Happy Tuesday! It’s been a while since I’ve updated my Etsy shop, so here are some new goodies. Keep warm and dry out there!
Category Archives: sewing
Upcycle Sunday: Sewing Machine Cover
Happy Sunday, guys and dolls, lads and ladies, blokes and betties. I hope your Valentine’s Day, or Lunar New Year, or whatever today means to you, is going well. Here in San Francisco the sun was shining through my window and the weather was nice enough to not have to wear a sweater indoors. Perfect for a day of sewing and blasting iTunes while simultaneously having a solo dance party or kareoke fest every hour or so. I have way too much fun by myself.
Moving along! One of the ongoing projects is vamping up or apartment. Within the next month or so I volunteered to take on the intimidating task of making a slip cover for our couch… so in efforts of preparing for that monster project, today I’ve decided to do a smaller scaled slip cover of sorts, for my sewing machine. read more »
Do anything, but let it produce joy.
I made this laptop bag today for my good friend Katrina’s birthday! It’s so cute, I cut enough fabric to make two, so the second one should be up in the etsy shop sometime this week. Of course, it won’t be exactly the same as this one.
My lovely friend/coworker’s favorite artist is Renoir, and her favorite writer is Walt Whitman, so as you can see I wanted to incorporate them into the bag. I used left over iron on paper from another project.
I lined the inside of the bag with leftover fabric from a diaper bag project from a while back (that I actually still haven’t finished). It’s a “Fun with Dick and Jane” print. 
I’m currently doing this thing where I’m not allowing myself to buy new fabric until I use as much as possible from what I already have. We’ll see how long I can go without making a trip to M&L Fabrics. Sorry this wasn’t the usual Upcycle project for today! This little bag took up a bit of my time. Now off to be techy and work on web stuff. Toodles and Happy Father’s Day!
Don’t worry, Eat BBQ
That was the theme of this weekend. Four friends and I decided to be adventurous and live life on the wild side this weekend and went camping at Park Moabi. And by living life on the wildside, I mean pitching our tent at midnight, sleeping on and around rocks that we forgot to move before we pitched our tent, and encountering spiders the size of my hand in the bathroom. Ok, well, the first two things were true.
It was a great weekend though, and boy, does my friend’s aunt know how to make some excellent Korean BBQ. Excellent food in general. YUM.
Alas! Since it is summer time (even though it may still be gloomy out), today’s Upcycle Sunday is appropriately themed for hot, sunny, beachy times. Today I turned a Dodgers shirt I’ve had for a few years into a bathing suit cover up of sorts. I was inspired by a cute shirt that one of my friends wore to the river. So here we go!
This project was a quick one. Took a little less than half an hour. I started using an adult small shirt. Although, I think the shirt is actually a medium… but who knows.
The first step is to remove the sleeves at about a half inch inside of the seam. Throughout this project, make sure you make your cuts very clean, otherwise you’ll have to go back and fix it later… unless you like that raggedy look.
Next, cut the top of the shirt. We will be reattaching this later.
Next, try on the shirt and mark how low you would like your neckline to dip. Fold in half to cut evenly and trim any excess. You want to remember that for this project, the less fabric you’re left with, the better. (But don’t get all hoochie on me.)
Here, I started getting a little experimental. I should have prefaced this tutorial with: I have never made a bathing suit cover-up out of a t-shirt before. So just as you are learning, so am I. I just cut the shirt in a way I thought would work.
After that slicing and dicing, I took the two pieces and twisted it up. I then pinned the back straps to the front straps and secured it with a straight stitch using my sewing machine. I think it would work to just tie the straps as well.
And there we have it! As I am sitting here staring at it on my dress form, I think I might go back and make the neck line dip about an inch lower. Live and learn, right? Well, this once-a-year outdoorswoman needs her beauty sleep. Have a lovely week and don’t forget that you can almost always turn something old into something fab. True story.
Lighten up, it’s just fashion.
Happy Sunday everyone! I hope your weekend was fab. Mine was pretty eventful. Friday, I won tickets to see Erykah Badu at Club Nokia at LA Live and it was AMAZING.
I wish my camera didn’t die, otherwise I’d have photo evidence of how even more beautiful Ms. Badu is in person. Not only is she a great singer and songwriter, but she’s a great performer as well. If she’s ever in your town, go see her! I’ve been a fan since high school, and OMG was it amazing to finally see her live. Thanks KUCI for the tix! She is most certainly an icon in the fashion world. Or at the very least, in my fashion world. She is constantly evolving, but always staying true to who she is. The outfits that she wore at her show were out there… but at the same time reflected her style really well. The first outfit she wore was a beautiful silk black asian inspired dress with a pink floral robe over it and a shiny silver outer-space/1920’s inspired cap. Like I said, it was OUT THERE, but it worked. Sometimes it pays to just have fun with your ensemble.
Alas! As it is Sunday, I have a nice little dress that I’ve spruced up to make it more modern and young. I didn’t really make much of a tutorial today, mostly a little photographic journey from beginning to end. So here we go:
This little dress story begins with this copper and black hounds tooth number that I found at le thrift store. It is clearly a 1990s style jumper of sorts with a lot of potential. The fabric caught my eye, and I knew it would be an easy fix.
I started by trying on the dress and taking in about 2″ from the top. In doing this, I was able to heighten the waistline without having to deconstruct anything. Score!
So after sewing both straps, I cut the excess, ironed it down and top stitched it up to make it look schnazy.
Next, I tried it on again just to make sure everything was going according to plan, and it was! I then pinched and pinned the sides all the way down to where the pockets began to fit properly. I sewed that up on both sides using a straight stitch.
Once that was finished, I tried on the dress once again to figure out how short I wanted the dress to be. I ended up cutting it about 7 inches shorter. Luckily because of the geometric lines provided by the print of this fabric it was easy to measure and cut.
Lastly, I ironed and pressed a hem around 3/4″ around the bottom and double stitched that baby up. Because the fabric is nice and sturdy and hounds tooth-y a machine stitched hem does not look bad.
And there we have it! A pretty simple fixer upper, but I am really digging this dress. It’ll be nice for hot summer weather, and perfect for the winter worn with a nice pair of black tights and a black cardigan. Voila! Another successful Upcycle Sunday, if I do say so myself. (Raises the roof). Have a great week my lovelies.
