"If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve....but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Making Time

Recently, after seeing some of Gorg's work elsewhere, my husband was contacted by a man looking for a backwards movement clock. He also wanted to have the checkerboard pattern of the Bavarian flag carved into the face. For those of you who are unfamiliar with a backwards clock, the numbers (going clockwise) count down from twelve instead of up to twelve. The hands move counter-clockwise to read the time.

The Initial Carving and Layout

Detail of the Carving

Carving and Numbers

 And the completed clock made out of Cherry with carved checkerboard pattern and carved numbers with a black finish....

 

Pretty nice, don't you think?

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Back to the Needles

I've been working on a few other projects while I've been taking a bit of a break from making jewelry. I was missing the feel of knitting needles in hand and had some beautiful yarn sitting in my cabinet calling to me. After some searching, I decided on the Kansas City Cowl pattern. My yarn choice is much softer and more loosely twisted so it has less cable definition, but I liked the overall pattern shape for this color of yarn; Lion Brand's Homespun in Lagoon. I had to adjust the number of stitches picked up along the side to shorten it just a bit. As a result, I have a center 'stripe' that is 6 k stitches instead of the even 4 called for. To help myself keep track of my adjusted pattern, I purled the stitches that would be dropped at the end. What do you think? The only question now is whether to keep it for myself or to put it up for sale!




I've also started to crochet a shawl in some old chenille yarn that was given to me. I've been looking at the Aphrodite Shawl  for awhile now and decided to see what it would look like in the teal colored chenille. Forgive the photo coloring, but it's impossible for me to capture the exact color with my camera. This is the closest that I was able to get after some photo-shopping.

Last, but not least, I pulled out my sewing machine and hot glue gun for a costume creation and alteration. Gorg and I were asked to stand as extras in a documentary film being made by friends. The film is a retelling of the life of William "Bell Tree" Smith of Bluffton, Alabama. He owned a 'blind tiger', also known as the Bell Tree, from which locals and wealthy tourists alike could purchase liquor during the prohibition years of the late 1800's and early 1900's. It's a fascinating story and I can't wait to see how it all plays out when the film wraps up production this fall. 

Since my collection of vintage clothing from that era is limited to a very fancy gown, I had to get a bit creative. I was able to borrow a fairly close to period dress for the first shoot, but before the second shoot rolled around, we stumbled across a beautiful ensemble that I would guess was made in the 60's. It's pieced together out of a beautiful ivory lace with ribbon trim. We found it on a wicker mannequin which came with the outfit. I've been wanting a mannequin for the longest time, but just couldn't find one in my price range. My sweet husband, knowing how much I loved both, bought them for me immediately. 

Once I had it home, I realized that the size 8 on the skirt's tag, was most definitely from a different era. It was all I could do to get the zipper up, and then keeping it there was a problem. The whole top had been shortened to fit someone even shorter than myself and the sleeves were haphazardly attached from the shoulders to the hem of the blouse; one of which was ripped and repaired rather badly. Of course, I was in such a rush to fix it, that I neglected to take any 'before' photos, but here is the finished product...

The waistline was originally lower and had an ivory ribbon, but the silhouette was all wrong. I removed the lace trim that held the ribbon and moved it up to make an empire waistline more reminiscent of the Edwardian Era. Thankfully, whomever had shortened the top only folded the lace behind the ribbon. All that needed to be done was to remove the old stitching and to give it a good steam-pressing. 


I also stitched the trim laces down in the front and added bust-line darts to keep the lines clean and crisp.


After assessing the damage to the sleeve, and being unhappy with the original, caped 'wing-like' design, I removed them completely for repair. The torn sleeve was so fragile that there was no way to simply stitch it back together. After an unsuccessful trip to the fabric store for a replacement lace, I opted to use a fine mess tulle under both sleeves and stitched the torn sections together on top of the mesh. This way, the stress is removed from the original material and will also prevent future damage. The torn section was originally on the right front sleeve. After removing them both and cutting them down to a better size, I switched them around so that the damage was placed less conspicuously on the left rear sleeve.

New sleeve and new darts.

Repaired sleeve section



 The skirt was a rather easy fix. The original design included a shorter hemline in the front and a longer, heavily gathered semi-train in the back. All that needed to be done was to remove the old waistband, cut a new one, ease the gathers out a bit, and re-attach the zipper and skirt to the new waistband. Once the waistband was a more fitting size, the zipper was fine and didn't need to be replaced. The final result is slightly less gathered, but over-all the lines are basically the same.

The new waistband

With a few tweaks to the camisole underneath, including some new elastic and drastically altering the hemline, this outfit was ready to go!

And of course, no Edwardian lady would be caught out in public without a fancy hat! Glue guns are a wonderful craft tool :)


If you are interested in the film itself, please check out the Bell Tree Facebook page and the website!

In costume on location at the 'Signal Hotel'


The Hook and Hammer