Fun at JoAnn's and Announcement

Announcement first - I opened an Etsy shop which you can find here.  My handle is StitcherChic.  Not much stuff up yet, but I'm excited.

JoAnn's was an adventure because I went in for the express purpose of buying buttons for my Victorian Tea top.  Five plain black buttons, how are could it be?  Apparently a lot of other people needed them too because it was ridiculously hard to find semi-affordable basic buttons in the size I needed.  Being in the aisle I decided to look at the clearance section - such fun:

 Top row are the more basic style buttons.  I am keeping all of those.  The bottom row are the fun buttons.  The far left are lion head buttons (closeup below), followed by shamrocks, red tractors, and two types of ducky buttons (cue higher voice pitch).  All but the shamrocks are going to my mother.

Most of them were $0.25 or $0.50 for the card.  The lion ones were the most expensive at $0.97 for the card.  Buttons are fun!

Busy Busy

So I am almost done with the Victorian Tea shirt.  Buttonholes are in, with some mishaps, but they're done.  Of course I put them on the wrong side.  Oh well, this top really wanted to button right over left anyway.  Now all that's left is to actually sew on the buttons - but black buttons on black fabric screams for daytime and the additional natural light, so they'll be going in tomorrow.  So exciting to be almost done.  More exciting will be being done.

Not so many posts lately, sorry about that, I've been experimenting with knitting and such between Victorian Tea top sessions.  I started an Etsy shop - with nothing in it.  Plus I agreed to make hats for someone else's craft fair table.  Too much to do.  As soon as I have pictures of what I've been working on I will put them up.  I recently bought the baby and teeny size round looms so I can make baby hats.  Turns out the teeny one comes with instructions for flowers.  I've been playing around with that.  Super fun and they're so fast so almost instant gratification.  Pictures will be forthcoming, I promise.

Almost Finished!

So I am actually almost finished with the Victorian Top as it is now dubbed.  It came together quicker than I thought it would - guess I did have time to prewash the fabric.  Hindsight 20/20 and all that.  I have pictures now.  There is a waist tie and the top isn't quite finished.  I thought I had 5 matching buttons to go down the back, buuuuuut no.  So there is no back closure, so for pics the top is tied and boyfriend pinned the top so it stays together. 

First pic is with the white skirt I hope to pair the top with for the Event:

Second pic is closeup on the top itself.  You can kindof see the grey floral pattern on the black, it is a subtle pattern from a distance.

I am hoping to find some buttons on an item at a thrift store so as to save money and maybe find something cute to use.  I've been going back and forth on button color - black, white, pearlized, etc.  I've pretty much ruled out shank buttons because, being in the back, they'll dig in if I sit against a chair back.  Not fun.  Any thoughts?

Project in Progress

SO I haven't been around for a few days and I'll tell you why.  1. I had all four wisdom teeth removed friday morning.  Huge bummer.  Rinsing with warm salt water makes me want to go back to having jaw pain sometimes.  2. And a much more interesting reason, is I am working on a shirt that is way beyond my skill level.  What is life without some challenge?

In less than two weeks a friend is having her bridal shower.  It is a Victorian Tea at a tea house.  Never been to a tea house, or had a Victorian Tea, but it sounds like something dressy.  To whit I combed my closet.  I found a white skirt with some eyelet at the bottom I can wear, but no suitable tops.  Wait!  I have a sewing machine and a pile of patterns.  Sure enough, enter McCall's M5661 view E.  Pleated neckline, gathered bell-like sleeves, and a tie waist.  Not quite Victorian, but we're channeling the vibe, and it's the best I've got.  Very limited time means no muslin, we're going right for fabric folks.  Live tv, there's nothing like it.  I had a pretty black with grey tonal flowers on it that I originally bought for a skirt, but is being drafted into service.  Its a lightweight calico cotton so it should drape nicely.

I managed to get all the pieces cut out, interfacing applied, pleats pinned and basted, and front piece attached to the two back pieces at the shoulders and sides before wisdom teeth day.  I'm hoping tomorrow to be able to get cracking again between hot presses and antibiotics.  If I can get this finished, well, I hope the bride likes it because it will have been a triumph of determination over, well, everything.

No pictures yet, but wish me luck!  I'll be needing it.

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?

Crochet Victory

Finally, after failing to learn years ago (probably from lack of patience), relearning, and much practice - I have single crocheted a scarf!  Maybe not so impressive, but the rows are pretty even, no mysterious dropped stitches or tightened tension, and it is a decent length to be worn.  Version 1.0 with this yarn actually came out well too, but I'd made it too wide so there wasn't enough length.  Cue ripping out all the crochet and starting again.  No wasting yarn here.

The yarn is a Bernat cottontots yarn - which is 100% cotton - with the color name "sunshine" that I had bought many years ago intending to crochet a hat.  Not sure how I intended to do that with my then complete lack of crochet ability, but hope springs eternal.  So here, in all of its not-very-interesting glory is my first successful crochet scarf, folded for your convenience.

Final dimensions were 50 3/4" long and 3 3/4" - 4" wide.  I'm not sure what I will do with it.  Either donate it to the domestic violence shelter, or save it for the Etsy shop I hope to start as soon as I can think of a cool name.

Reunited!

After being kept apart so long I finally have access to my sewing machine and time to use it.  So what is the first thing I do?  Make laundry baskets.  My mother was kind enough to give me a frame used to hold fabric laundry baskets, more laundry slings really, that she only had one of the sling/baskets for.  It was in her way and she wanted to get rid of it.  Having limited room in my bedroom I volunteered to make a home for it knowing I would have to make two more sling/baskets for it to use it effectively.  Conveniently, mom had also given me an old fitted sheet she had laying around.  The tag identifies it as a "Springs" queen fitted sheet made of 50% cotton/50% polyester.  I'm always in the market for free sources of fabric.  It had a pretty leaf print in a few colors.

It doesn't match at all the fabric of the sling/basket it came with, but free is free.  Bring a fitted sheet it was a little difficult to work with.  I started out seam ripping the corner seams so it would lay somewhat flat for measuring.  I used a fabric tape measure to get measurements from the existing sling/basket, adding 1/4" for a seam allowance.  The cutting went okay.  I wasn't too exact for something like this.  Close enough was good enough for me.  It was the pinning that made me want to scream.  I ended up with one long piece for the sling piece and two half-ovals for the sides for each sling/basket.  One end of the sling had to be hemmed (I re-used the serged edge from the sheet to save time) as well as the flat edge of each half-oval.  Then the sides of the slings had to be pinned to the half ovals, being careful to match centers so the sling/baskets would sit evenly.  The insides looked like this (after sewing because I forgot to take a picture while pinned.

This fabric had something weird going on.  I'm not sure what was used to put the nice leaf and random white spatters pattern on the fabric, but it made it a bear to pin through.  I stabbed myself every couple of seconds it seemed like because of the effort I had to use to get the pins through.  Sewing around those pronounced curves was a breeze in comparison.  Lots of pinning and sewing later I had two new sling/baskets.  The original sling/basket had the channel that went over the frame sewn so the only way to get it off would be to take the frame apart.  I put that one on the bottom.  These new ones are going higher and I might want to take them down to get the laundry out.  I had planned to add velcro, but I don't seem to have any.  So they were safety-pinned instead, three on each side.  The finished product:

Nothing earth shattering, but definitely useful in my limited space.  And an easy fix to make this product useful again where it might otherwise have gotten junked.  Sewing can definitely make your life easier if you have some imagination.