Ragamuffin Sewing Part 2

So my love of Vivienne Westwoods 1980 collections continue. This weeks handmade overalls are influenced from Vivienne’s 1983 collection Punkature. Borrowing idea’s from this Dickensian/Ragamuffin/ Rastafarian look whilst sticking with the muted tones and textures of her Nostalgia of Mud/Buffalo collection. It takes a bit of thought and effort to sew up your own cohesive look based on images, research and music video’s alone and given the overall look, altogether it does look like hardly any effort has been applied and this is exactly what I’m going for.

So without having to explain myself anymore than I need to the above images are my inspiration for this look. I love this— Dickensian/ Ragamuffin look so I got to drafting up my own version. I splurged on 2m of brown linen, boy do I love this stuff and dug through my stash of leather scraps to fashion up the braces. A snap fastener kit was also purchased. I drafted up the pants adding big deep pockets extending the front rise and back rise into a slight elevated point for the leather brace to sit. I trimmed the top edges with brown broadcloth and then fashioned a strip of fabric- turned over on both sides then topstitched down for the rope to travel through which is then pulled through a machine sewn button hole. The insides are all neatly finished on the overlocker.

You can imagine how easy the leather brace was to make, the hardest part is hammering in the fastener snap kit and even that didn’t break a sweat. The brace is the same on the back as it is on the front. Easy! My net top was also handmade and dyed grey, the fabric was yellow and thrifted and I have enough to make myself the Kitchen Sink Cardigan (centre image^).

So yes, admittedly this is not for the faint hearted, and I don’t even expect my lovely readers to begin to understand where I’m coming from it’s just the pure joy of sewing up something I know I’ll never be able to afford! I’m just sewing through my fashion fantasies. A see and sew kinda a thing if you will. Happy to share those fantasies here.

I wore this out last night to see White Night- the projection of images onto our iconic buildings here in Melbourne which was mind blowing to say the least. I had some lovely compliments from like minded folk and a guy who took some serious effort to scream from his car window ‘hey weirdo’…why thank you bogan boy.

A second pair had to be made, how yummy is this cotton silk? I waited a longtime for this fabric to go on sale, saving up vouchers and hitting Spotlight when it went on sale so I didn’t have to pay the full price of $25 metre. I love the patterns and the colours so light and floaty.

These were made in a similar manner as the linen overalls, I just needed to change my tension on the overlocker to get a nice looking stitch. They’re so damn comfy, great for lounging about in this heat, the colours lend itself more to a winter palette wouldn’t you agree? I’m cool with that.

So there you have it, this particular look is looking somewhat cohesive, I might just have to expand on it. I did see some really big wooden buttons on Etsy the other day…hmmm.

In other sewing news have you dropped your sewing pin on The Map yet? Vicki over at Another Sewing Scientist has brewed up the best idea ever, a Google Map for all us sewing types to pin our location to, you know, for potential sewing meet-ups and what not, how cool is that? Go make your mark you never know there could be a potential friendship just around the corner from you.

I wont be here next week, super busy but I will be sewing throughout the week, probably mock bras in varies sizes.

Have yourself a lovely week.

Happy sewing.