One of the pirates will have a leather neck-piece. I don´t know what else to call it. A collar? A necklace? A very short poncho?? 🙂 Inspired by a something I found on Pinterest and Sleeping Beauty´s evil step-mother, I sat down with paper, pencil, measuring tape and an eraser. I really like making patterns, figuring out how to turn 2-dimentions into 3-dimentions.
 
Since I was going to make the real thing in leather, I wanted to try it out first, to see if my calculations were right. It´s so practical to have a taylor-bust! Try things on for size, and push pins into the body to keep the fabric in place 😉 Mind you thought, it´s actually a bit frustrating that I can only ALMOST finish these things. Until I´ve tried them on and made adjustments, I won´t finish them. No need to undo work already done, so better to not finish it, and only do the job once.
Anyway. I want to make a lining for the leather. Both because it has excessive dye in it, and also to make the finished piece sturdier.
My choice was a cotton fabric with fake suede on one side. It is quite sturdy, and cut on the bias, it becomes just enough elastic to work together with the real leather. So now it´s almost done. It needs fastening in the back and a finished top neck-line. Also I am all of a sudden a bit unsure about the openings. I really like them, – they make it look more like a necklace or even like the sceleton of an armor… But I like the solid one too… hm… help? Anyone? What do you think?
A word of warning: although working with leather is great, basically, after a while I seemed to have a problem with my sewing machine. When sewing zig-zag, joining two pieces, the machine “cheated” in it´s stitching, and there were big gaps where the thread only fastened on one side. So instead of a zig-zag, there was just a normal straight seam. I don´t know for sure what the problem is, but after going over my machine, checking everything else, I suspect that some of the tiny fleece from the suede-side of the leather has gotten stuck in the machinery down in the lower part of the machine. It mixes very well with oil unfortunately, so I´m going to have a serious cleansing of my machine.
Another half-done-project is this utility-belt. It doens´t look too good on the bust, it´s too big for it. It looks much better in person. Even though it will be very fitting to the actor, it is comfortably elastic naturally. This piece is also lined with bias-cut cotton-fake-suede. And I´ve added lots of little do-dads so she can fasten all her weapons.
