Self Stitched September day 7 (except it's day 1 for me!)

Well here we go. I can say that it is a bit of a culture shock to get up, consider what I am going to wear beyond it looking all right and being suitable for work, and then take a picture of it. All I really grasped when I looked in my wardrobe was that I really need to do some washing and that I have no idea how style bloggers do it!

Having said all that, the weather is being obliging, and sticking to nice sunny summery times, pity that all the summer bits are the bits that are in the washing basket! So all in all there wasn't a lot of choice this morning! But I am wearing make up, and a necklace! (I always forget to put jewellery on!)

What I wore
Top -  H&M
Cardigan  - Charity shop
Skirt  - So long sarong  - Refashioned from charity shop

Thoughts
I quite like this, I had only been wearing the skirt with darker tops in a less summery way, but this is nice. It is a pretty basic start, but it is typical of the way I tend to dress (barring my usual lack of jewellery despite having tons of the stuff!)

On a more practical note, I really have to work on my photography/posing skills, I had to sneak this picture quickly this morning as people kept walking past and I didn't want to look like an idiot. This is the best of the few I got, I was leaning against the wall, but that doesn't really come across and so makes my arms look a bit odd!

Self Stitched September - a bit late

Well, I have been busy, and I haven't done any sewing, even though I have a list as long as my arm. I am in  a complete crunch point this month as I have loads of uni assignments this week, and exams in a month for which I need to do some serious revision, as well of course as the day job. Plus, as I will be applying to teaching school this month, I have also been visiting schools and need to write a kick ass personal statement. sigh. So all in all, I have a slightly better excuse for not doing any sewing than usual, in fact, I shouldn't do any (which of course makes me want to!).

To attempt to get the blog going again, without taking time away from everything else going on, I have decided (slightly late in the day) to do something I have always meant to do, take part in a self stitched month! For anyone who doesn't know, this a month where you make a pledge to wear things you have made yourself, in an attempt to wear them more, and work out what else you need. You can do this to varying degrees, depending on how much stuff you have! You also try to take a picture of yourself wearing your outfit and post it on your blog. It's all being run by the lovely Zoe, who was one of the first blogs I found. She describes the whole concept much better than I can here. A lot of people are quite hardcore about it and don't wear non-hand made stuff, but as I have only made about two tops that isn't going to work for me! (there is a lesson already!). therefore, here is my pledge (for the rest of the month!)

'I, monkeysocks, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-Sept '11. I endeavour to wear at least one hand stitched or refashioned item each day for the duration of September 2011'. 


This is going to be interesting, as I am not really sure how much stuff I have, it may get very repetitive. Also, if the weather gets nasty that is going to be tricky as a lot of the stuff I do have is quite summery! On the plus side, it will hopefully make me put slightly more effort in, and attempt to style myself/wear makeup! (I have been getting rather sloppy of late!)


As I decided this today after I got dressed, I don't have a picture for today (and in any case my hand stitched stuff is limited to the zip I mended (badly) on my skirt, and the bag my mum made, which is cheating!). Never the less, the bag is really nice, my mum made it as part of a run of them inspired by a bag my sister had that she wore to pieces. Now everyone my mum knows has one in different colours! It is cord on the outside, cotton on the inside, with pockets, and crocheted flowers. It is a great size as it just looks like a normal handbag, but you can fit masses in, including A4 things. 

Easy skirt refashion

Well its been a while. But I have finally managed to sew something! I had picked up this shapeless but jolly patterned skirt from a charity shop. It was far too long and a bit tight around the waist.

I simply chopped off the bottom and re-hemmed it to fix the length. As it is a partial elastic waist it was easy to make larger, I sewed down across the elastic about an inch from the end on each side and then made a small hole and cut the elastic between the old end point and the new, allowing the waistband to expand.

It now fits really well and is fun and flippy!

For my next trick I am going to having some slightly more adventurous refashioning fun with this super wide skirt.

Thrifted finds

I know, being British I ought to say charity shops finds, but it just doesn't sound as good somehow..

I haven't made much of late, due to uni, but I have managed to snap up a good deal of stuff from charity shops. A lot of these came from my attempts to find a wife beater and combats for the Ripley costume, which was highly difficult. The shops were proving their traditional "the shops never have the thing you want, no matter what that is" contrariness well, usually full of shapeless 90s clothes and hideousness, the moment I wanted that they were suddenly full of cute stuff! I coped somehow though, mainly by buying lots of things!

Firstly however, several months ago I had a huge binge in some charity shops I don't normally go to a little further away from my flat. I was mainly after some glass/home wares, but a lot of other stuff sort of crept in. As it was a while ago I have forgotten some of the stuff I got, and I got a lot of shapeless cotton tops that hopefully will get refashioned one day so I will not show them here, but a few select pieces make me very happy.

This skirt should have made me very sad, as it is a size 16, and I bought it to cut it down a size or so, but when I put it on it fit perfectly- ooops! Never mind, the potential sadness of being fatter than I thought, at least in the eyes of its makers, was completely offset by the jolliness of it. Sorry about the creases - I took it out of the washing basket for the photo. I have have worn this at least once a week since I got it! It is awesome! the photo doesn't really do justice to the rich purplely blue colour. I was wearing it in when I met Debi, and that picture suggest a bit at the brightness of the colour.

At the same time I found this stripey cardigan. As you may remember I had been moaning that I didn't really own any tops that were patterned, especially knitwear, and this fits the bill all round.

I also spotted some nice bedlinen that could be made into clothes. This duvet and pillowcases is primrose yellow and pale cream and is large gingham on one side and stripey on the other! I haven't decided what to make of this yet, but it seems to be crying out for something that uses both patterns. 

I also scored a massive duvet and pillow cases in this lovely foliage/flowery pattern. The colours are a little brighter in real life. It's a bit grannyesque but in quite a fun way. I have a cute 70s dress pattern with a wide collar and short gored skirt that might look very nice in this. I have also been toying with the idea of dying it, but I haven't decided.

In my more recent Ripley splurge, I picked up this incredibly soft cotton duvet in white cotton with slightly satiny contrast stripes. Not got any immediate plans for this, and it will almost certainly get dyed as I don't really wear white - I am far to prone to spilling things on myself. 

I also got this duvet in two tones of bright pink! I do love bright colours, and I never get round to buying bright plain fabric. 

In a special lesson in really rummaging in the linen sections and not just giving everything a cursory look, I glanced at this duvet, which has little trees printed on it, and wasn't sure, but then I picked it up and looked further and realised it was a border print! This is just screaming to be a pretty full skirted dress!

I also picked up some RTW stuff that actually fits. 

This amazing pink pencil skirt, which just needs taking up a bit. 

This cute chevron A line skirt

And this fine red and cream striped vest. This goes perfectly with the chevron skirt colour wise.

Plus some yummy big pearls

One day, I will sew something.

As I have finally finished my uni work for about 5 minutes, I may eventually get round to sewing something. Or photographing stuff I have sewn, or something.

But in the meantime, this post about the bizarre world of Maidenform advertising completely cracked me up this morning, thanks to Jen for posting it on Facebook and altering me to it!

Alien/Ripley

Well I have been very busy with uni stuff the last few weeks and I haven't managed to finish much or get organised to get photos, but I have amde a silly papermache costume! The party's theme was Opposites, which was a bit of a poser, but I eventually decided to go as Ripley and the Alien from the Alien films. For those who haven't seen them, the people on a spaceship are all picked off by a scary alien, and Ellen Ripley, a strong willed crew member, has to fight it off, and then do so again and again in subsequent (equally good) films.

She generally looks rather bedraggled after crawling through ventilation ducts and running down corridors, and the costume part for her, combat trousers and a white vest, was very basic and straightforward (in theory anyway-I spent a horribly long time looking in charity shops for them- a bizarre lack of these items available!).

For the alien part, I decided to just make the head, out of papermache. In case anyone feels an urge to make a xenomorph head mask thing, here is how I did it. It took about 1.5 hours excluding drying time.


First I made a tube out thin card for my head, which wil act as the alien's neck. I marked roughly where my eyes and mouth would be and cut them out. I made the tube about 20cm higher than the top of my head.

I then started on the main head bit. The alien's head is curved and rounded at the ends, so to create the base of the curve I used plastic bottles. I used the large 2 litre ones, cut both ends off and slit down one side. I opened them up and made card pieces to hold them open.

I then cut three large rectangles of card, and stapled them together on a slight angle so that they make a curve, and then attached the bottles onto each end.

I put two long strips across to hold the thing in shape, and two across each end under the bottles.

To make the mouth part, I cut a lower jaw out of a folded bit of card and added a bit at the front to complete the jaw at the front. I then cut out the top jaw and stapled it on. I then attached the jaws to the bottom with masking and duct tape.

I then attached the neck to the top with duct tape, and covered it with papermache.

I then slightly ran out of time as I was going to have tea with my parents, so my lovely flatmate charlotte had to paint it for me. Luckily it just fit in the airing cupboard so it didn't take long to dry. She used a mix of poster paint and PVA so that it had a slight shine. I tend to use water based paints for costumes as they wash out of everything, though that turned out to be a bit of a drawback at the party as when I spilt my beer on it by accident the paint came off all over me and other party goers!

So here are the final costume options,

Learning to sew clothes through the blog world -a (long) list of starting points

This post is a bit of a shout out to my friend Dani, who told me that she had a sewing machine and knew how to use it, but didn’t know how to sew clothes on it. She writes a lovely blog called Gourmet Gaming, where she makes real life super tasty looking meals based on food featured in computer games. As today is her birthday, I thought I would get round to finishing a post I have been working on about how to start sewing. This is particularly sensible as I have been wrestling for days with the shifting skies skirt which continues to mess with my head despite being very simple. 

It still looks a lot like this.

I am not an expert or even intermediate, I suck at most parts of sewing, but when I started it was because I got hooked on sewing blogs and they taught me how to do so many things and inspired me to make stuff. Sewing clothes is a bit overwhelming at first and there is lot of new things to learn. Therefore I have had a glance around the web and found some good places to start.

One of the best sources of really detailed thorough tutorials for different parts of the sewing process (online that is) are sewalongs, where a clever person makes a specific garment that you can follow along with, with each step and possible alterations explained. Whilst these are obviously based on a specific pattern, the techniques can be applied to anything.  A lot of the posts I am about to reference fall into this category.

Obviously the web is a big place, and there are many talented people with amazing blogs and sites , these are just a  few. Actually quite a lot now I’ve found them all.. but hopefully this will be a suggestion of some starting points and a signpost to some amazingly talented sewers and bloggers who have certainly taught and inspired me a lot.

Tilly and the Buttons

Overall learning to sew posts-where do I start?

http://www.tillyandthebuttons.com/2011/01/learning-to-sew.html

What do I need? Whilst many sewers hardly have any tools, and others have lots, it’s always useful to know what the various things do..

http://www.tillyandthebuttons.com/2011/01/learning-to-sew-part-2.html

http://caseymaura.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/guide-to-sewing-tools.html  

Making stuff from patterns

Reading and understanding dressmaking pattern envelopes 

http://so-sew-easy.com/understanding-a-sewing-pattern-envelope/

Picking the correct size http://www.tillyandthebuttons.com/2011/01/cutting-out-right-size-pattern.html

http://sewaholic.net/pendrell-sew-along-measuring-and-choosing-your-size/

It’s often worth making a muslin or toile (a rough run through of the pattern) to see if it fits. http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2010/buttons/sewing/toile/

Basic techniques

A Fashionable Stitch 

Seams

Seam Finishes – Generally I just do a zig zag stitch over the edges of my fabric so it doesn't fray but there are other fancier options! There are a lot of posts out there for these, a good overview here http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/2008/05/seam-finishes-simplified/

but Sunni's is probably the most comprehensive:

http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/categories/sewing/seam-finishes/

http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/categories/sewing/self-finished-seams-pt-i/

http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/buttons/sewing/self-finished-seams-pt-ii/

Princess seams http://www.blogforbettersewing.com/2010/09/sewing-princess-seams.html

Pressing seams http://portialawrie.blogspot.com/2011/04/sewing-basics-9-pressing-stitching-line.html

Sewaholic

Hemming-Frankly. I still completely suck at this! Hems can be as simple or complex as you like.

Basic overcast turned hem. http://portialawrie.blogspot.com/2011/01/sewing-basics-5-quick-overcast-hem.html

Covered hem http://sewaholic.net/crescent-sew-along-23-a-skirt-hem-with-seam-binding/

Hems have to  be marked all round so that they are level (despite the body’s lumps and bumps, and whether the fabric has stretched etc) ideally by an experienced seamstress (like your mum) but usually by a semi-willing helper with no idea what they are doing, plus its actually slightly tricky getting them straight. There are clever ways of making it easier though http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/buttons/sewalongs/hemming/

Hems round collars and armholes can be covered with bias binding-a flexible strip of fabric. http://www.burdastyle.com/techniques/apply-bias-binding, http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/tutorials-tips-tricks/facing-or-detail-bias-binding which you can make yourself very easily http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/tutorials-tips-tricks/continuous-bias-tape-tutorial

Sewing a bust dart

http://portialawrie.blogspot.com/2011/06/sewing-basic-12-sewing-dart.html

Zip. Zips are either visible or invisible  (invisible zips are sort of inside out with the visible bit of the teeth on the inside of the garment-often used on skirts) http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3728/sewing-in-a-zipper

Lapped visible http://www.sewing.org/files/guidelines/12_250_lapped_zippers.pdf

Invisible http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/tutorials-tips-tricks/tutorial-installing-an-invisible-zipper

Hand picked visible (hand sewn-sounds like more work and looking tatty, actually less fiddly and often looks better) http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/5135/a-hand-picked-zipper-is-worth-the-effort

Fitting probably shouldn’t be a beginner technique, but getting the bust size wrong without knowing what is going on will put you right off sewing so it’s best to have a basic idea. Most patterns, like ready to wear clothes from shops, assume you are a B-C cup. Obviously an awful lot of us aren’t, so we need to adjust the patterns to allow either more or less space, this can a bit fiddly but is usually quite straight forward.

Small Bust adjustment http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/tutorials-tips-tricks/adjusting-parfait-for-a-small-bust-a-tutorial-from-gertie

Full Bust Adjustment (these are all over the web and generally the same sort of method

http://curvysewingcollective.com/the-beginners-guide-full-bust-adjustment/ (also a lot of related posts on this blog -which is awesome)
http://sewaholic.net/pendrell-sew-along-6-princess-seam-fba-full-bust-adjustment/

Sewaholic for A Fashionable Stitch

Fabric

Selecting Fabric http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/buttons/sewalongs/tasia-the-sewaholics-lesson-on-fabric-selection/

Understanding fabric http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/fabric-haberdashery/fabric-series-fabric-terms  http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/fabric-haberdashery/grainline-understanding-terms

You must wash your fabric before you use it to make something (unless its dry clean only), otherwise it can shrink and it wont fit anymore once you’ve washed it. http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/buttons/sewalongs/pre-laundering-fabric/

http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/tutorials-tips-tricks/the-prewash

Cutting fabric

http://www.afashionablestitch.com/2011/buttons/sewalongs/cutting-tips-for-beginners/

http://sewaholic.net/pendrell-sew-along-7-cutting-your-fabric/

Working with knits (stretchy jersey not knitting!)

http://www.quixoticpixels.com/blog/2011/05/sewing-with-knits/

http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/4584/a-primer-on-sewing-knits