Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A post of many holes

Sewing fishnet is pretty much sewing a bunch of holes together. It catches on machine parts, stretches like crazy, and don't even think of trying to pin it. It's not the worst thing to sew though, don't get me wrong... I just like pointing out problems with the materials I use.

I never planned on making fishnet shirts, but these fabrics caught my eye at the store and I thought they would look cool made into some tops.


This is the first one I made - it's one shoulder, with a 3/4 sleeve. I used the top I'm wearing under it in this photo as a pattern. (More on the hat here.)

Monday, January 7, 2013

It's winter here, time for more hats.

Whenever I work with fur of any length I get frustrated by it's ability to get absolutely everywhere. I'll be cutting on the floor and end up with fur in the tea on my desk, fur in the bathroom, fur in my mouth... but, I guess it's worth it? It's become something I do; people ask me to make them things out of fur now.

These are pretty simple hats. I used the same tutorial/pattern as in my last hat post but with more edits.

The color of this short fur reminded me of Harmony Bear from the Care Bears (yes, I'm 5) so I decided to make a hat based on that. I think the ears are a bit too big and would probably make them smaller if I did this again. I added applique hearts to the pocket ends to mimic the foot pads of the Care Bears. There's some significant changes between the original pattern and this hat - mainly adding the long ends with pockets, and slits for the ears so I could insert them into a seam by machine instead of trying to sew them on once the hat was put together. 


The second hat was a Christmas present for my mom. I put the bear hat on her as a joke at one point and we noticed the color looked awesome with her skin tone. It's reversible since there's no ears. Making the pompoms was an interesting (frustrating) experience... They wouldn't form into balls, the thread I used to put them together broke a couple times, etc. I'm satisfied with them in the end though.



I'm still trying to work out a hat/hood pattern I really like. When I make this one in short fur especially, the hats seem kind of small; they don't have enough volume. I also have to readjust the center seam in the back every time I make a hat because it sticks out too much (on my head at least).