Monday, July 23, 2012

Punk lolita inspired skirt

A while ago (and by that I mean like, two years), I made a square overskirt inspired by some from Putumayo, and finally got some quick photos today. Typically I wear it with a different underskirt that I don't have any photos of, but this one is also a skirt I made, using some awesome border embroidery fabric. I LOVE border prints/embroidery.

This is unfortunately the best photo I have of the front, in the middle of fluffing the petticoat. There are three straps around the skirt that I can use to pull it up into these poofs.
 

Walking in these shoes is actually pretty fun, though I did get a blister on my pinky toe - Can't win everything.

Quick tie dye update

If you remember from my last post, I didn't expect this tie dyeing to go very well since I was pretty lazy about it. It's all sort of... meh. Not terrible by any means, but nothing special either. Ah well.
These shorts in the first two photos (front and back respectively) are also something I made. I pretty much wing it on pants like this, copying only the crotch curve from a random pattern. They have two front pockets, two back pockets, and an elastic waist/hems.


A couple more of the better shirts:

Thursday, July 19, 2012

And now for something completely different

By that I mean not sewing, but dyeing is sort of related...

I've been doing tie dye for 5 + years now, but had taken quite a long break recently. Here's my try getting back into it (mostly because I'd gathered way too much white clothing with stains). Granted I didn't try very hard... I had a lot of dye left over after doing the things I wanted to get done, so I just started tying things up randomly.

I can't wait to see if there's any accidental gems in the bunch (that I'll never be able to repeat since I did this so haphazardly - one of the best yet worst parts of tie dyeing).

Speaking of bad things about tie dyeing - this was more of an adventure than I expected. First, I got black dye powder airborne in my bathroom trying to tap it into a squeeze bottle. You do not want to breathe this stuff in! I'm still not sure if I got it all cleaned up.
Later, I was doing the actual dyeing in the utility sink in my basement. Well, this sink drains into a container with a pump that then goes out to a drainage pipe. The pump malfunctioned and the container overflowed into the basement. Bah.
...and now, my wrist/hand is hurting in a spectacular way. I'm quite thankful for washing machines because after wringing out just 16 pieces of whatever, I am in pain.

Anyways, here's a preview:


Monday, July 9, 2012

When I don't know what to wear, I make something new

Picture this:
It's Friday night, I still have work-from-home projects to finish, and another job to go to at 7:30 am Saturday*. I'm going out after work on Saturday, but won't have much time in between to find an outfit, so I decide to plan it now. I have A LOT of clothes - it takes a while to find something that works. Well, I can't really find anything I want to wear, so of course, like any crazy seamstress, I make something instead!


The pink fabric is a blacklight reactive organza, and the black is just regular tulle. At first, I only wanted the skirt to be pink, but it was looking pretty bland, so I added the black. Better, but now the pink layer looked too long and not fluffy enough (it started as 12" long). To fix that, I added a shorter lining made out of the waistband fabric (some sort of stretchy remnant) and attached the bottom of the pink layer to it to give the skirt a bubble hem. Much Better!
I wore it with my "go-to" top, as you can see below (and of course with some shorts underneath; from the waistband to the bottom the skirt is only 7 or 8 inches long). 


* I've been working a lot lately, which has left little time for new projects or even blog posts. I haven't give up on posting! I just have to find the time... it should be better in 2 months when one of my 3, sometimes 4, jobs ends.