Gingerbread Minas Morgul

This was my gingerbread house in December 2006.
It's my rendition of Minas Morgul as envisioned in The Return of the King movie. There are no shots in the movie of the whole thing, here are a couple of screencaps to give you the idea:
131 pieces of gingerbread. 40 cups of flour. One all-nighter.

It's not as polished as I would have liked. Partly I blame this on the all-nighter -- I did the entire assembly in one huge 20 hour session because I had to leave the next day to visit my parents. I learned some valuable lessons that I will definitely apply to the next project:

1. Super-acute angles are tough.
2. If you want your gingerbread house to live up to its full potential as edible, ephemeral art, plan a party to eat the house in advance. Otherwise it will be two months old and everybody will be afraid of it. Also, more candy == more deliciousness, except for licorice, which nobody likes.
3. Using a good construction-level recipe makes a huge difference on a big house. The recipe I used appears to have disappeared from the internet... I'll hunt down and post recipes in a gingerbread tutorial in the fall.
4. Make sure your cookie sheets are flat! You could see how the large spiky pieces don't quite line up because they weren't quite flat. The aluminum cookie sheets I was using have air inside and actually warp and change shape in the oven.
5. Lots of people like the look of exposed gingerbread. If I did Minas Morgul again I would tint the dough black instead of painting it with icing.
6. Rice krispy treats are a pain to work with. I suggest mixing rice krispies with icing instead, for something that won't sag.

For the detailed description and process photos, see my journal at deviantART.

8 (1/2) Gore Jeans Skirt

This is a bit of a narrative/vague tutorial about how I made this skirt out of recycled denim.

I didn't really want the style of the traditional skirt-from-jeans. And besides, I had one pair of jeans that don't fit with holes in the knees, but I also had two disembodied jeans legs and an extremely ugly button-up sleeveless denim shirt that's way too big for me. I've been carrying these things around for at least 6 years, some of them more. And I love this particular 8-gore black skirt I have.

Thus: 8 (1/2) gore denim skirt!

I started by making up a pattern. I looked at a couple of instruction sets online for making n-gore skirts. Basically you need at least four measurements: the circumference at the top, the circumference at the bottom, the minimum width to fit around your hips, and the length of the skirt. Get the top by measuring around yourself wherever you want the top to be. Mine was 32", though somehow the finished skirt ended up seeming bigger. Oops. The ratio of the top to the bottom will affect how much the skirt flares. I measured the bottom of the skirt I already had, which was 84". Also make sure to measure your hips at the widest point if your hips are bigger than your waist, and make sure the measurement at that distance from the top of the skirt will be large enough. Calculate the size of each piece by dividing the total measurements by the number of gores. Within the top, bottom, and minimum hip measurements, you can leave the pieces as trapezoids or shape them to make the skirt flare out towards the bottom like I did. When cutting the pieces, make sure to add the hem. I left 1" at the top and bottom and 1/2" hems on the side. If you are going to attach a separate waistband you probably don't need so much at the top. Also, if you don't curve the bottoms of the pieces you'll need a bit extra because you do want to hem them in a slight curve at the end.

Because of the limited size of my random denim things, I had to make nine gores to get the hem width I wanted, two of the gores being slightly bigger because I had two bigger pieces. I think this is where I screwed up, not recalculating the size of the waist when I added the ninth gore.

The picture on the right is of the pant leg pieces. One of them had fun embroidery. I think I owned that pair of pants in approximately 1997, when the 70's were temporarily back in style. The second one is of the shirt pieces. I got two out of the back and two out of the front. The front had functional pockets -- often lacking in skirts.

Hmm, apparently I'd already used the back of embroidered leg for silkscreen practice. Someday I'll post about the silk screening in embroidery hoop experiment.

Can you guess what comes next? That's right, actual sewing! I have a sewing machine on loan right now, a nice new Brother. I'm not using special top stitching thread or needle.

I pinned and sewed all the pieces together in a chain, and ironed the seams to both sides. I'm generally allergic to ironing, but ironing the seams does make it so much easier. Then I hemmed the top, with one row of stitches at 3/4" and one at 3/8".I've never sewn in a zipper, and I'm afraid of button holes. So I stole a fly from another pair of jeans. This one was already seriously denuded by the time I got to it.

I cut out the fly, cut the buttons apart from the buttonholes, and sewed the buttons onto the right side. At this point I also wrapped the whole thing around me and realized it was too big, so I took about an inch off that piece while I was at it.

Then I fought and sewed and ripped out seams for a while trying to get the other piece in. Was trying to sew the fly in by cutting a rectangle out of the side of the other piece. Realized it was 1:45 am and thought it would be a good idea to actually sleep. The next day, I ripped off the last gore on the left, slimmed it, and attached it to the bottom of the fly's flap. This took off more extra fabric. Now you see where the 1/2 gore comes in. Good thing it was too big to begin with. It also disturbed the symmetric-ness, so the pockets in the back were off center, but oh well. Better next time.

Now all I had to do was sew this semi-gore back on on the left side, and sew the part below the fly to the other side to join the skirt together. There was a bit of fussing to make sure the flap ended up on top of the buttons, but it turned out well.

The hemming on this is straightforward. I measured from the top when I was pinning to make sure I was doing it to a consistent length. Remember that for it to be a consistent length, the bottom will be slightly curved.

And now I have a new skirt! With pockets! And two bits of embroidery!

Here's the back:

Intro Post!

This is a blog for my craft projects and crafty art projects. For tutorials and vague hand waving (I can't follow a pattern myself). For being a geek. For dislike of the color pink. For beading, and wire work, and sewing, and card making, and knitting, and crocheting, and stamping, and embroidery, and gingerbread houses. For not scrapbooking. For loving illustrators and concept artists and all the other people who keep craft in art. For recycling and remaking and turning random things into awesome. For things you can use or wear or eat, because I don't have any more shelf space for pretty knickknacks. Even if I don't actually do anything new for a while, I have some past things to post about to keep things going here for the first few weeks.