New Pledge

I hereby pledge to not buy any new craft supplies, excluding notions required to facilitate projects such as thread, zippers, etc., and to use what I have to do future projects. 

I have a ton of fabric.  Boxes stashed neatly under my bed galore.  Plus boxes of assorted supplies for assorted crafts.  I need to use this stuff up.  I admit it, i am a hoarder, but I also love to craft.  So everytime I go to a craft store i end up buying more.  I figure free stuff from freecycle or craigslist free section don't count because I'm not spending any money.  But I am hoping to get back into making clothing for myself and refashioning other clothing to refresh my wardrobe.  To this end I want to focus on fabric and un-used clothing I already have first.  Use up my stash.

I definitely don't want to buy anymore new fabric for now.  I've been trying to be more environmentally friendly, and I think using what you have and re-using clothes has to be more eco-friendly than buying new fabric for every project.  I'll make it work somehow.

It is exciting because what projects I work on will, to a certain extent, be influenced by the fabric I have.  This could get interesting.  Once I get going I'll keep y'all up to date on the adventure.

Matching bib? Of course!

SO my coworker was so in love with the baby bonnet, that I offered to make something to coordinate with it.  I still had a decent amount of butterfly fabric left to make something small.  A skirt was out, even for a 6-mo old.  I was able to whip up a bib in a night start to finish, however, using the same kind of construction.  Coworker donated a white knit shirt for backing since I had finished off my stash on the bonnet.  With more white cotton curtaining inside and white bias tape binding, the bib came together pretty easily.  I used the same kindof inside-out construction as the bonnet to attach the ties, also made of white knit.  The ties came out not quite straight from the main part of the bib, but oh well, it still looks adorable.

And I still have butterfly fabric left over.  Not sure what I'm going to do with it.  Probably save it for another baby project.

Baby Bonnet Finished!

I really wanted to finish this baby bonnet, not only because it is promised to someone else and I hate to drag my feet on things like that, but because it is such an easy project that it is reliable gratification.  To recap, I offered to make a baby bonnet for a coworker who is expecting a new niece any day now.  I used a tutorial from Sew Mama Sew that I have used before with adorable results.

Since I've been on a re-use kick lately, I decided to reuse some fabric I had around.  A pair of sleep shorts with a cute butterfly and flower pattern was the lucky donor.  I'm glad I left the center serged seams in place because I would have needed to piece the fabric anyway.  I don't have a serger so I would have been duplicating work.  After carefully deconstructing the garment to save as much as I could, I got to work.  The bonnet has three layers.  The outer layer is the butterfly fabric.  There is a hidden inner layer of a thicker cotton weave to give the bonnet a bit of stability since the outer layer is a worn thinner cotton and the innermost layer is a white cotton t-shirt knit.  Also recycled, but with no body of its own.  I wanted something soft for against the baby's head.  The ties are also t-shirt fabric for this reason.

So without further ado, here are the last few stages in pictures.

This is with the pieces assembled and sewn on 3 sides.  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the pieces and intervening steps.  This stage caused me enough headache as I had accidentally piled the pieces out of order.  So when I flipped it to the right sides the interfacing fabric was showing instead of the butterflies.  I had to pick all the stitches out and reorder them to sew again.  Unfortunately I had already trimmed the seam allowances so I had to sew very carefully.

Once that was done (correctly) the next stage was trimming them front edge.  Last time I made this bonnet I was able to just use some wide lavender ribbon from my stash and call it a day.  Unfortunately that ribbon doesn't match this fabric.  The client wanted white trim anyway, but luckily I had some white bias tape in my stash as well.  Bring much narrower than the ribbon, I had to sew it on carefully in two steps.  I sewed it on one side to the inside of the bonnet, then folded it over the raw edge and sewed down through all the layers.

Here it is with the bias tape on.  I also folded over and sewed the bottom edge where the tie will go at the back of the baby's head.  Threading that was a pain.  Lacking also any spaghetti bias tape, which is what the tutorial calls for, I improvised by using more of my white bias tape folded over and sewn through to create a narrower width.  The channel had come out a bit narrower than intended, so there was some trouble getting the length through, but I managed.  I only had to unpick a small section at the end and re-sew it to make the channel a little wider.  Tied up, the bonnet is done done done!

Here it is with the brim forward:

And back:

I hope she likes it.

Baby Bonnet ironing is a go!

Alright, so apparently you can iron on just a table top with a towel for padding.  Guess we're going to find out because I desperately need to iron this butterfly fabric before I can cut out the pattern pieces.  So with that dilemma solved, it will be onward as soon as I have some time to devote, hopefully later this evening.

Baby Bonnet Update with Pictures

So an update on the baby bonnet from sleep shorts project.  Let me tell you, it would have been way easier to just cut, but noooooo.  I wanted to make sure I had enough fabric so all those seams had to be taken out by hand.  Serged seams are doubly a pain.  Plus these babies had a covered elastic waist and trim on the bottom of each leg. 

Finally, though, all the seams are out except two.  I'm waiting on those until I measure to see if there is enough fabric to cut out the pattern sections without piecing fabric.  If I need to do piecing, I might as well keep the original serged seam in place and save some aggravation.  On the upside the fabric is cute, and is growing on me the more I work with it.  I'm hoping to re-use the trim for the ties.  With any luck I'll find another project to use the rest of the fabric.  Zero waste, or as close as I can get, is the goal.

So before decontruction:

And after:

Unfortunately I'm stymied until I find a way to iron the pieces out.  The bottom edge where the trim was attached and the top edge where the waistband were are not going to cooperate for pattern cutting until I can get the fabric to lay flat.  Of course I have an iron, but no ironing board.  Anyone know of a solution to this dilemma?  I'll have to google it at some point and see if I can find an easy way to MacGuyver an ironing board.

At least this is one more step down.  Onward!

Step 3: Iron

Step 4: Cut Pieces from fashion fabric, interfacing fabric, and lining fabric

Step 5: Pin

Step 6: Sew

Baby Bonnet from sleep shorts

After seeing pictures and hearing about a coworker's new niece on the way, I spontaneously volunteered to make a baby bonnet for her.  This offer enthusiastically accepted, I was faced with the prospect of fulfilling this obligation.

Step 1: pattern
There is a great baby bonnet pattern from Sew Mama Sew that I've made before and I love and I totally intend to deploy it for this project as well.  I'll post the link in my followup post.

Step 2: fabric
Little girls need little girl fabric.  I have around 4-5 boxes of fabric under my bed right now and none of it was appropriate.  Then I'm walking past some bagged clothes intended for donation, and there on top is a pair of sleep shorts in a pretty lavender shade with butterflies and flowers all over it.  Perfect!  I'm currently unpicking all the seams to get a sense of how much fabric I have.  I will have to do some piecing to get the right size sections, but I think it'll work out.  I have plenty of white t-shirt fabric for lining and stiffer cotton woven fabric to use as a stiff inner layer.  Yay for recycled fabric.  And my coworker is excited about the eco-friendly use of fabric too, so win!

So I'm currently in Step 2, and since many of the seams were serged, it'll take a while to unpick them.  But I think it will be worth it to have every speck of fabric, even if it just allows for seam allowance.  Plus it allows me to save pieces I don't use for future projects.  Zero waste is the goal.  Re-using fabric is good for the environment and the wallet.

Pictures will follow.

Project Roundup

Alright.  So my resolution to actually finish some projects would probably benefit from knowing what projects I have to do in each category.  I'll have to add things as I actually sort through my stuff.

Mending:
- jeans with a hole by back pocket
- sew up torn side of reusable shopping bag
- hem a pair of my dress pants
- add buttons back to my black wool pea coat
- zipper on my down coat (below-the-knee length coat so a long zipper - replacing it would be a pain)


Refashion:
- tuck neckline on cowl neck top to avoid exposure
- tuck neckline on two shortsleeve shirts for same reason as above (why would I want to flash random people?? More importantly why didn't I notice this when I was purchasing the shirts?  Oh well.)
- embroider black cardigan? (not sure on this one since without embroidery it doesn't call attention if I wear it more than once in a short period of time)
- embroider grey cardigan? (same concern as above)
- figure out if I can alter dress pants since I lost weight (not sure how feasible this is given I've never even made pants before.  we'll see.)
     * one down - herringbone

New:
- ankle-length skirt for my mother
- fall color medley loom knitted shawl (no recipient in mind, I think my longest running project in progress ever)
- skirt for work from some moleskin my mother gave me


How do you guys keep track of what projects you have to do plus the ones you'd like to start if you had the time?  I always seem to forget until I stumble on it or need the item in question for some reason.

Downcycle? Sidecycle?

Usually when we refashion we talk about upcycling.  Taking something and turning it into something better.  Six years ago I bought a top for a wedding I was attending in the summer.  It was a pretty lavender layered look with a shiny camisole covered by a gauzy silk overshirt with fluttery-sort-of-cap sleeves.  Not sure what you call them.  After the event I put it in my pile of stuff to be dry-cleaned.  A year later I opened the dry cleaning bags to get something else and noticed that the front of the shirt had a burn mark on it.  A year later is much too late to take it back for a refund or some sort of repair, if possible, so I was stuck with it.

Front and just right-of-center on the edge so no way to applique over it, even if you could applique on 100% gauzy silk.  Very noticeable too, I tested on the boyfriend and he saw it right away.  So it sat for the next five years as I debated what to do with it.  Finally I had an idea. 

Some coworkers of mine had gotten a yoyo maker from Clover that they showed me.  Then I saw someone in an elevator that had gauzy fabric yoyos with beads in the center for flowers on an embellished cardigan.  I decided to cut up the silk overshirt and make yoyos.  As horrified as this made one of my coworkers, the shirt as is was doing me no good.  With the yoyos I could use them as embellishment on something.  The shirt in (mostly) before condition is below.  Just imagine the front isn't cut away.

I decided to not cut squares as the yoyo maker suggests.  I figured I would get more if I put the piece in and then cut around it.  I was totally right.  I would have gotten maybe half as many cutting out the squares first.  Cutting around the device allowed me to finagle many more out of the available fabric.  The final tally is below:

That is a lot of yoyos.  No clue what I am going to do with them yet, but at least now I have something useful to pull out when I need instead of a pretty might-have-been sitting in a box.

So what do you think?  Upcycle?  Downcycle?  Sidecycle maybe?

Not Quite a Refashion #3 - cardigan to awesome cardigan

Unfortunately, due to my busy work schedule, I've been restricted to projects that are portable and can be done at my desk.  So while this isn't really a refashion, I am hoping to squeak it in because it did take an item I wasn't a huge fan of and made it something I might wear more often.

This cardigan started life as a plain red cardigan.  Actually, by a huge coincidence, I have a grey one exactly like it.  I bought it for the bold pop of color, but the big redness of it turned out to be a bit too color-blockish for me.  So it languished in my closet as I wore other brightly colored items that weren't, well, so RED.

You may have noticed my introduction to embroidery.  This gave me the idea to embroider something on the cardigan as a way to pass the time at work.  A coworker suggested doing the design all in white so it would pop against the bright red.  After some looking around for an appropriate design, I found a flower design at knitting-and.com here except I turned it upside down on my cardigan.  I also copied the big flower over again for the smaller side design.  The heavier knit meant I went through embroidery floss much faster than on the thin linen fabric I was using for the kitchen proverbs.

The whole front, I apologize for the poor contrast with the background.  For some reason I put it on my dining room table to take this picture.

Just for comparison, I also have closeup pictures of each side so you can see the design better, and I even have a picture of me wearing the cardigan to show you what it looks like on.  So picture blitz ahoy!

I like it much better this way and I've already gotten several compliments.  Though these were from coworkers who know I've been crafting up a storm at my desk through these long hours.  More projects from the storm will be posted later as I catch up getting pictures taken.

Refashion #2 - shirt to cardigan

This refashion came about because of a three-quarter-length sleeve knit shirt that I was so-so on to begin with (I owned it in a light green as well) somehow ended up with a mysterious stain right on the front.  No idea how that happened, but needless to say, the shirt wasn't getting worn.  I also happen to have an aversion to throwing things out if they can be fixed.  I decided to try and turn it into a cardigan using a tutorial I had seen somewhere (I am so sorry I lost the link to it).  I forgot to take a "before" picture, so just envision a v-neck 3/4 sleeve lavender knit top.

I decided to cut up the middle per the tutorial and folded under 1/2" on either side then basted.  To cover the stain I used 1 1/2" wide grosgrain ribbon running vertically up each side.  Below is a picture of it pinned on.

It is hard to see in the picture but the neckline is on the left.  There was a seam there where the neck edging had been sewn on from the back.  This created way too much bulk folded under so the excess had to be cut off in order to sew the grosgrain ribbon down.  That created a new problem of raw knit edges showing on the ends of the neckline.  Luckily I had also bought some lacy hem tape in lavender for this project.  I'm not much for lace and ruffles necessarily, but just the edge folded over the neckline and the rest underneath has a subtle look to it.  I just folded it over, pinned and top-sewed through it as close to the seam with the rest of the top as I could.  Hopefully the pic below will help illustrate my explanation.

Once I got the lace on and tried it on I realized that putting on buttons would distort the side seams.  I wouldn't be able to pull one side over the other without too much stretching because the shirt didn't have enough extra width.  I decided instead to use some hook and bar closures I had since I bought an entire package for the skirt beta.  Sewing in two at the bust area, I left above and below open.  Finished product below:

(Please forgive my slouch.)  So, as a shirt it layered under things not very well which is why I didn't like it much.  As a cardigan it layers over other things so I am hoping I like it better this way.  The embellishment of the ribbon and lace edging turned out very subtle on the finished product so I am debating if it needs something more.  I guess we'll see.

Hand Sewing FTW

So, through some strange crafty spirit in the ether, having my sewing machine on its way, and then on my living room floor - see previous post - inspired me to alter a cardigan I currently own.  Alter by hand.  That's right, having a machine that will be officially mine in approximately two weeks inspired me to sew something by hand.  That I could have done at any time, having needles and thread in my craft supplies already.

So, since I did not think to take a before picture, imagine a black cardigan.  The length hits me about middle of the hip.  The width is boxy and definitely too big.  The sleeves come down over my hand unless I push the cuff up to my wrist.  Then the sleeves slack and hang loose in gathers along my arms.  Altogether it hangs on me like I'm a clothes hanger.  It has one redeeming quality - warmth.  My office can get chilly, so a cardigan that is nice and warm is essential.

Not having any kind of guide to taking in the sides and such, I decided to just wing it instead of searching one up.  The power of impetuousness and impatient.  I wanted to work on the cardigan now.  So I put the cardigan on inside out and felt along my sides to get a sense of how much extra fabric there was.  Enter pins to hold one side down and a tape measure to duplicate the pinning on the opposite side.  Some trying on and off to evolve a workable line that would look okay without pulling away too much on the sides (hopefully - cardigan doesn't have to button, those buttons are hard to fasten, but I'd like it to look like it could).

Well, seeing this tutorial on finishing the cut edges of a knit garment answered my only remaining question.  I adapted it for the inside side seams by folding over some ribbon I had lying around over top of the seam and sewing through it like so:

For the bottom seam I just folded the ribbing on the bottom up and sewed through it in two rows with small stitches.  I used the ribbing now on the inside as a guide for spacing the stitches evenly.  Below is the bottom seam, no pic of the sleeve, sorry.  Here you can see both the underside and the outside.  I like to think the stitching shows up as a subtle detail on the outside.

So without further ado, here is the finished product.  Kindof underwhelming - plain black cardigan - but a nice staple for my office that will keep me warm and work as a replacement for a suit jacket.  Sleeves are the right length and the bottom edge hits me at the waist.  And I look like a person wearing a cardi instead of a hanger.  Bonus.