A Dark Inspiration

Merry meet all,

This post will focus on Samhain and my dyeing fabric project using acorns. Are you all excited? I am.

I foraged for a very big mullein stalk yesterday morning. The stalk was about six feet in length. I plan to use the mullein stalk to make hag tapers or torches with. I hope and hope the weather on October 31st will cooperate. I want to have the traditional bonfire. I always have my traditional bonfire. I will  prepare the mullein pieces, cut to size in a double boiler pot with melted beeswax. I will add herbs and oils. I want the beeswax to look black so I will add charcoal. An additive to make beeswax black can affect the way it burns. The charcoal is purely for aesthetic purposes. The popular herbs for Samhain can be used to enhance the beeswax and hag tapers. I would use aromatic herbs like sage, rosemary, wormwood, mugwort and rose. I can’t wait to make the hag tapers.

I’m making the dye bath with the acorns I foraged for earlier. I have treated the muslin cloth in a pot of water with the powdered album. I use the album to make the fabric take to the dye. I used a very large stainless steel pot and added the acorns. I have to ensure the water covers the acorns. I will continue to simmer the acorns for till late tonight and let the acorns soak in the water all night until about midday tomorrow. The longer that the acorns steep, hopefully the darker the color will be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I will strain the acorns and pour the dye bath back into the pot. The acorn dye bath has steeped overnight and I’m boiling it on the stove again. The dye has become a lovely dark brown colour. I know the dye will be three times lighter when rinsed and dried. That’s why I am steeping the acorns for so long, to achieve the darkest color possible. I will attempt to dye the fabric tonight and I may do a test patch too. I am excited to see how this turns out. The tannins in the acorns are what make the dye possible. Acorns are rich in tannins. It makes me feel so witchy, stirring a pot of acorns! The scent from the acorns is musky and earthy. 

Now I have to prepare for Samhain! I am sure I am not the only one. I pureed the pumpkin to brew pumpkin bread, perhaps some barmbrack bread and pumpkin soup. I may even try making powdered pumpkin and use my dehydrator. I want to harvest dandelion roots and dry them in my dehydrator. 

Fall is the season of abundance! I am sure the book I am binding will be beautiful. Last night, I worked on it some more. I watched a few videos about people who know how to bind books professionally. They sure knew their stuff. Some of it was a little over the top. I am binding the book to create a book for my horror poetry. I want to write another poetry book. I have a pdf of the Writing in the dark poetry workbook. I am not writing my rough drafts of the poems in that book. Of course the first poem I will put in the book will be the one I wrote and had published, about the cemetery, Encounter with Death. I want to stain the pages with coffee or tea and maybe other herbal infusions. Or dilute essential oils and add that to the pages. I want herbs to have a big role in the creation of this book. The acorns are already adding that energy. I did make three pages of paper. I added a few herbs to the pages too. I will tea stain those pages and add them to the front and back of the book. The covers and spine are cut to size. I cut a small rectangle on the back book cover so I can emboss that section. 

I also plan to include a photo of the headstone where I gathered the acorns by accident. I want to include a small note that I appreciate and respect the spirit for letting me gather the acorns. I’m putting the note in an envelope and storing at the front of the book. I thought of buying a taper logy set ( the decorative paper for making a junk journal) and dyeing the paper and adding it to the book. 

The fabric I’m binding the book with is muslin. I hope the colour will be a deep enough colour of brown for this to work. I want to attach a black velveteen strip to go over the front edges of the book. I also want to add 4 corner protectors. Most of the supplies are available at Michaels. I love that store. I want to also add an adhesive to the muslin once dyed to make the fabric stiffer and more durable. 

I considered making the paper for the book by hand. But I don’t have the fine art of making paper with a mold and deckle down enough. I plan to buy a pack of coloured paper at Staples and then tea staining it and trimming the outer front edges of the paper to add texture. I have a lot of plans with this project. Maybe this will finally make me write that book already! 

Golds, brown and black tones and shades will obviously work here. I originally wanted to use the davy board up. I had some remaining from my other project. I want to decorate the pages with crows, spiders and bats. This is supposed to be about horror after all. I will post more when the book is complete. I can’t wait and I can’t wait for Samhain. 

Blessed be, Spiderwitch

 

Cosplay Nightfell Herbalist

Merry meet all,

I’ve been busy sewing myself a beautiful cosplay costume, Nightfell Herbalist. Here is the photo of the costume: 

It has been so much work. I’ve returned to the project for two reasons. I want to finish it before October 31st. I also want to wear it this fall. The pattern consists of a long knee-length coat and a mock corset with a very gathered skirt that has a gathered ruffle. I have the veil, choker, and black lace gloves. My kick ass black lace up boots will look great with the outfit. 

I have a large beautiful blue button to sew onto the bodice. I can’t wait to add the trim. Here are a few tips to make a cosplay costume of your own- in time for Samhain! Do own a measuring tape and seam ripper. Remember: the seam work goes on the inside so the polished seams show outside. Measure twice cut once! That can save you lots of heartache. It’s better to have too much fabric than too little. 

I made the skirt for the costume. After three tries to gather the threads, I ended up sewing in an elastic waistband. The skirt is a deep blue color to complement the beautiful mock blue corset. I’ve included a photo of the costume so far:

The skirt was hard. It is a good idea to measure EVERYTHING! Measure the skirt before you gather the material to know how much you have. Measure how small or ‘gathered’ the skirt will be when you are all done and see if it matches your original estimation of fabric. You will then know if you are on the right track. I did it that way and my guess for how much fabric I had after it was gathered was the same as before. I ended up making an elastic waistband instead of a zipper. It was too hard to do the gathers by pulling the threads. But when I sew the ruffle ( which looks ten feet long), I have to gather. I gather it in sections, then match the ruffle to the center, side and back sections then pull the threads. I had to hem the skirt ruffles and that was a lot of effort. I didn’t do a narrow hem because it would hardly be noticed and it was serious effort. Then I sew on the waistband. 

The ruffle was a little nightmare. I had to make sure the wrong side was facing up on all the five sections-which is now 4 sections. They were all stitched together. One side was right side up so I corrected that with my seam ripper. They are so handy. Then I hemmed it section by section. I set the extra fabric over my ironing board or over a chair to hem it. My ironing board is my work space. Since all the sections were stitched together, it was trying. But slow and steady wins the race.

The ruffle sections were hard. One side of the five ruffle sections were notched. I knew then how to sew each section together. I cut tiny triangles in the seam allowance to know which side was which- and matched the edges together that way. I had to sew 5 sections together so the tiny notches were a great guide. 

I have sewn the gathers into the ruffle. The ruffle is so long. I can’t quite yet grasp how so much fabric is pinned and eased into the skirt hem. The skirt and ruffle are both dark blue. I stitched the gathers in, using 2 different lighter colors of thread. The stitches were a wide length and I left long thread tails for each section. See the photo below:

Here is a closeup of the gathers on the ruffle:

Today I shall adjust the gathered fabric into the smaller skirt hem. After that, when I am satisfied with how it fits and the gathers are evenly spaced, I will sew on the dark blue wide scalloped lace over the seamline. 

The costume is supposed to have a petticoat. However, I am ever resourceful and thrifty. I have a knee-length black tulle skirt already. I cut it from a Baroness costume I wore once ( but paid $60 for). Sheesh. I donated the costume but kept the tulle skirt. I will stitch it in when I have to add the waistband. It will work just as well. See how I saved money and time- and tears that way? Yups. 

I have to finish the sleeves. The sleeves are in 2 sections. One is the sleeve with the armhole. It joins to a lacy ruffled section. I plan to finish that this weekend. The back of the jacket is a problem. I plan to stitch on a section of black fabric to the back and finish the raw edges. A zipper would normally be added but that is physically impossible for me to zip up. My arms don’t work that way. I will add a snap to the back and with the extra fabric concealing raw edges, it should look nice. When the fabric edges join where I would add the zipper, it seriously pulls on me and feels tight. I like to believe there is always another way to finish something. 

Sewing is tedious and repetitive. It does demand a certain level of dedication but I believe the results are worth it!

I have completely redone the sleeves from scratch. This time, they are sewn properly. I sewed the beautiful sleeves with black cotton and lining. The ruffle was the hard part. The ruffle has four layers to it. The ruffle is dark blue on the wrong side and black on the right side. The ruffle is very gathered. The four layers are edged with ribbon trim on all layers. But the bigger ribbon trim really does the ruffle justice. Here it is in the photo:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can tell that the ruffle is very gathered. The original size of the ruffle is about twenty-three inches in total to gather into fourteen inches. That is a lot of gathering. After I adjusted the gathers and was sure, and that my arms fit comfortably in the sleeves when I fitted it, I stitched on the bow and the small black button to the center of the bow. It looks so beautiful and feminine. 

I basted the back of the jacket and am now ready for the zipper. Once that is done, I shall sew on the sleeves. I have one or two spots to touch up then voila! Done!

Once that is all done, I can finally sew the button on the bodice. I shall add the veil, my lace gloves and witchy boots. I can’t wait to be done and wearing it in time for Samhain!

Update:

Well it turns out the cosplay costume is not ready in time for October 31st. I have sewn the sleeves onto the dress jacket. I also sewed lacy ribbon trim to the entire dress jacket opening edges. I shall sew a nice wide ribbon to the center back seam and stitch the zipper onto the ribbon. That will give me more room to fit in the dress jacket. I also need to adjust the mock corset to the rest of the jacket. I shall top stitch it to the dress jacket black fabric. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What they don’t tell you about sewing this costume!

The skirt has five sections but you can only match four sections of the ruffle to the four sections of the skirt. You can sew in the five sections of the ruffle. That gives you way more gathers. I went with four sections and it still looks great. The sewing quality has to be amazing. No room for error here. The stitches show whether they are perfect or not. It all counts! I had to redo the entire sleeves and ruffles because I realized early on the initial fabric was too heavy to take to being gathered. Oh- and do try multiple fittings as you work on this project t make sure it fits you perfectly.

The fabric didn’t want to gather as much as I would have preferred. The fabric on the back of the jacket near waistline. I still made every effort to gather the fabric and stitch it into the back waistline. 

The sleeve ruffle is very gathered but again, no room for error. Sewing the sleeves into the dress jacket took an entire afternoon. I basted and eased the sleeve into the armhole, I pinned LOTS, and I stitched the sleeves in twice into the armhole. The gathers show and whatever you do, take your time with this. It will turn out much better. Match up the ‘points’, for example, make sure that the top of the sleeve matches the top of the armhole point where it should meet. The same goes for the bottom armhole point then pin- a lot! Be sure before you begin sewing the right sides of the fabric are together. If you can turn your sleeve out and it is correct, then you sew. Then press/ iron it and try to tease out the fullness of the sleeve cap. Also, make sure that there are no holes or obvious puckers. 

Stay tuned for the next update!!

Blessings, Spiderwitch