Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Over my christmas break, I had a couple weeks to rest and relax [AKA babysit and take a family roadtrip.] Fortunately, I had a couple days to sew and crochet so here's what I made!

For my mom and a friend, I made a linen grocery tote.

Then I fashioned myself a shirt after getting inspiration from Etsy.com. I used the same concept as when I made a version of the ruffle J. Crew shirt by buying a larger-than-my-size long sleeved shirt and then using the sleeves as extra fabric to make the ruffle.

Since this is the first week back to classes, I'm taking advantage of the little time I have free to sew as much as I can-especially since the projects I am working on are supposed to be Christmas presents. >.< So far on this wonderful Friday evening, I have made my friend a ruffle vest and will soon start on her le sac dress.

It feels good to be back at my sewing machine. It's been gathering dust for too long! Maybe a resolution for this year [aside from the obligatory "start exercising!"] should be to make something at least once a month. So far, so good :D

Happy 2012!

I'm back

I decided to share clothes that I make on this blog, but without a time commitment. I don't use patterns when I sew so it takes me a lot of time to make anything. I also don't have a mannequin to work on and I usually have to stop every 15 minutes to try on what I've done [so much time!!] I could go buy one...or, even better, make my own! I found a tutorial for a DIY dress form from Threadbanger. When/if I make one, I'll share :]

Since I'm no longer doing my thesis, I can take my time making whatever I want instead of trying to complete something once a week. More time = experimentation! I went to JoAnn's and was browsing sale fabrics when I chanced upon some really cute chiffon. I've never sewn with this type of fabric before, but there are so many cute items of clothing made of chiffon that I wanted to give it a try. [I forgot that it needed lining since it's sheer so the project was postponed until I was able to make another trip to JoAnn's.]

My fabric:



I was very indecisive about what I was going to make, but decided on a ruffle skirt after seeing these:



So, my version!



First mini skirt I've owned, and it's handmade to boot! :]

More Ruffles!

Like last week, I was in a ruffled shirt mood, so after searching google on ruffle shirts last week, I had a few sites bookmarked.



This Homemade J Crew tutorial looked really simple and, lucky for me, I had a long sleeved shirt handy. When looking at the real J Crew shirt, I saw that the ruffles extended on the collar so I decided to follow that instead of the tutorial--I just thought it looked odd not attached to the top of the tee :P

P.S. This works better when you use a well-fitted tee since the ruffle makes the front heavier. The shirt I used was made to be loose so the front sagged and looked weird with the addition of the ruffle. Simple solution: take in the sides to make it a tighter fit using pre-existing tee as a template.

P.P.S. I forgot to take a picture of this shirt when I was out and about so the lighting is so-so.

----EDIT----
I did have a picture of me out and about. I watched a film from the Gasparilla Int'l Film Fest at a fancy movie theatre, CineBistro. Lighting is still meh, but I must share because that chocolate cake was DELICIOUS!

Happy Friday!

Experimenting with Ruffles!

I've been seeing a lot more ruffly shirts these days and decided to create one of my own...and let me say that searching for "ruffle shirts" on Google is not a good idea. I was a bit overwhelmed. Luckily, I remembered that I found a ruffled shirt that I really liked recently while perusing Free People Clothing.

Nice and simple, right?

It would have been if I had a tank top handy. Unfortunately, I had to make my own. I used an existing camisole as a template and sewed up a quick tank top using the bottom of two white shirts.

I used the bottom of the shirt to make the straps by cutting on the dotted line.

I made the ruffles from cutting ~1 1/2" strips of fabric out of a cream shirt. I made the strips ruffly before placing them on the tank , pinned, and sewed! In the midst of sewing, I didn't look back at my original inspiration so it turned out a bit different.

Either way, I was pretty happy with the result, especially since I finished just in time to go to the Dali museum! The outside looks really cool...

...but the inside looks even better!

Spiral staircases are the best :]