The 5-hour fantastic Cape
Oct. 29th, 2007 02:09 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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craftgrrlHemming other people's dresses by hand sometimes leads to last-minute inspiration...
NO! It's GOTH MOTH!
If you please, to ignore the frayed edges and loose threads. I pulled this thing from my stash of fabric in less than 2 days, and finished 30 minutes overdue for the Hallowe'en ball on Friday. I have since pulled out all loose threads and tidied up the fringe on the red appliques. I found The Perfect Edge Fringe Ever, but it was $10/m (and that was already marked down 50%!), there were only 5m on the bolt, and I needed 7.5m to cover the hem. *le sigh*)
The red outer fabric started life as a round outdoor patio table cloth ($3 at Goodwill), with a Velcro closure to the centre so it could be positioned around an umbrella post. I removed the Velcro tapes and spread the piece on my floor (lots of help from the cats). I positioned my white drapery voile (3m, remnants bin, maybe $2 for the piece) over it, and did my level best to cut the wedges the right shape and size for maximum coverage. I carefully picked up and pieced the voile together with my serger (love sergers!), laid it out again over the red outer fabric, and cut the neck opening where the umbrella post would have gone. It is longer in front than in the back, for maximum arc effect. After Googling butterfly and moth images, I cut a triangle from both pieces at the centre back, just enough to give the illusion of wing separation. You can't see it in this picture, nor in any pictures of the back. Oh, well. (Lesson here: use a smaller circle!) I referenced the butterfly and moth images for the red voile appliqués you see on the lining, and cut the shapes across the grain.
I folded the lining in half along its centre-front and centre-back (so left and right edges met), to make it easier to work with on the floor, and PIN, PIN, PINNED the appliqués through BOTH layers of voile. This was important because I wanted to duplicate the position of the appliqués on the other wing. It was about 5pm on Friday night, at this time, and I had to be at the Hallowe'en Ball by 6pm, so I did a hasty zig-zag zoom 1/2" inside the appliqués' edges, and pulled all the threads I could find to the wrong side of the lining. Voile-on-voile is tricky. If I wowed the pieces, they don't show, and I don't need them pointed out to me. :-) For the neck, I faced it with 2" wide hem tape. I pinned it to the neck edge of the RED OUTER FABRIC, right sides together, pleating it to ease it around the curves, and stitched in the fold of the tape. I pre-pressed that seam allowance as best I could without clipping the curve, because I would have to use a lower temperature on my iron for the more fragile voile lining. Then I pinned and stitched the voile lining neck opening right side to right side of red outer fabric (so the tape was sandwiched between), stitched it down, clipped, turned, pressed with a lower heat setting, and topstitched the tape down on the outer edge. I used red thread in the bobbin, and white thread in the needle -- so I wouldn't have to have any stitches show at the neck on the inside or the outside.
Then I matched and pinned the front edges of the lining to the outer fabric at the hem, matching corners and giant notch in the back, and SERGED all the way around. (With white thread, expecting to have The Perfect Trim applied at a future date, but that is not meant to be, alas.) The finishing touch: two 1/4" wood dowels I found in the storage closet, left over from my husband's previous furniture-building forays, between 12" and 15" long, each. It didn't matter at this point that they were slightly different lengths. I folded the opening edges under, stitched a channel down the length, slipped a dowel into each side, and stitched the bottoms shut. INSTANT WING EXTENSIONS. I got the large gold-look buttons free in a scrap-swap, and I had to anchor the cape on my shoulders with "maternity" button-hole elastic: it slips over the left button, runs under my arms across my back, and slips over the right button. If I didn't anchor it, it would slide back on my neck, ruining the effect of the vulgar bosom, its candelabra necklace (purchased specifically for that costume from a beader at my farmers' market), and choking me.
I was going to put on fangs and call myself a Vampire Moth, who only goes out at night (har har), but my 9-year-old daughter took a look at me and shrieked: "GOTH MOTH! Mom, you're a GOTH MOTH!"
Oh, and I took her butterfly antennae headband, cut off most of the spiral coil antennae, and hot-glued a couple of ostrich feathers into the remaining 1" of coil for my moth antennae. Our feather duster will never be the same... *smirk* Darn thing gives me a headache, though.
I've posted the green costume here before; the vest is lined with the same fabric (another patio tablecloth) as the cape, so it made sense to haul out the booby-smusher costume for the complete look.
Cross-posted to the usual suspects.
NO! It's GOTH MOTH!
If you please, to ignore the frayed edges and loose threads. I pulled this thing from my stash of fabric in less than 2 days, and finished 30 minutes overdue for the Hallowe'en ball on Friday. I have since pulled out all loose threads and tidied up the fringe on the red appliques. I found The Perfect Edge Fringe Ever, but it was $10/m (and that was already marked down 50%!), there were only 5m on the bolt, and I needed 7.5m to cover the hem. *le sigh*)
The red outer fabric started life as a round outdoor patio table cloth ($3 at Goodwill), with a Velcro closure to the centre so it could be positioned around an umbrella post. I removed the Velcro tapes and spread the piece on my floor (lots of help from the cats). I positioned my white drapery voile (3m, remnants bin, maybe $2 for the piece) over it, and did my level best to cut the wedges the right shape and size for maximum coverage. I carefully picked up and pieced the voile together with my serger (love sergers!), laid it out again over the red outer fabric, and cut the neck opening where the umbrella post would have gone. It is longer in front than in the back, for maximum arc effect. After Googling butterfly and moth images, I cut a triangle from both pieces at the centre back, just enough to give the illusion of wing separation. You can't see it in this picture, nor in any pictures of the back. Oh, well. (Lesson here: use a smaller circle!) I referenced the butterfly and moth images for the red voile appliqués you see on the lining, and cut the shapes across the grain.
I folded the lining in half along its centre-front and centre-back (so left and right edges met), to make it easier to work with on the floor, and PIN, PIN, PINNED the appliqués through BOTH layers of voile. This was important because I wanted to duplicate the position of the appliqués on the other wing. It was about 5pm on Friday night, at this time, and I had to be at the Hallowe'en Ball by 6pm, so I did a hasty zig-zag zoom 1/2" inside the appliqués' edges, and pulled all the threads I could find to the wrong side of the lining. Voile-on-voile is tricky. If I wowed the pieces, they don't show, and I don't need them pointed out to me. :-) For the neck, I faced it with 2" wide hem tape. I pinned it to the neck edge of the RED OUTER FABRIC, right sides together, pleating it to ease it around the curves, and stitched in the fold of the tape. I pre-pressed that seam allowance as best I could without clipping the curve, because I would have to use a lower temperature on my iron for the more fragile voile lining. Then I pinned and stitched the voile lining neck opening right side to right side of red outer fabric (so the tape was sandwiched between), stitched it down, clipped, turned, pressed with a lower heat setting, and topstitched the tape down on the outer edge. I used red thread in the bobbin, and white thread in the needle -- so I wouldn't have to have any stitches show at the neck on the inside or the outside.
Then I matched and pinned the front edges of the lining to the outer fabric at the hem, matching corners and giant notch in the back, and SERGED all the way around. (With white thread, expecting to have The Perfect Trim applied at a future date, but that is not meant to be, alas.) The finishing touch: two 1/4" wood dowels I found in the storage closet, left over from my husband's previous furniture-building forays, between 12" and 15" long, each. It didn't matter at this point that they were slightly different lengths. I folded the opening edges under, stitched a channel down the length, slipped a dowel into each side, and stitched the bottoms shut. INSTANT WING EXTENSIONS. I got the large gold-look buttons free in a scrap-swap, and I had to anchor the cape on my shoulders with "maternity" button-hole elastic: it slips over the left button, runs under my arms across my back, and slips over the right button. If I didn't anchor it, it would slide back on my neck, ruining the effect of the vulgar bosom, its candelabra necklace (purchased specifically for that costume from a beader at my farmers' market), and choking me.
I was going to put on fangs and call myself a Vampire Moth, who only goes out at night (har har), but my 9-year-old daughter took a look at me and shrieked: "GOTH MOTH! Mom, you're a GOTH MOTH!"
Oh, and I took her butterfly antennae headband, cut off most of the spiral coil antennae, and hot-glued a couple of ostrich feathers into the remaining 1" of coil for my moth antennae. Our feather duster will never be the same... *smirk* Darn thing gives me a headache, though.
I've posted the green costume here before; the vest is lined with the same fabric (another patio tablecloth) as the cape, so it made sense to haul out the booby-smusher costume for the complete look.
Cross-posted to the usual suspects.
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