done!

feeling like utter crap today, so stayed home knitting and watching movies (belle de jour and match point). both gorgeous movies which made my sick self feel a little more awful in comparison to their gorgeousness.

and the cardigan i was working on for the fenelon fair and neighbour's baby is finished!



i do like leafy patterns a lot, it seems.



and, wee flower-shaped buttons are lovely with leaves!

finished? of course not!

but after some time at the machine and a few hours with mildred pierce, i have the new lining tacked into the anything else-inspired tweed coat and the inner pocket is done - with the label returned to its rightful place!




and while looking up the link to mildred pierce, i discovered that it's been made into a tv series to air at the end of march! horrifying. except that it is directed by todd "superstar" haynes, and starring kate winslet, so might be actually good. important to note: it seems to be a series in the uk sense, what might be called a mini-series in the us. so, no dragging the story into 26-eps-a-year for five years in hopes on syndication. thank goodness.

tweed

i've decided to dive into a project that's been on the backburner for an age: relining my beloved anything else-inspired tweed coat (the recon project was one of my first ever posts here - five years ago). tweed is always perfect when there's a chill in the air, so i have worn this thing to bits over the years. the outside is perfectly fine - harris tweed will wear forever. but the lining is kaput. so, i've ripped it out, to replace with some kaffe fassett for rowan i bought on sale at macfab a while ago (one of the things stopping me from getting to work on the coat is that i keep looking at the fabric and thinking, maybe a skirt or shift instead?).

i've trimmed out the lining (i love looking at the innards of a well-tailored garment!), preserving the inner pocket and of course the harris tweed label. wondering about the number stamped on, i did a little googling and found this interesting note on the vintage fashion guild website:

The Harris Tweed Authority is a great aid in dating Harris Tweed labels. You can contact them with the number that is stamped on the label and from that they can supply you with the maker and approximate date of the cloth.

well! you can rest assured that i contacted the harris tweed authority right away. i hope they have some information for me! based on the pictures from the vfg post, i would guess that my coat is from the 1960s.

tangent

not sure how that happened... a conversation at work about patrick swayze's death led to a discussion about cult classics and first memories of seeing movies... i slept through all the disney classics as a tot, but the first movie i really remember seeing in the theatre was a local community hall screening (that's what you get when you live in the middle of nowhere) of play it again sam with de düva: the dove when i was maybe 8? or 10? i begged to go because i was mad for humphrey bogart at the time.
the other early memory i have of movies is magic shadows on tvo, and i was very please to discover just how easy it was to find the opening

holiday madness day two

okay, taking a quick break as my hands are vibrating and ears are ringing due to a combination of scroll saw and circular saw, and i need a bit of fresh air before i get back to it... but i am feeling quite pleased with myself! the project is really starting to take shape:

the tricky bit is that each piece of wood needs to be precisely measured due to the general wonkiness of the house. but i'm quite proud of the job i did cutting the boards to fit around the moulding at the top of the window:



the paint's peeling on the woodwork around the window and you can see that it's a lovely dark wood underneath... part of me wants to strip it (and all of the rest of the woodwork around the windows and doors, and the baseboards) but that would take forever. sigh.

eta: the end effect is meant to be something like all of the bookcases in those gorgeous manhattan apartments that woody allen's characters inhabit... the only pic i could find (without wasting too much time is not ideal, but it will do (from hannah and her sisters )

holidays

ooh, what happened to me for the entire month of october. busy is what! work is mental busy, due to my beloved coworker leaving me for another job, boo. and, more mediaplayer madness, but now with the bugs all worked out i think? check out denis villeneuve's take on politics if you're not sick of the whole game yet: 120 seconds to get elected

in other news, as you may know, yesterday was hallowe'en. the wee one went on his first trick-or-treat ever, and had no clue what was going on (makes it so much easier for us to steal his candy). the house is now covered in bits of grey fluff, but it's so worth it:



the best bit is little red riding hood, stuffed in his tummy (you know the wolf devoured her in the original story, right?):



she is based on my felted kodama dolls pattern, and knitted out of leftovers. the wolf itself is a pattern i made based on one of his sleepers.

and now that that is over, another christmas is nearly at our throats - this year i am determined to send out cards or die trying. i made up a batch of forty of these tonight:



(no, i don't really know how to play the piano in the background... yet.)

in the original photo i traced, the little one was in the bath, i just added the christmas stuff in around him. the plan was to watch match point (another gratuitous film reference in order to justify calling this "filmcraft") while cutting out the pictures and glueing them on, but somehow our version is dubbed in spanish? something is very wrong with this picture...

sketchy

here's a filmcraft tutorial for you. remember when i was posting about the tweed jacket and i said i couldn't post my sketches because i was having scanner trouble? well, i just said toss the scanner, i'll take a photo of the sketches instead. so here they are!

these first two show how i changed the seaming in the front and back. the green lines show where the original seams were, which i ripped open, and the red lines show the new seams. i did a fair amount of basting and trying-on and adjusting and basting again before i actually cut anything or sat down at the machine. here's the front:



you can see how i made the side-front seam more of a girl-shaped princess seam, and re-cut the front lapels. here's the back. notice the shoulder seams especially:



i moved the shoulder seams back for a more edwardian-esque sloping shoulder. the way to do it: first, remove the sleeves. next, dig out the shoulder pads. this is trickier than it sounds: on a properly tailored man's jacket, there are layers of horsehair canvas and cotton batting and muslin, all shaped and stitched together by hand. you have to be very careful to just take out the shoulder padding, and not interfere with the interfacing that gives the front of the jacket its shape. check to make sure you haven't cut any crucial threads which are holding together the front interfacing, and hand-stitch anything that looks shaky. taking apart men's jackets has given me a whole new level of respect for tailors.

once all of that has been taken out, you can split the shoulder seam and pull the front side further to the back, like this:



you can see how the front overlaps the back. that seam needs to be hand-stitched. moving the shoulder seam tightens up the armscye, making the whole jacket more tailored for someone smaller. because you only split the shoulder seam, the collar remains untouched - one less thing to deal with.

the sleeves were easy after all of that - just turn them inside out, and taper the seams. since i wanted the sleeves gathered anyway, there was no rocket science involved - i hate fitting set-in sleeves normally, but gathering to take out the extra fullness makes it super easy.

and that concludes our lesson for today!

jackety

i'm done the back of the "in the mood for love" sweater, but that's pretty boring, so instead i've got pictures of a re-con jacket inspired by woody allen's film anything else.

here are a couple of pics from the film - i couldn't find one that shows the jacket very well, but you can see that it's tweed, fitted, with slightly puffed sleeves (just typing the words "puffed sleeves" gives me hives):







so that's the original. here's my version:



i started with a man's tweed jacket in size huge - i think it was a 46 or something - which i bought for $5 at a thrift shop. here's a before and after shot:



big change, huh? what i did was remove the sleeves, shift the shoulder seams, re-cut the armscyes, re-cut the princess seams front and back, add another seam to the back on each side, re-cut the front lapels, take in the sleeves, gather the sleeve caps, and re-attach them.

you follow? i did a few sketches to illustrate what i'm talking about, but we're having scanner issues at the moment, so they'll have to wait.

here's a close-up of the back showing the seaming detail:



here's a shot of the front, so you can see how much more pronounced the princess seams are around the bust:



i think the smartest thing i did was to farm out the button holes. there's a shop on queen at spadina called simply "buttons" i think, and they will do your button holes for you with their lovely industrial machine. it used to be a dollar each, but i think it's gone up to $1.50 (that may be my fault - when i brought this jacket in, the guy said, "wow, that's thick fabric, tough to work with." i said, "that's why i bring it to you!")

eta: tutorial here