Third Dress of the Year Made By Me!

Hello Kittens!

I'm happy to announce I just finished my third dress sewing project of the year! The dress itself I actually finished a few weeks ago but took a while to find the right belt buckle to go with it. And because this was my first belt I've ever made, once I got the belt buckle, it took me a week or two later to get myself to actually go for it and make the belt. The pattern notion listing called for a 2 inch belt kit but because I couldn't find any belt kits in the stores I decided to just make this belt with thick interfacing which turned out alright. I realized I could have easily just bought a red belt or used a red belt from one of my other dresses but I really wanted to try making my own.

Overall, I'm very happy with the way the dress turned out as a whole! This was my first "intermediate" dress pattern for this year. For this pattern I learned how to use interfacing, learned how to make my own belt, and practiced gatherings. 

I used Butterick 6582 and decided to make it in a red gingham print. I was sad that I missed out on Trashy Diva's red gingham Trixie dress last year so have been really looking forward all year to working on and completing this dress.

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Front View

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Front View

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Side View

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Back View

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Close Up

Third Dress Of The Year Made By Me, Butterick 6582- Close Up

Vintage Belt Buckle From Etsy

Butterick 6582

Third dress of the year down... only one more dress this year to finish before I meet my goal of four dresses made this year. Time to get cracking!

Making Little Hats- Cherries Edition!

So now that I finally started working on some DIY hat projects again, I'm on a roll!

The day that I made the last fascinator (see the Carmen Miranda inspired hat here) I also made a black fascinator with cherries but didn't get around to photographing it until just now!

And so without any farther ado, here is the DIY tutorial for a cherry fascinator you can make yourself at home!

 
Making Little Hats!

1) Start with a fascinator base. I bought this straw base from ebay

 2) Add the decoration of your choice. I start with what I think will best go on the botton layer of the fascinator first... the part closest to the fascinator base.

When adding decoration which is heavy or which might not have an easy time surviving on the hat from just hot glue alone, I like to find a way to sew on the decoration. For these cherries I hot glued the stems together then sewed the stems onto the hat.

To reinforce the stitches, I then hot glued the decoration on over the stitches. 

 Here is what the back side of the fascinator looks like.

3) Next, if you are adding multiple things to your fascinator, if there are parts overlapping, those overlapping parts should go on next. If you want something overlapping the second layer, add that next, and so on.

I both sewed on and hot glued on the bow.

4) Hot glue your stitching on the underside of the hat too once all your decoration is added!





5) Next, sew on a hair clip, alligator clip, or hair comb. Be sure to pay extra attention to which way you will want the hat to be orientated on your head. If adding a hair clip (like shown) or alligator clip you will want the hair clip to be parallel to the ground when attaching the fascinator to your head. This will give the fascinator a jaunty tilt. If you are adding a hair comb you would want that to be at the front of the hat towards your face with the teeth of the comb facing towards the back of your head.

6) Last, reinforce your stitches with hot glue at the fat end of your hair clip or alligator clip. For a hair comb, you would want the hot glue to be at the long solid edge of the hair comb not touching the teeth.

      

And here you have the finished product! A new fascinator to wear out and have fun with!

Black Cherry Fascinator You Can Make At Home!

Making Little Hats! The Return of the DIY Projects!

Hello Kittens!

I hope you all had a good labor day weekend (for those of you in the states) or a good Labour Day weekend (for those of you in Canada) or maybe just a good weekend in general (for those of you elsewhere). :)

I noticed that it's been some time since I last did a DIY post so I figured it was due time for this one!

 
Making Little Hats!

 1) Start with a fascinator base. I bought this straw base from ebay

2) If the fascinator base doesn't come with one already sew on a snap clip or hair comb

 3) Once the snap clip or hair comb is sewed on hot glue it on to reinforce it.

Be sure to apply the glue only to the edge of the snap or hair comb. You will need the snap or comb to be slightly mobile to put it on your head.

 3) The last step is either the fun step or the tricky part... or maybe it's a little bit of both... adding the decoration.

For this hat I added a bunch of fake fruit to make a Carmen Miranda inspired hat! These pieces of fruit are a collection of foam fruit I bought from ebay, Joann's fabric, and the Japanese dollar store, Daiso.

I sewed all the fruit on to the fascinator base then reinforced them all with a hot glue gun. For the cherries I hot glued two piece together at the stem then sewed the stems onto the fascinator base.

And here is the little fascinator in action!

Second Dress Of The Year Made By Me!

Several months ago, you may remember me talking about my second dress of the year project, a red seersucker dress with red piping.

Well, after purchasing the material about a year ago and the notions about 5 months ago, I finally got around to actually making it! Once I actually got working on it, it only took about 3 days to make... something like 18-20 hours. Since this is the first sewing project I ever made with piping, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. Also, I'm proud of myself for going the extra step and putting in a liner at the bodice... even if I didn't follow the instructions and added it as an after thought so that the lining ended up coming out a little funky.

(Check out the first dress of the year made by me here.) 

I'm still a newbie at making clothes and up until this year have only sewed clothes for Halloween costumes. The instructions on the sewing patterns still make no sense to me sometimes, but I'm hoping with every project, I will learn a little more each time. This time I learned what exactly grainline means. ;) Also, I learned, I may be able to go down a size in my sewing patterns. I had to take this dress in quite a bit after sewing it, and even still, I can tell it fits a little big. My next project, which I've already started on, is a size down from this pattern so I guess I will see if that hypothesis is true.

For this dress I used Butterick pattern B5603 and followed dress pattern B.

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Front View

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Front View

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Side View

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Back View

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Close Up of Ties

Butterick B5603 In Red Seersucker- Front View

Butterick B5603

My goal is to make four dresses this year. With my third dress project already underway, I think I'm going to make it!

 

Making Little Hats AKA a DIY Tutorial on Fascinators

I am so excited about the new little hat I made over the weekend!

I've slowly been compiling quite a collection of hats, fascinators, hair flowers, and hair bows. It was within this obsessive frame of mind that I saw Trashy Diva's blog post on their new fascinator collection by Louise Green, Fascinator Frenzy. These hats and fascinators were so whimsy, cheerful, colorful and just so fun!!! I was dying to get my hands on the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat! But then I saw the price. :( As much as I do spend my money I just couldn't take the plunge. And so I was sadly resigned to the fact that I did not and will not own the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat. But that doesn't mean I would have to go without some whimsy, cheerful, colorful and fun little hats and fascinators of my very own. I decided to make my own. And here friends is my DIY tutorial on the new fun little hat I made over the weekend.


1) Start with a fascinator base. I bought this teardrop sinamay from seller guigkat on ebay. I have also seen similar fascinator bases on etsy.

(My trusty bff Murkurie overlooks my work.)

2) If your fascinator base doesn't already have a hair comb, alligator clip, snap clip, headband, elastic string, or neck tie (some kind of way to keep the hat on) you will have to get one of these items.

For this fascinator I decided to utilize a hair comb because the base itself is not too flexible so a snap clip probably wouldn't be too practical, I didn't know how well an alligator clip glued on to this somewhat nonporous surface of the hat would hold, and I didn't want to have the visibility of a headband, elastic string, or neck tie on this particular hat. 

3) I sewed on the hair clip to the back of the fascinator sewing around the base of the hair clip between the last two teeth on each edge of the comb. 

4) Next... things to put on the hat! For this hat, in the spirit of the Louise Green Cherry Doll Hat, I wanted to make something with fake fruit. I decided to make a grape fascinator!

5) And yet, while I was out gathering my grapes I saw this peacock feather in the same aisle. I thought, how lovely these colors go together! And you may know from my other past posts, A Good Peacock is Hard to Find, and  A Peacock for All Occasions, how much I do love peacocks!

6) I hot glued the peacock feather about halfway down the fascinator and at a jaunty little angle to give the hat some asymmetry, gluing the feather at about the eye of the feather and also at the base of the feather.

7) Then I sewed the feather on for extra reinforcement at the base of the feather.

8) Next I added the grapes. These I sewed on as well sewing around the stems of the grapes at the top middle of the bunch and also at the end of the bunch. I knew I wanted to have some of the grape leaves on with the bunch but the grape leaves that came with this bunch was super rubbery looking and not to my liking....

9) So I took a leaf off of my artificial grape vine in my house and hot glued that on to my fascinator!

10) And voila! My very own whimsy, cheerful, colorful, and fun grape fascinator!

DIY Tutorial- How to make a 1950's style caplet with cat fur!

Hello Kittens!

Whenever I brush my cat Murkurie I'm left with a huge ball of grey soft cat fur. My husband Tim says that it's so much fur that I could make another Merk with it. He's not kidding!

It's so much fur it feel like a shame to just throw it away. And so it got my crafting mind thinking... what can I do with all this extra cat fur? Make a 1950's style caplet with it! Genius! The first step would be to brush your cat. This may take several brushings based on how matted your cat is and/or how fluffy. Save all your cat fur as you go. I like to put my saved cat fur in a mason jar to keep the other cats from licking it and thus turning it into hairballs. 

Two Cats Ready For Their Daily Brushing (Murkurie, left. Wolfgang, right)

Next, don't forget what today is... :)








....April Fools!

Making Hair Bows- A DIY Tutorial

Hello Kittens!

Today, let's start a DIY project... Hair bows!

1) Start out with a square piece of fabric (resting cat is not necessary but it is nice to have my Merk with me). I started out with a 6 1/2" square but this bow came out slightly larger than I expected so you can make it smaller or even larger depending on your preference.

2) Press two sides of the fabric about a quarter of an inch.

3) Fold the fabric square in half perpendicular to the pressed sides with the pressed sides facing outward.

4) Sew along the edges of this rectangle leaving a small opening by the folded side. I left a little bit over an inch unsewn.

5) Carefully turn this pouch you just made inside-out... this is where that small opening comes in handy!

6) Then, once the pouch is turned inside-out sew your opening closed.

7) Take another piece of fabric. This size will be determined by how big your first piece of fabric was... for a 6 1/2" square piece of fabric I am using a piece of fabric about 3" x 1 1/2".  For a 5" square you will probably want something slightly smaller... for an 8" square you will probably want something slightly larger.

8) As you did with the first piece of fabric press two sides of the fabric along the longer edge. I pressed about a quarter inch.

9) As you did with the first piece of fabric, fold the fabric over in half perpendicular to the pressed sides and with the pressed sides facing outward.

10) Sew this fold close only on the short edge and not along the whole parameter.

11) Turn this fabric inside-out

12) Now, taking your first piece of fabric, the pouch, fold it accordion style along the long side. When you fold make sure the two edges of the fold are facing the same direction and not one facing up and one facing down... the accordion fold should look something like this: /\/\/\ when looked at from the side.

Wolfgang wants to know what is going on.

13) Slip the second piece of fabric onto the first piece of fabric with the finished side of the second piece of fabric on the side of the bow where the accordion folds are facing down.

14) Flip the bow over and sew four edges of the second piece of fabric onto the first piece of fabric. This will keep the middle of the bow in place.

15) Next, using a hot glue gun, glue an alligator clip to the back of your bow.

...like so.

16) And you're done!