Corset Inspired belt

"I swear, I'm sotally tober, Ocisfer."

I've always wanted to make my own clothes. I have Project Runway fantasies and a reality that looks like a PSA against drinking and sewing. Just ONCE I'd like to be able to cut a straight line. Maybe it's because I use scissors right-handed and I'm a leftie. Maybe it's the astigmatism. Maybe it's none of this and people who can cut straight lines are robots.

I took an apparel class in high school and did a dress as a class project. I hated mine by the end of the only day I wore it. I made one skirt on my own and it was equally terrible.  Both pieces ended up in the back of my closet to fester and die. I wish my instructor would have taken the time to have us all get the proper size based on our measurements. Instead, we went with the clothing size we thought (or wished) we were and I don't think anyone in the class came up with an attractive dress. If you've never sewn from a pattern, your off-the-rack size and pattern size aren't the same, as if vanity sizing wasn't confusing enough. I wear a 16-22 depending on the clothing manufacturer and I'm around a 24W in sewing pattern sizes. It's a blow to the ego at first, but fit is more important than a number on a tag.

Ben bought me a Brother sewing machine for Christmas in 2013 after he'd asked for some alteration to his clothes and I'd give him the same response: "Sure, if I had a sewing machine."  Ben took this to heart and got this amazing gift for me and I was so excited! I could finally do the tailoring to my clothes that I always wanted but could never seem to part with the money. Now for the fun part: learning how to use the dag-blasted machine which I have just named Mano. Why Mano? Because it's Spanish for "hand" and slang for "brother" and I'm a dorky Texan.

A slow, careful start 

I procrastinated. I waited until Thursday, my first day off after Memorial day because it's starting it now would be logical. I got lost on YouTube getting inspired for a whole 'nuther set of projects. I did some cleaning. I went for a long walk. I brushed the cat. I gave myself a manicure. Eventually, I got started because I still wanted something to talk about come Tuesday.

I measured from under my bust to about the midline of my hips (about 12 inches) and measured my waist (38). On the brown paper bag, I marked out the horizontal, divided my waist measurement in half , marked on the bag, and then drew my shape. I cut it out of the paper and then made a practice piece so that I would have half a clue of what I was about to do before I did it on the nice fabric.

I was pretty happy with how that turned out.  It looked like I could make something nice with some careful pressing. I carefully cut out my pieces, ironed them, paying attention to all of those little details that my apparel teacher tried to teach me back some... uh... 20 years ago.

Mano a Mio 

I wound my bobbin and installed it upside down in my machine, which screwed my stitches all to hell. I fiddled with the settings that were working perfectly on the scrap fabric and never once thought it was the bobbin until the very bleeding end of this project. I finally got something I thought I could live with and began to work on my fabric. Mano HATED the interfacing and me. The plastic fusing thing that wasn't the flexible interfacing I wanted kept catching on the needle. I forced it through my machine, it complaining at me the entire time.

To the Sewing Machine Ghods and those who know what the hell they're doing, Mano had a long talk with me and we both agreed that I need to stop being a jerk and listen to the appliance that obviously knows better than me. The piece I'd so carefully cut out had gaps where I didn't stitch the two fabrics together in several places. I blamed the interfacing and threw that attempt out in a frustrated huff and then apologized to my machine.

Round 2: 

I re-cut my pieces and took them to the sewing machine with no interfacing. Mano liked this a lot more and gave me a better, if occasionally loopy stitch across the entire piece. I turned the piece inside out, gave it a good iron, folded my hem over twice and ironed at each fold,added the boning, and topstitched both the top and the bottom. My thread broke and I realized finally what my problem was all along... the freaking bobbin. From this point on, the stitches were beautiful and Mano was finally happy with me. Too bad I was finished sewing. I was pretty happy with what I'd created. I tried it on (as much as you can try on a laced piece) and went to work on the grommets.

There is a fine line between "stubbornness" and "stupidity" that I like to think I don't cross but do. Lots. I've never installed a grommet, and ended up ruining an entire package of them while I tried to force them to work for me. I cut a hole that was too large (I think), used a tool that was too small (I think) and just ended up mangling all of them to the point where they were unusable. Now that I had holes in my fabric, I reinforced them with a buttonhole stitch and called it a day. It wasn't the most elegant solution, but it this piece isn't meant to have that much stress on the closures.

Onto the lace and WAAAUGH!!!! 

I hand stitched the lace onto the pieces with the copper on the plain muslin and the lace on the faux damask side.
The muslin was too plain so I added stripes. Everything was looking lovely at this point, but when I took photos of the piece, it looked a little plain to me, just brown fabric and an off-white with some wide panels. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't very exciting, either. I wanted something that popped on camera, so I grabbed some gold paint and began to paint in some of the print that I loved so much.

It was looking beautiful and I was so excited about it, which is a cue for Something Terrible to happen. I spilled some paint, which got on my project. There was gold on the copper ribbon that I couldn't get off and the muslin just soaked up that color alarmingly well. I got off as much as I could, but the back side was definitely ruined, unless there was a way to make this work. I'm creative, I can come up with something to turn this around.

I decided to sleep on it.

CTRL+Z! CTRL+Z!! 

Since I had a sad, blobby thing on the copper side, I decided that if I had more (less sad) blobby things, it would look smoky. I have a reddish bronze color, gold, silver, and doing the piece with a metalic smoky look would be awesome. I could blend all of my sins into something that looked intentional and the piece would be saved. I loaded up a damp sponge with the bronzy color and began to dab away. I saw the color begin to bleed into the surrounding fabric and something told me to check the other side.

 My stomach dropped to my knees. The brown side that I had spent hours carefully painting now had sad red blobs on it. I did what any reasonable artist would do at this point and Freaked The Hell Out. I even cried a little. I whined at Ben who decided that this project was cursed. I whined on Facebook. One of my friends suggested that it now had a "story" that went along with it, so I decided not to throw the whole thing in the trash. When I can look at it without wanting to curl up in the fetal position, I'll complete the red blotches, distress it a bit and use it that way.

Never piss off the Sewing Machine Gods, they will get their revenge.

(sigh.) Round 3

After I came home with more fabric and ribbon, I set to work... AGAIN. This time I bought a different fabric with a floral pattern for the back that shows up better when photographed. I rushed through most of it and machine sewed
the ribbon on rather than putting it on by hand.  I don't like having the thread visible, but I was d-o-n-e with the whole thing by this time.

This time had no major disasters, but I was having trouble completing the project by this time.  It was hard to get the motivation to finish at this point.  The buttonholes that took me 2 nights to do the first time took me 4.  I kept kibitzing on Ben's projects, which was equal parts procrastination and genuine help.

He wanted to go to The Church's A-Kon cosplay afterparty and he was in a rush to complete his Clockwork Orange inspired steampunk.  I managed to finish by this time and went myself.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that my own costume went over well and I had no major malfunctions.  There are things I'm not happy with like the boning, but all in all, it's good, especially considering my skill level. Now that I have the major pieces together and I can see how it looks, I'm really happy with it.  I'll have a costume preview next week, so stay tuned!