Fabric Roses

I did it!  I got married!  While I didn't accomplish all 1293847520983745 crafty projects I had set for myself, I did accomplish enough.  It was more sewing and making than I had done in a very long time and I'm SO glad I set aside enough time to work on things.  That said I will admit to sewing the lining in the dress I chose to wear in the last few minutes before we left the house to head up to the wedding site.

I don't have a lot of pictures yet, and I don't want to share *too* much of them online, but I will show you some of the things I made and of course the dress(es).

Here is my bouquet - I am 100% thrilled with the way this came out (picture by Isaac Wasuck):

I used a Clover Rose Maker in Large (using the "advanced" method where you turn it inside out to hide the seam)  and after testing out a ton of different fabrics (using mainly thrifted castaways) I settled on using fat quarters from Jo-Anns.  I thought they gave the best "rose like" appearance and the ease of picking colors was an added bonus. 

For the stems I bought a bunch of fake roses and gardenias and disassembled them, removing all the petals and plastic pollen pieces but leaving the green plastic "base" where the flower attaches to the stem.  This left me with a nice base to glue the roses onto.  I used Beacon Fabri-tac for the glue - this stuff is INCREDIBLE and I swear by it for anything you might normally use a glue gun for, plus anything not worth spending the time to hand sew.  It's a costumers best friend.

My First Christmas (tree)

I got my first tree as an adult this year!  We had zero ornaments to start out with and I really wanted as many handmade ornaments as possible. 

I have been saving vintage wooden thread spools since I was little, so I painted the empty ones with acrylic paint and hung them on the tree.

We also got a little crazy with sequins and styrofoam...

...and I've only just begun playing with clear plastic ornaments and "stained glass" paint...

I have to be honest and say that my absolute favorite ornaments are the ones that came on the tree:

And the ultimate Goodwill score - five sets of these for two dollars!

I am addicted to the cross filter setting on my camera.

OTSBH

I've mentioned my desire to go to bra making school, and a little over a year ago I bought enough supplies to make about 12 bras to get me started.

Instead of being somewhat embarrassed that it took me this long to make one, I'll focus on the positive - I made my first bra today!!!!

It was much easier than I had anticipated it would be. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that I got to use a bunch of the built in special stitches on my machine which really added to the professional finish.

I definitely ran into a few issues though.

1. I thought I was better at sewing elastic than I actually am, so I didn't bother pinning it first, which would have saved me some time and some re-sewing.
   
2. The underwires that were provided were *just* a bit too long - I was able to force them in but I'm going to have to look into what I need to do to shorten them. If it's anything like shortening boning for corsets, it's going to be a very messy undertaking.
3. I also didn't bother measuring myself before I traced and cut the pattern pieces. Anyone that has met me will find this partly hilarious and partly unbelievable, but it's too small. I made a 34A, which makes me wonder if even bras have fallen victim to vanity sizing. Except that it doesn't really make sense - wouldn't vanity sizing mean you would want to buy a bigger size than you really were?

Here are some ridiculously large pictures so that you can examine my fabulous execution in full detail.

The front:


And the inside:


P.S. Did you know that the little decoration - usually a bow - that is placed at the center front is distilled from the busk ties on corsets during the Elizabethan era?

My Thanksgiving dress

I cooked the turkey this year, so I chose to celebrate its significance by making a dress to wear.

I used a vintage 70's wedding dress pattern for this one, with some modifications. For fabric I used this really nice heavy wool that I have had for so long I no longer remember where I got it.


One of the modifications I made was the gathering on the skirt. The original had the gathering on the sides....which is a terrible idea if you ask me. I think it looks much better with the gathers between the princess seams.


Probably the most fun part of this is the lining: an Alexander Henry print.


The most significant aspect of this dress though is what happened after I put the zipper in. The top edge didn't quite line up, and so to hide that I attached a little bow which attaches with a trouser hook on one side.



This is going to be my signature detail from now on - I love it so much!!

Almost a tutorial...three piece dress

The idea for this dress came to me while I was riding the bus to work. All three pieces were in my donate pile for various reasons.



I cut the top off the blue dress:


I cut the bottom off of the white top:


and I cut two rectangles out of the green rose print top:


Then I serged the green pieces into a tube:


did some draping and pinning on Millie:


and finally serged everything together:


This dress has everything I loved about the original pieces and nothing I didn't.

Floral empire waist dress with hand-picked zipper

I made this with rayon I purchased at Jo-Ann's - I've been dying for the perfect floral dress and I thought that this would be it.



I didn't plan out where I would cut the fabric, and so the bodice oddly has almost no red in it, which I was concerned about at first, but once the whole thing was together the skirt made up for it.



It took me almost 10 years to figure out, but the best way to sew in a non-invisible zipper is by hand. It's called "hand picking" for some reason and it really does give you the most amount of control, and honestly in the end takes about as much time as machine sewing. It does a nice job of looking handmade without looking "homemade." Does that make any sense?



Unfortunately I'm not crazy about the way it looks on me, so I'm going to put it in my Etsy shop in the next week or so along with a bunch of other stuff. Time to reopen!

Allison chains

This is a bit out there, but I'm still pretty sure I'll wear it. Another second-lives-for-broken-necklaces piece, inspired by the body chains by Bliss Lau that are all over the place right now.

Another way to reconstruct a t-shirt

In November of 2008 Etsy seller necklush sold their first piece...so I'm going to credit them with the original idea. Urban Outfitters' Urban Renewal line has created something very similar, which I got for $1.99 on clearance recently. You can even find online tutorials (like this one from Connie at this old dress) if you'd like to make one for yourself...which is exactly what I did on my lunch break last Friday while working from home.

I used an almost threadbare t-shirt which was being thrown away and had plenty of holes in it.

Necklace explosion

I forget which blog I found this link on, but I was almost instantly inspired to try it myself. The less than instant part consisted of taking a picture and posting it here...I think I finished this about a month ago.

I made it entirely out of random broken jewelry and pendants that I had on hand. I just took a short length of chain with relatively large links, and attached two charms on each link (one on each side) with jump rings. I put the largest pieces on the bottom, the smallest on the top, and mixed things up a bit in the middle. That's really all there was to it.



I wear it on a very long chain, and so far have only lost one item off of it, which was promptly returned to me by the bouncer who picked it up, so I'm thinking it carries a bit of good luck with it.

Making good...

...on my New Year's prediction, I finished this hunter camo jacket last night, using the same pattern as for the leather jacket. The only things re-used here are the zipper and the thrifted cotton lining, and let me just say it was a pleasure to sew with straight-up basic cotton after the last few projects.

s-t-r-e-t-c-h

I had intended to reconstruct a dress to try out this pattern, but there wasn't nearly enough fabric (the front is fully lined) and so since I had 4+ yards of it I used this slinky stretchy stuff I had on hand. I cannot remember where I got this fabric from, but I'm fairly certain that I got it at a store (as opposed to a thrift shop or yard sale).


Once I was finished, I liked the look of the fabric so much, I tried making a dress out of it. I used Vogue 1046 by Anna Sui and while the pattern itself is really simple my choice of fabric ultimately proved to be a poor one. The front has a slight cowl neck, which requires you to cut it on the bias - no problem there. It's also lined, and so I used a vintage nightgown for that part, which I was really pleased with - nice and thin and slippery.

My first problem came after it was mostly assembled. The curved seam in the front and the back got really stretched out and just looked terrible. To fix that, I topstitched the allowance down about 1/4" from the seam, and then inserted some elastic in the casing that was formed. My second problem came when it was time to sew down the facings. I had to hold the fabric stretched between the fingers of one hand while slip stitching the lining shut with the other. Not fun and very tiring for my hands. In fact I'm still not done! Only the back is sewn down in this picture:


I'm not sure I even like it on me, but I do think the pattern has potential if next time I sew it with a woven instead of a knit.

THE leather jacket

Remember this? I've been collecting various leather items (for years!) with the intent of cutting them up and making my dream leather jacket out of them. Well, I finished it several weeks ago and here it is!!



I couldn't be happier with how it came out. The leather is so soft and buttery and it fits me PERFECTLY. The pattern I re-used is Vogue Elements 7266 - it's out of print now which is a shame because that whole Elements line was the best thing Vogue ever did, in my opinion. I used thrifted polyester satin for the lining and a reclaimed zipper that I shortened and dyed black. The only new things I used were the needles, thread, snaps, and interfacing.

And for completeness - here are pictures of two of the jackets that went into making it:



Leather is definitely not the easiest material to work with.

1. Use leather needles in your machine and change them frequently (I used three just on this jacket)
2. Don't pin anything! I have rubber coated metal clips that I use to hold the pieces together while sewing. I've read that paper clips work well, too, but haven't tried those.
   
3. Keep your seam allowances in mind when assembling. You don't want to have to sew through eight layers of thick leather if you can help it.
4. Use a slighly longer stitch length than you normally would, particularly if the leather is very soft. Leather needles are shaped like a triangular blade, and so are literally cutting through the leather with each pass of the needle. This can result in perforated pieces that easily tear apart if you're not careful.
5. Surprisingly (to me at least) you can successfully use fusible interfacing on leather. I used the wool setting with steam and it worked great.
6. I wasn't able to find rubber cement for use with leather, so I tried the "regular" kind. This did not work. At all. The suede side of the leather completely absorbed any cement I tried to apply.
   
7. ...but it doesn't seem to have mattered! I didn't do anything to the seam allowances (with the exception of #3 above) and it still looks great.
8. As time intensive as it is, hand sew as much as you can. This ties to #4 above. I used leather needles made for hand sewing (and a really good thimble) to sew all of my linings closed and it really made a difference.
   

Two coats, one pair of pants, and one skirt later....

...I've created a mountain of work for myself.

Purple zipper

I began working on this yesterday and finished it up this afternoon.

Before:


After:

I was able to keep the pockets from the original - I love when that happens!

And a close up:

Assymetrical sweater

I got this sweater at UO...sound familiar? It had big ugly "brass" buttons and this crazy ruffle nonsense going on in the shoulders. I switched up the buttons and reset the sleeves without the ruffles and now I have a very wearable basic.

The Stud Bug

...has bitten me. I finished de-studding this belt a few days ago:

And now I have these!


I spent today working on this shirt transformation after being inspired by Clevergirl. I didn't actually watch the tutorial until afterwards (it's very well done!), it was the before and after pictures that got me thinking. So I picked up this men's shirt on Friday and worked on it while I should have been outside in the sun.


It's so cute and there are so many great details that I'm in love with. PLUS, I saved *just* enough fabric to make a matching bra!

Sorry for the blurry pictures. I finally broke down and ordered a full size tripod that is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. TONS more sharper pictures to come!

Vroom!!

Here's a before and after of a reconstruction I finished this weekend. It's a sweater that I got at UO for $5 a s a gift for someone who thought it was too "swashbuckler." I figured I had nothing to lose so I cut it up and took it from a men's XL to a ladies' XS. I tried a new technique - serging the raw edges and seaming with a conventional machine.

The pictures are unimpressive but the finished result is much better.

...and these are Millie's new wheels!!

Introducing: OSFA for Heinous Shrew

These are the "two hole" earrings I made!

These were made from recycled necklaces. I used to have two of them, but somewhere along the line I lost one.