Tag: fashion

Refashion · sewing

A Stitch in Time

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I had all but given up blogging for a while as the dull short days and artificial light make awful conditions for photographing projects. So here is a little round up of what I have been making recently;

This was my favourite make, I saw the fabric in  Hobbycraft and decided straight away I would turn it into a shirt. Buying new fabric unless it is to improve a refashion,  is not something I do often but it is a special print and I already have ideas for the left over scraps!

I had drafted the pattern previously and used it to make a printed corduroy shirt. I am in love with the cowboy style yoke on shirts and I have a few with this design feature.

image The Infinity Scarf

I love a good scarf and wear ones of varying weights all year round.

This one was made from remnants I had left over after making a lining for a sleeveless wrap jacket, featured in this post

I really enjoyed the simplicity of the make and it’s pretty cosy as well!

 

I have had a great year, tutoring workshops with a local social enterprise company that run projects to encourage more arts and crafts for children and adults using materials from our local scrap store.

This year I plan to expand my involvement in helping people to learn new craft skills and realise how fulfilling creating something yourself is.

Festival Fashion · Hand Sewing · Upcycling

Thrifty Festival Accessories

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For several years now festivals have become quite a big pull for people all over the world.  We probably have one of the most famous ones here in England, the Glastonbury Festival.

I went to Phototastic-24_06_2016_7ff305bb-792d-47cf-bcd4-0331b37769daHow The Light Gets In Festival in May, it was rain free! I went to Glastonbury last year for 5 days and got away with one heavy shower of rain! Pretty Lucky huh?

The popularity of festivals has kept an indie bohemian style to the forefront of summer fashion.

As I seem to have a box full of earthy colour scraps and beads, I thought I would put together a few funky tassels and accessories that are festival inspired.

There are loads of tutorials on Pinterest, so instead of putting together a tutorial I have put together a short list of the ones that inspired me.

http://missrenaissance.com/2013/04/01/6697/  – Tassel Inspiration

http://rachaelgreenland.co.uk/felt-balls-tutorial-update/ – A Felt Ball tutorial, its a great tutorial with really loud garden birds in the background!

http://howtodosomething.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/how-to-make-feather-earrings.html – These earrings inspired the feather necklace pendants.

I like picking up seashells that have become worn and almost skeletal, the shells have natural holes that make threading easy, like the one on the orange thread tassel.

Apart from the roving I bought to try out the felt balls, I didn’t particulary use any specialist tools. The keyring parts are from broken old ones, the beads from old necklaces, I used an awl to make the holes in the leather but they are easily available from DIY stores.

Have a go, if you haven’t got any leather you can get some great effects in other fabrics.

Refashion

Keeping a Check on Fashion

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Keeping in with the upcycling theme of my blog, this month I am sharing a little refashion project I did on a sleeveless wrap jacket.

InstagramCapture_bd3bd1fc-0b49-4a87-a242-a63bc8ab25b4I brought this unlined wrap jacket in the early Autumn, I only wore it twice. This is for a couple of reasons one is it has been a really wet winter and the second is it is quite a thin fabric and was getting pretty creased if I wore it sitting in the car.

I decided to line the jacket, to give it a bit of reinforcement which would help it to stop creasing if I sat down in it and I love a funky lining. A great lining is like nice underwear, no one can see it but it makes you feel good.  I didn’t choose a typical lining as it would’ve been too thin, the check is a thin woven wool mix, I purposely chose this to add body to the piece.

The inside of the jacket was fully faced ( in the picture where I am holding the jacket open you will see the black inside where the facing meets the checked lining). I started by measuring the back, then measured for the front side from the side seam to the facing edge and added seam allowance to the pieces.

WP_20160317_16_03_49_ProThese are the finished pieces, when I pinned the pieces to the fabric I made sure that I was following the grain of the fabric. This was easy as the fabric is checked to I had to make sure that straight lines running up the paper were lined up with the straight lines on the check. I could pin the pieces opposite ways up as the check is regular, if you have a one way print, e.g you have flowers that only run up the fabric then you will need to make sure that all of your pieces face in the same direction – which also takes up more fabric.

Here is the finished jacket.  I was really pleased with the end result and after wearing in the car, when I got out it hardly creased at all. Excuse the dodgy modelling, it’s not really my thing! I had some left over fabric so I think I will make a scarf to go over the top, if people catch sight of the lining and the scarf when I go out somewhere, they might think I had a matching set custom-made for me!

Phototastic-25_03_2016_37bf3dfc-4b18-42ee-bc0f-f4136e62e178

Here’s to spring and dry weather!