Hello all, for this months Minerva project I made a wardrobe staple - a pair of navy trousers. I chose an Italian wool/viscose Stretch Suiting Fabric. A nice natural fibre combo with a little bit of stretch added in for comfort. You can read all about the making process on the blog here.
Thanks for reading, to Minerva Crafts for the supplies for this project and to Bethan for taking the photos!
Lauren xx
Hello all! Now it's time to tell you about the making of the penultimate part of my outfit, the jumper. But before I could even start to learn how to knit, I had to dye the wool. The wool is Bluefaced Leicester Roving which is a DK/worsted weight and I bought 5 x 100g hanks for £45.48 which would be enough for my jumper. After reading through Jenny Dean's book, 'Wild Colour' I bookmarked all of the colours that I liked and then worked out which were available to me. The quantity of plant matter you need for natural dyeing has to be equal to the weight of the fibre so this essentially narrowed my choices down to one ingredient: elderberries. Luckily in the summer the hedgerows were full of them and I could easily find the quantity that I needed for no money whatsoever. (Many thanks to Andrea for pointing me in the right direction to find them.)
First I washed the wool and made sure it was thoroughly wet. While it was soaking I crushed and simmered the berries for 1 hour and strained off the dye liquid.
I added the dye liquid and alum (the mordant) into the pot, added the wool and simmered it for 1 hour. Then the heat was turned off and the dye was left to soak in the fibres as much as possible overnight.
Below you can see how much dye the wool had taken after a couple of hours.
All in all, I have mixed feelings about how it turned out. The ratio of berries to fibre gave me very muted colours. Next time I'd increase the ratio of berries. There's some surprise blue in there which I wasn't expecting. This could be because the alum was added to the dye pot, as opposed to mordanting the fibre beforehand. It could also be because I didn't untwist each hank before I put it in the dye pot. If all 5 hanks were just in 1 loop as they are on the washing line in the dye pot I don't think they would have fit and I would be concerned about them getting all tangled together. It is something to consider next time though. The mixed colour palette has grown on me and I think it looks very nicely variegated once the jumper is knitted up.
Thanks for reading,
Lauren xx
Hello all! This is the point in my British Outfit project in which I go properly out of my depth. I have never attempted shoes before, and here I am attempting to do it with British materials, making the job at hand 100 times harder. When researching making shoes I decided that I had 3 options: clogs, ballet pumps or espadrilles. Ballet pumps were quickly out of the equation because glue is heavily featured in their construction. I decided that espadrilles would be my best bet if I could just source some British rope. Unfortunately, as far as I could find out, British rope does not exist. This left me with one option: clogs. I was very much inspired by Carolyn's clog making and decided that if she could do it, I could too. This meant that I had to try and find some British wood. Luckily I had to look no further than my Dad for this information. A keen cricketer, he was quick to point me to Hunts County Bats, a company that makes British cricket bats from British willow. I gave them a ring and a lovely man named Tony invited me to his workshop and said he'd see what he could do.
The first step was to draw around a template of my foot that I had handily prepared. That guideline was then used to trim the block to the rough shape of my foot.
The next step was to cut in the heel and the arch, and also gently shape the top of the shoe. This was very much guesstimated as we had no point of reference.
When we had the shape that we wanted, Tony sanded them down using an electric sander to make them super smooth. You can see the difference it makes in the picture below, (left shoe sanded, right shoe unsanded).
And there we have it, my beautiful clog bases! I can't thank Tony enough for his help. Without him this would have involved many hours of struggle, and I think this whole process took less than an hour.
I oiled my clog bases with linseed oil (Thank you Dad for having it in the cupboard all ready to go) to make them a bit more waterproof and give them a nice shine. In the picture below the bottom clog has been oil and the top clog is unoiled.
The next step was to source some leather for the uppers. It proved to be a bit of a minefield to find leather that fit the requirements that it had to be British made with no chemical processes. It turns out that most leather (even if it is manufactured in the UK) is Chrome tanned, which is a chemical process that is quicker and therefore more cost effective than the more traditional technique of vegetable tanning leather. When I did find British veg tanned leather, it still wasn't feasible to use it for my project because most leather suppliers sell leather by the hide. I only wanted a square foot for the uppers of my sandals and couldn't afford to pay the £100+ that these hides cost. Luckily I found the company Tanner Bates who produce handmade leather goods using traditional skills, who agreed to supply me with a foot of oak-tanned leather for £30, which was much more within my means.
Whilst I was looking for British leather for my uppers I came across Thomas Ware and Sons, who supply English sole leather. I thought that I was all set for soles with my wooden clog bases, but I contacted them anyway and they very kindly sent me samples of their different soles: full soles, half soles, heels and insoles. I decided to attach the half soles and heels to my clog bases to give the soles of my clogs some more grip, and to prolong the life of my shoes. Unfortunately the only way to do this is glue, and this is where I had to compromise. I used Evo-Stik contact adhesive which is at least manufactured in the UK if not made from British materials. The way it works is that you apply the glue on both of the surfaces you want to adhere to each other, you let it dry until it becomes tacky, and then stick them together. Then I trimmed off the excess leather with a stanley knife which was quite a painful process, especially near the heel of the shoe.
The next step was to work out the design which was very much directed by the lack of fastening needed. I could have easily gone for a slip on design, but I like having my heel supported and I needed these to be wearable for me. After I looked at some inspiration images on Pinterest I played with bits of paper until I had what I wanted, and then cut the shapes out of leather.
After I cut the leather out I found it really hard to try and get the fit right on the shoe base. In the end I had to resort to using my tutors unicorn duct tape to try and get the leather to stay where I wanted it to, but then this needed moving when the nails were hammered in. There was no way of marking the strap placement on the wood which made the whole thing a bit of a struggle.
Next it was time to nail the leather to the wooden base. I was originally very proud to find British made iron nails but then I was informed that they weren't suitable for my shoes and that they would split the wood. Ring shank nails were recommended to me as an alternative (the ring shank acts a bit like a screw and makes sure that they stay in the wood) but unfortunately these nails are definitely not British made. I'm quite sad about this, as this is the only element of my entire outfit that isn't at least partially British. However, there was no other way to get the leather to stick to the wood so that compromise had to be made.
I was very much a novice when it came to hammering in my nails. Hammering nails in straight is hard! Sadly, when I was hammering in the nails on my second shoe it went too close to the top and split the wood (as you can see in the far left picture below). After a bit of a cry and a phone call with Dad I popped down to the scenic department to see what their advice would be. Luckily Michael knew exactly what to do. We got the wonky nail out, stuck down the splintered wood with PVA glue (I know not British but it was an emergency) and then drilled a new path for the nail which wouldn't split the wood again. The middle picture below is just after the repair and the picture on the right is after it's all been sanded down. Almost as good as new!
In the picture below you can see how the nails look on the shoes. Some of them are straighter than others, but it was a very steep learning curve. I'm really angry with myself that I sharpied the cutting lines on the back of the leather. I completely forgot that the wrong side of the material would be seen. Pencil would have been just as functional.
I cut a very thin strip of leather to act as a cord to tie around my ankle as a strap. Unfortunately it doesn't tie very well and I think the thin width of the tie is very much at odds with the widths of the leather strips on the rest of the shoe. I'm thinking about making some fabric ties for the ankle straps instead. As the clog bases are handmade, they are very much sisters and not twins. This meant that it was nigh on impossible to make the crossed leather on the front of each shoe look even. Even though it measures even, it still looks a bit off which is frustrating.
The clogs have probably been the trickiest aspect of my British outfit so far, purely because I was going into the whole thing blind, with very little knowledge and experience. I am very proud of them though, scars and all, and I look forward to seeing how well they wear in the next month or so.
Thank you very much to Dave and Michael in the Scenic department who were there for me everytime I had a question or dilemma. Your recommendations were invaluable. Thank you to Alex for lending me a sharper knife and to Amy and Bethan for holding my shoes down while I hammered the nails in and for taping my feet when I asked them too.
Just the jumper and the trousers left to go!
Lauren xx
Hello all! Today I have a new underwear set to share with you. I'm going to call this my first 'proper bra' because I've only previously made bralettes and this is my first time making an underwired bra.
I went to Amsterdam in September, and a big motivator behind the trip was getting to go to the lingerie fabric shop there. I ended up walking about an hour and a half out of the city centre to get there and almost got blown away by the wind but it was worth it when I found the shop and the treasures it contained within. I spent a long time looking through all of the fabrics for 'the one' and this dark pink-purple stretch lace was the winner. It was however, very hard to match everything else. The straps were the closest match that I could find, and a purple powermesh was the best match for the lining and band.
I was given the Cloth Habit Harriet Bra pattern for my birthday so there was no excuse but to start making! I measured myself as a 28B (which is my regular size) and got cracking. I quickly established that the bra cups were too small, remeasured and cut out the 28D cups. I left the band as it was to save fabric, but next time I'd cut out the 28D all round. I'm not going to lie, it was very exciting to have to size up to a D cup and I told all of my friends.
After I cut out the larger cup size everything went together swimmingly. Below you can see the insides. I love how neat the finish is, but I wish I'd bought matching channeling in Amsterdam. I did buy rings and sliders while I was there, but I can't find them now so just sewed the straps straight onto the bra. I might add some metal rings and sliders later. The only alteration I made to the pattern was to cut the back band out in laces as well, as I wanted the entire bra to be lace.
For the pants I wanted the scallops on the waist and leg holes but wasn't quite sure how to go about it as it's quite a narrow lace. I ended up cutting out some boy short type things but the lace was too narrow and they sat far too low. I took a chance and added a gusset which actually did the trick perfectly.
I lined the pants completely with viscose jersey scraps left over from a minerva project because I wasn't a fan of the concept of see-through pants. Although the scalloped edges are obviously already finished I wanted to stabilize them with some elastic and figured out an ingenious way to also enclose the gusset seam allowance within that (shown below). The elastic also did the trick of securing the lining.
So that's my new set of underwear! This is actually the first underwire bra I've ever owned, so I'm looking forward to taking it out for a test run and seeing what I think to it. As a first impression, I'm so impressed at how flat the bridge sits, which is obviously thanks to the underwires. The pants are also a bit of a new style for me so we'll see how comfy they are in comparison to my normal ones. I have some lace and elastic left over but not enough bra strapping so I think I'll make another pair of pants to match the bra. Maybe in a more standard brief style though.
Thank you very much for reading and to Abby for taking the pictures!
Lauren xx
Now I have my shirt buttons all ready to go, it's time to move onto the shirt. I could have easily chosen to make a wrap shirt and called it job done. However, I really wanted a white classic shirt in my wardrobe. This meant making my own buttons (see previous blog post), but I knew that it would get worn infinitely more. Plus it would be good to have a decent shirt pattern in my arsenal.
I used the classic shirt block from Winnie Aldrich's basic patterncutting book and made no alterations on paper. I cut it out in the main fabric which was silk habotai. It was somewhat of a novelty at this point to be able to use the fabric straight away without any long dye processes beforehand. The closest I could get to British silk thread was thread outsourced from Turkey but with the finishing done in Macclesfield, UK. I tacked it all together for the first fitting, and in the fitting I raised the back neckline, raised the sleeve so it sat more at my shoulder and pinned out some of the excess width in the sleeve. You can see the original sleeve on the left side of the shirt and the altered sleeve on the right.
For the second fitting I drafted, cut out and attached the collar and cuffs with the updated collar measurement. In the fitting I pinned out some more excess at the underarm and in the sleeve so it would hang evenly. Excess was also pinned out of the cuff and the sleeve width. 3cm was taken out of the side seam. I found it surprisingly tricky to get my shirt the right amount of 'oversized'.
I had a quick 3rd fitting after these changes were made and the only change I made was to add 1cm to the sleeve and cuff width.
Then it was time to get cracking on the construction for real. I started with burrito-ing the yoke and quickly learned that top-stitching and silk habotai do not play well together.
I chose to do tower plackets on the sleeves, but I think in hindsight they are a tad too heavy for this fabric. They are neat though, and I am proud of them. Silk organza was used as interfacing.
I french seamed all of the insides as delicately as possible, including the sleeve heads.
The collar I did using the method I learnt from this blog post years ago. It never fails to give me a neat collar.
I cut strips of organza bias binding and used that to finish the hem.
After referring to my shirt making book I marked 7 buttonholes down the centre front of the shirt. The first is 5.5cm from the top of the buttonstand and the rest 8.5cm apart. Then there is on horizontal button in the middle of each cuff. I don't like the fact that the buttons are unevenly spaced at the top. I think it looks messy and that I can't measure accurately. I'd space them evenly next time.
And that's my shirt finished! Now it's just the trousers, jumper and shoes to go.
Thanks for reading!
Lauren xx