Badass in This Dress

You'll find all my original posts tagged with #a talia original

For all my dramatic pictures you can go to #talia is a drama queen

For the sewing projects, visit #talia's adventures in dressmaking

Most importantly of course, there is the #waistcoat spam

The dnd chatter is all at #no vampires allowed, or #no vamps allowed chatter and #thylead (or just #dnd)

My lacemaking adventures are all under #talia learns bobbin lace

For the shirtsleeve sew-along, you want #floofy shirt sewalong

January 2025 chemise sewalong starting the 25th

This morning I am distracting myself from the heat by making a milkmaid dress crop top. It's technically a mockup for a dress I want to make later, but I thought it would be fun to just have some little puff sleeves to wear for hobbity looks

Heard it was Make A Terrible Comic Day, which reminded me of the little doodles I drew in law school about law lass and her super villain alter ego Lawless who solved her uni woes with lasers and maniacal laughter

My recent work woes could do with some super villain antics to break through the circles of polite circle communication we've got going on, so I brought her back. This was fun!

Bonus:

Of course!

Years ago, I saw Morgan Donner do her gathering stitches with two needles at the same time. I was, of course, amazed and astounded.

Now when I had 3 meters to gather, I decided to give it a try. It's certainly faster, and when you get the needles to line up right, it's also very neat. However, it's super easy for the needles to start creeping towards or away from each other, ruining your nice straight lines. That's why I tried to see if I could stick the needles in clothes pins, which worked a little but didn't have enough pressure. (Basically I was creating a fundamental two needle gathering machine)

So, what's the technique I've worked out so far?

You want your needles to be the exact same length and nice and long

you want to anchor the needles on your thimble so that the points are precisely next to each other

thumb and index finger keep the needles in place

free hand pushes the fabric onto the needles until they're full and you have to pull the thread through and reposition

Make very sure you don't accidentally cross your needles when setting up for the next bit. Actually thinking back on it now, I should have made my gathering threads two different colours, even if that ruins the aesthetic a bit

Mostly this technique was good just for variety. Doing a meter of two needles and then when i'm fed up with that again one meter twice with one needle made it less tedious.

Last month I started a new italian chemise as a nice handsewing project to take on holiday. I love my shortened white chemise so much I wanted one in black with long sleeves.

I have velvet

...

On the other hand, I've got a lovely almost finished waistcoat on the dressform

And