Elf Cuffs & Fantasy Stuff - An Etsy Shop Re-Launched

I've recently just re-launched my Esty Shop, "Chameleon Candour - Elf Cuffs & Fantasy Stuff"! There's not that much there yet, but there is much more to come! Here's a little look at the stuff I've made available for purchase so far:

First up, a pair of what I call "Elf Cuffs", in a rusty orange coloured wool, with wool yarn felted into the base to make a pattern:

Second, another pair of Elf Cuffs in the same type of wool, but these are decorated with crochet flowers:

Thrirdly, and lastly for now (but not for long!), is a my signature leather belt (seriously, I wear this pretty much all the time)! It's not in stock, as this is made to order, and I tailor it to fit spesific measurements:

My sewing and crafting has mainly been a hobby, but it is as costly as it is time consuming, so I've decided to start selling certain products that I've received positive feedback on, in hopes that this hobby might actually start earning me a little money as well. I won't lie, it would be a dream come true if it turned out I could partially live off running an Etsy shop!

I would therefore be beyond thankful if you, my kind readers, would pop by it, have a look around, and, if you like what you see, favorite my shop and share it with your friends! And, of course, buy things from it, if you see something you want! ^_^

http://www.chameleoncandour.etsy.com

Kíli Project - Tunic Finished!

It's taken a lot longer than expected, but finally the blue tunic is done! It took a lot of material and lot of broken machine needles (seriously, if you're using linen and are sewing it in multiple layers, make sure you have needles meant for leather for your machine, because this stuff is tough, as in "meant to stop arrows from penetrating it"- kind of tough!), but here's the final result, modeled by my very own handsome dwarf!

 I made the lacing out of a long strip of the same linen, hand sewing it into the cord you can see on the photo.

The eyelets too are hand sewn, a painfully long process, but it looks so much better as a result.

The hood, although you can't really see it in this photo, is pleated and attached to a short, Victorian styled collar, and ends in a point at the back.

The gambeson bits on the shoulders came out looking a lot better on him, than it did on the mannequin, so I'm really pleased with that!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be focusing on next for this project, but I might just go for the boots, or in my case, boot covers. We'll see. ;)

Other sewing projects

Life has really been keeping me busy, and I've been sewing all sorts of things not related to the Kíli Project. I've been doing medieval and viking markets, plus a larp, which have kept my fingers busy and here are some of the results:

 This was my outfit for Oslo Medieval Festival.

I made the rusty coloured skirt, the leather corset, 

the high waisted leather vest, and the leather hip belt:

This was a green linen dress that I made for the 

second day at Oslo Medieval Festival, which I 

wore along with the leather corset:

 Here's my brown linen viking gown, most of which

is handsewn, over a chemise I quickly put together

out of white, thin muslin:

For the Viking Festival in Sarpsborg, which I visited 

briefly on my birthday, I used the green linen dress 

under the viking gown with some of my viking bling:

For the larp, I made a two way bodice with lace-up 

front and a short sleeved gypsy blouse:

 

 I also made this skirt two times, out of unbleached 

cotton, and then dyed one of them a mossy green

and the other a sharp purple:

 I did the same with this blouse, only, I made three 

instead of two and kept one of them white:

 Then, because I felt up for a bit of a challange, I made

these leather boots. Unfortunately, they're actually a

bit too wide, it seems, because the shaft of the boots

tend to end up in one big, crumpled heap around 

my ankles when I wear them. But they look good 

for 30 seconds! ;)

For the larp, I also made this huge, squishy, 

colourful pillow:

 And, lastly, I made a new cover for my Kindle in 

light grey leather, which I dyed into a tan brown:

So, as you can see, I have not been idle, even though I've been sorely negligent of my blog, for which I apologize profusely! I will do my best not to leave it this long before I blog again!

Kíli Project - Tunic 0.2

Finally getting back into this project,  I've started remaking the blue tunic, this time in linen, which is far more satisfying than the dreadful cotton.

Having measured up and cut out the pieces for the front and back, , however, I realised there probably won't be enough fabric for me to do both rhe sleeves and the hood, so today will take me on yet another trip to the fabric shop. :p

This is how much I managed to do before running out of material, though:

Having learned a few lessons from the last attempt, I'm using three layers of material for the front piece, plus a fourth layer for the gambeson pieces at the shoulders. This will pad the whole thing up and give it the rigidity around the shoulders seen in this photo. It also makes sense to pad the chest area with you several layers of linen as this would serve as extra armour and protection against weapon penetration.

Also, having studied the video blog material on my precious Blue-Ray of The Hobbit, I finally found some shots of the back of the tunic, allowing me some further insight into how it's been constructed. As I'm loathe to post images on my blog that I do not have the rights to, I'll post the sketch I made from the still instead, which illustrates the extra layer on the shoulder area on the back piece:

It now looks like this:

Front piece stitched together (I know, the gambeson piece is far too small, but I cant be bothered redoing it again):

 

I will return to you with more updates once I have grabbed some more material and made further progress! :)

Kíli Project - Tiny, Almost Insignificant, Update

I've really been focusing a lot on my music lately, which has put the Kíli Project a bit on hold, but yesterday, I got a little boost of inspiration as I read a blogpost by my lovely and talented  friend Therese (not only is she an excellent seamstress, make-up geek and generally delightfully nerdy, but she also has an amazing singing voice!) about her self-made Merida costume.

For the blue dress, she had used linnen, and the colour was perfect for Kíli! This obviously got me way more excited than anyone should be allowed to be about a bloody fabric, and I started interrogating her about it. Turns out, she bought natural coloured linen and dyed it herself, however, the perfect woad blue result she got was actually just a normal "stuff it all in the washer and see what happens"-dye.

Feeling very relieved at the fact that I might actually not have to go through the whole messy process of using natural dyes to get the right colour (I do still want to work with natural dyes at one point, but I'd rather it be for a project without a particular time limit on it), I'm really looking forward to pick up where I left! I will get back to you as soon as there is some real progress to write about! :)

Kíli Project - Patterned Sleeve

The half sleeves on Kíli's coat has a beautiful dwarven pattern. I don't know  for certain how they've made it, but I will assume that it's embossed or raised, which means that's what's up next!

So, before I start, I had to do a test run,  so I drew the pattern onto a piece of leather with chalk.

Once that was done and it looked relatively correct, I went over the chalk lines with a silver clothes marker to make it more clear, and not to mention, more permanent. 

From here, I proceeded to cut out the pattern, resulting in this:

As it turned out, this didn't really work, as the pattern needs to be embossed fra the inside and out, so I tried a new tactic. Finding a wooden plank and drawing the pattern onto it (a lot more precisely, this time,  mind you), I began the process of carving the pattern out.

After hours of work, this is how it turned out:

 I did a test with a piece of leather and this is how it turned out:

I'm not entirely happy, as the pattern doesn't show as well as I had hopes, but, then I didn't soak it through with water properly, nor did I work very long on the embossing process. But at least I have a stencil (and very achy hands)! Yay!

Kíli Costume - Over Coat

I've started the process of making the over coat. To do so, I had to make the suede leather look more shiny, but more importantly, giving it the right colouring for the over coat. This entailed rubbing it in with petroleum jelly and polishing it with a smooth metal surface (I simply used a shampoo tin from Lush), leaving it to dry and then repeating the process. 

 

After I achieved a smooth(er) result, I started with the paint. Applying a thin layer of petroleum jelly first to make it easier to blend the colour and rub it out, I began with the first colour (a light brown) carefully dabbing some spots of colour onto the leather and then rubbing and blending it out. 

Once I'd finished the whole piece, I rubbed it in with another layer of petroleum jelly and left it to dry over night before starting with the next colour (a light tan) the morning after. 

 

 

 

Rubbing it in with yet another layer of petroleum jelly, I left the finished product to dry.

  

So, that's one piece ready, six to go. o_O

Flu, Bronchitis and stays

So, the inevitable flu has finally caught up on me, spoiling all plans of celebrating Imbolc, going to the gym, or getting some reports done at work. With little else to entertain me than fumbling what could have been rather spectacular jumps and moves in Assassin's Creed II on Rick's new Xbox, playing Spider Solitaire for the umpteenth time and surfing on a rather unstable internet connection, I have decided to turn my attention to my next little sewing project.

At the beginning of March, the larp "Broderskapet" ("The Brotherhood") takes place just outside of Oslo. It's a 18th century larp about thieves of all sorts (wood bandits, pirates, highwaymen and society thieves), with a dash of horror and supernatural elements brought into the mix. Combat; almost non-existent, intrigue; essential. Quite my cup of tea.

Being given the role as the leader of a clan of wood bandits, I was relived of the preassure of having to sew all the fineries of the quintessential 18th century lady in four weeks, however it gave me the tricky task of deciding what the clanleader of such a motley crew would indeed be wearing.
Regardless of what conclusion I will arrive at in the end and although the costume requirements are not at a reenactment level, one thing is quite clear: no matter her class or occupation, proper stays would be required. And if you disagree, you have never experienced the pain of having an F-cup and running/jumping without a bra. ;)

And so, equipped with some black cotton, a grey wool mix, dark beige cotton canvas and 18 pocket packets of paper tissue, I am setting out on the adventure of making stays. Being lazy and slightly short on time, I will be machine sewing some of the seams this time (if the result is good, I will then have a working pattern for a more accurate, hand sewn version later). I had previously made a pattern (with two different solutions for the front), using the cardboard method described in this blog, and cut out the pieces.