Gimme Some Rock'n'Roll : Washington Dead Cats (plus a few random bits)

Hi folks...long time no see!

So...what have I been up to these last weeks? Well, I went to Paris where I saw the best French psychobilly band - aka the Washington Dead Cats. This specific gig was given to celebrate the band's career's 30s birthday...and boy, what a gig! Salads and leeks fight, a balloon release, and even a burlesque performance by Juliette Dragon...we had it all! Here's a little video from this concert (not mine though) for your enjoyment.

In other words, I've been quite busy this last month and it's not going to stop soon. I've started a training course to become a web developer, so I don't have much time left for sewing these days (I'm still working on my boyfriends Negroni and I've just made a muslin for my future Ceylon...), and I have even less time for blogging. But I hope I'll soon be able to use my newly-acquired coding skills to try and develop my own website! And I can still find some time for knitting!
In the meantime, I think I might be more active on Instagram than on this blog these next months...so come and have a look if you feel like it!

Gimme some Rock'n'Roll : Demented Are Go

For those who know them, I'm not sure these guys need an introduction...For those who don't, you can find more informations on Wikipedia (in French and in English). And if you want to hear what they sound like, go check YouTube.

They happened to play on last Friday evening in Orléans, not (too) far from where I live, and my boyfriend and I didn't want to miss it, because psychobilly gigs are really rare non-existent in our area, sooo...we went!
And we didn't regret it!The venue was not really big and the crowd took some time to warm up (to the annoyance of 6 Feet Down, the French band who played the opening gig) but the show was really great!
Funny enough, even though Sparky (DAG's lead singer, for those who don't know) downed quite a few wine glasses, beers and so on (all the while putting on a hell of a show), he still took the time to check on a guy who was apparently totally high (or down, that was hard to tell) on drugs, just to see if he was OK. So, who says punks and rockers can't have manners?!

All in all it was a very musical weekend for me, as I also got to see Al Willis and the New Swingsters live on Saturday evening! Sure, it was more sedate than DAG, but a great show nonetheless!

The "Psychobilly Freakout" shirt

After an uneventful - sewing-wise, that is - month of March, I'm back to show what I've made last - another shirt for my boyfriend, from what is now becoming a tried and true pattern - Kwik Sew 3484.
This one is actually much simpler than the first - which you can see here - but there's actually a reason for it : it was actually simply supposed to be a background for a patch! Consequentially, the fabric and the thread I used for the buttonholes (handworked...again!) were actually chosen to match the colors of the patch!

Here's the shirt itself...

And here's the justification for the title of this post!

The fabric is a poly/cotton blend in a dark/greyish blue, the buttons are grey metal and the buttonholes are made with red thread. I initially intended to topstitch with the same thread I used to make the buttonholes, but my machine would have none of it. On top of it, at first I thought topstitching was just a long, straight machine stitch done with a thicker thread and a specific needle...so I went to my sewing machine and sewing supplies dealer and asked for such a needle, to which he answered there were no such needles (although I do remember reading about it...) and that topstitching was actually a specific stitch! You can imagine I felt pretty dumb.

But that's how you learn I guess...I finally found out the setting on my machine and will be able to topstitch the hell out of my next project. Stay tuned for that :)

And now I'm going to leave you with some music. Hope you enjoy it!