I was happy with how mine turned out..less so with hers. Mine is a taffeta(ish) fabric, lighter in weight with embroidery all over, it is fully lined. hers is a gorgeous silk satin, with vintage lace at the neckline.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Two dresses
One of the more frustrating things I made over christmas, was these two dresses, for my daughter and I. I used Burda world of fashion magazine patterns for both and was not at all happy with how the bodice patterns on each were drafted. Mine would have been better (and required a lot less fitting) if I had used a fabric with a slight stretch. I kid you not, but I ripped and resewed the bodice of mine about 6 times and the bodice of my daughters dress ten times!!
I was happy with how mine turned out..less so with hers. Mine is a taffeta(ish) fabric, lighter in weight with embroidery all over, it is fully lined. hers is a gorgeous silk satin, with vintage lace at the neckline.
I was happy with how mine turned out..less so with hers. Mine is a taffeta(ish) fabric, lighter in weight with embroidery all over, it is fully lined. hers is a gorgeous silk satin, with vintage lace at the neckline.
Some quick jewellery for me
spiral print tie-Dye tutorial
These pictures were taken in the last of the summer...trust me there is no going outside these days with all the rain and the coldness!..but the colours make me happy.
This is the finished result. i use fibre reactive dyes. I make up a strong dye solution, with just water. I only own dyes in the primary colours, so I mix up red blue and yellow dyes, power and water, in disposable containers!..you only need about 1/2 pint of strong colours. And then mix blue+red=purple etc, to give me the three secondary colours.
Start with piece of prewashed cloth (to remove any starch) I used a square about a yard long/wide. Lay it flat on the ground in front of you and grasp the centre point and start to twist
it will look like this if you let go...dont let go.
keep twisting, keeping the fabric fairly flat to the ground, until you end up with a tight spiral of all of the fabric, arrange the pleats as you go to keep it fairly neat.
For a rainbow spiral, take three long pieces of string, carefully put the first one underneath, bring it to the top and tie off, do this with the two other pieces so that you have the fabric divided into 6 sections (I know a rainbow has 7 colours, but this is a good approximation)
tie off the string fairly tight (tighter than in this pic) and tuck in the loose ends so you have a neat package
I use the soda soak method of dying, with procion fibre reactive dyes, this means that the (dry) fabric gets soaked for about 20 minutes in a strong solution of washing soda and water.
take out the fabric and squeeze out as much of the soaking liquid as you can, keeping the spiral intact. Set it on the draining board of the sink..or work outside..it is messy.
'Fill' in three segments with your three primary colours, yellow, skip one, red, skip one, blue , skip one...( you will notice from the photos that I screwed this up..but it still looks OK, tie dyeing is very forgiving. You don't have to completely soak each segment, some white is good and will look good in the end. Don't worry about staying inside of the lines..as long as you have complimentary colours adjacent to the ones you are adding, they will blend and look great. I use a big paintbrush to put the colour onto the fabric.
You can either put the spiral, very carefully into a plastic bag to allow it to soak for a while, this should increase the intensity of the colour a bit..or if you are like me, cut off the threads, rinse out the fabric to remove excess dye and glory in the eye-popping colour.
this is the very best way to revive tired bedlinen, makes a great centre for a quilt and is just fun,
once you are done you might find you have dye left over, so scurry all around your house for tired white cotton clothing, chuck them in the soda soak for about 15 minutes and then have fun!
This is the finished result. i use fibre reactive dyes. I make up a strong dye solution, with just water. I only own dyes in the primary colours, so I mix up red blue and yellow dyes, power and water, in disposable containers!..you only need about 1/2 pint of strong colours. And then mix blue+red=purple etc, to give me the three secondary colours.
Start with piece of prewashed cloth (to remove any starch) I used a square about a yard long/wide. Lay it flat on the ground in front of you and grasp the centre point and start to twist
it will look like this if you let go...dont let go.
keep twisting, keeping the fabric fairly flat to the ground, until you end up with a tight spiral of all of the fabric, arrange the pleats as you go to keep it fairly neat.
For a rainbow spiral, take three long pieces of string, carefully put the first one underneath, bring it to the top and tie off, do this with the two other pieces so that you have the fabric divided into 6 sections (I know a rainbow has 7 colours, but this is a good approximation)
tie off the string fairly tight (tighter than in this pic) and tuck in the loose ends so you have a neat package
I use the soda soak method of dying, with procion fibre reactive dyes, this means that the (dry) fabric gets soaked for about 20 minutes in a strong solution of washing soda and water.
take out the fabric and squeeze out as much of the soaking liquid as you can, keeping the spiral intact. Set it on the draining board of the sink..or work outside..it is messy.
'Fill' in three segments with your three primary colours, yellow, skip one, red, skip one, blue , skip one...( you will notice from the photos that I screwed this up..but it still looks OK, tie dyeing is very forgiving. You don't have to completely soak each segment, some white is good and will look good in the end. Don't worry about staying inside of the lines..as long as you have complimentary colours adjacent to the ones you are adding, they will blend and look great. I use a big paintbrush to put the colour onto the fabric.
this is the very best way to revive tired bedlinen, makes a great centre for a quilt and is just fun,
once you are done you might find you have dye left over, so scurry all around your house for tired white cotton clothing, chuck them in the soda soak for about 15 minutes and then have fun!
I'm a Craftster Best of 2010 Winner!
wrap top from two old teeshirts
I was doing a wardrobe purge and came across two old teeshirts, I didn't want to simply throw them away, so I experimented with a wrap top. I am pretty happy with the result, I had to do a lot of patching in pieces so that each pattern piece was complete (I used a Burda world of fashion pattern) and so I added some applique to make it look less random.
My daughter specialises in non-flattering pictures of me!
12 days of christmas swap
Over at craftster I like to participate in the 12 days of christmas swap, where you make a gift(s) for your partner for each of the 12 days of christmas, here are some of the things that I made for mine. Some bags and slide pendants for her 3 sisters, I was given themes to work from.
PJs bottoms (aka lounge pants) and a sleep kit. I love a sleep kit, I make a zippered pouch and add earplugs, eye mask and lavender oil. I recommend them for travel, if you are a light sleeper like mine. You will notice from this pic and the next that the colours are absent..pretty much monochrome, My partner didn't like much colour and so I was limited, but as I said in a previous post, limits and boundaries are so good for me.They help focus my work and stop me adding too much colour, too much randomness to things.
I love this, this quilt was very difficult to part with (I didn't send the cat!!) it is IKEA fabric and I think the whole thing came together very well.
PJs bottoms (aka lounge pants) and a sleep kit. I love a sleep kit, I make a zippered pouch and add earplugs, eye mask and lavender oil. I recommend them for travel, if you are a light sleeper like mine. You will notice from this pic and the next that the colours are absent..pretty much monochrome, My partner didn't like much colour and so I was limited, but as I said in a previous post, limits and boundaries are so good for me.They help focus my work and stop me adding too much colour, too much randomness to things.
I love this, this quilt was very difficult to part with (I didn't send the cat!!) it is IKEA fabric and I think the whole thing came together very well.
I also sent some blank cards, they were altered art, starting with some images from a calender, and for some reason upside down in this picture!
stencilled tee shirts
I love the internet, a google search of stencil, will give some great images, we print them out, trace them onto freezer paper, cut out the stencil. Iron the shiny side of the freezer paper onto a (prewashed) t-shirt and then using screen printing inks, paint. I prefer screen printing inks as they are thicker and so don't bleed, they also have good colours.
here are some tee's that went as gifts, courtesy of Banksy and Starwars
poppets....
Poppets are frankly a bit of a pain in the ass to make, they are fiddly and have a mind of their own. This one was a request from a swap partner, She was to be a sort of fairy gothy type, I sent her to her new home with a little photograph album. This I made from scrapbooking paper, using a stab stitch binding.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)