Simply Curious

Have you ever considered making a costume out of paper?  I did.

*dusts off blog*

Obligatory backstory:

There I was, stuck in rural Pennsylvania, where shopping was hard enough in normal times, so when the pandemic hit, I became a regular stop for package deliverers. The cardboard boxes and packing supplies started to pile up, because I knew we were going to move again when things settled down, and I knew I would need them.  

In my defense, I had no adult supervision and a house full of cardboard and kraft packing paper.  Things happened.  Things like this tree shelf:  

It was a fun time, full of creativity, but I was looking forward to getting back to wearable art.

I'd been wanting to do a wood elf costume for years now.  I wanted it to be organic looking, comfortable and practical.  If you've ever tromped through the woods, there are millions of tiny branches and brambles and leaf debris to trip you and snag your clothes.  It's often cold and damp and things drip on you, so gauzy gowns are out. Boots and tight leggings and tunic for the win.

I also wanted a project where I could use worbla or similar thermoplastic sheets, and I was excited when I finally envisioned a way to use one goal to achieve another.  Bark bracers!  It would be perfect!

This post is not about Worbla.  I saw the price per sheet and stopped short. But there were rolls and rolls of brown kraft paper just sitting in the corner of the kitchen, waiting for . . . what?  Me to make another tree?

What better material to use to make bark than paper?

Nah, it'd never hold up.

On the other hand, that pirate hat I'd recently made for Maxwell out of packing paper and Mod Podge was surprisingly hard and sturdy.

Then I had to wait for it to dry.  Meanwhile, I began to wonder, what color IS bark, anyway?  I ended up doing image searches and questioning everything.  Bark was grey, or sometimes orange, and look, covered in moss! Ooh, moss!

My house is lit and controlled by a button.  It's ridiculously exciting.  I don't HAVE to disguise those bulbs, but I want to!


I used e6000 glue to glue the gold bead to the ceiling around the Pico LED, and then glued the other bead on top of that.

And . . . that's it.  The hardest part was making decisions about which beads to use.  Oh, and taking pictures.  Taking pictures of lights is not easy! 

The beads were all roughly 2 mm sized, to help you figure out scale.  They do look a bit big in the house, but lighting is one of those things you can easily cheat on in regards to accuracy.  They come in so many sizes in real life, too!

Oh, look.  It's been four years.

What can I say?  Life has been busy, and I started sharing my projects on Facebook because, well, I get responses there.

BUT, I started posting about my 1:144 scale Willowcrest here, and I'm going to finish it here, so let's keep going!  Here's where we left off:

Yes, I was determined to make this tiny house light up.  That required a bit of planning.

Things you need to think about before lighting a house are:

What kind of fixtures do you want?
What materials can you use to make them look that way?
Where do you want the lights to be?
Where do you put the power source for the lights?
How do you run the wires to those locations from the light source?

I'm going to address the second part of these questions first.


I opted to keep it simple, and just put one ceiling light in each room.  I turned to Evan Designs for my supplies, based on suggestions from True2Scale.

I ordered 1 switched coin cell battery holder, 4 3v warm white pico LED lights, and some heat shrink tubing.  (please hover over the text for the links, the lines don't show up?) These bulbs are TINY.  I can't really take a photo of them, they're just little yellow blobs, but they give off an amazing amount of light.

I used poster board for the ceiling on the upper floors, and ran the wires up through a tiny hole, then down the outside sides of the house.  (Had I planned ahead further, I could have run them down the inside of the house.)

For the lower floors, the wires are glued to the ceiling and run to the interior corners, then down the wall and out under it.  A little paint will make them vanish.

You'll notice that each bulb has two wires. One is colored red at the far end, just before you get to bare wire, and the other colored green.  Once you've got your wires where you want them to end up, you need to carefully gather up and twist all the exposed ends of the red wires together, and then the ends of all the green wires together.  (it's possible the green wires were black, just make sure your colors match!)

Cut two short lengths (about one inch, perhaps?) of the narrower heat shrink tubing, and slide one onto each of your twists of wires, pushing it further back so you can work with the exposed ends.  Then you need to match your twists to the proper color on the battery coin holder, and twist red to red, green to black, ensuring the exposed metal touches.  (it's only important that the reds go together, the other color clearly doesn't matter!)
Now, get a battery and test to make sure it all works before you do anything more permanent.  Make sure the exposed ends of the red and green wires don't touch!

Oh, and relax.  It's only 3 volts.  Your skin has a resistance to such tiny amounts of electricity and you won't feel anything.  I can hold the wires directly against a battery to test the lights and it's just fine. But it could mess up your project if it's improperly wired, so make sure your exposed wires are completely covered!


I ran into the slight problem of having a coin cell battery that was labeled 3v, but only half the width required to fit in the device. I must have scavenged it from a Dollar Tree magnet flashlight. I eventually found the right size. 

Once you've determined everything works, slide the tubing to completely cover all the wires, and use a heat gun or similar to shrink the tubing.  I tried to use a hairdryer, but it apparently didn't get hot enough.  Tug gently to ensure there's a tight grip.  I will say that I had some problems with this,  (the wires are too thin for even the thinnest tubing!) and I'm not sure how to fix it, except with another, longer layer of heat shrink tubing.  Just make sure you put both layers on the wires first, and keep the second layer away from the heat source!


And it works. Check it out!




So where did I put that battery and switch?  It's pretty obnoxious to have all that wiring and that heavy battery and casing dragging about with this tiny house.

Fortunately, this particular dollhouse came with a simple wooden base, and I was able to use it to hide the wiring, battery, and switch.  To keep it accessible, I cut out a frame to fit inside, and then used a piece of cardstock to act as a sliding lid.  I'm using museum wax (and/or orthodontic wax, they're essentially the same thing) to prevent the battery from sliding.  I used E6000 glue to hold the switch in place.

I didn't measure properly, or I would have realized the button was the same width as the side pieces, and I would have cut the frame to glue to the bottom of the piece, rather than level with the interior.  It's a minor problem, fortunately, and easy to work around.

And the lighting is done!  Not too painful, right?

I don't know what it is about Myths and Legends Con that brings on a massive creative spurt, but this year I again found myself madly sewing in the weeks leading up to the event.

It really started with the custom corset by LoriAnn Costume Designs.  When I got it, it immediately started whispering that it didn't WANT to have anything to do with Steampunk, and began suggesting fairy to me.  I remembered how awesome this fabric had looked in B.'s orange office, and then I began thinking of various ways to do a layered skirt, and then found myself researching wings . . .

The results amazed me.

I bought this Faded Glory maxi sundress at Walmart. I had to shorten the straps by 2 and a 1/2 inches, and took off the ridiculously long ties on the front, but after that I really liked how it fit.  It was super comfy and secure.  As in, if I didn't feel like putting a bra on, I didn't have to worry about flashing people.  I decided it was worth having multiples, but all the other colors were extremely dark, which is kind of stupid for a sundress.  Dark colors absorb heat!  So I studied and measured it for a while and eventually came up with a pattern.

 I don't know what my problem is.  I buy all sorts of patterns, but the dresses I seem to actually wear are the ones that I made by looking at dresses I already owned.  I wear my peacock dress, made from the bottom half of a maxi dress, all the time, but haven't yet worn my pink dress, made from a pattern.  Is it because I know how it will look on me and that it will likely fit the first try?

 I happened to have several yards of challis fabric that I had claimed from my sister's abandoned stash. (I expect any fabric I leave in someone else's basement for over 6 years to be fair game for whoever wants it.)  With nothing to stop me, I made a dress.  And now I'm sharing a tutorial, because I am definitely making this again.  There was a lot of challis in that stash . . .

I liked this dress because it seemed so simple.  No zippers, no buttons, no sleeves, no collars, and the way I designed it, only two pattern pieces to deal with!

I had to learn two new techniques for this dress, and found two great online tutorials for sewing with elastic thread and making bias tape.   Don't be intimidated!  The waistband proved to be extremely easy for me, and the bias tape would have been even easier if I had waited and bought the right tool.

Materials:
2 yards of challis or similar lightweight fabric - 60" width
thread to match your fabric
Elastic thread

Wow, that's it?  You'll also need a few . . .

Tools:
scissors
sewing machine
an iron and ironing board
a marking pen or chalk
sewing and safety pins
seam ripper (no one's perfect!)

To make the bias tape, I found a rotary cutter, cutting mat, and a see-through quilting ruler to be invaluable, and should have had a bias tape maker, which I bought after the fact for future projects. It's possible to do carefully with an iron and your fingers, but someone designed a cheap tool to make this easier, and we should use it!

Instructions:

• Wash your fabric before cutting out.  (If it's not washable, then why are you

  Reenactment, and I used weights  instead of pins

  making an easy-wearing sundress out of it?  Washability is part of the comfort level!)

• Draw out the pattern.  I used brown Kraft paper from a Dollar Tree roll.

• Cut two pieces from fabric.  (For the collar, I dipped down about 1" in the middle for the back piece, and 2" for the front.  Be sure to mark or cut notches to indicate where the waistband will go.

• With right sides together, sew up one side of the dress.  lay it out flat, and clearly mark your sewing lines for the elastic, from one marked notch to the other.  You'll want to mark these lines on the right side (outside) of the fabric, as this will be the side facing up when you're sewing.  

• Set up your machine for sewing with elastic as described in the elastic tutorial, and sew four rows across the entire width of the dress, about 1/4" apart.  (that's usually the edge of your sewing foot, which is what I used for reference.)  

• With right sides together, line up the ends of your newly sewn rows of elastic, and run a seam across all four on the open side of the dress.  Then line up the rest of your fabric and sew the other side of the dress shut.  (If you're more accurate than me, you can just sew down the side and everything will magically line up.  I had to prioritize what part I wanted to be exact.)  

• Make some 1/2" bias tape following the bias tape tutorial, or buy some if you don't mind it being a different color and fabric.  I suppose you can also do this right after you cut out the fabric.  You won't need much, I estimate about 2 yards.

• Run a gathering stitch along the front and back sections of the dress, and pull it in, til the top measures roughly 10" across.  You may find you'd prefer it wider or narrower, adjust as you like.  I safety pinned temporary straps to the dress and tried it on so I could see where it would hit on me.  

• To attach the tape, unfold it and place it right sides together along the edge of your dress.  Baste it down, then fold the rest of it over to the back of the fabric, and sew it in place.  If you have no idea what I just said, I understand.  Check out this tutorial on sewing with bias tape.  Check that your stitching doesn't wander off the front of the bias tape.  Do the armholes first, then the back.  Allow a little extra on the back so you can fold it over for a clean corner.  

• For the front, allow about 7 to 9 inches of bias tape to overhang on each side of the collar.  These will be your straps, and you'll need to fold them in half and sew them down.  Then you can take your time adjusting the length before sewing them to the back of the dress.  (It's quite possible that this would be easier to do if you did this to the back, then you could actually adjust without taking them off.  Either way will work.)  I ended up making 7" straps.

• Sew down your straps, lining them up with the edge of the back.  Fold over the bias tape from the top edge of the back and stitch down.  Cut all your threads.  Try it on again.  

• Hem the dress and iron if needed.  Now put it back on and run around all happy and comfortable.  

Notes


To make a knee length dress, I hemmed it at 24" from the waistband.  Cut out around 25-26" from waistband instead of 36.  I did this partly because my fabric turned out to be 58.5" wide, and not 60", and partly because it's just as nice at either length!

I did not include seam allowances, mainly because I forgot, and was excited about getting even numbers on my measurements.  I used a half inch seam allowance when sewing.  Keep this in mind when drawing out the pattern and be sure to add on whatever seam allowance you prefer.  This style is REALLY forgiving, so if you forget, too, it will likely turn out all right anyway!

This pattern was based on the size small dress - I usually wear a medium, but the sizing was rather off.  My measurements are 34, 30, 42, and I'm 5'6" (yes I did just admit all that) so you might need to adjust slightly for your own measurements.  I think the waist ended up being about 22" wide on the fabric, (44" all the way around) and it fit perfectly around my torso after the elastic was installed.

inside view of the shirred elastic thread.  I swear it's much straighter than it looks!

The elastic 'shrunk' the dress roughly 12", to give you some idea of how much shrinkage to expect when shirring fabric with elastic thread.  I started out with 44" of fabric, take off about 1" for seam allowances, and it fit quite nicely around my 30" torso.  Not too tight, not too loose.

I have a drop-in bobbin, and used the machine to wind the thread on the bobbin rather than doing it by hand, based on recommendations I read online.  It worked perfectly for me!

I COULD have just made a pocket to thread elastic through, but I feared the elastic would be too heavy for the fabric and drag the dress down.  I also could have foregone the bias tape and the spaghetti straps and gone with something simpler, but figured I might as well learn how to do it.  The nice thing about this pattern is it's easy to alter.  Add ruffles, add pin tucks, make wider straps, add sleeves!

If you want regular sleeves, try adding another 3.5" to the 4.5" measurement (this is the armhole sleeve height) on the pattern above.  Then your collar measurements will be a 4.5" deep curve for the back, and 5.5" curve for the front.

Once I cut out one arm hole curve, I used the cut piece to draw and cut the second armhole, so they would match exactly.  I also could have folded the pattern in half and cut both curves at the same time.  Otherwise I don't know what to tell you to do about drawing the armhole curves, except to eyeball it, or pull a sleeveless dress/shirt out of your closet that fits well, and copy that.

I folded the fabric in half following the selvage and cut out a full shape because the full piece of fabric allowed for it.  If you have a fabric you just HAVE to use that's narrower, I recommend buying 3 1/3 yards of fabric, opening it out flat, and cutting out two separate pieces (make sure the fabric is running the same way for both).  The dress measures about 48" long altogether, so two pieces (front and back) would require 2 2/3 yards.  the 2/3 yard left should give you enough fabric for the bias tape.

I realize there may be raised eyebrows about me 'copying' a dress, but frankly you can't copyright clothes, and I did not copy this dress exactly anyway.  The original dress is actually about 7 separate pieces - 4 skirt pieces, a separate waistband, and then the front and back of the bodice.  I also left out the keyhole in the bodice. I simplified quite a bit, mostly to see if it would still work.  So far it has!

Questions?  Comments?  Did I make a horrible mistake somewhere?  Please contact me, either through the comments section or click on 'my web site' on the left, and then the 'contact' link.  If you make a dress using this tutorial, I would love to see photos!