Projects – Page 56 – Hopefully Creative

Present! Finally Finished

Today I was supposed to go to the birthday party of a friend of mine. However a few weeks ago I found out that I had a study day today as well. This was only a once a year day and I’ve been struggling a bit with the course matter so it seemed like a better plan to go there. However, I felt a little guilty for not being able to come because he had announced it literally months before. So I decided to make a gift. A special gift. A (mostly)hand-crafted gift.

The plan was as follows. Since I know him from Larp (live action role play) which is, how is it easily and shortly explained?!, a type of role playing. You write a character for yourself that you play in a setting that game masters have written, usually fantasy/medieval like. So you basically, from the moment they announce ‘time in’ to the moment they announce ‘time out’, you play someone else and improvise. It sounds very silly and complicated (especially when I tell you that we fight with swords with a carbon core, foam around it and latex on the outside) but it’s really a lot of fun and you can easily enjoy yourself by trying to make period(like) pieces to wear.

So I figured, what do all people in medieval times need? A pouch to put their stuff in. So I made a pouch. I still had some fabric lying around that I’d used for a dress (it’s not done yet, after 3 years), which was brown and suitable. So I picked that. Now because of the little guilt trip I was having I figured I did not want to just make a plain pouch, so I decided to do some embroidery on it. The first thing that came into my mind was leaves. So I found a picture of leaves and copied those.

I have the worst method of embroidering ever, since I use tracing paper to copy the shape and then pin it on the fabric and sewed directly through and over it, later I rip it of and use a pin to remove little bits. That last bit can be severely frustrating if you have several lines crossing each other. But well it worked.

So after many long hours embroidering leaves onto a rectangular and a round bit of fabric that I’d strengthened with interfacing, I decided I had enough leaves. I cut identical pieces to the embroidered ones and sewed them together (lazy me used sewing machine), and the embroidered ones to. Then I attached the lining to the embroidered bit right sides together while leaving 3 cm or so unsewn so I could turn it right side out. I sew a little loop to the top (inside the open bit which I’d left at the back seam) to hang on a belt and added 8 little loops to the top to be able to close it. Then I hand stitched the lining to the embroidery around the bottom and around the top. Many, many hours after the initial idea had been hatched, three lost needles and many pricks from the things too, it was finished. So I mailed it yesterday and received an email today that he’d received it and liked it. So I’m happy now.

Do you want to see some pictures? If not don’t scroll down.
By the way, excuse the picture backgrounds, I finished it at the office because the four loops I had on just weren’t enough so I added four more at the intern ship I’m doing. And since it had to be mailed that day I had to take picture for evidence there.

From the back all the way round, and the lining.

And here how it looks closed up and ready for use!

Conclusions: finishing something on time, before the deadline is very, very gratifying. Making something useful is also very gratifying and learning a new stitch can make one’s embroidery look much nicer. I think I might try this again someday people. Although I’d probably clip the seam allowances more next time. I will hopefully do something fun tomorrow.

From Clay to Silver – Part 2

So the next day I came home late after work and we started finishing the piece I was making. This involved a lot of sanding, with minute files, and increasingly finer sandpaper. The idea is that every flaw and crease you get out before firing you don’t have to sand once it is finished. So while I was working on the flower everything went alright. I got it sanded to where I wanted it and that was all fine. But then I got to work on the little stem like bit the rose was going to be attached to. It went fine for quite some time, but eventually I accidentally broke the loop of. However my aunt insisted that we could glue it back on and it would not be too much of a problem. So after sanding both bits and deciding it was good enough we wetted the ends of the break and added a little silver clay from a syringe, and stuck the bits together again. I used a brush to spread the clay as far as possible as to reduce the amount of sanding that was needed. We popped it in the over at 100 degrees so it was well dried before I sanded everything off that needed to go. And then we stuck the flower to the stem bit. Again same method with dampening the bits where I wanted them to stick together and then adding some syringe stuff. It fitted perfectly. Popped it the oven again and then syringed the back to make it one piece for added strength. Sanded and sanded and sanded until I was fed up and we decided it was fine.

Then the exiting bit. Filling the sink with water in preparation. Then we placed a mesh over the cooker hob and turned it on after we put the hanger on it. Turned the lights of and saw it glowing red. Counted down 2 minutes and then put it in the cold water to cool. When we took it out it was white, but my aunt grabbed a little steel brush and made me brush.. and from underneath the white came very shiny silver!

I was so incredibly surprised and happy, I couldn’t sleep for another hour after I finished sanding it and using an agate to make it shine even more. I’m so happy with it.

I hope you like it as much as I do! I’d like to hear of your adventures with silver clay, some day!

From Clay to Silver – Part 1

My aunt is visiting us this week, she’s come by boat from England and is staying with us until tomorrow night. Last week she asked me if I would like it if she brought her silver clay with her. Silver clay is a strange substance made of 92 (I think) percent silver, some water and some binder. So it looks and feels like clay but is ridiculously expensive. Anyway so she came along and brought some here so we could play with it.

So first we had to decide what we were going to make, I got my little bag of jewellery stuff and started looking at the things I liked. Eventually after looking at my stuff and liking the following three (the two right ones are the same but front and back). I selected the most right one to try and see if I could make something similar and then we started playing with fimo.

I have a big box of fimo and I’ve done quite a lot of things with fimo before, so I started playing with making roses. Eventually I settled on a rose design with a sort of loop around it, like a rose in the middle of the hanger to the right. Once we unpacked the silver clay, I found out that it is really sticky but also dries out extremely quickly. In the end I tried wrapping cling film around my fingers and that sort of worked. The first attempts at the rose were not so good, my usual technique of squishing bits flat into petal shapes failed miserably because of the stickiness. So in the end we decided to do a long petal in the middle and once I had that I added three petals to the sides. So now I had a rose. (Saying it like this makes it sound very easy but sometimes it was tough)

So then we attempted the snakelike thing around it, but the clay dried out so we couldn’t make the loop at the top, so we tried again, and again eventually it worked and we were very relieved, they even fit together nicely in the end. Well that was the first night. We needed another night to sand it, stick it together, ‘glue’ it and sand some more.

But that is a story for another day (say tomorrow if I remember writing it). I think I’m liking this new craft!

Spring Cleaning

So I haven’t been very active in the creative field. However the past Sunday was spent clearing up my sewing room. It was a complete mess to begin with so something really needed to be done. And it’s even Spring so I’m allowed to call this post Spring cleaning. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that I think!

I now have my fabrics neatly organised in boxes on their sides so they look little closets, I put all my notions in a cabinet and found out that I had way more than I though. I finally figured out that the box of buttons I thought I’d lost was just in the bottom of a bigger box in the corner. I even organised all my patterns in a big catalogue binder thing and now they are not all over the place and all the pieces are kept together. I found some (read; a lot) of projects that I did not remember I had in the works, like a jacket and a long dress, a frog dress that only needs to be hemmed and much more. I really should finish those projects someday.

I’m actually really proud of me because I’m not much of a neatfreak, I’m very bad at clearing up. I think I just like to have all my stuff surrounding me.

However the organising has helped me already because I needed some pins and could find them instantly and I figured I was going to make a friend a birthday present. I knew which fabric I wanted to use and I only had to search a little to find it! I’m making a sort of pouch with falling ‘fall’-leaves embroidered on in fall colours (red, orange, yellow, brown, some greens) and I’m really liking it. Too bad I accidentally spilled some lemonade on it and now it’s in the sink, where I’m hoping it will come out. So I’ll take some pictures once it is finished.

I hope this weekend will bring me closure for some projects. Enjoy yourselves!

Summer!

I know it is only April and that we are officially still in Spring, but I think the weather in the Netherlands disagrees. This Easter was really really hot, so I spent Saturday in the garden reading books I got from the library. Because it was finally hot enough to wear something without sleeved I pulled my embellished top from the closet.
Last year I bought a tube top, I don’t like tube tops because they have no straps and I’m never sure if it’s going to stay up. But this one was red, and had a marvelous colour, and I figured, I can always attach straps. So I did, I made yoyo’s (basically circles of fabric, gather the edge and sew them together) and attached them to the top. They are not perfect bra strap hiders but they are ok enough for me to wear it.

Here’s the picture, what do you think?

And here the straps (which is what it is all about right?)

Hopefully more interesting crafty things next week. But my internship together with studying a course at the open university makes my life pretty busy. So I guess it is wait and see.

By the way.. Happy Easter!

Blouse

So I finally took a picture. Today I got people telling me I looked like a cook in this blouse. I don’t really care because I think it’s nice and I liked making it. I’m proud that it worked so that’s good, I assume.

Well here it is:

Excuse all the wrinkles, the second button from the top is actually white/pinkish, the rest is all dark.

I worked a bit on my mothers skirt this week. So now I have most of it in one piece. Just need to put a zipper in it (the most horrible part of all), hem it and make sure it fits. Wish me luck on that.

I’m going to enjoy my blouse out in the wild now.

Vintage Pattern Blouse

So I started this project of making a blouse from a vintage pattern (Simplicity 1236) in a white linen ages ago. But at a certain moment I was so confused by the instructions that I sort of gave up, put it in a drawer and looked back at it once in a while.

But yesterday I finally had to courage and enthusiasm to try it again. And this time, after again carefully reading the instructions I finally figured out what they wanted with the collar. As you can probably (hopefully) see on the picture though, the bust area of the blouse is supposed to be really baggy, which personally I thought looked really terrible. So I took the darts up about 10 cm or so, so now it’s rather more fitted and I like it much more. I took some buttons that I got somewhere and put those on, and I think the effect is rather nice. The wonderful button making foot and options of my sewing machine were also used gratefully. I even closed of all raw seams, so I’m quite proud of myself.
I’ll show the result later when I feel like taking pictures, and have actually ironed the thing. Anyways, I’m proud of myself for finally finishing it. Only a few more unfinished projects to go.

And I think I’m going to start on one that has been in my head for a while, because I finally figured out a way to make it work. I’ll keep you posted.

Creativity ruled today, I hope to see more of that.

New Skirt Project

My mom has given me an assignment. Not too long ago my parents and me were visiting the fabric market in Utrecht. My mom had been impressed with my skirt not too long before so we went in search of a nice fabric so I could make a similar skirt for her.

Eventually we found one, it’s nice and spring ish, with red, white and other nice colour threads. I’ll post a picture later.

I’ve finally started trying to figure out how to make it work for her. I hope it’s going to work, but I don’t know yet because the problem is that she has an apple type shape, and normal sewing magazines don’t support that figure. So I am going to have to grade 4 sizes down from waist to hips. I guess it’s going to be a lot of fitting basically.

I’ve cut the pattern and I’m pinning it onto the lining, and tomorrow I’ll sew the waistband lining together and start fitting. But I’m not feeling that tonight, so that will have to wait.

Anyway, enjoy!

Pictures

So yesterday we took pictures of my parents and me in our Carnavals outfits. I think they did not want to be on the internet with their faces on, so I blurred those, but the suits are still visible. So my dad is on the left. He looks a bit like a bird especially from the back.

And this is a picture of my pirate costume. The sword that I have in my hands is a LARP sword, but it’s a little to expensive to possibly lose, so I’ve made a fabric one that’s really wonky. But it’s the idea that counts, right?

Ah well, I hope we will have fun tonight.

Carnaval Outfit

So today I was trying to make my own Carnavals outfit. I was quite inspirationless but eventually I settled on pirate. I know very not original, but I wasn’t very creative the last couple of days and I couldn’t think of anything else. Well actually I could, I wanted to go as a dinosaur/dragon, and make myself something like these below. I’d make the right one with the left one’s head. Because the left one’s head looks like Toothless and Toothless is awesome! Anyways, no inspiration or green fabric, bye bye dragon idea (pictures from here and here).

So now I’ve made a white shirt with drawstrings along the top. Based on this pattern, but I made long sleeves, thought that was more piraty. And I’m wearing a black fake leather underbust corset over that. I’m wearing a similar blue coverall under it and black boots. The coveralls are so big that I’ve got poofy pants and I fit in with the rest of the group, so perfect. I hope it’ll be fun tomorrow. We’ll see.
I’ll post a picture once I’ve managed to fit the camera to the computer.

Enjoy!

Category: Projects