I met the Pope of Trash, and made a new sleazy dress for the occasion.

Remember this post? The one where I pretty much ended up collapsing to my knees and wailing "WHY GOD? WHYYYY?" at the top of my lungs after royally ballsing up a great many times?

Well yeah, I tried again. Only this time it worked!

 

Hell yes. That's bright.

I had a stroke of luck, and the first time I visited the Liverpool branch of Abakhan Fabrics after moving here, I evidently had a stroke of another kind and bought another piece of the same cursed fabric which had led to the crushing of my dreams a few months before. I used iDye again, and despite the high synthetic content I used the all-purpose dye in bright yellow, and just ran it through a hot wash in my machine.

Here's the finished article! I added pom-pom trim and black facings to the petal bust and skirt drape as planned, and made a little kitty ears hat to match! I felt very Poison Ivy wearing this! You too can look fabulously feline in a kitty ears hat of your very own at http://www.kalandrajane.com/ and if any of you fancy one in the yellow leopard print, I have a little left for custom orders.

I wore it with my cropped fake leather jacket and some 1950s deadstock vintage black velour killer stiletto heels, and off I trotted with le boyfriend in tow to see John Waters! The performance was part of Liverpool's 10th Annual Homotopia event - a celebration of all things LGBTQ which even from the limited bits of it I experienced, seems a hell of a lot more inclusive and community-focussed than the commercialised 'pride' events of certain other cities *ahem*.

The Liverpool Echo gave the performance a great writeup, and I had such a good time! His Highness was as witty and acerbic as you'd expect him to be in person, keeping everyone enthralled and amused (and feeling a little bit guilty for laughing at some of his more ribald anecdotes), every bit the expert raconteur.

Then we got to meet him! Squeals of delight! The queue for book signing and photographs was rather long, luckily there were only about 25 people in front of us. Mr. Waters was charming and funny, sent get well wishes to a friend who'd been unable to attend the show due to an operation, signed a book for him, and one for myself of course! He sent me on my way with a fantastically bitchy joke I won't repeat here, and a sly wink!

PS. I read the whole book the next night, and will certainly be buying his new book when it's out next year!

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Catching up! Sewing news.

Hello all,

I have been super busy these last few weeks, but have still managed to get quite a lot of sewing done, and yet more sewing planned.

I made the melon dress as promised from my last post, here it is! Excuse my sweaty demeanour - this was at the end of a three-day psychobilly festival and I was a little worse for wear.

As you can see it's a little... bursty. The lining shrank when I steam ironed it, and I'd stupidly cut it out to my pre- Christmas measurements. I'm about 1" bigger all over now, but as it's such a close-fitting dress to start with, an inch unfortunately makes all the difference. I will be making efforts to rectify this situation over the next couple of months with copious amounts of exercise and salad.

I also made myself this black and red taffeta sarong dress, you can't see how gorgeous the fabric is here so I will get a better picture this week. The fabric was mainly left over from a commission dress I made for a friend to wear to the launch of the latest in the Style Me Vintage book series, and it's just lovely, so authentically 50s with its tiny flecks of shiny black and red on the black base.

I also joined the SewToday Club for £7.50 a quarter, for that price you get a magazine every month, any two patterns free when you join, plus 50% off all Butterick, McCall, Vogue and KwikSew patterns. They also regularly have buy 1 get 2 free events for their members, one of which started less than a week after I joined, so I have ordered five patterns so far.

So far I've been scooping up Gertie's patterns, and I can't wait to get started on them. Here's what I've ordered:

B5882. How could you not?! It's gorgeous... the shelf bust is such a nice feature. Apparently a lot of sewers (as in sow-ers, not suw-ers. Ewww.) are waiting with bated breath for Gertie to do a full bust adjustment for this one, so keep an eye on her blog if you're amply endowed up top. Tits ahoy!

  

B5895 - I got two of these, one for me and one for my sister Ginny over at Buttons and Bobbins. I've got a modern capris pattern but this one looks to have a more vintage-styled higher waist, and the simple retro blouse pattern will be really useful for Summer and would make some super cute Hawaiian print tops.

B5814 - I wasn't sure about this one, so I looked at some pictures online of other people's dressmaking efforts with it and decided that my misgivings are mainly down to the envelope photo - the dress itself is lovely but the styling isn't quite right, and the model, bless her, isn't really filling out such a bodacious garment. I think once you put someone with some bigger curves in there and add some more vintage accessories this dress will be a killer.

KwikSew 3491 - This one could look a bit dodgy at first glance, but disregard the hideous violet/greige ensemble the model is wearing, and look at the construction, and you have a perfect little 40s/50s Ike Jacket, a bit like this one:

Via the Vintage Pattern Wikia

This 1940s Hollywood pattern was the one that Tasha at By Gum, By Golly! used in the Sew For Victory challenge, and it looks great. I'm more of a 50s than a 40s girl though, so the later style knitted bottom band and zip front of the KwikSew pattern are just fine for me. I'm envisioning it in a yellow and black or red and black extra large check or tartan, and maybe a black twill version with a big back patch design for a more rockabilly look.

I've also got my beady eye on this brand new release of a 1951 pattern from Butterick, no. 5880. I'm hoping to buy this, Vogue's new mens suit pattern (for Aerospace Boyfriend now he has conferences and stuff to attend, and now Vogue have finally brought out a suit that doesn't look like something out of Miami Vice), and whatever else tickles my fancy before the 3-for-1 offer is up.

It's just lovely, and a bit easier to wear that my usual boob-bearing, boned, skintight affairs. So just to make sure it's still utterly unsuitable to wear in polite society, I've been utterly stubborn, or perhaps utterly stupid, and decided to attempt the fabric dyeing that failed so comically in my last post, and make it from that. I went into my usual fabric shop for trimmings, and lo and behold, sat on top of the bargain basket was another piece of the dreaded white leopard print fabric. I bought a shade lighter of the yellow iDye, and it is running on a 90C cycle in the washing machine RIGHT NOW. I don't know if I even dare look. To be continued...

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Dye, Dye, My Darling... in which I try iDye and FAIL HORRIBLY.

Today was possibly the most disappointing day I have ever had in my years as a dressmaker. My dress didn't even get to be stitched together *sob*.

Last week I bought these glorious fabrics in the bargain bin at my local fabric shop. When you buy from the baskets, there's usually one piece and you'll never see that fabric again. You want it, you'd better be prepared to impulse buy, and fight a tiny Asian grandmother to get it.

Fabulous, right? The melon one, you'll be glad to know, is safe. I cut out my dress parts from it, bought some garish yellow trims, and you should be seeing the finished article in a couple of weeks. The leopard one however did not fare so well. I decided that I would make a bright yellow leopard print version of my usual sarong dress pattern, with black trims, black petal bust, and black lining to the draped overskirt. I could see it in my mind; this thing was going to be my new favourite outfit in the world, to be debuted at next week's Bedlam Breakout psychobilly weekender. I wasn't sure of the fibre content, so I used a Dylon hand dye in sunflower yellow. Trusty old Dylon eh? Nope.

It turned out a colour which I will politely refer to as pale lemon, but would prefer to (rather impolitely) refer to as I-boiled-this-in-a-bucket-of-my-own-piss yellow. Although annoyed at having spent £3.10 to turn my fabric such an insipid shade, I remained upbeat as we could now determine that the fabric had a high synthetic content and would need to be dyed with something suitable for polyester and nylon.

Picture by Dixie DIY

This is what I found. I think it's the only product available on the UK market for home dyeing synthetics, but it looked pretty good anyway. I did some research online as to what other bloggers' colour results had been for each yellow shade, and picked out the yellow iDye Poly and iDye for natural fabrics in 'Golden Yellow', as directed by the packaging in order to colour a cotton-synthetic blend fabric.

The instructions stated that the iDye Poly, poly colour intensifier, and iDye natural should be chucked into a pot of hot water together to dissolve, the fabric added and brought to the boil, and a US cup of salt added.

This is what it was supposed to look like. Via Live the Fancy Life

Problem 1. I didn't own a pot large enough to fit my whole 2.5m of fabric into. I decided to cut out all the parts of my dress, adding an extra 1/4" to each seam allowance to account for any shrinkage, fraying or wonkiness which may occur. The fabric had already been dyed and washed once so shrinking or twisting wasn't likely, but pre-cutting your pieces before dyeing is a risky strategy. It all fit into my largest pot, so I began the dyeing process.

Problem 2. The instructions said that in order for the dye to bond to the polyester fibres, I needed to keep the mixture at a 'rolling boil' for 30-60 minutes. My pot never came to the boil - it was always on the edge of simmering. This was probably because I was using a stoneware crock pot, not a metal pan, but I'm a woman living alone - I don't own a 12 litre stew vat! Frankly, the fabric looked alarmingly orange as soon as I put it into the dye bath. I thought it would rinse out to yellow, and persevered. Because the mixture never boiled, I left it in just over an hour.

Oranges and lemons... balls.

I rinsed. ORANGE. Not even orangey-yellow, ORANGE. These pictures don't even show the full horror of just how exceedingly jaffa-hued it was. I put it through a normal wash cycle at 40C with an extra rinse. Oompa Loompa. I put it through a 60C intensive wash cycle. Colour of a pornstar's palms.

I decided it was time for desperate measures. I filled the sink with warm water and added 60ml (1/4cup) of household bleach, followed by the damp fabric pieces. Nothing. I doubled the bleach and agitated it for ten minutes... the water turned yellow but the fabric looked unchanged. I ended up with 300ml of bleach in the sink, and a mild chemical burn on my hands (no, I don't own rubber gloves. If I did they'd no doubt be orange by now). The fabric faded by a couple of shades, so I chucked it into the washing machine, thinking the residual bleach coupled with some heat and agitation would loosen the dye from the fibres. I whacked the temperature up to 90C.

Who ya gonna call?

Then this happened. So, yeah, turns out thick bleach foams in hot water. At least I can be sure that my washing machine's innards are utterly germ-free now.

Finally, I took the fabric out of the washer. It was still sodding orange, but it had definitely become lighter, and would probably be just about acceptable when it dried. Then, ULTIMATE HORROR!

Yep... the print which had survived four washes, two dyeing attempts, being just under boiling temperature for over an hour, and being soaked in a sink of toilet-strength bleach for half an hour, had given up the ghost and come off in the final wash, turning a vile shade of rusty brown. I was utterly dejected, and my dreams of the perfect dress went up in a puff of smoke. Just as this fabric will be doing when I burn it in the garden tomorrow and dance around nude, wailing at passers-by and smearing myself with its (no doubt bright orange) ashes.

By the way, the fabric, multiple dyes, salt, and copious amounts of electricity used cost me about £20. Bargain bin fabric? I think not.

Fucksticks.

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What I did on my Summer Holidays - Rebellion Punk Festival

So it seems that once again, I have fallen victim to that old devil, blog neglect! So here's the first in a series of recap posts of some of the fun stuff I did over the last couple of months! I'm going to write a few now then release them over this week to ease me back into regular writing.

During the first week of August we went off to Blackpool for Rebellion Festival! This is our Summer holiday every year, as unlike me, Aerospace Boyfriend doesn't get much time off to go to gigs during term time, so for him it's one big catch up.

Outfit, Day 1! I made the fascinator, necklace, bracelet and capri pants! This was my first foray into trouser-making and I have to say, I have no idea why I was always so nervous of it. They're easy! I bought a really basic capris pattern and have adjusted it to my measurements, it's proving invaluable. The pattern is Butterick 5614 and despite the mumsy-looking envelope photos, this is the perfect pattern for vintage-styled bad girl capris! The shoes are by Melissa and are so ridiculously comfortable and flexible that I can now wear heels for an entire festival.

Much horseplay was had by Areospace Boyfriend and our darling friends, possibly encouraged by the excessive consumption of Guinness and cider...

One of the absolute highlights of the festival for me was The Hillbilly Moon Explosion, they're one of my favourite bands at the moment and absolutely amazing live. Emanuela's coy stage presence and sweet, jazzy voice coupled with Oliver's rock 'n' roll showboating and the band's all-round passion made for a fantastic show, their songs are like beautiful lullabies interspersed with butt-shaking badass rockabilly rhythms and definitely worth checking out!

On the Friday night we saw King Kurt! These boys never fail to put on a great show! Thankfully the eggs, Marmite, jam etc. that their performances are notorious for were left at home, and the only antiquing we received was a light sprinkling of flour from a jubilant audience member. Some filthy comments from singer and reknowned pervert Smeggy even managed to get psychobilly-shunning Aerospace Boyfriend giggling and enjoying the scene's messiest stalwarts and we both had a great time.

Outfit, day 2: jeans, top and jacket all modified by me in various ways over the years, chopped up/dyed/embellished etc! The big mirror in the hallway of our hotel was perfect for taking ridiculously vain pictures of myself posing before we set out each day to watch the bands. I had pictures of days 3 and 4 but I appear to have lost them in a haze of whiskey and disorganisation.

The big headliners of the festival were Rancid and Social Distortion... I've loved both these bands for years, especially Rancid, but frankly the less said about them the better. I don't know whether the sound engineers were incompetent or whether it's just impossible to get a good result from hundreds of decibels bouncing around an arched, high-ceilinged, tunnel-shaped Victorian Ballroom covered in twiddly Rococo bits, but the sound in there was so bad that I could barely distinguish some of my favourite songs until they were almost over, which was really disappointing.

On a much more positive note, for me a huge highlight of the festival was having some brilliant aftershow gigs to go to, presented by Misery of Sound. Organiser Andy worked really hard to put some brilliant psychobilly and horrorpunk bands on and did really well! I missed the first one featuring Vince Ray and the Boneshakers, but the next two with Th'Loveless Bastards (featuring members of Mad Sin and The Hyperjax, keep an ear out for them!),  Luna Vegas and Graveyard Johnnys were absolutely storming, hence there aren't many pictures from these nights because everyone was either too drunk or too busy having fun!

I'll get moaned at for this by Aerospace Boyfriend who does not appreciate me taking a little of my love and giving it to other boys, but you need to watch this... my darling Welsh friends and favourite little rockstars, the Graveyard Johnnys:



If you're in Europe they'll soon be on tour, keep an eye on their facebook page, go and support them because they're lovely boys!

I also made two amazing new friends from Sweden and Holland Respectively, Marie-Louise and Ivo! These guys made my weekend and I hope to see them at the festival again next year, maybe sooner!

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Summer Updates!

Hello my darlings. It seems it's been a month since I last wrote a blog post - this is because I have spent the entire time either working or being drunk at festivals! I'm utterly exhausted.

I'll write a different post every day about all the stuff I've been doing, there's so much to cover. I'll start over a month ago, when Clare (from whom I have stolen a couple of these pictures) and I did a stall at the Bolton Tattoo Bazaar (they also run the Manchester Tattoo Tea party).

Here's our stall! I was just helping really so had a space for my hats on the end.

I saw my gorgeous friend Kitten! I'm wearing a dress I made and a lovely flower by Dolly Cool.

One of my hats graced the cover of Tattoo Revolution Magazine, on the beautiful head of my good friend Rachel Baldwin. She's pictured in her wedding gown, and the hat I made for her Las Vegas wedding! She married fellow amazing Tattooist Nick Baldwin, and their gorgeous work along with pictures of the ceremony were featured in the magazine. I'm so proud of her, she's been through a lot recently but shows such strength and puts so much love into her art. I'm also wearing new glasses! You can't see how beautifully green they are here, I'll get a better picture of them in all their Dame Edna glory.

I got new business cards! With my face on, because I'm vain, and my Twitter, facebook and blogspot address because I'm trying not to be such a huge technophobe. Please follow me!

I bought new eyeball colours for my Psychobilly Mini Top Hats! Also a marvellous Hillbilly Moon Explosion vinyl EP, but more about them in a post later this week!

That'll do for today, I need to ease myself back into blogging after such a long break! Coming up during the rest of this week: great bands you should know and love, fun at festivals, lots of pictures of me looking ridiculous and/or drunk, amazing leopard print capri pants sewing, vintage knitting, Aerospace Boyfriend's graduation!

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Sewing - finished aeroplanes halter dress!

Today I finished this dress. It's for Paul's graduation next week, he is being awarded his masters degree in Aerospace Engineering, so I thought I would make an appropriate outfit!

This is just a sneaky peek, there will also be a bolero, hat and shoes for you to see, which I will post pictures of after the occasion. The pattern was modified from the ScissorHappy Sarong Dress, but frankly it's nothing like the original now - I added the circle skirt instead of a sarong skirt, the halter strap is of my own design, and I also worked out how to create petal busts, all on my own! Squee! The fabric is a soft twill, American Folk Fabrics 'Flying High' from 1995 which I scored on etsy.

Here's a glimpse of another one I did with a petal bust, my squid dress! Which is now known as the dangerous squid dress, due to its effect on certain males last weekend. I've used this pattern so much since I bought it, and taught myself how to make lots of modifications, I'm now on my fifth creation from it! Who knew boning and petal busts were so easy?

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In which I have a fangirl moment over NOFX, and show you my amazing skirt.

I just realised I haven't blogged in nearly a month! I'm sorry, my dears, it's not that I've had nothing to report, I've just not had much motivation, I must have needed a little break but am back now!

Last week we went to see NoFX at the Ritz in Manchester, they were amazing! They have been my favourite band since I was about twelve, I've seen them twice before but they've gotten into the habit of doing crappy metal festival gigs like Download rather than proper tours, so I jumped at the chance to see them in a smaller venue (the Ritz only holds a few hundred at most). This is where I was standing. Support was from Snuff who are still going strong, Paul was more excited to see them than NoFX, being a child of the early nineties punk scene rather than a whippersnapper like myself.

Curse you, Showsec!

Last time I saw NoFX, in 2006 (or maybe it was 2007) they weren't that good, possibly due to their excessive intake of tequila-soaked carrot sticks and cocaine, but this time they were spot on. I got a place right down the front - see those blue, red and white blobs in the bottom left in front of the speaker? That's our friend Paul, my Paul, and my fantastical voluminous beehive hair. The hair that prompted Fat Mike to take a break from playing and singing to compliment me on it and gaze at it in wonder, and which contained such copious levels of backcombed, hairsprayed fuzz that it protected my head like a crash helmet when I got booted by a crowdsurfer.

Here is my plectrum from El Hefe, he was highly amused by my fringe and eyebrows.

Here's my outfit! Teal Me First and the Gimme Gimmes glittery cocktail print shirt which I bought when they toured about four years ago, this is Mike's other band, punk rock cheesy covers supergroup! This has been in my sewing pile ever since, I have only very recently gotten over my deep fear of wearing colours other than black and red on my top half. This was a man's shirt, I took it completely apart and remade it girl-shaped. (Side note: I've just noticed their UK dates for this year are the sodding Reading and Leeds festivals. Honestly, I will be so annoyed if they don't tour outside those dates, Reading and Leeds are total crud, extortionately priced festivals for gap-year students and stupid girls in Wellington boots and floaty hippie dresses, where you are likely to have your tent set on fire by public schoolboy hipsters off their faces on chemical toilet fumes or get hit in the face by a flying bottle of piss.)

Drunken blur action.

 
Yellow tartan skirt with braces! This is actually version two, I made one in September and loved it, but I made it a bit too tight and the loose weave fabric just pulled away at the seams. This is hopefully a more robust version that can accommodate the strain of encasing my gigantic rear. This is probably my favourite thing I have ever made, I have worn it every day since, it needs to go to the dry cleaner - there's only so many times you can air something out before it becomes a bit wrong to continue wearing it.

Sweaty! With Kel :)

New fruit hair tie from Clare at Dolly Cool, it's got an AVOCADO on it! My vegan joy knew no bounds when I saw its avocado goodness, and Clare was lovely enough to let me have it after we did a stall together at Big D's Ink, Iron and Hot Rod Show. This was from vintage fabric that she also made into a fabulous circle skirt!

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Outfit post: new circle skirt!

This week I went to a fabric shop I hadn't been to before, looking for pom-pom trim for a project I was working on for a friend, only to come home with no pom-pom trim but instead with three metres of cotton printed with deep sea anglerfish. You know, because anglerfish are so ravishingly attractive.


Here is a thoroughly educational comic strip about the plight of the poor male anglerfish and his miniature gonads.

Anyway, I made it into a circle skirt! I've made it with a tie at the waist to accommodate my ever decreasing and expanding waistline. Here I am posing in the park with Scamp.


I matched it with this aquatic hairclip by Miss Tiki Designs, and made some new bitey goose friends, who were already so stuffed with bread thrown by the horrid children who flooded the park as soon as the sun came out, that they turned their beaks up at my meagre crusts.


Must remember to bring food that geese actually like next time, I'm sure bread is not good for them.

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New Fabrics - Bambi and Retro Kitchen

I had a good rummage in the fabric bins at my usual shop in town today, looking for Hawaiian prints but found these instead!


Yay, retro kitchen gubbins! There is only a bit of this fabric, enough to make an amazing apron though!


Cute Bambi fabric! I want to make a skirt with this, although usually I only wear pencil skirts or circle skirts. It's too thin for a pencil skirt, but there isn't enough for a circle skirt. I may have to cut wide strips, stitch them together at the ends and do it as a border round the bottom of a full skirt, with a plain colour at the top.

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New Pattern!

I just received this pattern in the post from PatternCenter on etsy.


I've been looking for a vintage bolero pattern for so long! They're usually either way too small, or close at the neck which isn't the look I want. I tried drafting my own, but it ended up fitting badly so I'm glad to have this basic pattern in my collection.

Speaking of too small...


Look at this amazing Oriental dress pattern in the Pattern Center etsy shop! No wonder the woman on the envelope looks so smug. If you have a bust that's only a bit bigger than one of my legs, it's for you!

Now I have a decent bolero pattern, I will be making lots of little jackets to go with my Summer dresses, just like these cute ones from Vivien of Holloway!


In other news... I cut out all the pieces for my Wartime Dress from Vogue 8936 and will be working on it this week!

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