ADAM AT HOME UK

For the spoken version, please click  HEREABOUTS ...  BLOG CATCH-UP I feel a slight apology is in order - not that I imagine there's anybody out there looking at this any more! I hit a couple of 'tricky' spots with the banyan, not the least of which was trying to sort the hem out. There was no way I had the space to lay things out here, so I ended up using Martin-at-Pennell's wonderful cutting table - my goodness it's useful having a friendly local haberdashers!  The garment is 90% finished I suppose... The last hurdle is to sort out the sleeve length: I have left them over-long as I want to turn them back to form a cuff... but it means  a bit of unpicking - not difficult with a hand-sewn garment, just tedious... so it gets put aside.  Now I have a small kitten (of which more later) which means the banyan has been bundled away until there's less danger of someone's claws shredding the silk damask... In the meantime, I have made myself several more items of ...

For some reason, I did not post this back in May... so here it is, 'better late than never' !! To bring you up-to-date on a few things: THE BANYAN progresses, albeit slowly.  There's an awful lot of just plain old sewing of long, straight seams.  Perfectly enjoyable, but not really 'newsworthy! The second photo shows the neck of the lining being re-inforced, prior to stitching it into the outer layer. Exciting stuff... but I have a few more straight seams to sew before I can move on to that... Then I have been developing my latest crochet pattern, called Treble Triangles, which is now slowly taking shape as a wrap... Oh... and on top on all that... I have just taken up the tenor Viola da gamba! When I left school, forty-five-odd years ago, it had been my intention to learn the gamba as my second study when I went to college to study singing.  Of course life is never quite that straightforward and I ended up at Guildhall - where second study was, automatically, piano :-(...

If you'd like the spoken version, clickety-poo   HERE So good people, it's back to the banyan we will go... The banyan project got rather side-tracked last year, partly by the desire to make a mannequin of myself first: Then, I don't know... 'life'... intervened, not to say the making of the 'Good Yule' cards! So, a quick re-cap is in order I think.  If you have followed my blog for a while you may remember I toned-down my lovely, hand-printed Indian cotton with some strong tea, just to knock it back a bit: Then I decided to interline said cotton with some well-washed curtain lining, to give it a bit of substance. This was a rather long and tedious process, familiar to quilters, no doubt, but involved essentially tacking the one to the other with a fine blue cotton thread that hardly shows on the cotton chintz: Next up was a sort of short inner jacket of the chintz padded with cotton domette, as an extra layer in winter. A very, VERY tedious process, of whic...

For the vocal version of this post, please click   HERE Oh the joys of modern technology... nicely into my blog and dear Blogger decides to hang and lose everything I've just written...Grrr... So... once more unto the breach, dear friends...! I'm starting this blog with a small proviso - that most of the photos in this instalment are garnered from the recesses of the worldwide web and often their provenance and copyright are lost along the way. So my apologies... Like much C18th clothing, for the banyan we have to rely on a few extant garments in collections dotted round the world and on painted images (usually portraits of intellectuals and thinkers). One thing that always comes across is that these were clearly comfortable, baggy garments. Some, like the first image, seem to have been somewhat structured and others, like the rather lovely yellow brocade one, are very simple 'T' shapes. There are one or two patterns out there in web-land and th...

For the vocalised text, try clicking just   HERE I'm at that awkward stage shared, I am sure, by many artists and craftsmen: I am ready to start my project, but uncertain (not quite the right word) how to begin. It's a bit like being faced with a large sheet of white paper and not quite knowing where to start making a mark: cutting fabric is so VERY final !! So, as mentioned in a previous post, I have been playing around with mild tints for the chintz lining: instant coffee (left in the photo) Earl Grey tea (centre) and Rooibos (right). The results were, unsurprisingly, quite different: Coffee left very little mark once I'd washed the fabric; tea was the strongest - a rather greyish beige - and Rooibos was vaguely rusty.  Really hard to tell from the photo, as the tint IS very subtle: all I want to do is slightly knock back the rather bright white, so I think I'll stick with my dear old mother's tried and tested tea! Because the s...

For the spoken blog, click right   HERE I've been on a bit of a 'high' all this week as, finally, the really very lovely silk brocade I have chosen (well, I think it's silk weft on a cotton warp, but who's fussing?) arrived, all the way from China.   It's a rather narrow fabric, at 72cms (much as it would have been in the C18th) so there's quite a lot of it. The absolutely fabulous  lining material came last week; that's hand-printed cotton chintz, all the way from India and has a very C18th look to it. Being given the 'Benny' seal of approval:  I think I may have to do what my dear mama used to do and that is dip the lining fabric in dilute tea, just to knock back the whiteness. I think an experiment is called for... This is another 'time of plague' project, so there's no rush to get it done. To begin with Martin, who runs the local fabric shop and lets me use his cutting table, is away on holida...

To hear the spoken version of this post, click   HERE My most prominent line of thought at the moment is what will my next project be? Having already made four pairs of trousers (three of them historically inspired), four shirts - two of which were totally hand sewn - and a rain jacket (note to self: I do NOT like working with nylon fabric!!), where next? Having been watching far too many 'YouTubes' this last few months, many of them to do with sewing period dress, I have elected to go for a man's banyan - a form of dressing gown, or house coat for the uninitiated. The internet led me to a  wonderful site by a lady calling herself Mlle Canadienne *  and indeed it was her fine blog that got me started on this one so, thank mademoiselle 😀 I am at the awkward stage of trying to source the right fabric now- silk brocade would be nice... but beyond my means! But thank goodness for the internet - and Etsy 😉 More to follow... *  http://mllecanadienne.blogspot.com/201...