Friday 8 July 2011

Roswell Week day 2 (sort of)

OK, I have managed to photograph things so the second half of the stuff I made on the first two days will now be revealed.

Item (s) completed - Shoulder cape vest
State before Roswell Week - had pinned some bits (wrongly it turned out)
Reason for abandonment -no idea
Time spent as an UFO - about 2 weeks actively, about 6 months overall
Time used to finish - 20 minutes 
"chump" factor felt for not having done it sooner - high - this was extremely easy

I had bought the original vest from a charity shop months ago, as I loved the colours and pattern and it looked easy to fix. The vest was slightly weird in its original version, as it was a) one of those odd tops that is really wide and hangs down much further at the sides, and b) had odd shoulders where gathered flippy bits were attached at the front and back, so you had both a vest strap, and a droopy bit of jersey frill halfway down your upper arm. I felt that this was not the most flattering of garments (for anyone surely?) and so decided to fix it. 
It was a pretty simple fix. I laid over a vest I already have and cut round it to get rid of the tent like droopiness, and matched up the bottom hem (It doesn't look straight in the photos but it is!) I then just sewed the gathered bit up onto the vest straps to make more normal fluttery sleeves. What is still slightly bizarre about the vest is that the position of the straps is such that its more like a square from the top, the distance between the straps at the front and back is about the same as the distance under the arms. This means that the fluttery sleeves are actually rather large and are more like mini capes! 



So another top made, and another knit! I am not as scared as I was.

Item (s) completed - Kneely chair recover
State before Roswell Week - boring blue cover with a hole in it and several stains
Reason for abandonment -Hadn't got any fabric I wanted to cover it with.
Time spent as an UFO - about 10 years!
Time used to finish - 10 minutes!
"chump" factor felt for not having done it sooner - high - It is pathetic how long it took me to do this.

I have had my kneely chair since I was a teenager, its meant to make you sit up straight, but I frequently use it wrong-there's just so many ways to sit on it! About 10 years ago, whilst still at my parents house, someone (no one ever owned up) ripped a hole in the cover. Over the following 10 years, as it followed me to Edinburgh, and via an uni architectural studio where I sometimes slept on it (I know, it doesn't look possible but you would be surprised) it collected a number of marks and stains as I spilled chocolate, beer, glue, wax etc on it. Given that it was a boring blue to start with, it didn't look good. Ever since the hole got ripped I have been meaning to recover it, but to no avail -until now! I used the rest of the fabric from the blue chair yesterday and just stapled it all on. JOB FINALLY DONE! It looks awesome!


You can see that my rug is suffering slightly from sewing of late-really need to get the hoover out!

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