#vuvalini jacket

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I’ve been home from Wasteland Weekend 2019 for awhile now, but only just finished unpacking and putting everything away today, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite pictures of the event before turning my attention back to getting my Tumblr queue working again.

WWX was quite an experience. I lived out there for a full week, and now that I’ve been home even longer than that, it’s all started to blur in my head a bit. I’ve written a lot more about it elsewhere, but for here I’ll just say: it was amazing, ridiculously windy, comfortably hot then bitterly cold. I made a lot of new friends and solidified existing friendships, and generally partied my ass off. The project I spent all year working on, bringing the Green Place ward into reality with @thatonezombiecosplayer, was an unqualified success, and I think will be a defining feature of future Wastelands for me. We had just under 100 people occupying about 730′ of road frontage, all in gorgeously themed camps. I loved my little camp with Jack, and our neighborhood Tree Thing shrine, and how lovely it was to come back to our home at the end of each day.

And naturally the Green Place got involved in Tribe Shenanigans™ and stole the Dead Crows’ HeckleCAWpter, strapped it to the top of a themed car, and entered it into the Wasteland car show on Friday. You know, as you do.

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Evolution of a Hood

I recently finished the mockup for the jacket I’m making, which involved drafting the hood four separate times before I got it where I wanted it, and I thought a look at how they changed iteration to iteration might be fun. These are the side pieces for the hood, there’s also a rectangular piece that connects the two sides and forms the top. Each time I re-drafted the pattern, I re-cut it out of muslin, sewed and attached it to the jacket body, so I could see how it laid (and then picked it all apart to re-do the hood, three times, bleh).

Version #1 I drafted from measurements and a vague idea of the shape I wanted, but it turned out a lot smaller than I’d thought, more like a bonnet or aviator cap -- so much so that I may actually keep that pattern on hand to use for something like that, lol. I re-measured and drafted #2, which was closer, but everything was pulling weird along the neckline (the dangly bits that hang down connect to the wide neckline on the jacket), so I pinned extra fabric to the front edge and drew on that to get a better idea of where needed more space, then used that to draft version #3. That third one was preeeeetty close, and I almost just left it there, but since I’ve put so much work into this jacket, I figured one more attempt couldn’t hurt. The pattern for #3 is still folded over with one of the changes I made to the drafting of #4, based on the pinning and drawing I’d done on the fabric version of #3.

In the lower left picture, I layered all four pattern pieces on top of each other, #4 on the bottom and #1 on top, aligned by the top forward edge of the hood. Lower right picture is the same pile, aligned on the notch that marks the top of the shoulder seam, so you can see the variations these went through with each version.

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WIP Wednesday: I... Forgot It Was Wednesday edition. I snapped a couple of pics last night but didn’t get a chance to post.

We’re under 50 days until Wasteland Weekend -- 7 weeks exactly, as of about an hour ago -- so I’ve been buzzing along on my Vuvalini jacket. Over the weekend I cut my fitted pattern pieces out of the salvaged fabric I’m using: a US-military issue circa 1964 water-resistant cotton sleeping bag cover I got at War Mart (aka Camo Surplus) in LA. The design of the bag uses a drawstring through grommets to pull the bag closed around you, so when I cut it apart I kept the grommet strips intact to use for the lacing at the side seams of the jacket. The grommets are spaced widely enough that to get the fit I want, I’m adding hand-bound eyelets at intervals between the metal grommets. The sides will lace up with the same cord that was part of the sleeping bag cover.

I’ve sewn as much of the main body as I can before putting on the side lacing strips. The front, back, and hood are all assembled and seams flat-felled with their raggedy edges sticking out (for that post-apoc look, of course). I’m about halfway done with the handsewing, and once all the eyelets are in I’ll sew the strips to the side seam edges on both sides, then attach up the shoulders and add the sleeve caps. I miiight even be able to finish this before this weekend, but in any case I expect I’ll have something else on my sewing table by this time next week. :D

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Hokay, really doing this, cutting into 52 year old fabric to make this jacket. Why is this so difficult?? First cut anxiety ugh.

Also: giant hair is a go. (Now to see how it wears the next couple days...)

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Vuvalini jacket progress! Sorry for the plethora of mirror pics in my messy room, but trying to get good angles on yourself without a timer is a little rough, heh. 

Just finished the hood, v4 of the pattern for it in the lower right there. Thinking in 3D shapes is not one of my strong suits, so it took a couple of iterations to get the hood to lay the way I want. This is the look I wanted (tho I think I’m going to invert the neck seam when I sew the actual jacket -- lots of inverted seams in this, and I liked the way I attached v3 better than this), wide enough that I can wear my big Vuvalini scarf with it, so I can officially call this mock up done woot. If I get time later I’ll draft and sew some lace-on sleeves too, but if this bit (in its actual fabric) is all I get done before Wasteland, I’ll be happy.

I have just a couple of edits to transfer to my paper pattern (the adjustments to the side lower edge have already been made, just didn’t feel like recutting the whole thing), then it’ll be on to deconstructing the circa 1964 US military sleeping bag cover I’m using for fabric, hehe. 57 days to go!!

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Work In Progress Wednesday, holy crap 9 weeks until Wasteland Weekend! edition. This thing is coming up fast and my production abilities have been really low this summer, so a couple of weeks ago I sat down and prioritized everything on my list, and decided that sewing this jacket I designed would be biggest improvement in comfort and least likely to be purchasable elsewhere. I’m nearly done with the mock-up, and once I’ve got that all sorted the actual jacket will come together quickly.

Since I last posted about the mock-up, I’ve done quite a lot of adjusting to the fit of the body, shoulders, and armscyes, and then getting the cap sleeves to work the way I want them to. It’s just about there -- I’m going to add a 5/8″ to the outer edge of the armscye, hopefully that’ll fix the last little quibble I have with the cap sleeve fit. Since I’m hoping to use this pattern as a base for jackets/coats/RumIslandShifts in the future, the better fit I can get now the less work on future projects. And hey, better fitting jacket for Wasteland.

With all the body adjustments done and the sleeves basically right, I moved on to the hood in the last couple of days, and finished drafting it last night. It’s going to be a big three-piece hood, connecting to the wide open neckline in front and back -- the idea being that I can wear my big open-weave scarf under the hood/over the open neckline and have everything fit together well, and still leave room for my hopefully-giant hair (see also pic #4!).

I’m intending to draft two-piece sleeves for this at some point too, but once I’ve finalized the fit of the hood, I’m going to move on to my production fabric -- a vintage 1964 US military sleeping bag cover in a wonderful army green. For a sniper who spends her days hidden among the green atop the Citadel, it makes sense. ;)

On the hair front, I’m slowly working my way through the hair fall bits, getting close to done. The braids at the top of the fourth pic need to be taken apart and turned into something appropriate for Wasteland, and I might add a bit more to the one of the far left to better balance its pair beside it. With all of that braided in, even if my hair goes completely straight and/or I end up wearing it in a bun for most of WW, it’ll still look interesting and post apocy.

Still on my hope-to-do list after these are finished: pants, belt-with-pockets, top to go under this jacket. I have at least one stand-in in each of those categories already, so it’s just a question of how much I can get done in the next NINE WEEKS ugh. And weathering and helping Jack with his stuff, and maybe a shade project for our campsite itself. I’m really enjoying having a break year from Dragon Con to focus on just one costume/fandom, but holy crap it really did not cut down on the length of my to-do list, I think it just made it worse, lol.

63 days til Wasteland!