Jeans are boring, I'd rather wear a skirt.

At work we're allowed to wear denim, black, or khaki pants or skirts. I really dislike jeans (so uncomfortable!), but that's what I usually end up in because they have pockets and are easy to throw on. A couple weeks ago I set out to make black skirts for work with large enough pockets. Success! I can both follow the dress code, and still wear a style I feel comfortable in. The fabric is from a sheet that has these cool embossed polka-dots. It's a bit too rough/stiff - it clings to my tights and tends to ride up unless I wear a slip, though the stiffness also helps give the skirts some body.

The first one is a simple 3/4 circle skirt with an elastic waist and, of course, side pockets. (shown with a light petticoat).

The second skirt is a 3/4 circle wrap with a yoke waistband, belt loops, and again, pockets. At first I completely forgot about the pockets and didn't have side seams, but fortunately I realized my mistake before attaching the waistband. The whole point of making these skirts was to have some with pockets!

Maybe I like it when people pet me.

What did you do this weekend? I spent my Saturday night struggling to align animal ears and get fur out of my mouth. Sewing faux fur is both frustrating and easy... it gets everywhere, but it's very forgiving since mistakes are easily hidden by it.

It caught me off guard the first time someone wanted to pet me when I wore the outfit that matches this first hat (see below), but now I find it pretty entertaining to see people's reactions.

The ears still aren't perfect, but after redoing them multiple times I've accepted my fate. I think they're pretty close to being in the same spot, but one has become floppy from all the handling and re-stitching, so it looks lower (the photo makes this look even worse because this head tilts to one side). I don't know, I'm trying to convince myself the floppy ear is charming. Also, the short fur lining sticks out more than I expected at the edges, probably because it's stretchier than the outside fur. It's not really a problem. I had a very limited amount of fur to work with since it's just leftovers from the outfit I made a while ago, but I think it still worked out okay.

This other hat I made a while ago is more symmetrical and a little larger because I had enough fur to work with. There's no issues with it, I love the thing.

For both hats, I used this tutorial/pattern, trimming and changing some of the curves slightly until I was satisfied. There isn't much of a difference visually, but the changes make the hats fit my head a little better.

I made both of these hats to match outfit pieces I made within the past couple years. The first one includes a skirt with buttoned pockets (you can kind of see one in the photo), leg coverings (aka fluffies), plus a tail and wristcuffs (not pictured, sorry). The second set is fluffies and wristcuffs (again, sorry no photo of the cuffs).

Oh no, it's been months!

I said I'd keep this up... I really want to, things have been pretty busy though. To make up for my lack of posts, here are some other costumes from Halloween. This isn't even half of all the ones I wore since I dressed up almost every day for work. I think it came to something like 36 costumes.

I was a couple characters from Alice in Wonderland, Alice being one of them. The dress isn't something I made specifically for Halloween - I've had it for a couple years now. I remember using a pattern, heavily altered though.

I didn't make any of these specifically to use in a clown costume either, but it all worked together pretty well. The no-sew tutu, leggings, and tank top with side gathers are all sewn by me, long sleeve shirt is some tie dye I did.

Funny story on this one - I purposefully didn't do full white clown makeup because I didn't want to scare anyone, and yet there was still a girl at the store I work in (probably around 13 years old) who could not look at me and had to close her eyes whenever I walked by.

So, I really like capes.

Capes are awesome. They're fun to wear, work with lots of styles, and are super easy to put together. I guess the downsides are the amount of fabric they use and how they choke if they slide back. I tried finding information on stopping this, but short of attaching the cape to clothing underneath I can't find much - guess I'm not cut out to be a superhero.

Over the past couple weeks I've made 3 very different capes, using zero patterns and vague measurements:

1. I have to get to dress up for work on the weekends from now till Halloween, and when I saw this cheap red velour I thought it would be great for Little Red Riding Hood. It's a bit scratchy on the neck seam so I'll probably have to wear something with a higher collar underneath, but I like the look. This "pattern" is a half circle.

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:

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:

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.

Picked up a "new" sewing machine today

That is, new to me. This baby is now sitting in my basement (please excuse general basement mess), waiting patiently until I find some time to clean it up. It's a Singer 9610 if I recall correctly.

"Bold. Power." technically refers to Kohler and not my machine, but I think, in a way, it's an appropriate description.

 When I was a little girl, we had a treadle machine in our hallway. I still remember playing with it constantly, though I don't know what brand it was or even what it looked like anymore. The second half of my childhood was spent in an apartment at a triple decker where I eventually found the machine above. It was in the corner of the attic, untouched for many, many years, gathering dust and other grime. I think the layers of wood that make up the table (below) have split apart from the wildly fluctuating temperature and humidity in the attic, but the machine looks to be in good shape and feels smooth when I turn the hand wheel.

A couple months ago I asked the owner of the triple decker if I could have the machine. That's when I learned it would probably go into a dumpster when they cleaned out the attic in the near future. How could I let this go into a dumpster!? I decided that I had to at least try to save the machine... I know I could get one in great shape and with a nicer design for even just $100, but there's something special about knowing I can keep this one out of the trash, have something from a house I grew up in, and have something to remember my landlords by (they became sort of like grandparents to me over the years).

Today I finally got around to heading over there and, with the help of my father, bringing machine and table down the three flights of stairs. This thing is HEAVY. He said he never would have come with me had I told him I needed help with the machine in the attic. Hah! He thought the landlord was giving me one from her apartment.

Next step: find time to clean all the dirt off.