have a stripey cossack shirt I cut about 3 months back partially done which I need to remedy. last thing I pretty much finished was another cossack shirt in orange which is a coincidence to this teenage image of me. But I got the placket the wrong way round which I only realised when i had it done. So I may need to go back and redo that.
Need to remember that cossack shirt placket has opening pointing to left should er instead of to the front. Having it open to the front would mean the wind would get in.

I've left this longer than I meant to but have been somewhat busy with various things.

These are 2 views of the completed Strawberry Thief jeans jacket that I was cutting in the last entry. It's worn here with a pair of paisley twill jeans in a fabric called Joanne olive. The shirt seen here is the long sleeved 3 button tshirt that I made back in spring. The boots area pair of short crepe soled chelsea boot type that I got in TK Maxx, possibly a little narrow for my feet but they look pretty good.
















 The jacket took about a week and a half to do and I think was mainly pretty straightforward. The only point of trouble I can think of was that I had to work out how  to do the side/inner pocket thing which is 2 pockets made out of what is 2 pieces of fabric on the original.

Here I had used interfacing on the back of the pocket part that's made out of  the same fabric as the outer shell. That meant that if I had my hands in the side pocket they would be up against the interfacing which is something better avoided.  I therefore had to work out how to add in a 3rd layer to the pocket.  Since i hadn't thought the process through totally before beginning construction I had wound up stitching the 2 parts of the pocket which I'd started with together and then had to unstitch them to add the 3rd.  The cerise jacket didn't have interfacing on the pocket back so the technique i had already used needed to be adjusted.
There is a way of stitching things so that all the excess bits of seam allowance from the pocket parts will be captured together in an area that isn't open, especially since it winds up sealed within the waistband when that's added. The alternative way has the rough edges sticking out at one point. Subsequently if I'm going for 3 layers on the pocket it is best to start with them being stitched together in the same seam.

Otherwise i think this went together pretty easily. The only mistake i can think of is that I need to watch where I'm cutting the buttonhole on the pocket flaps. I cut the one on one side too high so the thread that the button that goes through it is higher in the fabric its attached to than it wants to be. I'm worried that if anything wrenches it, it will rip through the top of the piece of fabric it's attached to. Not really something it's easy to work out when the pocket flap is unattached, which is the easiest way of doing the hole. But definitely something that I will need to take into account in future. I think I was thinking that it actually made more sense to have it higher when I was sewing and cutting it.

The jeans are similar to most of the other jeans I have made so far. based around a pair of jeans that wore out on me a while back and then heavily custom fitted. I'm wondering if the cut on the originals is the same as the cut on a pair of jeans made by the same firm that I have been wearing for rough work recently. If so the fitting is a lot tighter on the end garment here.
I've nearly run out of the twill curtain lining I've been using for making linings and pockets out of for the last year plus, these are the first pair of jeans that have the new substitute which is a cotton curtain fabric with plants and boats on. I bought this stuff because it comes as twice the width of most curtaining fabric plus it was on a sale. I think this was 280cm wide. I really should have got a few metres of the stuff not just one. Though pockets are now a more papery consistency than the twill had them as. I really need to work out what the best fabric for making trouser pocket bags out of is. Especially if I wind up selling any of these things which people keep suggesting. I think I'm still a ways away from that point, and not good enough or accurate enough and take too much time over each garment. Would also really need a decent sewing machine to do things on a larger scale. But I'm getting there slowly.

I've now completed another pair of babycord jeans, this time in a fabric I've been looking at all summer. I don't think I had really thought they would come out looking like this, since the brown background seemed to be more prominent. They seem to be more prominently coloured by the pattern detail than the background.
I had a lot of trouble with the crotch on this pair which  meant a lot of unpicking to try to get it to go right. I think I am still struggling with zips. Trying to get them to go in absolutely flat and not have excessive use of thread around them.
 I still don't really know the correct place to sew the end of the under seam to. It should be in line with the stopper on the bottom end of the zip but the zip only gets sewn in after that seam is done.

This is a close up of the pattern as shown in the advert. I guess the likelihood of the brown showing through with any prominence is not that high.
Again I'm interested in what colour people would see that pattern as. Especially since the layout may only be really visible on close inspection.

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.