Luck o' The Irish

Happy... Friday? Yup, it's Friday. Sorry about yesterday - I've been a bit under the weather lately so I wasn't in much mood to sew, so this one is going to be a bit of a throwback.

I started out with this green garment that I didn't know what to call it. Dress? Not really. Cover up? Not so much. I still am at a loss of adjectives for this one.

This was long, large and not very flattering, but a perfect green to ring in St. Patrick's Day. Plus, it had the most amazing back to it!

At first, I thought about just sewing up the button front and making an actual dress of it. However, I just couldn't see a seam up the middle of my stomach/chest being flattering, so I had to go another way of it. I decided to take away a lot of the fabric in order to put more emphasis on the crocheted back.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no pictures of this process, so I'll have to go at this the Kindergarten way and "use my words". First thing I did was cut the bottom just above the fourth button and then hemmed the bottom. Because the fabric was a bit stretchy, I went around the bottom hem twice. I then cut the sleeves off to 3/4 sleeves. I realized at this point that the fabrci wasn't fraying, ripping or destroying itself in any other way without an actual hem, so I decided to leave the sleeves with raw edges. As I planned on scrunching them up anyway, no one would notice if they were slightly uneven. (Which they didn't. Or, at least, no one pointed and laughed.)

And that's it! It was pretty easy, peasy and a great cardigan for St Patrick's Day. I got a lot of compliments on the back now that it was more prominent without all the extraneous fabric. I have worn this pretty often since - it's becoming quite the staple to my wardrobe.

Fabric Invasion!

Hello All!

I know it's only Tuesday, but I just had to show everyone my recent haul! I've recently gotten into the habit of going onto Craigslist for arts and craft items. Mainly, I've been looking for cheap sergers, sewing supplies and random varieties of ribbons, thread, elastics, bias, etc. As I only started looking about a week ago, and have no committments to myself to purchase anything just yet, I couldn't help but answer one advertisement.
What was it you ask?! TWO (read it, TWO!) big bins fabric. And this isn't just remnant fabric; most of these cuts are full out yards of it. Some of the fabric, even though it had obviously been cut, still had at least a yard of it. With the exception of some very bright pink tulle, none of the "remant" fabrics were any less than a half of a yard. Some, such as the top dark fabric on the left pile in the picture, still had the price slip on it from Joann fabrics (3 yards priced at 18.00). The only downside is that there is so much fabric and none of it has explanations/details on it. Some are pretty obvious, such as velvet, corduroy, cotton, etc. but then there are others that are out of my fabric knowledge. Another thing I'll have to google, I guess! I'm so excited to have this fabric - not only can I make interesting additions to my thrift store finds now, but I may even be able to create something homegrown and all my own! (See what I did there?)

And oh! I forgot the very best part. All I paid for this fabric that the lady estimated at $600 (I found $120 worth of price slips still on the fabric):

$25.00

Gonna go ahead and call that my Steal of the Month!

Dying Dresses

Happy Thursday, ya'll! Let's jump right into this one...

 

If you've followed me for longer than a few posts, you've known that I've been pretty obsessed with lace and nauticals lately. This one, although lacking the nauticals, certainly is lace. As much as I was in love with the lace, I was not loving the white. Folks, I am an extremely clumsy person who often spills coffee on my clothing and has a slight knack for drawing on my shirt without noticing. I took the opportunity to do my first dying!

 

I'm not lying when I say that the name had everything to do with my choosing this one. Also, WalMart had a whole 4 colors to choose from so the pickins' were already slim anyway.

Since the shirt was all cotton, I knew it would take to the dye pretty well. I got my bucket, filled it with steamin' hot water, a half a bottle of dye (this was probably excessive for one shirt) and a bit of salt. The salt ingredient isn't in the directions, but the many other blogs I've read that talk about dying often mention salt is important for... something to do with bright, rich colors. I then stuck the shirt in and let it soak, stirring pretty often, for about an hour.

 

I didn't want to ruin any of my spoons, so to stir this whole get-out I used the wooden/ribbon wands that I made for my wedding. Considering I had about 60 wands left after the reception, I had no problems parting with this particular wedding souvenir. 59 more dye jobs to go!

After I dyed the shirt and took it out after an hour, I spent about 30 minutes rinsing it under water to get the excess dye out. Once the water was turning semi-clear, I threw it in the washing machine with an old towel. At this point, I was anxious to see how my first dye job went. Because of this anxiety, I did something stupid. When this cotton shirt was finished washing I put this cotton shirt in the dryer... on high. I didn't think this one through at all, and in hindsight, I certainly should have because as I took my cotton shirt out of the dryer I slowly realized that it was much, much smaller. Fail. I put on the shirt and knew for a fact that I would never wear this midriff-bearing shirt. Brainstorming ensued.

Finally, I thought of something! Plan: buy some fabric, make a dress. Boom. So I bought some fabric made of cotton/spandex blend that would complement my newly dyed shirt. When I got it home, I realized this fabric was different than all the other fabrics I've bought. How is it different, you may ask. Well...

Ignore the crazy eye - I haven't quite gotten the hang of the red eye remover.

 

I had apparently managed to buy a yard and a half tube of fabric. Not sure how this happened, but it totally saved me from sewing a seam or two. My confusion turned to relief pretty quickly.

I had a piece of elastic in my craft room, so I measured it around my waist and sewed the ends together. As I wanted the elastic on the outside of the dress, I did a fancy-ish seam. My gut tells me it's called a "french seam" but I am unsure on this fact (google it). Basically, you sew it together, and fold it over the seam so the outside looks as such:

 

This makes it just a bit cleaner on the outside than just the cut end of the elastic. I then sewed my cotton/jersey fabric to the elastic. I read on a few blogs that when you're sewing dresses with elastic you should stretch out the elastic while sewing in order to keep a "ruffled" look and keep the stretch in it. This was - well - it was a mess. I kept stretching it, which then pulled the elastic faster through the needle and made the stitches uneven. I then tried to not pull it too hard, and ended up not stretching it at all. I kept going back and forth between great stitches and drunken sailor stitches. Again, no one will climb up my dress and inspect the inside seams, so I let it go.

Then, I cut my shrunken shirt shorter - to my natural waist - leaving a bit of a seam allowance. You'll notice on this picture as well that I'm in need of a longer ruler.

 

Once I had the top and the bottoms on the elastic, it all came together from there! I have a nice new dress with lace shoulders that is very, very comfortable. Check it!

 



Darted to Death

Happy Thursday! I hope your week went by well. My weeks since my resignation have seemed to go very, very slowly. They're pretty painful, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel and can't wait for May 6th (which is my start date at the other job). Apparently I love changing my entire life around at the beginning of May. Last May, I married my best friend. This May, I'm changing careers. Wonder what next May shall bring?!

So friends, I gave you a teaser in the last post about the upcoming project. Alas, it is finished and it is a huge, huge fail. It's so destroyed that it is actually sitting in the garbage right now. I may take it out later and try to harvest some fabric, but right now it's in a fabric time-out to think about what it's done.

I had pretty high hopes for this one.

It was a long skirt that I absolutely loved the pattern on! It reminded me of summer and I couldn't wait to make it a cute sundress. The idea was easy - as ideas always are - take it up around my shoulders, cinch the middle, hike the hem up a bit and call it a day. Oh, and there was the little matter of the hooch-tastic slit up the side.

So when I hiked up the skirt to my armpits, it was quite billowy. As I saw it, I had two ways to go on this one. I could throw a belt on it to cinch it or I could actually learn something and do some darts to cinch and fit it a bit more to my body. I decided on the latter - I was going to learn something.

First thing I did was put the dress on Sophie (as you saw in the last post) and put some darts in starting at the bottom of the chest and going down a few inches. Now, I'm obviously no "how to guru" on darts because you know this project turns out to be a huge fail, but basically a dart is put in to fit garments to the curves of your body. They're often found at the bodice, back and chest but could be other places as well (for example on skirts you often see four of them - two in front, two in back). If you look at most of the clothes in your closet, they have darts somewhere or another. Essentially, it's where the tailor pinched the fabric together in the back and sewed a little triangle, chopped off the excess triangle piece and ironed down the fabric. Turn something inside out, you'll see it.

Back to what I did - I pinned on Sophie where the bottom of her chest was and then a few inches down for my starting and stopping point. I did two of these on the front. After I sewed, this is how the wrong part of the fabric looked.

Luckily, I was a smart cookie and tried it on before cutting off the excess. After I tried it on it was absolutely hideous. We'll call this Fail #1. I donned the skirt dress and it was a) uneven, apparently Sophie isn't as symmetrical as we thought b) puckered at the back, I had a full-on back belly and c) puckered at the sides. The sides I was actually okay with - if it puckered there, I could always sew up the side seams that were already there and bring in the puckers that way. The other two problems I couldn't live with, so the handy seam ripper came out in style and I ripped it all out.

It was at this point that I gave up and wrote you a post about all the random things I had done throughout the week. Meanwhile, I scanned YouTube and other tutorials on how to do what I wanted. Let me tell you guys, I. Found. Nothing. Nothing. I found a lot of tutorials on how to do the darts following a pattern and making a dress from scratch. I found a lot of tutorials on how to do a dart on a random piece of fabric. I did not find one tutorial on how to include darts into a refashion of a dress. No instructions whatsoever on where to start them, where to finish them, what type to do on what types of dresses, etc. I know people have done it, but apparently it's such an easy tactic that no one felt a tutorial was needed. I showed them.

Luckily, I was all "learned up" on how an appropriate dart was done. Basically, you start at the inside of the dress and go to the outside of the seam. You back stitch when you start, leave it be when you end and just tie a double knot in your thread. So - I did attempted that.

I mean, it basically did happen. A dart was made. I also made it longer to go all the way down the bodice. I had noticed on the last one that the fabric still folded over itself in a natural fall during the first time around, so I thought if I continued to bring the dart down into the bodice and waist it would really make it nice and fitted (and lengthening lines). Yeah - I was dreaming. I put this thing on and it still a) made me have a back belly and b) puckered at the sides, however we now have a new c) cinched the waist so tiny - I had accidentally taken the dress in about 2 sizes and I now couldn't breathe. Fantastic. So the seam ripper came out again. We're calling this Fail #2.

I found in my random Google travels that there is a different type of dart - the diamond dart. Since I was already on a roll, I figured "why not?" I knew at this point the dress couldn't go out into public anyway - there were major holes in the (what I now knew as) delicate fabric from my seam ripping that you could see tiny dots of my skin all over my waist.

In my mind (again, those easy idea things) this thing called diamond dart was the perfect solution. It would tailor the garment under my chest to bring it in, and the bottom of the diamond wouldn't bring in the waist as much so I could commence breathing. It was settled - I did the diamond dart.

You heard me. I did it. This is actually how it's supposed to look. You start at the seam and end at the seam, back stitching nowhere, and tying double knots from the excess thread to keep it.

Then I put the dress on, and threw a belt in there just to keep it a little more cinched at the waist, since I hadn't kept the dart going all the way down the waist.

Mind not the bra straps. I'm not fancy enough to go all the way up two flights of stairs to find a strapless. Deal with it.

So from the front it wasn't horrible. It's not what I would call the most flattering thing in the world, but it was a strapless dress, cinched at the waist with darts that made it more fitted. AND! There was no back stomach, and only a small amount of side billow-age. It still wasn't going out in public, but it was something I was happy about. I learned something.

Then I turned sideways.

Fail #3 can be summarized, again, via alphabet. a) Pancake boobs. Yes, pancake is an adjective in this sentence and you know exactly what it means in this context. b) Belly pooch - and folks, that's not mine. If it was mine, I would have edited that shit out and never drawn attention to it BUT! this one is not me. The pooch was even larger without the belt. It looked like I carried a baby and a six pack in this pooch, neither of which is accurate.

Although after the week I had at work, and looking forward to the next 2 weeks at work... the six pack doesn't sound half bad...

See you next Thursday, friends. And please don't follow or consider this blog post a "tutorial" or "how-to" post at all. I don't want to be responsible for the result.



This and That

Hello all, and Happy Thursday!

This one isn't quite a refashion - more of a "taking care of loose ends" post. I was going back through my posts and I never realized that I forgot to show you something that I had teased you about! Remember this post? I had teased you with some fantastic fabric that I was in love with, but because it was an upcoming Christmas present, I couldn't tell you what it was? Well, now's the time! To remind you, this was the fabric.

What was it, you ask? It was a piece of flannel from a rag quilt that I made for my baby niece! I bought a bunch of different colors to make an interesting pattern, but in all honesty I had to make it all around that fabric. I had picked it up and couldn't put it down - I wanted to use it everywhere!

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with rag quilts I'll give you a quickie explanation. It's a quilt that you sew together with one side having all exposed seams and the other nice and clean. On the side with the exposed seams, you allow the seams and edges to fray (a la rags). And then you're done. Easy peasy, right? Well, if you read my post, you knew it didn't go easy peasy as a pair of pliers was needed to fix my sewing machine.

Now for the quickie DIY Rag quilt. First up, I cut out tons of squares of each fabric. You can make the squares any size you'd like - I think I used 6" by 6". I then doubled it up, wrong sides together, and sewed each square. Then I used my floor to put all the squares in a random design until I found something that worked. I then worked on the row's first - I pinned the sides together making a row of 6 squares. Once I had my rows, I lined each row up on the floor again to make sure I had my design still there and pinned each row to itself, making sure I kept all the seams on one side. This is how it looked when the rows were sewn and then pinned all together.

Little did I know, this was the easy part! Sewing all the rows together and trying to make sure I didn't mess up was the hard part. Also, walking on my floor ended up being a bit difficult since there were random dropped pins all over it waiting to jab you in the foot. My cats "enjoyed" it as well.

Once everything was sewn together, I then had to go over each seam and cut little slits it in. This is meant to help it fray. Now, when I say "every seam" I mean every. damn. seam. Around each little square and every single outside edge. This took me quite a while and 3 pairs of scissors, but it happened. I found the trick was to start in the corners where four points came together and then that created enough give in between to snip it down. Also, when cutting such small slits, doing one piece of flannel at a time (as opposed to all four) was way easier. This took a good amount of the seasons of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit to finish.

Once all the seams were cut, I threw it in my washing machine. The first time you wash it you can't use softener. I then threw it in my dryer - this creates a lot of lint so you have to make sure to empty your lint trap about 4 times during the first drying. Then you wash it again, this time with softener, and then dry it again. Make sure you keep checking that lint trap! All in all, you go through the washing/drying process about 4 times to make it look appropriately frayed and to not get lint coming off of it. The more you wash and use it in the future, the more frayed it'll get, but the lint shouldn't be as bad coming out of the 3rd and 4th dry.

Here's the finished project on the seam side.

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the other side, but it's the same pattern, but with no frayed seams except the outer edges so it's very clean on the other side.

So you may be asking yourself - what the heck have you been doing all week if there's no new project? Well, I've been overwhelmed. First of all...

I quit my job.

That's right - I'm peacing out of the nursing home. Why? Because I got myself a new, better, more shiny job! Am I excited? Eh. It'll probably hit me when the time to change gets closer, which is around April 30th. That's the last day at the old, and the new one starts on the 6th. I'm not a "change" kind of person but this should be a good change.

I'm also overwhelmed because of all this...

That's right - this is all my scraps from previous projects. I just don't have a place to put them anymore, so I really need to start thinking of ideas for them. Of course, the first thing I did was scour Pintrest for "fabric scraps" ideas. I found a lot - most of which I'm sure I'll try out - but a lot of them needed other items such as ribbon, elastic, etc. that I just didn't have on hand, and my sweatpants were kind of dictating for me not to go out in public. So, I just whipped something up and hope it would work. First up, I decided I'd make a sunglass case.

For this, I used the leftover green flannel fabric from the above rag quilt. I'm actually quite in love with my new case. It's quite large for sunglasses (although I still use it for that) but at some point I'm also sure I could put a strap on the top and use it as a wristlet. The button I got from my huge collection that I picked up at Joann Fabrics on sale. Now, I don't own a buttonholer and have no idea how to create a button hole, but damn it don't I have the buttons to do so! This one was one of my favorites and I thought it went pretty well with the green, making it nice and summery. The latch had me confused for a bit. It was only after I added the button that I realized that the whole point of the button was to actually be able to close the pouch. I rummaged around my craft room until I found some twine leftover from the ring pillow I made my best friend for her wedding. Some sewing, hot glue and 3 burnt fingers later, I owned a sealable pouch!

Next up, I put my eyes on these babies...

That's right little shoulder pad, I'm talking to you! I'm not entirely sure what kind of crazy thoughts I had in my head when I saved the shoulder pads, but here they were, taking up space. I had to figure out something. So... I sewed it together.

What is that, you ask? (You sure are inquisitive today, aren't you, readers?) That is a homemade shoulder pad catnip toy. Once I sewed up the seams I saw that it looked a bit "mouse-like" so I decided to stuff it with catnip and sew up the edges, maybe make a make shift tail of some sort and let the cats go at it. The foil in my plan is that I had forgotten that the little jerks broke into the catnip cabinet and destroyed the bag a few weeks ago. So once I purchase catnip again, this will be filled up and stitched and ready to destroy. Boom.

Now, I had also started a project. Being the little procrastinator that I am, I started it on Wednesday afternoon. Turns out, the project ended up being a bit more confusing and difficult than I had imagined in my head (who would have thought...) and I got too frustrated to finish it. That's what I get for procrastinating and then trying to figure out something on my own that I probably should have googled.

So, I leave you with yet another teaser of the project that is started and is slowly making itself into the "fail" pile. Should be an interesting week! See you next Thursday!