Month: April 2008

Koi circle skirt…

This is my latest experiment – a circle skirt with an elasticated waistband. For those of you who read my elasticated a-line skirt tutorial, this one is made in exactly the same way. Instead of being triangular, the pattern piece is a quarter circle, which you then cut on a double fold in the fabric.

You have to be a bit careful with prints and circle skirts. If the print only goes one way up, you can end up with it going skew-wiff at the side seams. This particular print is so busy that it doesn’t really matter which way up it goes! Circle skirts also take up quite a lot of fabric. You can get one of my a-line skirts out of a metre and a half of fabric, but the circle skirt takes at least three metres. You also need five metres of trimming for the hem.

Koi fabric
The print is lots of koi, highlighted with gold.

Koi circle skirt - without petticoat Koi circle skirt - with petticoat

Here you can see the skirt displayed without and then with a petticoat underneath.

I was quite surprised the first time I made a circle skirt and saw it without a petticoat. You see full skirts so often as part of 1950s fashion illustrations, and they’re always drawn with the expectation that they’re going to be filled out with lots of petticoats. They look so different when they’re on their own – very flat, and almost disappointing.

I plan to wear this one to work tomorrow, without a petticoat. The one on the mannequin is a bit too tight for me these days, and I don’t fancy wresting with thirteen metres of dress net and fifty metres of trimming to make a new one before tomorrow morning! I keep thinking that perhaps I’ll buy one instead, from Petticoat Perfection, but somehow that seems like cheating, when I’m perfectly capable of making my own.

Mind you, I’m perfectly capable of doing lots of things, but that doesn’t mean they’re all at the top of my to-do list!

More slippers…

The monkey slippers are finished!

I added some felt soles, with a decorative blanket stitch to neatly finish off the edges. I hadn’t worked blanket stitch for approximately 28 years, but it was lovely to have a look through my Great Aunt’s sewing book from 1940, for a little refresher course. 🙂

Almost finished slippers! Monkey slippers - the finished soles

I love these monkey slippers with a fiery passion, and I have managed to find a single fat quarter of the same fabric, but with the nuts/gourds in purple rather than brown. If I buy it, I can make one more pair of monkey slippers… or of course you can all have something different!

I’ve also finished my second pair of slippers – these are a slip-on mule style, made from skull and crossbones print fleece.

Skull fleece slippers

The uppers are made from two layers of fleece, with a layer of denim sandwiched in between for strength. The soles are made from a layer of fleece, then denim, then heavy buckram, and finally felt on the bottom. (This is what the soles look like.)

The monkey slippers have a layer of foam rubber in the sole, which makes them extremely squashy and comfortable to walk on. They feel a bit tight the first time you put them on, but after a couple of days the foam compacts down nicely. The mule slippers don’t have any foam in the soles at all, which is something I want to change about them. I think it would be nice if they were a bit softer. I also need to make some changes to the felt soles, to make them a little safer. They’re a bit slippery on laminate flooring – I’ve almost gone skating a couple of times!

If anybody would be interested in buying the skull slippers, they’re a size 6/39, and can be yours for the bargain prototype price of a fiver!

I’m not taking formal customer orders for slippers yet, but if you’d like to help me by testing out a slightly experimental pair (possibly involving you drawing around your feet), please drop me a comment, and we can work something out. 🙂

Tired and Inspired.

Insomnia is not my friend. Half past six on a Sunday morning is a terrible thing to see, especially if you’ve already been up for two hours. I plan to snooze in the bath later this morning.

Thankfully the internet is a twenty-four hour operation, and instead of wasting half the night on Cute Overload or I Can Has Cheezburger, addictive as they both are, I’ve been reading lots of inspirational blogs.

This list is mostly for my benefit, so I’ll remember where I’ve been, but I thought it might be useful to other people as well.

Lauren and Emira have a book and a blog called “The Boss of You”. It’s about being a designer and an entrepreneur, and gives excellent advice on setting up and running your own business.

Jenny Hart talks about Crafting a Business – this article specifically talks about some of the copyright and licensing ideas I that I was discussing the other day.

At decor8, Marcia Zia-Priven talks about finding your niche as a designer.

Design For Mankind has several interesting posts about “Roadmaps”, and how they can help you as a creative businessperson. Follow the links to other blogs and websites, for even more inspirational designers and crafters!

I became quite a fan of Seth Godin after I bought one of his books, Small is the New Big. I read his blog regularly, and he always seems to have something relevant to say.

I also bought three interesting books this week:

DIY: Design It Yourself is full of inspirational design ideas, coupled with extremely useful practical advice – something which is missing in a great many craft books!

Fabric Jewellery contains twenty-five projects which I will almost certainly never make. But it’s already inspired me to think in different ways about the materials that I already have at home, which is exactly what I’d hoped it would do.

Sustainable Fashion & Textiles: Design Journeys is a series of essays by Kate Fletcher, about various aspects of the fashion industry and how they can be approached in a more ethical manner. I haven’t read this yet (6:30 on a Sunday morning is probably not the best time to start!), but I’m looking forward to learning some interesting things, and seeing what differences I can make myself.

As it happens, I didn’t exactly buy that last book – I bartered it for one of my duvet cover skirts. I’m more than happy to be paid in goods rather than money (sometimes – books don’t pay the bills!), so if I’ve made something that you like, please feel free to barter for it, if you’ve got something that I might like in exhange.

Everybody needs monkey slippers!

Monkey slippers!

Today I have been mostly making monkey slippers!

I promised to make a pair of slippers for a friend, so I thought I’d better make a prototype for myself first, to figure a few things out. I had just enough monkey fabric left from my Superbuzzy order, so I couldn’t resist using it up.

I have plans to make some more, probably out of fleece, and a slip-on/mule style with some of my leftover fancy fabrics. This is all part of the Grand Shoe Plan, but I figured that slippers would be a good starting point.

This is how I made them…

Pieces for a pair of monkey slippers.
Here you can see (almost) all of the necessary pieces. For the uppers, there’s the monkey fabric. For the lining I used some cream poly/cotton, which is fused to a piece of batting. (That’s the squashy stuff.) For the soles, there are two pieces of cream poly/cotton, each fused to heavy interfacing. Between them goes a piece of 1″ upholstery foam.

Insoles and uppers, ready to go...
These are the upper pieces, sewn together and turned right sides out, and the sole pieces with the foam sandwiched between them.

Insoles and uppers pinned together...
The uppers and the soles pinned together. I learnt a few things at this stage:

  • Press the uppers before you sew them on to the soles
  • Don’t bother pinning and machine basting. Hand basting is actually quicker and easier for this.
  • If you have a fine upholstery needle.

I also left out the elastic which was suggested for the back of the heel. The slippers do stay on without it, but I think I’ll be adding it in next time, to stop them from gaping.

Almost finished slippers!
Ta-daa! They look finished!

Slippers with no sole...
Until you turn them over…

I’ll be buying felt for the soles tomorrow! I might also add a bit of decorative top stitching around the uppers.

And there you have it. Monkey slippers!

[edit] I forgot to say – I made these using Burda 7978 as a starting point, and then getting creative with a book about making your own shoes. Feel free to make your own!

Recycled pinstriped skirt…

I had been planning to make some slippers today, but I realised that I was missing a vital ingredient – the soles! I’ll work on those another time.

Instead, I fished out two pairs of my fiancĂ©’s trousers, which had been in a box destined for the charity shop. They were made from a really nice heavy brushed cotton, with a faint narrow pinstripe. I decided they’d be much better off being given a new home in my wardrobe, so I turned them into a skirt!

Recycled pinstriped skirt

It turned out to be a sort of fishtail shape – straight to the knees, and then flared out at the hem. This was dictated by the shape of the trouser pieces, once I’d cut them up. The waistline is in my usual choice of bomber jacket elastic, and there’s a very narrow lace trim around the bottom.

I’m now quite tempted to raid a couple of charity shops, and see what they’ve got in the way of interesting trousers. Two different pairs, in alternating panels, might make a really pretty skirt.

Paddington shopping bag…

This is what I’ve been up to today – as well as finishing ‘s dress, I’ve made a Paddington shopping bag at the request of .

Paddington shopping bag

It’s a big bag, quite a lot bigger than the totes that I’ve made previously. It’s roughly A3 in size, and the handles are short ones. They won’t go over your shoulder, but you can carry the bag in your hand without it dragging on the floor.

I’ve got quite a lot of pillowcases in the Shed – most of them came with the duvet covers I’ve been buying to make skirts from. I can get two of these bags out of one pillowcase, so I’ll be running up a lot more in the not-too-distant future. I particularly like the fact that there won’t be any leftover fabric at all, by the time I’ve finished.

I’ve signed up for the Rising Sun Art Market in September and November, and I’m on the reserve list for July. I’ll be taking these new bags along with me, as well as lots of badges, and anything else I happen to make in the meantime!