Anna Plochl wants to dance

Yes I'm still alive.

And I'm still sewing.

But I just never never have pictures taken of the things I sew - a pity!

Last week I did a little "tournee": starting in Linz, to Vienna, to Hamburg, to Berlin - meeting a lot of friends old and new and going out.
A bit more than I'm used to.

In Vienna we spent one evening at the Vienna Steampunk Revue, and since I don't like "the S-Word" I don't own any S-Clothing, but there was formal evening wear accepted so the perfect excuse to wear my ball gown:

The Anna Plochl Cathedral memory gown.

Anna Plochl was married to Austrian archduke Johann in 1829, wearing this beautiful beautiful dress.
I'm in love. So I did shape this dress after the pictures we have of Anna Plochl, and the dress that Austrian traditional clothing company Gössl made a couple of years ago.

The bodice is made from cotton lining and a very strange but beautiful fabric with velvet flowers on it and silver glitter.
The skirt is this "I don't look like poly but I am" fabric with the most awesome print I've ever seen, it always reminds me of church windows or the arches of cathedrals or alike. Love it.

The blouse is the one I made for my last dirndl dress (yes it's finished, I just don't have any pics... gna) and I wear the most awesome shoes ever made:

It was a great evening, thank you girls for being such great company.

Christmas Swap

Well, I haven't been here for a while :(

Due to a lot of exams and tests in college I had to cut down on my sewing time.
Anyway, there's a tiny teeny little thing I made and I can finally show it now :)

I participated in NatronundSodas Christmas Swap/Secret Santa, and picked a nice little wish.

A user wished for a dress for her babygirl, a bit christmas-cute-kitschy.

That's the perfect wish for me!

So I've managed to find this cute candy fabric in my friends drawer (thanks honey!) and I made a tiny candygirl dress.

The top has got some lining with bats on it, I bought the fabric in Helsinki last summer and it's so cute!
The skirt part is made from thick nice cotton jersey.

I added some big stitches per Hand because I think it's very cute having the pink yarn on the dark grey Bat-Fabric:

The straps are fastened with braces.

It's a baaaat world!

Extremely cute Candy fabric:

And I've got a very cute bag from Giftzwergin to transport my music sheets for my cello lessons.

But it's so great, I'll use it for other stuff too ;)

 

Marie thinks it would be a nice sleeping bag. No, darling. No ;)

Thank you for the beautiful bag!


Cu,


Denocte

bias progress

A liiiittle progress with my dirndl.
I started finishing the neckline with bias tape, ergo sewing per mano again. I kind of like it now.
It's very... relaxing in some ways :)

Ok, so I've already sewn the bias tape to the neckline last time.
Next step is folding the tape around the seam allowances (if they aren't narrow enough, cut them back, I already left very little seam allowance on the neckline from the beginning), and pin it with some needles.

Iron it.

Remove the pin needles piece by piece and fold the bias tape so you get a nice seam on the inside too and don't see any seam allowances anymore.
Insert the needles again.

Since there are many nice tutorials how to make and attach bias tape (e.g. this one)out there, I spare you of my drawing skills ;)

I will open the seam on the V-cut neckline again, it's a bit crooked atm. But I'll change it soon ;)

Isn't this fabric just WONDERFUL?
With flashlight:

And without:

And, help me pleeease:


I'm just noticing, the dress does look lovely with my fake-fur sheepskin... Maybe I should sew some winter scarf or something to wear with the dress? 

Or is it just me in my "can't wait to have snow here" delusion?


And tomorrow is knitting thursday again, yay!
I hope my cats haven't eaten all my knitting needles yet. They really seem to love my bamboo needles.
(and yes, I keep my knitting out of their way, but they tend to be very creative when it comes to open stuff they are NOT supposed to....)


Cu tomorrow,

Denocte

Dirndl Mock Up: It's a Dress!

Yesterday I pinned the top and the skirt together to just try it on and have a look, whether I'm on the right trip or not.

And, yes, it does look right :)

I spare you the pics of me wearing it, furthermore there aren't any buttons in it yet so I always need both hands to hold the dress on its place - no hand left for taking pictures *grin*

tada:

Front:

Back:

Next thing I have to do:
Make A LOT of bias tape and finish the front and back parts of the top before sewing them together.
Then add the skirt, add some buttons and sew an apron.

If you read it, it does sound very small work left... but finishing the top will take me some time I guess. And choosing which buttons I want will take a lot of work too^^

Oh, and buying fabric for the apron. It should be black, but that's all I know for now.

And buying fabric for the blouse. Again, should be black, but what fabric? Chiffon? Nice thin cotton? Help?

cu,

De.Nocte

New WiP, Dirndl it is again!

One might say that because I recently made a Dirndl Dress, I'd need some kind of pause before sewing the next one.

Well, no.
There seems to be a strange kind of addiction to Dirndl Dresses. I just can't stop thinking about new models and designs and patterns!


But this Dirndl is a premiere for me to, it's not a traditional Dress, but more a fashion Dirndl.
I do use a traditional pattern though, but the colours are all modern this time.

And I shortened it, too. Not this horrible modern "Dirndl-Oktoberfest-Crap", you can buy on ebay or in Japan, - length, but just kneelength.


The pattern I use is another Innviertler Dress, but not the same I used for my Ikara Dress.

This one will be similar to the Rieder Festtagstracht, the red Dress in the picture:

For my birthday I got the fabrics for the dress, and the brooche will go lovely with them:





I already started with the top, altered it to my size

and tried how it looks with braids.

In order to decrease the very unflattering plaits of taffeta which I'll use for the skirt, I won't ruffle ("stifteln) the skirt but will fold it in rather large plaits, every plait overlapping the next one about one half of its length. This and some extra weight in the seam should hopefully prevent me from looking like a giant cupcake. hm.



And I'll finally get to wear my Lorien Necklace from "Die Perlenzwerge" <3

 

 

 

Have a nice weekend, enjoy the lovely weather!

De.Nocte

Flight of Icara

On Sunday _the Day_ finally was there:

At the "Gössl Dirndlflugtag 2011" I jumped down 4m into a "lake" wearing my brand new Dirndldress and feathers and wings and accessories etc etc.

It was a lot of fun and I definitely want to take part in this contest again next year! Maybe with some more advanced jump to have a chance at the prizes ;)

You can see detailed pics of the parts of the dress in my last blogentry, so I'll just post the "action pics" in this posting.

Thanks a lot to all the people who helped me realize this project. It was very important to me, I finally managed to defeat my fear of heights.