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.

sewmsewmsewm.

zoom zoom zoom,
I actually made some progress with my dirndl :)

I've sewn the braids onto the top, and I did this, not that typical for me, per mano.

But it just doesn't look right when you see the stitches, so I decided to sew them onto the fabric per hand, and the stitches are invisible now :)

Took me really long time, but I really like it.
Yeah, it looks crooked, but the top is still just pinned together ;)
Next thing is making the bias tape and - again - a lot of hand sewing.

Will take me a while, college keeps me busy. I hope you don't get bored ;)

my little princess

On monday I made a baby sweatshirt and two bibs.
Very girly, very me, very PINK!

My cute little princess *heart*

It's my first baby jersey shirt, so there are still some little *hmm* bugs in it ;)
Like, sewing the overlapping overlock seam right in the back of the seam, where you can totally see it^^

But nevertheless I like the shirt. I used a pattern of some Ottobre mag earlier this year, provided by her mother.
She sews a lot of really awesome stuff too, I just provide some pink (and later a bit goth ;) ) material for the girls wardrobe!

And two not very spectacular bibs, I bought the fabrics in Helsinki especially for sewing "something cute" for the princess. They did have a lot of really cute fabrics for patchworking and stuff, but I don't do any patchwork (yet).


I reaally liked the Disney picture "kiss the frog". Note: Buy DVD!

I hope the mother and princess will be happy with my stuff :)


De.Nocte

Recycling, Military, Nerd, Cliché - I like!

First of all: No more braces for Denocte ;) Yay!




All the years I'm in the subculture now there are a few things I've never worn.
e.g. torn tights with holes and stuff on my arms. Or hotpants with some kind of stockings.
And I've never put some functional stuff, like gears or components on clothing, just because it looks good (which, to be honest, it just doesn't in most cases.)

Until this weekend ;)
This weekend I thought I could embrace cliché for once and celebrate that I finally got rid of my braces.
Because, to be honest, a military end of the world outfit just works a lot better without teenagerbraces in your mouth.

All started with this ring.
It's really simple, I just glued a CPU onto a ring. But I just love it! It's cute, and cool, and you can wear it in everyday live as well as in the evenings when going out.

But, then, problem: I didn't have any outfit to go with the ring. So the whole "doing stuff I've never done before" thing started.
I upcycled an old corset of mine. I've sewn it 5 yrs ago, worn it once. It's too small now around the hips, but we can fix that ;)
Originally it was just plain satin camouflage fabric, half bust. When I was done with it it looked like this:

I added some leather clasps in the front, a lot of studs, tulle and straps. left and right I just cut the corset open with zig-zag scissors and added a "lining" made from tulle. Hips-problem solved.

The colours of the rest of my components are in perfect harmony with my corset, don't you think ;)

An some of the straps I strapped on the, perfectly ruined, cut off jeans pants.

 

The upper part of the Jeans was my handbag for the night, which can be worn over your shoulder as well as around your hips to ensure maximum comfort while dancing.
And I added some stuff too. Simply black is not enough for this night ;)

I hope you like it, it was a totally new experience for me to actually destroy something I've sewn. But I liked wearing it, so I think it was worth it.


Denocte

The Beethoven Dress - Opus 24 - Spring

Now the secret sewing is finished - a week ago I gave the dress to its new proud owner.


I'm very happy that she allowed me to show some pictures of her wearing the dress, because it just looks so awesome on her!

My good friend S. studied the violin and is now officially "Master of Arts".

Congratulations again, we're so proud!

She gave a concert were she played all the stuff she prepared for her final exam, including the really beautiful Beethoven Sonata "Spring" (Opus 24).
And it just struck me. Sitting there in this small church listening to her really touching interpretation of Spring, I knew it: I had to sew a dress.

I gave the whole thing a lot of thought, everything is really exactly like I imagined. Beethoven's Sonata fits so well to S's start to a new life, life after college etc ;)

I chose the colours red-black-white for a reason:
Red - the new joy of spring after a long winter
black - the melancholy that always stays
white - it's the universal colour of eternity for me.

You see, the perfect Music for a new start to a new life...

Enough psychology, here it is:

That's what Beethovens Spring would look like, if it was a dress ;)








I presented the first drawings in the last posting, I chose the second one in the end.


The straps are adjustable. The button in the middle is just because it looks nice, it doesn't actually hold anything on place ;)




As some devoted readers might have noticed, I actually used this fabric for a dress before - Summertime for Surferbabe, remember?. But I didn't have any fabric left, so I'm very very thankful that victorien, a fellow User of Natronundsoda found the fabric for me!


Special Feature:
There's a part of the sheet music of the theme of the sonata printed on the inside of the dress, Thank you Mademoiselle Chaos for your tutorial how to print onto almost anything using not more than paint thinner, q-tips, something flat and a laser printer!
Unfortunately, it doesn't look that good on the pics. It looks really nice in real life ;)






I also made a hairbandthingy, I put some tiny beads on it. Since it's a very stretchy fabric, I had to sew every bead on its own. But it was worth it.







If you're interested in the "pattern", the dress is really not that hard to make.
You basically need just the following parts:

Stuff for the upper part: (The skirt is just a rectangle)
The lining for the back isn't shown on this pic, because I still had to print the extra feature when I took this pic ;)



If someone is interested in a detailed walk-through, please just ask. I'll make another dress using this "pattern" for myself and maybe I'll write a tutorial :)
Until now you have put up with the german-english mix ;)


I hope you like it,

denocte