celtic braid coat | Tien Chiu's Blog

August 6, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Piecing

I finished the outside shell of the Celtic Braid Coat yesterday, and decided I didn’t like it. The silk noil is black, all right, but not the deep black of the suede. So, placed next to each other, the noil looks like it’s charcoal, not black, and just doesn’t play well:

two blacks - "black" silk and blacker suede — two blacks – “black” silk and blacker suede

So I’ve decided to do the entire vest in leather. Do I have enough? Not enough to do four solid panels, but enough to do two solid back panels, plus a lot of scraps that I am cutting up to make the side panels.

Now, if you’re going to piece a panel, you may as well make it look intentional. So I am putting a “braid” pattern into the leather on the side panels:

pieced side panel - pattern piece — pieced side panel – pattern piece

And here is what it will look like in leather:

pieced side panel - in leather — pieced side panel – in leather

The pieces will be smaller, of course (the cut pieces include a 3/8″ seam allowance), and the piping will go between all the pieces, to emphasize the braid pattern. (If you got it, flaunt it!)

I’m actually on the fence about the piping. I love the look, but am afraid that it will interfere with flattening the leather seam and also add too much bulk to the side seams. I’ll probably sew up a small sample to see if it works.

One of the reasons I selected this particular pattern – aside from its fitting well into the theme – is that there are no places where multiple seamlines meet. I had considered a chevron pattern, but with two seams meeting at the tip, it would have been nightmarish in thick black leather.

Anyway, I’m in the process of cutting out the leather, and will start sewing it up tonight. I’m thinking I may temporarily revert to the Bernette – the Bernina 830 makes a little grindy/rattly noise when it starts up that is worrisome. I think I will take it to the shop for tuning.

I have also scheduled two dye play days! One with Sharon next Sunday, and another with a coworker the following weekend. That should allow me to make a dent in the two dozen items (plus yardage) I have to dye.

July 31, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Destined to dye

I’m starting to accumulate clothing in need of color:

one new terry cloth bathrobe (the old one being quite threadbare)
seven button-down shirts, suitable for work if dyed conservatively enough
half a dozen white T-shirts
one or two sports bras
three pairs of bamboo socks
three pairs of cotton socks
3 pairs of sweatpants

…and probably other stuff I haven’t dug out yet.

The only possible way to handle this, of course, is to have myself a dyefest: mix up dyestocks, print Thermofax screens, carve katazome stencils, melt the soy wax, haul out the fabric paint – and have fun with it all! I’m thinking not this weekend but maybe the weekend after (so either August 11 or 18) – a lot depends on when Mike finishes putting in the outdoor dye sink. Soon, I hope!

Meanwhile, I have mostly been trying to wrap my head around some esoteric topics in double weave, for an upcoming guild study group meeting. But in between banging my head on double weave, I have managed to understitch about half the cape, and hope to finish it tomorrow or the day after. Once that’s done and the seam allowances trimmed, the cape will be more-or-less done, and I can start working on the vest pattern. I’ve decided to use the Celtic Braid panel in the vest, which (to answer Pat’s question) I don’t intend to wear open. The cape is heavy enough that I suspect it would drag unattractively at the vest if the neck closure isn’t fastened. I’ll need to make a few modifications to the vest pattern to make it work with the panel, and I suspect another muslin may be in order, just to make sure I’ve gotten it right.

The other thing I’ve done is write up the lesson plan for my upcoming workshop on the creative process. It’s turning out quite well; I’m pleased with the learning activities and the cadence of the exercises. The first run will be in October, for one of my guilds (Black Sheep Handweavers); then I’ll be offering it for a guild in Texas next March. I’m hoping it goes well and the students get a new look at ways to generate and explore ideas, create original designs, and design experiments/samples to refine and improve their designs.

Off to bed! Tomorrow is another day, a perfect opportunity to learn something new.

July 29, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Draping the cape

I didn’t make it to the Gaultier exhibit today, electing instead to work on the Celtic Braid Coat. After much fussing, I managed to get the cape edges sewn, turned right side out, and pressed. There is still a lot of understitching, trimming, etc. to be done before the cape is complete, but at least it now looks like a cape! Previously it looked like a shapeless bag, so this is a great improvement.

And of course I had to throw it up on the dress form:

semi-finished cape, with inset Celtic braid fabric

I wasn’t sure if that was too much red, so I tried it with just plain black:

I haven’t really decided about this yet – the top photo, with the Celtic Braid panel, feels a little too busy to me, but the bottom photo feels a bit too plain, and lacks focus. The panel really emphasizes the stripe and brings the focus onto the fabric. So unless I think of something better, I’ll go with the panel in the final version.

Off to bed! Tomorrow I’ll start understitching the cape lining. Once that’s done, I’ll finish redesigning the vest, so I can finally cut and sew that leather!

July 27, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Battle of the Berninas!

You may recall that, a few blog posts back, I said I was perfectly happy with my Bernette 740E and wasn’t planning on upgrading.

Well, but then I saw a Bernina 830 Record on Craigslist, priced very attractively. I investigated, and it turned out to be a gem of a machine, carefully and lovingly tuned up and restored by someone whose hobby is the restoration of vintage sewing machines. I bought it, figuring that even if I decided I preferred my faithful old Bernette, it would be easy to resell for as much as I paid for it.

Now, of course, I have to figure out which one to keep. Which means setting up for the Battle of the Berninas! (I know, technically the Bernette isn’t a Bernina, but they are very close cousins!)

I’m still thinking over what trials I want to put the machines through. Obviously it needs to be able to sew on a wide range of materials, but that part’s easy. I have everything from silk chiffon to heavy garment leather on hand, and scraps of slippery silk charmeuse, velvet, etc. Easy to try the machine on each of those materials.

But what else do I need to test? Bound buttonholes, of course, and plain seams. Maybe an overcasting stitch. But do I need to test free-motion embroidery/stitch painting? The ruffle foot that I own but have never used? I’m not sure those matter nearly as much but feel I should experiment with new techniques as well as trialing old ones. This has the potential to explode into a much bigger project, but I’m trying to keep it under control!

Anyway, here are the battling Berninas!

Meanwhile, back in the woods, Little Red Riding Hood has been hard at work on the Celtic Braid cape. I don’t have any glamorous progress shots, but over the last several days I have underlined the handwoven fabric, basted to mark the seamlines, and sewn the Celtic braid fabric portion together. I made a sample with the leather piping and decided it was too stiff, so I made 14 yards of black silk charmeuse piping, and basted it carefully to the partially-assembled cape. This morning I cut and assembled the lining, then trued up the seamlines, re-re-basted, and sewed everything together on the sewing machine. I threw it on the dress form, hoping it would would be at least somewhat photogenic, but of course without the pressing, trimming, or understitching of the seam, it mostly looks like a shapeless black-and-red blob. So tonight I will press it and then start understitching the lining, following which I will trim the seams to reduce bulk, following which it finally might be camera-ready. I expect this to take about a week to complete, and will post pictures once it looks a little less shapeless. After that, I can start working on the vest.

July 24, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Food for thought

I went to a workshop with Randy Darwall yesterday, and he suggested that I get formal art/design training if I were interested in making art-to-wear on the exhibition and museum circuit (which is quite different from the craft circuit). This matches more or less with my assessment: I can figure out (or get help with) the mechanics of making almost anything, but am much weaker on the design side: what to make and how to make sure it’s artistically well-designed. It was helpful to hear that from someone with experience in that arena, and he made a suggestion for a local mentor who could help me understand “the ropes” of art-to-wear – what skills I need to develop, what to look for, which exhibitions to enter, etc. I’ll follow up on that, of course.

Meanwhile, there is the design question. I’m thinking a local community college course (for now); the OCA course, as interesting as it sounds, isn’t focused on design, and because it focuses on two dimensional design in the context of textile work, I’m thinking that a focused class on design is probably better (and cheaper!). Of course, I need to figure out where to study – someplace that will be challenging and not too expensive. In retrospect, my previous class on two-dimensional design was helpful but not as thorough as I would have liked, so I would like to study three-dimensional design in a more rigorous manner. Which means figuring out a good school in which to study – not the easiest of tasks!

I also need to figure out what to study – design classes, obviously, but what else do I need to know? I don’t know, which means I need to find someone with formal art/design training who knows my work can make suggestions. I have a few ideas, but if y’all have suggestions, let me know, would you?

After the Randy Darwall workshop, I went over to Britex Fabrics, where I discovered that the three-cornered buttons would not fit through my buttonhole. However, these buttons fit:

I am not totally happy with these, though, because they have a slight shine to them, attracting attention. I think I will make another sample buttonhole and send it to Sharon, who has access to a buttonmaking machine, and ask her to make a suede-covered button that will fit.

(Pat suggested using nonfunctional buttons with snaps underneath. I will probably use at least one or two snaps to help hold the top of the garment, but it’s always struck me as somehow cheating to use faux buttons with snaps. I should probably just get over that, but I’d rather have functional buttons, if I’m to have buttons at all.)

Finally, I have washed out the katazome:

Obviously the flower katazome is more successful, largely because of its simplicity. The multicolored butterflies simply degenerate into mush. In retrospect, I should have used only two colors of butterfly, one red-orange (for the foreground butterflies) and one blue/green (for the background ones). That would have given dimensional depth (because red and orange advance while blue/green recede) instead of visual chaos.

If I were doing it over, I’d also use a colored background – the white is too prevalent and drains color from the piece. But whatever; it was a learning project, so I’m not overly concerned about results.

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