These are notes from an old post:
This garment doesn’t look massive however it is a humongous one piece. It has an outer layer with appliqué pieces attached all over, and an inner layer that is plain. I also added two pockets as shown in the ac online instructions and found the pockets to be a perfect angle for the hands to use. I love ac thought and design. I was left with barely any scraps – a few dozen appliqué circles and that was it.
I took the long route in this version although it’s always a bit hard to assess. All I can say was at the start it was painfully slow. So slow that it redirected me into investing in a hobby airbrush and Alabama Chanin’s paint spraying unit. At the start I actually brushed/coloured the stencil with a fat black sharpie but that was honestly just too slow – so slow that I knew I would give up eventually, and I found myself valuing the time spent on embroidery rather than stencilling.
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| Self-drafted DIY A.C. Walking Cape |
Fabric 180 gsm cotton jersey, 1.8m (width) x 4m (length) in navy from Joelle's shop. Enough to cut top and bottom pieces of the cape, collar, two large pockets as single layer & enough leftovers to do all the circular appliqués. Very little left over, almost nothing, in the end.
Embroidery dmc 53 floss, approximately 20 skeins.
It was still very slow in the embroidery department because of the size of the garment and the need to go round and round and round. I think another member of the stitchalong group counted 370 circles for her garment. The stitch in itself isn’t particularly tedious; in a long straight line it goes so much faster – almost effortlessly. It was the need to keep spinning the garment and holding all that fabric in your hands that drove me insane at times. Not to mention the un-spinning and the turning over to knot off every circle. Even though I did this stitch in circles so repetitively I don’t think my embroidery feather stitches were ever consistent like they would have been in a straight line. It was just a lot to hold and turn and manage. It was a difficult combination for me to master.
About a year of doing this and only halfway through the garment I was like, this just has to get faster. I don’t care about slow-fashion – this is just a pain in the ass. When I began stitching with multiple needles at once, the fun began and I was totally on a count down to the finish line. Eventually I was stitching with 8 needles and 8 appliqués at a time to alleviate the need to turn the garment so often. It was great having predictability about how much time I needed to invest and when it was going to be finished. I had also timed a couple of sets to know my pace. I found that to speed things up more, it was best to set up the tasks so that I switched between them as little as possible. For example, pre cutting a whole stash of appliqués, pre threading all eight needles at once, knot off all eight appliqués together, etc.
Heat setting the paint
In this garment, to heat set the paint, I baked this in the oven at 110 Celsius for around 30 minutes. I have to keep using leftover acrylic paint rather than buying new things, and saw that after heat setting that the paint would no longer run off in wash testing under the tap with soap or even simply being able to be scratched off with my fingers. In the latter, it would come off slightly as dried powder. I chose this temperature in the oven to lessen risk of burning. I had read that polymer clay can be baked at that temperature with acrylic paint & knew that I could dye and boil cotton jersey fabric at 100 Celsius without problems. The other way I saw this work well was ironing the paint for 10 seconds on the cotton setting – but I thought the oven was better for such a big garment. It did smell a bit like chicken afterwards but that dissipated just hanging out in the open air.
Interestingly the paint I used was not black. It is a dark purple; an attempt at black using my least favourite acrylic paints. Yet the outcome emerges as black.
Drafting the pattern
I self drafted this pattern because I thought it so simple but being a beginner I wasn’t really wise (lol!!!) I should have tested this on any kind of spare fabric but didn’t and had to do unnecessary adjustments later on ad hoc to lengthen the garment. Adjustments can be seen as the addition to the neckline area. The new proportions made the collar longer than the original. I also changed the recommended button placement simply to where it suited me best. I actually love how simple Alabama Chanin design and construction are in that you barely need instructions. They’re so good for beginner draftsmanship and experimentation.
