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#i mostly use it for sewing projects
maebird-melody · 6 months
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Oh hey look I’m doing The Cosplay. A long overdue update to Tieren’s costume (bard chronicler from my Pathfinder game that meets maaaaybe twice a year these days). The promise vine from the dryad got turned into a neat little bracer because we freed her from madness through the power of ~music~. So I’m making it! I loved the loopy vine with the green LED cord, but it was a little uncomfy.
I bought craft moss but honestly no idea how I’m gonna attach it. Probably sew it in with little tiny stitches. Probably do other embellishments too.
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amphibiouscosplays · 7 months
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think if i do decora kei!jacket again, i'm gonna try and find a cheap pair of black circle sunglasses so i can replace the mesh in the eyes. visibility in that thing isn't so great and if i'm honest the mesh is kinda uggy in pics
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chiropteracupola · 2 years
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the thing about having been sewing dolls and such for almost a decade is that now I have this absurd pile of dolls and clothing of mostly questionable quality and because the way I work ends up with no two of these guys on the same scale anymore, almost none of these things can be reused on the current project.
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illdothehotvoice · 1 year
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I need to find a blorbo who wears a dark emerald green outfit that I can make out of satin dshgjkfdh
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noirandchocolate · 5 days
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Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."
So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.
And also...
My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.
It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.
So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!
And I really am feeling very good about doing it.
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poopyboiman · 9 months
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A while ago you made a post abt neurodivergent headcanons for the TF2 characters, and included Medic having chronic mania/hallucinations. As someone who experiences those very things I’ve been wanting to hear further on your thoughts surrounding this headcanon (that I share myself :D). If you’re up for/comfortable with writing abt it, I can understand if you’re not :) Still! I wanted to say I enjoyed seeing a headcanon abt medic dealing with psychosis that wasn’t an angst fest or “grr scary and evil!!!” Type deal
I feel the same way I'm exhausted of seeing psychosis always get demonized (that headcanon was basically just me projecting on my favorite little guy) also i have been dying for an excuse to expand on this headcanon so thank you anon!!!!
as said in my previous post medic has hallucinations on the daily, mostly minor auditory stuff
I don't think he would be freaked out by his hallucinations, he'd be fascinated by them and he would want to study them (he follows cartoon logic: he hallucinates a big scary monster and he sticks his head in its maws and marvels at its teeth)
sometimes tho he gets too wrapped up in his hallucinations and has a hard time separating what's real from what isn't and that's where Archimedes comes in
medic trained him to pick up on certain cues to which he responds by perching on his shoulder and applying pressure therapy by pressing on the side of his neck
other times he tries to get medic to pet him to distract him and make him focus on something soothing instead
occasionally tho it's better to ask the other mercs for help and he just goes up to them and straight up asks them if what he's seeing is real
he's told them of his situation and they are all pretty used to it at this point (also this is probably one of the more normal things about the guy who sews animal organs into people)
although sometimes when he's alone with scout he gets to have a little fun with it: he gets really close to him, stares into his soul with his cold blue eyes, points at the nearest corner and goes "do you see zhe grinning man?"
medic has put the fear of god in scout for the funnies and scout has shit himself on numerous occasions
he just likes to be silly in true medic fashion
here are some silly sketches about this headcanon
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Scout pov:
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How scout sleeps since medic started pulling these pranks
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skygoldart · 2 months
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First time posting here and I wanted to start off with one of my favorite recent projects: Grian’s elytra
I also want to show off more of my progress with builds since I don’t do that often anywhere else
The idea
To say this project was painful is accurate, but the final result was well worth it.
Many Grian cosplays I’ve seen have the full parrot wings, but I was inspired by a Mumbo cosplayer I briefly met at a convention in 2022 who had a set of elytra wings on his back, and I wanted to make a version that was a “what if the hermits customized their elytras”. Hence, the parrot theme stayed with the mini layers of feathers at the top
The process
To start a cosplay I will often sketch out a character reference that is fairly accurate to the final build. What’s not shown here are the 10+ pages in my sketchbooks with the different designs for the wings, outfit variations, many accessories, as well as a visual breakdown of all the layer and steps to things.
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Out of all the wing designs, I picked my favorite and traced my sketchbook design of the wings onto an digital art program an cut it into 8.5x11 pages, printed it, and cut it out.
I then used some very incompatible and tricky fabrics to cut and sew each side.
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The inner side of the elytra has a holographic vinyl layer and the outer side has a layer of cotton with some shimmery toile on top.
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The insect wing detailing could have been drawn on and then stitched over, but I decided to freehand the majority of it with some guide points dotted here and there to make it mostly symmetrical based on the original sketch.
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To finish it off, I made some feather layers from flannel and stitched them along the top
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The final step was to add the harness the elytra connects to since I wanted it to be obvious these wings were not a part of the character, rather just an accessory.
Using a pattern from this Etsy listing, I cut faux leather using it and used rivets and cording to keep it together
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And there you have it! My Grian elytra!
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The full cosplay project isn’t fully done yet, but at least the wings are
Bonus:
Obligatory cosplay selfie in a car
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More projects coming in the future!
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gender-trash · 4 months
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(i am seriously late in posting about this due to The Problems BUT whatever! its here now!!)
somewhere around late november 2022, i asked my dad "hey are there any out of print technical books you'd like a reprint of for christmas?"
he linked me to a dubious black-and-white pdf of Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy. now, i wound up checking out a copy through link+, and the original edition is a really nicely put together book! the chapters are themed around various types of measurements (length, angle, etc), and they all have these cute little diagrams which the endpapers reuse in a lil repeating pattern... the image captions are done in this really lovely dark red that did not scan for SHIT... tons and tons of diagrams and illustrations and images (both color and b&w)... just, all around, a fucking nice book!! (see also @morrak's post about it here.)
and that made me feel kind of bad about the crappiness of the pdf, which is where the Problems began. i used my phone to take pictures of all the photos and color diagrams in the original and went about replacing them in the pdf, using what turned out to be the world's worst pdf editing software (i also got through replacing all the image captions in chapter 1 of 5 before my dad convinced me to give up). i did NOT finish the pdf editing before christmas 2022 (i was going somewhat off the deep end, because both my housemates were away visiting family and i had zero external structure in my life so it was just me and my cat and this stupid FUCKING pdf wrecking my sleep schedule together); i poked away at it for most of the rest of my time off and then got so goddamn sick of it i put the project away for months. "it'll be a birthday gift instead", i said optimistically (my dad's birthday is in april! it should have been enough time!)
gentle readers, i did not finish the pdf editing by april. mostly because it was such a miserable slog that i put it off until the last possible moment and then tried to make up for it with another death march.
hating both myself and the project again, i decided i was Not going to let myself typeset Anything Else before it was done, and then took a break to bind my immortal (using the renegade publishing typeset! i didn't do any typesetting!!). SURELY, i said, i can finish this in time for christmas 2023.
i'm sure you know where this is going.
in my defense i DID finish the pdf editing by christmas, despite first doing every other possible procrastination project (including a second edition of the little second century warlord book), because by this point my dad had managed to convince me to lower my standards. on the evening of the 22nd i kicked off the print job and said to myself "this will finish printing overnight and then tomorrow i can work on sewing the textblock!"
late on the 23rd, after lots of babysitting and using at least one cartridge of every color ink in my printer, the print job was finally done. (my sweet and lovely cat wants SO BADLY to hunt and stalk the printer while it is printing -- more specifically, the printed pages, i think because they tend to make noise and move and then STOP moving. for this reason, the printer is kept in the craft room, because the cat can be shut out of the craft room and thus prevented from chewing on the pages when i have an all-day book printing job going. unfortunately the craft room was also being pressed into service as a guest room at the time so 80% of the floor space was consumed by an air mattress which i had to repeatedly trip over in order to reach the printer and replace the ink cartridges.)
then i went to my parents' house on the 24th and 25th and apologized to my dad (again) for not having the book finished. but this worked out well because we finished putting together my awesome new book clamp:
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(the feet still aren't done being painted so they're just dry-fit on for now but you can still clamp books in it and that's what matters!!)
i came home, sewed the textblock (french link stitch over four linen tapes, with sewn endbands made of variegated embroidery floss over linen cord, and kozo paper glued over the spine)
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... and promptly realized i SHOULD HAVE PUT IN MORE OF A GUTTER because some of the text was getting reeeeeeal close to the spine. "it's fine!" i said. "i just have to make sure it lays flat!! what better time than to try out K118 binding, a technique i have literally never done before and which people on the bookbinding discord notoriously have a hard time pulling off first try! i even have tyvek tape for it!"
so it turns out that tyvek tape isn't actually tyvek with glue on it, it's tape FOR attaching pieces of tyvek TO EACH OTHER, which maybe i could have guessed if i'd done even the slightest amount of research or planning. at this point i think it was the 27th and i was still angling to get this thing done by new year's, so no time to order Actual Tyvek.
fortunately, i had ALSO received An Package in the mail with yarn for a totally unrelated knitting project... shipped in a tyvek envelope.
i peeled all the shipping labels and stickers off my tyvek envelope, cut that shit up, and glued it on there.
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and THEN it was time for gluing on covers, which i thought was going to be easy because i had actually thought ahead and ordered materials (specifically acid-free museum board), except when i cracked open the box of museum board i decided i Didn't Like It because the surface was too soft and easily dented, so i glued onto it the too-thin board material i'd previously been using (so that the cardboard goes on the outside of the book). this worked super well (the cardboard stuff has a tendency to curl up from the glue moisture, but the museum board doesn't!) and i'll probably use it on other stuff in the future.
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i thought the blue bookcloth i used was kind of boring but i showed my dad the available cloth options and he really liked it, so... what do you know? i cut the piece i used on the back cover very slightly too short but it wound up being covered by the leather, so you can barely tell.
and the leather... a scrap just baaaaarely big enough from my bag of leather scraps from discount fabrics... and this the first time i'd ever attempted to put leather on a book... AND YET the only complaint i have is that i didn't manage to put an even amount on the front and back. it's reasonably square and straight!! amazing!!
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i am super super happy with how this project came out (especially given the number of problems i encountered) and oh my god check out how much the spine bends
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AND, AS A NEW YEAR'S PRESENT, I FINALLY MANAGED TO GIVE IT TO MY DAD
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apple-salad · 3 months
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Rose Ribbon Embroidery "Mini" Projects (for BABY NYFW) Part 1: Kumya JSK
I decided semi-last minute to attend BABY's fashion show at NYFW!
BABY had mentioned in their NYFW brand description that their newest collection would be a return to their origins, as well as presenting archival items.
You have to dress to impress for NYFW, right? So of course, I had to pull out all the stops and wear my Rose Ribbon Embroidery.
Also at the last minute, I decided to make a few extra complementing items...
A matching RRE kumya JSK, and a bonnet.
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What follows is more of a sew-along/journal rather than a tutorial or guide, mainly for my own memory's sake. But if you enjoy looking at my process (sometimes sloppy), I'm happy!
Also feel free to take a look at the more romantic process video I edited.
Part 1: Kumya JSK
Part 2: Bonnet
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To make a matching kumya JSK, I first had to investigate the original dress a little! This I found actually very fascinating because I had never bothered to take a very careful look at the construction details of this JSK (it was, and still is always a precious item that I am afraid will get dusty or dirty if I look at it wrong...)
I actually even found a spot where it looks like the material was torn and someone roughly repaired it by hand (laugh). I have a feeling this was a factory mistake/fix (either from fabric manufacture or sewing) because it's hidden beneath some lace ruffle and I don't really think it's something that an owner would let happen, but who knows.
So here's a few details of RRE~
Many people don't know that RRE is made of velveteen! And further, there is sometimes a misconception that it came in a "cotton" and "velvet" version. As far as I know, there is only one version made out of cotton velveteen.
So the white can get dirty and attract dust super easily :')
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The bodice has a panel of 3 ruffles + upper "hashigo" (ladder) lace part with ribbon. It is also boned (BABY's crap boning with sharp edges and no channels, meh...) but obviously I can skip that for kumya.
The skirt has a trapezoidal embroidered panel, the star of the show, surrounded by 3 tiers of ruffles that extend all the way around the back. The last "tier" is not gathered and has a smaller ruffle all around the skirt.
While thinking about how to construct something similar in kumya-scale, I found it fascinating that the under-material the ruffles are attached to are cotton! Makes sense to reduce bulk, plus you can't tell when the ruffles cover it.
The density of ruffle starts out quite concentrated, and then reduces as the bottom ruffle is reached. The cotton under-material also seems to have less material gathered than the main velveteen ruffle. This also makes sense to not only reduce material usage but also because having a huge amount of gather on the bottom tier can make the skirt look too heavy.
Knowing this, I fussed out some semi-arbitrary ruffle multipliers for each tier (and lining) in my notebook. Very important to keep tabs on how many fabric strips I need and their exact widths!
Also since everything is in kumya-scale the gathering is generally reduced by a lot. Kumya doesn't need much to have a very full skirt, and with such tiny tiers the effect of the gathering can easily look like overkill. The kumya elizabeth OP gathered lace/tiers very lightly:
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As reference dimensions for kumya, I have these two kumya dresses which I used lightly (mostly the sugar bouquet one because it's a JSK). I also have the babydoll kumya, but as it was out of commission for a while (on my christmas tree!😅) I didn't use it for checks at all.
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The sugar bouquet "bodice" is about 3cm long. I decided to extend it one more cm to 4cm to make it easier for me to calculate for the ruffles and also leave enough space so the ruffles would be visible and not potentially buried.
I use a cotton velvet fabric and a mixture of cluny and torchon lace I have on hand. This velvet has a noticeable twill weave to it and is thinner than the velvet BABY usually uses, but the thinness is perfect for this purpose. I was originally going to just use cotton sateen but remembered I had this!
You can't see the weave from afar so I tolerate it. I wouldn't have wanted to use polyester velvet/suede-like/minky, I think.
Since the material is still a velvet and does have a thickness compared to cotton, I decided to roughly hem any ruffle edges by hand with a simple once-turned whip stitch. it kind of seals the raw edge and hems it at the same time. Note that this is not a great idea for something that would be worn and washed a lot, but this piece in this specific case won't be.
In general, when it comes to mistakes with this piece I mostly ignore them because it's kumya-scale and not only will most people not notice, but as stated above it's also not a piece that will be worn and washed often so quality of construction isn't much of a concern.
Mentally deconstructing and calculating the construction of the ruffle part was a bit of a pain. My lace was wider that I needed so I had to roughly mark out where it should be sewn into the ruffle, not always with great success.
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I'm also not great with working at small scale...much respect to doll clothesmakers.
The bodice of the sugar bouquet kumya JSK is made from a front trapezoidal panel with a strip of fabric attached to the sides that extends all the way around the back, and the skirt attached to that. So I cut some slightly angular side panels to attach to my rectangular/square-ish front ruffle panel.
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(I threadmarked approximately where I wanted the seam to go because I don't trust myself to attach the side panel in the right area/dimension otherwise with such a wonky panel)
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Simple straps made from strips of fabric. I make these slightly thicker than a regular kumya JSK as well because I feel like RRE has thicker straps too (well, the entire construction of the bodice is a bit different, but ignoring that...)
And a facing layer of ordinary cotton is sewn to the front panel.
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For the section of lace at the top, I frankenstein together 2 types of lace that I trimmed to look more like the lace used on the original JSK. It seems the original JSK also has this lace sewn through the lining layer, so the stitching is visible from the inside.
I use the thinnest ribbon I can find--some silk ribbon in this case. It actually works really well because silk ribbon is very thin/flimsy and can be tied and threaded in nicely with relative ease.
By the way, if you aren't aware already, a yarn needle works very well for threading ribbon through lace.
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Bodice portion finished. This took way longer than I was hoping, an entire night. Hopefully the results are worth it.
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Next I fuss out the skirt. At this point I am working out the calculations and investigations already mentioned previously. I did make a few mistakes and had to re-cut a couple tiers!
I use a different lace from the bodice for the tiers because I thought the shape of this one was closer to what was originally used (it's actually the bilateral ladder lace used for the bodice, but instead of cutting off the lace edges and using the thread-through part, it's just cut in half)
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After hemming the ruffle, I attach the lace to the velveteen ruffle with a single gathering stitch (too lazy to use 2, and the thick material makes it hard to gather anyway). The under cotton layer is gathered separately and sandwiched between the cotton layer of the previous tier.
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Coming along. I think the lace length for these ruffles is a bit off/uneven/less than ideal, but oh well, can't be bothered to fix it...
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After the third tier, a non-gathered velveteen tier is attached with gathered lace.
I also prepare the bottom ruffle, but that will be attached to the completed skirt.
Next, the most exciting but also potentially the most taxing part must be done--the embroidery!
I know that the top of the embroidered panel is basically the same width as the bodice ruffle (referencing the original dress), but the width of the bottom is a bit arbitrary (about 3x the width of the top of the trapezoid)
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I mark out everything roughly with water soluble marker (the darker patches are where I messed up and used some water to erase, waiting for it to dry...)
The midlines of the panel as well as the 1/3 lines were marked because I 100% do not trust myself to make the embroidery symmetric without doing so. I'm a beginner and not nearly skilled enough in embroidery to freehand...
I carefully investigated the original embroidery and copied the locations of roses and leaves to my mini-panel. Once I have the general shape that I'm happy with, I start embroidering.
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I didn't take too many progress photos of the embroidery, but I also don't think you need them. Because the scale was small, this took an entire evening/night which I think is not too long?
For the roses I use a combination of the "pinwheel" rose method and french knots (+ some additional plain stitches where I wanted more volume).
The nice thing about ribbon embroidery, I think, is that the ribbons add so much texture that even if it's a bit messy it looks very impressive anyways. Plus your mind will mentally interpret some random puffy ribbon lines as a flower anyways.
I use regular DMC 6-strand embroidery thread (split in half, so 3 strands used here) for the vines and leaves. Because I also suck at embroidery and have never embroidered a real project/learned real techniques I mostly kept the leaves simple and slightly abstract with 3 branchlike stitches. I think I currently can't fuss with making nice rounded miniature leaves without messing up every second stitch...
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Finished.
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I spray water to remove the marker marks and let dry.
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Attach embroidered panel to ruffles. I should have double checked where the panel was aligning with the ruffles on each side since it's uneven, but whatever.
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Gather bottom ruffle and attach to skirt.
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I attach the bodice strip to the front bodice panel as well, and sew the straps down.
I basted the front of the bodice to the skirt by hand because I wanted to make sure they were aligned. Because I messed up sewing the ruffle tiers to the embroidered panel and they are somewhat misaligned, I tried to adjust where the top of the skirt was sewn to the bodice to compensate, it didn't work that well but eh, it's alright.
Gather the skirt and sew to the bodice portion. This was very fiddly and I had to redo some parts several times because the lace wasn't getting sewn down properly. It's still not great but I'll fix any egregious parts by hand.
The gathering is also pretty uneven, but I'm ignoring it...
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Looks almost done but not yet!
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There is a tiny bit more embroidery on the edges of the middle ruffle tier. I marked approximately where I wanted the roses to be and roughly embroidered them (without a hoop because it's too complicated to figure out alignment before construction, although embroidery is always easier with one).
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I also add a back ribbon to simulate waist ties, a detail I notice on a few other BABY kumya JSKs. The waist ties on RRE have a slightly rounded/pointed shape to them, so I freehand this shape for the bow "tails" (because I'm getting tired and lazy, I didn't really measure although I did check that the width was approximately the same throughout). The backside of the waist tie is another layer of cotton, which reduces bulk when turning the shape inside out (the backside of the original JSK is also just lining material). I also folded a long strip over itself and basted it down, creating a loose tube shape to use for the bow part.
It's pretty hard to create defined folds in the bow with such thick fabric, but I tried my best...at least it's likely the back will rarely be seen.
I gave the dress a final allover spray with water to hopefully erase any remaining soluble marker. Also, some interior hand finishing needed to be done (mainly tacking down some unruly seams)
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And finally, actually finished. The embroidery thankfully turned out decent enough to distract from any weird spots of construction and so on. It looks quite remarkably like the actual dress, so goal achieved I think!
Extra contents:
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I make kumya little wrist cuffs because some of the kumya variations (such as babydoll kumya) come with them, and that's really cute.
BBD kumya seems to use a type of lace that's already elasticated, but I don't have that on hand so I just sew two pieces of the same lace used for the bodice ruffles together to make it bilateral and stitch on an additional elastic with a stretch stitch. And add on a little ribbon bow (I only have silk ribbon in this narrow width, but I think a ribbon with more body such as poly satin or cotton satin would work better)
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And I also make two of those little applique ribbon thingies (you can buy them cheaply from craft stores and so on, but whatever) and stitch them temporarily to kumya's bows for an extra accent.
I'm lazy so I use the bloomers that came with the hawase kumya set underneath (I'm sure making a similar pair of bloomers wouldn't be too much work but I have no idea if these are patterned with some kind of shaping/rise and I don't want to deal with that)
This is actually yuefii's kumya that I am still hoarding for whatever reason and has its eye and mouth fur already trimmed.
And now Usakumya is ready to see the runway :)
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Part 2 (bonnet making) is here.
Thank you for reading! If you ever decide to take up a similar project, I'd love to see it!
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escherbug · 1 year
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YEAR OF THE GRUB: JANUARY
Project: Needle Felting with Wire Armature
CRAFT STORE RUNS: 2
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(The sleepy but patient Lt. for scale)
This year I started a Master's Degree program in Entomology. I wanted to make sure I was still making fun things while I'm so busy (mostly reading papers and books), so I arranged a set of media-based projects centered around my favorite insect (scarab grubs), trying to complete the project by the end of the month.
I didn't quite make it this time because I ran out of supplies a couple times and made the project a good deal harder for myself than I thought, but I think that's okay. This is just for me, after all.
STEP BY STEP:
First, I used sculpting wire and a pair of pliers to twist the skeleton of the grub. I wanted to be able to move all the legs and the main line of the body. I thought I'd be able to get an easier anchor in on the felt if I covered the hard wires with pipe cleaners, but I was pretty much wrong about that.
Next, I felted a bunch of spare roving into the general shape I wanted, and felted the head and the back end of the grub on in brown. I also hand-sewed six little socks to cover the wires on the legs and secured them as well as I could to the rest of the body so they won't fall off at random. This came out messier than I'd have liked, but I think also that I should cut myself some slack for having designed and patterned most of this on the fly.
Next came felting on the bulk of the fatty, cream colored body of the grub. Part of the reason I didn't end up making my deadline was that I ran out of white/off-white wool roving, and was unable to find it in stock at any stores, so I had to order it online and wait for it to arrive in the mail (it absolutely did and honestly, the new stuff from Shepswool.com is way softer than the wool I was using and a softer color, so it was well worth the wait).
From here, mainly all that was left was detail work. I didn't get a ton of photos of this because all these steps ended up being my Sunday (day of posting), but I used a finer wire, the same pliers, and super sculpey to make gently posable antennae, mandibles, a clypeus and labrum (as well as a pair of maxillae that absolutely did not show up in the end, just much too small), baked the clay on the wires and then affixed them to the existing framework I'd set up on the head for most of the face. The mandibles are attached to the antennae, so they move together, and the clypeus/labrum and maxillae are held on by the wires supporting the mandibles. I also glued on some cute little eyes that came standard with my felting gear.
All that was left at this point was final detail work-- I didn't feel like embroidering on a ton of hairs in the end, but I embroidered on some spiracles and felted those little sclerotized buts near the head.
And voila! A needle-felted beetle grub about the size of a small ferret. Wouldn't it be nice if we had more grubs around this size?
Further notes:
1) it's nice to be making something big enough for once while felting that I didn't stab my fingers constantly! I only stabbed myself like twice.
2) I bought a multi-needle felting tool for this, but I didn't really find it helped much beyond having a safety cover. It was also super noisy to work with, so I ended up going back to using a single felting needle halfway through.
Catch you at the end of this month, hopefully having completed my February project: WATERCOLOR ILLUSTRATION!
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nerdierholler · 16 days
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IT'S DONE! I made a book! I never thought I'd ever be able to make a book. Sure mistakes were made but it was still a fun process and I learned so much from making this first one.
This a binding of The Wayhaven Chronicles IF but with my personal Detective's choices included and the resulting text smoothed out to read more like a novel.
Honestly, I thought something like this would be way beyond my skill set but it wasn't as scary as I thought once I got started. Definitely check out @renegadeguild for some book making and typesetting guides and their discord is super friendly and helpful as well.
If you want to learn from my mistakes I'll go into some trials and tribulations under the cut.
I'm not sure how well this book will hold up long term but that's ok! It was more about learning and I'll make some adjustments and try again with the same text probably.
Typsetting
Margins - need to make them bigger. I mostly read paperbacks so I was going for that format with narrower margins but then when I ran into paper problems, I didn't have a ton of room for trimming.
There was an option on the imposer to add dotted lines to the center fold and I clicked that but they're visible still even after binding. Could be that I needed to sew my signatures tighter and that would help but regardless I don't think I need them in the future so I'll be skipping that feature.
The font was intentionally small, along with the margins, because I was trying to minimize the number of signatures I was dealing with for a first project. I'll bump it up in the future.
Paper (so much wrong)
So the grain should run parallel to the spine but I couldn't find short grain paper. I read at some point that someone recommended using sketch books instead because that should be the right grain. It was not, at least not what I bought, so it still ended up going the wrong way.
The sketch note book I bought had perforated pages. It made them easy to get out but I didn't realize that the page widths were inconsistent until everything was printed out. The paper width varied by at least 1/8 of an inch. I wasn't planning on trimming my pages but my top was super uneven because of this so an attempt at trimming was made. It could have gone worse (there was no blood) but the trimming could have been a lot better too.
Should have just used printer paper. The results would have been the same.
Making Book Cloth
Used the Heat and Bond method with some spare fabric and it worked pretty well. The problem was when it came to adding backing. I'd read tissue paper or even plain paper so I grabbed some piecing paper that was close at hand. That was a mistake. It was good quality fabric so it was thicker already and the paper backing made it too thick. I could barely fold it over and it kept wanting to flip up. It's the spine fabric and I'm still concern it's going to do this in the future.
Used tissue paper for the marbled looking fabric and it was much easier to work with.
Book Board
Not measuring right was all on me. The rice box worked in a pinch but I think it will be prone to bending. Got me the experience I needed be wouldn't be my go-to material for a project of this size.
Glue
I used Elmer's All Purpose and it got the job done but, again, probably not going to hold up the best long term. However, I'm glad I didn't buy PVA and basically waste it on this project. Elmer's was good and cheap enough for practice. I'll be getting some PVA for future projects.
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20dollarlolita · 8 months
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If anyone is wondering, this tutorial to make this skirt is still a method that works. Both those links are from wayback machine captures from a time before Photobucket betraying us all and deleting pictures.
Yes, I'm still mad about that.
Anyway, in the spirit of seeing if budget lolita was still doable in 2023, here we go with a cost breakdown:
>Main skirt fabric was a $10 walmart 4-yard precut; enough fabric to make waist ties not pictured here >Skirt is fully lined with a polyester bedsheet I got for $1 at a surplus store >The bow lace was part of a bulk purchase, ended up costing 21cents a yard. Skirt probably has 6-8 yards of lace on it. The little vertical strips were scraps from another project. Back shirring on skirt is 1/4" elastic, which covid conveniently made super cheap. >I didn't have the zipper on hand, so I had to buy one for $1 at walmart. As anyone who has been on Wawak knows, that's massively overpaying for zippers.
This skirt is 3" longer and a few sizes larger than the one in the post. I had to make a new cutting layout for the skirt, and it took a fair bit of additional fabric. In addition, to save on fabric width, the "side seams" on this are actually a little bit farther back than the side of the skirt. I cut the back of the skirt to full fabric width, and then added the adjustment for the fullness into the side front pieces. Clarice, who wrote the original tutorial, mentions that the person she made it for was very small, so I sized it up a little bit.
I make sketches like this as I go for personal reference, but maybe it'll be helpful.
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In the spirit of livejournal, I "clarified" my sketch by making it more confusing in GIMP. (Your pieces you need to cut will be back: 44"x19.5", cut 1. Side Front, 22"x19.5", cut 2. Center Front, 15"x25.5", cut 1. Frills, 5.5"x44", cut 9 or 10).
So, when we get into it, yeah, if you have a good design (or can copy a good design) and you're willing to put some time into it, you can still do a budget lolita skirt for under $20 of materials, if you're careful. I'm mostly making this post to save which archive.org captures are the ones with working pictures.
(It also helps if you don't mess up on the waistband so many times that it slowly shrinks into a 1" waistband.)
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Fun fact: the trim on the ends of the waist ties may or may not be because I hemmed them sloppily and the hem came up bubbly, and zigzagging some lace onto the bottom handily covered up the bubbling. One of the advantages about knowing a decent amount about lolita fashion is that you can look at things and go, "Yeah, if I added x here, it'd be fine," and knowing enough about sewing to go, "yeah, if I do x cheat here, it'll look better" and being able to put the two together and go, "hey, if I cheat here, it'll still look lolita!" It's a good feeling.
Anyway, if anyone else has ever used Clarice's tutorial to make a skirt, I'd love to see it! This is my second time using it, but the last time was almost a decade ago at this point, and I think I've improved a lot since then.
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slightlymediocree · 21 days
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☆Update 2:☆
I remembered to take pics today! Sort of. Only after i had put away my machines and stuff...
Here are (most) of my edwardian undergarments
(i am wearing modern clothes under bcs the internet is weird)
Chemise, bustle pad, underbust corset, petticoat
I still need to make a corset cover someday, ive just been using a second thin chemise over all this:
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I used these vintage buttons on the cuffs. I wanted some more security but ran out of buttons so i used small snaps:
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Also put one on the collar so i could try it on. I think the placket at the back of the blouse is a little ugly and larger than ive seen in extant garments but i forgot to adjust the pattern for my broad shoulders and need the extra width for comfort.
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I tried on the blouse and skirt together:
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I may need to loosen the waistband of the skirt, the corset is a bit bulkier than i thought itd be. Also the blouse is just stuffed into the skirt and currently only has one closure on at the collar so it looks a little bit disproportionate. The belt/sash will help smooth everything out so i dont look like im drowning in voile.
I might go without the bustle pad during the final shoot because i think it gives too much volume in the waist/hip area for edwardian tastes. Its from an 1890s pattern, so the silhouette is a bit out of date. I should probably try the skirt on without the pad before extending the waistband though.
Im pretty happy with how the sleeves turned out! I have some vintage nottingham lace i bought on etsy from penelope textiles that i was going to add to another project. I think ill sew some different laces together and add it to the cuffs to elongate them a bit. Since this dress is supposed to be from roughly 1905, i want the sleeves to look as they wouldve in that time. The photos ive seen mostly feature large ruffles at the ends of elbow-length sleeves but i dont think ill be likely to wear ruffles very often. Ive also seen tighter cuffs that extend from the elbow to mid-forearm or from the elbow to wrist. I think the elbow-length sleeves are a feature of afternoon dresses but i could be wrong. Maybe that was just day dresses? Not sure.
Im also not sure if i want to get gloves/a hat/parasol for this project. On one hand, it would look really cool for the video. On the other hand, it sounds quite expensive and i doubt ill wear it again. I dont want to buy things i wont use and create waste, theres enough of that in fashion. I have a pink 1900s parasol that i might cover with black fabric, but idk.
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There isnt much left to do! Im gonna make a list here so i have it written somewhere:
-sew snaps onto blouse
-finish blouse hem
-attatch lace cuffs
-press pleats on sash/belt
-order synthetic whalebones
-add bones, hook/bars to belt
This is just the sewing tasks though, i need to edit the video clips and record audio. I have no idea how to do any of this. I just downloaded davinci video editor so hopefully i can figure it out. The only experience i have with video making/editing was in 3rd grade on ipads on the imovie app. Ive just been binge watching bernadette banner videos bcs i love her video style.
Any tips/feedback are much appreciated! ♡
Date: 4/22/24
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theomancycos · 10 months
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did you ever finish the knight’s set from
bloodborne? 👀
I DID!!! I'm currently using one of the detail shots as my icon. I finished it October 2021, I've posted a lot of pictures on twitter since that's been my main media presence in the past but for some reason the tumblr mobile app is being kind of weird as far as what photos it's letting me access to post from there. I'm terribly disorganized when it comes to my photo organization, so it's going to be a bit of a process while I work through re-collecting the pictures I want to post of various projects I've finished since I was last cross-posting them here.
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(here's the picture I took when I first tried everything on together, but I'm planning on posting photos from the photoshoot I did sometime soon!)
I actually never really left tumblr, I just kind of stopped posting my sewing here and was hiding out on my personal sideblog, @sizzleitupwithtaako where I mostly just reblog stuff.
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handweavers · 4 months
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first english paper pieced quilt top is going well, i really like this plus sign design. i'm mostly using cotton fabric from past sewing projects, a lot of it is indian block print fabric as well that i've thrifted. epp quilting is all hand stitched which i really enjoy
the ugly visible stitching is just basting stitches that temporarily attach the paper templates to the fabric, they get removed later
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centipedelightning · 1 year
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Hobbies!
headcanons about what kind of hobbies i think some of the skeles have. this post includes undertale and underfell sans and papyrus. i want to smooch these guys so bad y’all.
| Undertale & Underfell || fluff |
Hobbies: you are here | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4
words: 1045
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Sans
Canonically it’s trombone, and he knows how to sew
He started learning how to sew pretty young (out of necessity) so he’s really good now. He made papyrus’s costume after all! He’s actually a pretty skilled seamstress and super super good at making barely visible, perfectly blended alterations to clothing. He’d be better at mending if he cared to, but he isn’t bad.
The trombone was probably in whatever the underground equivalent of his second year of high school.
Yes he was and still is a band kid sorry 🤷🏻‍♀️
Other than in game canon, I see him doing origami. He found a box set of books (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) at the dump in great condition and decided to take it up.
He used to make a bunch of little characters and animals for babybones Papyrus to play with.
He makes so many paper stars. Like two of those really big mason jar fulls with a third actively being filled.
It became a bit of a coping mechanism to be able to pick up scraps of paper and make little things quickly and mindlessly. Not to mention the chance to make a wish
More than once he may or may not have used torn slips of blueprints and schematics for projects…. Oops
Papyrus
He’s so babygirl girliepop
He loves puzzles but that’s already covered by playing the game and this is not written to rehash the canon
So instead I will tell you about the million and one crafts he does (no I won't)
He so so crafty and creative so technically he does a lot of different things, but I see him loving making decor items. Stuff like rock painting and recycled garden decor. Yk those bottle cap flowers for your garden? Stuff like that.
His front garden is so cute because of all the stuff he put in it.
The rocks he paints are just random local forest and river stones. The paints are all natural and watershed safe. Ecological awareness queen.
He mostly does those dot patterns when and places them all around the garden and pathways. Sometimes he’ll do little faces or bugs to mix it up
ZUMBA omg
He’s such a Zumba girl you have no clue. He loves the fun danciness of it while still being a good workout. He’s very 90s fashion-wise so you know he’s in those brightly colored body suits.
He lovesss putting together and painting model figures. Kinda like dnd minis but I see him being more into put it together yourself robot sets (like Gundams or whatever they’re called)
Y’all he’s so down bad for sexy robots you can’t tell me he wouldn’t love Gundams. Just look at how he acts towards his action figures AND METTATON HIMSELF. He’s so tragic and so real tbh.
Red
He’s my artsy babygirl.
If you’ve read my headcanon post about him you’ll know.
He’s not very good, but he does do landscape paintings every now and then. Those times are more when he randomly decides to take a walk around a local park or something. He’s more interested in studying other artists’ work than doing it himself.
Onto an actual hobby: Whittling!
He discovered the hobby kinda on his own in the underground. Whenever he was forced to show up to his sentry station and couldn’t find a way to run off, he’d pick up sticks and cut them down to nothing with a pocket knife. Over time he started carving little shapes and figures into the sticks. He’d usually just make simple bone attacks or snow poffs. Sometimes if he found a bigger branch, he’d make replicas of some of the other royal guards or random machines.
Topside he makes so many animals. Like so many. His favorite things to make are birds. He has so many different types of whittled birds all over his room. There’s boxes in his closet overflowing with finished and half finished bird carvings. They’re also in the windows and you can see them walking past their house.
If he’s feeling fancy he’ll pull out the woodstain and give them a little depth to make the species more obvious.
He makes other animals too of course, but they’re usually gifts. He makes a bunch of forest animals for Frisk (their favorites are rabbits and deer).
He made an MTT carving Once when Edge was going through it and was increasingly stressed for like a month straight. Red is a bit of a hater so jacking anything MTT was like pulling teeth. You gotta do what you gotta do for the happiness of your siblings I'm afraid.
A lot of people see him working as a mechanic and I agree, but that’s his career and jobs can’t be hobbies so I’m not gonna go into depth.
Edge
Ok consider for a second: (silk) flower arranging
For one, I headcanon him working as a professional makeup artist on the surface so its not completely left field,
For two, I’m right and you know it.
He does it as casually as you can imagine Edge being casual. Mostly dining table centerpieces and hallways vases. He does silk flowers for places he doesn’t check as often (like hallways) but since he’s classy he dumps the extra G for the fancy fake flowers.
The real flowers are in foyers and on tables. He even takes the occasional flower arranging class in different disciplines to be able to have the skill to arrange any flower in any style.
Edge is such a granny so I think weaving would be reasonable too.
Originally he started out darning his clothes so they would last a few more months, but since he got topside he does a lot of more artsy woven pieces on those small lap sized looms.
He’s not too picky about the actual design; they’re usually classy and fancy and a bit pretentious like him but he’s not actually all that picky about it. He mostly makes scarves and wall hangs that he sells at the local farmers market and craft fairs.
All his friends do have specially designed and stunningly made scarves that he spent hours laboring away on. He gets to critical levels of happiness when he sees them wearing his hard work.
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