In the flow

You know when you spend months looking forward to something, have big plan and then it suddenly sneaks up on you? That totally happened to me this time. I am going to the Medieval week in Visby next week and my dress is anything but ready. In fact, I have been sewing madly for the last two days in an attempt to get it ready. I love being stressed for things like this. Not always, not even regularly but sometimes it is good to remind myself that when crunchtime comes, I have untapped reserves of energy and motivation.

Crochet carpet made from tshirts - a recycling project

Remember June 2012, when I cut up an old top into yarn? And how about November 2012, when I tried and failed to turn it into a carpet?

I finally succeeded and turned all that yarn, that I have been collecting over the last couple of years, into a carpet! I have used old tshirts, shorts, tops, a dress and fabric scraps. Any type of jersey left over went into it.

It will keep my feet nice and warm in winter. I love how this project finally turned out. I especially love that apparently my wardrobe is so colour coordinated that it all nicely fits together. ;)

Belt & What I wore

The sun came out, the mister was at hand and I managed to take some pictures! I’m quite proud of myself I have to say, I have been trying to do this for days. Anyway, this means I finally get to present the new belt I made to you.

The belt is inspired by one I saw on a market in Bangkok. It is basically just this long strip of velvet, slightly thicker in the middle, that gets tied in a know at the front. It’s brilliant for wearing over loose dresses like the green (don’t know what happened to the colours) one in the picture.

I wrap it around twice so I have the narrower bit lying over the wider part. The look reminds me a little of the Japanese Obi’s.

This is a pretty standard outfit for me. I wore: Dress and Scarf from H&M, Cardigan from GAP, Tights from Boots, Belt handmade and shoes from somewhere in Switzerland.

Still crafting

I’m sorry it’s been a little quiet on the crafting front lately. I have made some things but some of them, I can’t show you yet. The two things I have been meaning to show you still haven’t been photographed properly, thanks to the weather outside. I’m working on it.

So the only new development I can show you is the new crochet hook I bought. Look at that colour! Have I mentioned that I really don’t know how to crochet?

My first quilt

This project has been a seriously long time in the making. I started with this quilt even before I moved out to go to university. At the time, I just patch worked the pieces together. Later, I added the rim and bought the wadding and the fabric for the back, before tossing it all back into another corner for two years. I am proud to announce that I finally finished it!

In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing special. I have seen so many splendid quilts lately that I’m actually a little embarrassed to show this one. It has a very simple pattern and there are more mistakes in it than I am willing to think about. But, it’s my first quilt and I really enjoy the feeling of sleeping under a blanked I have made myself.

The quilt already contains quite a lot of memories. One of the dark green fabrics is left over linen from a medieval dress I made for my sister. The light green material used to be curtains in my old room, the stripy fabric was left over from making some pillow cases. I actually died the really dark green fabric by hand, many years ago, when I was making a hobbit costume for a friend of mine.

Finding the Foam and a note on London's diversity

What you see above is not a hat even though it would probably dispute this claim if you asked it. It is in fact my camera case. I do admit that it is less than ideal for a camera case so I have been meaning to replace it for ages. I wanted to make myself one of these well padded versions you can buy in a shop but I had one serious problem with that plan. For the life of me, I could not find proper foam to use as padding. I’ve been checking art shops and craft shops for months but this morning, I stumbled across a market stall selling foam in all varieties for upholstery. The only downside is that they wanted 10 pounds for a fairly large piece. I didn’t want to pay 10 £ and I didn’t want that much foam either. Some haggling later, I walked away paying 3 £ for some pieces left over from cutting something else.

I love Shepherds Bush market for that kind of thing. It isn’t what you would expect from an English market at all as it caters mainly for the Middle Eastern Community that lives in the area. It sells pretty much anything, from giant pots for cooking, gaudy wedding dresses, five kilogram sacks of rice all the way to goldfish. I think it is generally great how multicultural London is. The supermarkets are a perfect example: Just the other day, Tesco (one of the biggest supermarket chains) sent us a “Ramadan special offers” leaflet. When I went shopping there yesterday, I stumbled across 10 kg sacks of Chapati Flour, produced by “Tesco Everyday Value”, which is the supermarkets own cheap brand.The “foreign food” section includes one with Polish food, the meat sections sells Halal produce and buying things like Plantain, water spinach or Yam is possible every day. It really shows just how normal variety is here. I love it.

More yarn!

I think it might be time to curb my enthusiasm for this type of yarn, preferably while I still own some t-shirts to wear. It might also be time to actually think of a project where I can use this type of yarn. Any ideas?

The new blue dress

Look, the dress is as good as new! I don’t currently have much time to go into the details as I have to leave for the airport in about 15 minutes but I just wanted to share with you that I made it. It’s not perfect ( and also not very well hung up in this picture) I will try to take some pictures with me in it over the weekend.

I’m off to Hamburg now, expect some blogging from the road! Have a lovely weekend :)

Resurrecting the Blue Dress

I know that I’ve just started another sewing project but my grandmother’s dress will have to wait a little because I realised that I really need something to wear for my little cousins baptism next weekend. I bought the dress you can see in the picture above and I’ve worn it much but the material is so thin, the dress has started to unravel from the seams. I love the shape though (even though it looks a little frumpy on the hanger) and so I’m planning on cutting it apart at the seams, copying the pattern and then making a new version of it. I already bought 3,5 m of the most gorgeous dark blue jersey as material.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, this must be the most complicated stretchy dress I have ever made and I only have a few days. If it doesn’t work, I might have to do an emergency shopping trip on Wednesday before I’m off to Hamburg for a few days.

sugar overload

Thank you for all your lovely comments yesterday. I did have a pretty good evening. The Mister and I took a long walk in the sunshine along the river Thames, had a drink and met a friend on the way home. Later that evening, we celebrated with copious amounts of Sushi.

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely done yet with uni. I have five exams between the 22.5. and the 1.6. so from now until then, I will be revising hard. To make carrying all the suff I need a little easier, I have sewn myself two drawstring bags. Nothing special in terms of sewing but look at that fabric! It's got cupcakes on it, and hearts!

Wrapping up the patchwork

I finished off my quilt! Or rather, the patchwork part of it, the actual quilting is still ahead of me. I thought I'd finally use the last few pieces to show you how I do it.

First I cut out a little paper heaxgon. 

I then pin it onto the fabric and roughly cut around it.

Using some thread, I sew the loose ends over the back, pulling out the pin in the process. The piece of paper is still in there and it gives it some structure.

Then I place two pieces with their nice sides together and stitch over the edge.

 Instead of attaching them straight to the big piece, I make these little flower shapes instead, with one of the turquoise ones in the middle. This isn't a full flower because I was filling the last edge. I then attach the flowers to the big piece and fill any holes with the dark blue pieces directly.

Done! I unfortunately didn't have any american coins but I think you get the idea.

305 hexagons make up the complete piece.I'm just not sure what to do about the edges. To you people with papter stichting experience out there: I want to attach a strip of fabric to the edge. How do I do that?

laptop cover

 Quite a while ago, I made my mother a cover for her laptop. Since I'm always carrying my laptop about at the moment, I borrowed it and so I can finally show you. I really love simple designs, made of high quality materials. Unfortunately, I far too rarely act on it because when I'm actually in the shop, my penny pinching self will take over and I tend to opt for the cheaper option. Here I didn't do that as it was a present and I'm really pleased with the results.

The cover is made from a single piece of thick wool felt. I'm normally not a great fan of felt, most of the stuff is awful, but this one here is 100 % wool and it has a really nice texture. When I found it, I threw out all my prejudice about felt in a flash. A wide piece of elastic holds down the flap. 2 pieces of material, three seams: Simple but effective.

Getting dressed

I'm glad to report that there has been some progress on the dress. It's actually pretty far already and I should definitely be able to finish it for thursday. I tried to take the pattern of a dress from my wardrobe but that didn't work amazingly well. However, with much adjustment I believe it fits me now so it's all good.  It looks a bit frumpy in the picture because the back is still open.

Still to do:
close the shoulder seams
Hem the lace neckline and the straps
actually sew the skirt to the top (it's currently just pinned)
hem the black layer
put in the zip (I'm dreading this so it will definitely be done last...

A hundred possibilities and more

You already saw the first signs in yesterdays 7 things, I am making myself an infinity dress . This is by far the simplest dress I have ever made and it looks so much more sophisticated than it actually is. I already played around with the shape a little even though it is still lacking a hem. This is how I am currently wearing it and it is so comfortable. I think I need some more of these.

taking it to another level

I have convinced myself to work on the next layer of my skirt. The ruffle is scarily long but what's even worse: the next one will be 1.5 times longer again! Not good.

48 hours to move to the 20's

A few weeks ago I was invited to a "20's barbecue" and of course that means dressing up! However, I don't own anything remotely suitable for such an occasion and dutifully researched, thought about patterns and fabric and makeup, got all excited... and then forgot about it. Until yesterday, when I suddenly realized that said barbecue will take place tomorrow. Panic time! It was past 7 pm, all shops closed, I had neither pattern nor fabric and very little time tonight. So it had to happen yesterday!


Necessity is the mother of invention and I felt slightly reassured after I found these instrctions on the internet: Flapper dress in one hour! That sounded exactly like what I needed. After a quick look at the picture I decided tat I don't really need to spend money on the pattern.

My fabric hunt eventually left me with a (slightly ripped) bedsheet, a matching pillow case and something turquois I dug out of my fabric drawer. I was about to cut the pillowcase open when I realised that it looked more or less like I would fit into it. I did:

So I got my scissors back out, gave it a bit more of a shape and finalized the top. The bedsheet had a pretty pattern just made for the skirt. I only felt a little bad abotu cutting it apart. After adding the skirt, it looked like a dress:

So I quickly put a hem on the edges and was done with the most important bit. Time for a deep breath. It took me more than an hour but I don't think it took longer than two. In the end, this dress consist of four rectangles (or, more precisely: one pillowcase and two rectangles ;) ) This is the simplest dress I have ever made...

However, the dress turned out to be somewhat see-through so I needed something for underneath. Of course, I had no matching fabric (been there before) but I still had this dress I was planning on giving away anyway.

Foolishly I decided to "quickly open the seams and separate the layers" as the bottom layer was perfect for my purpose but the whole thing was too thick and gave the dress an odd shape. Never ever say quickly when opening seams is concerned! It took me an hour and a half. By the end of it, I was so annoyed that I didn't even take a picture. I did sew it back together but the result is sloppy at best.This is partially due to the fact that the material took damage while opening all those seams. You get a picture anyway

I guess it looks alright from a distance. It only needs to last one night anyway. 

Finally I put everything together: Not bad for an evenings work, huh?

I will do my best to get you a proper picture, with makeup, hat and better light tomorrow.

Shades of black

For this new project, I had to face something I have actively avoiced for a long time: [grave voice] smocking  [/grave voice]. However, I really wanted a long comfortable black summer skirt. As in: REALLY wanted it and the best solution was to smock the top. So, I gathered my courage, purchased some elastic thread and gave it a go:

Not bad for a first attempt. I have to say, it was really quite easy. I shall never fear smocking again ;)

I also got a little bit further on this skirt (No, not the same one from the last post. I always do this...) and added the next fabric. Unfortunately it turnes out that the shades of black are not quite the same. So annyoing, I really tried to match it but the light in the shop was apparently too dim to see anything. They probably do this on purpose.

excuse me miss, we'd like to be a skirt

These fabrics have mentioned that they would like to be a skirt. Some of them I got from a lovely friend for my last birthday and they have patiently waited for their moment. I haven't quite decided yet what the skirt will look like but it will layered and summery. Can't go wrong with those two!

Quilting panic!

Aaaaaah! I finally managed to finish the patchwork on my first quilt and now I'm so scared, I don't dare actually quilting it. What if it goes wrong? So much time went into already. And I don't just want to follow the seams because the design is so simple, I want something more fancy. At this rate I will never finish this project. It has already spent two years in a corner and I was so proud I took it up again.
 
Right, deep breath. I will manage this. Just need a little advice and I'm sure my favorite sewing community will have some, as ever. Girls, I need you.

Just like in old times

When I was little, my mother made me a doll and when she made me some clothes, she made a mini version of it for this doll. I have always loved it and for many years took it everywhere so it almost broke my heart when I found it a few weeks ago, pretty much naked and clearly neglected. I just had to do something about it! Keeping with the tradition, I decided to make it an outfit I still like, one I might have worn a few years ago and this is what I came up with.



The only original piece are the white knitted tights but everything else is new, even including some underwear. I mean, she really can't go without, can she?


I even made some matching jewellery from some buttons and an old earing.