Unfinished – Page 4 – Hopefully Creative

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!

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!

Corset

Not very long ago I added another project to my to do list: a corset. I’ve made one from the Dutch pattern journal Knipmode, and it looks really nice. But a couple of days ago I found a pattern for an underbust corset and instructions at BurdaStyle, for free. .
So currently I’m making a muslin out of some funky children’s curtainish fabric. It’s got pink, orange and yellow stripes (quite wide, I’d say 20 cm?) and green frogs and red ladybugs. It’s really cute but not something you really want your clothes made out of. I think I might have printed it out incorrectly because it seems really small. But we’ll see when it’s finished.

New Project

My parents are in a samba band, and they are planning to perform in Den Bosch next week. The reason for this is Carnaval, a festival that widely celebrated in the south of the Netherlands, it marks the beginning of Lent I believe. Anyways, it’s always a lot of fun, everyone is dressed up as whatever you can think of and a lot of beer changes hands. It’s always very ‘gezellig’, a Dutch word that cannot really be translated, let us keep it at sociable. Anyways, all the members of the samba band received a blue one use painting coverall that they had to decorate the way they wanted too. My parents hired me for the job. We went to fabric market and got some really ugly furry red, green, pink and blue fabric. I’ve cut it up and am now stapling it onto the suits. It looks really terrible, but also a lot of fun. I have to finish them before Monday. One is done, but I still need to start on the other one. So wish me luck.

Oh, on the fabric market I bought some other fabrics too, a navy linen for pants, some white cotton for a shirt and purple and red linen that has to designated project jet. Any ideas?

Enjoy crafting!

Skirt

So I actually tried to get the zipper right yesterday, I ended up taking out about 5 cm of excess fabric at the waist. The skirt is going to be really short (for my normal wardrobe anyway) and have ‘suspender’ type ties over the shoulders. It’s high-waisted and hopefully fitting nicely. However, so far I’ve only basted it in, so I should actually go find my sewing machine and sew it in place. Then I can see if it will actually fit now. I do hope so. My mother really likes it, and she wants me to make something similar for her. So I guess I’m going to have to locate some fabric for that. I’m currently also studying for the theoretical part of my driving exam. It’s quite exhausting, so this is my break. I’m going to sew that zipper in now..

Again, wish me luck, I’ll send some your way too.

Oh this is the fabric for the skirt, I think it’s wool like:

Ongoing Projects

So, currently I’m working on a number of projects, mostly clothing. I am currently working on a:
– Red black plaid skirt,
– Greyish brown dress with piping along the waist,
– Black dress with a deep back,
– Bag knitted from strips of plastic bags,
– Grey and white dress inspired by a vintage one I saw a picture of on Etsy and
– White blouse from a vintage pattern (which I’m scared off since the instructions are.. weird),
– Champagne (for lack of better word) coloured full skirt, which needs hemming.

And the problem is, I have many more projects that I would like to do, such as:
– Covering a grey strapless shirt with a lacey fabric (although I haven’t the foggiest idea how),
– Making another pair of high-waisted pants (now hopefully slightly slimmer legs) and
– A skirt with a waist tie,
– Draw more,
– Do some embroidery (although on what and how is not sure yet),
– Make a skirt for my mother.

However, since I’ve stopped with school I have finished some projects, well I mostly started new ones so the old ones are still lying around. These are:
– Two pairs of high-waisted pants (of which I’ve ruined one the day after I finished it, by dropping super glue on it),
– Embellishing a strapless shirt by creating straps from fabric Yo-Yo’s (Tutorial here),
– Red and black plaid skirt with two zippers in the front,
– Lining my homemade black coat with a yellow padded fabric, so I can wear it through the winter,
– Sewing a stuffed bunny, which is really cute,
– Corset out of asian style fabric.

As you can see I’ve got loads more to do, but not so much incentive. I find it difficult to focus on one project, once I get stuck somewhere. The grey and white dress for instance has some spots of bother around the bust. The red skirt has a badly placed zipper that gives me a pointed bum which I need to fix and hem also. The greyish dress has a skirt that is not attached in nice way so that needs to be redone too. I always find it easier to start a new project than to finish one. Not the best way of working I know.

Anyway, I think I’ll see if I can mend the red skirt zipper, so I can wear it for a birthday coming weekend. Maybe if I do it by hand it can work out.. hmm..
Wish me luck, I’ll wish some to you too!

Tag: Unfinished