#sewingother

[thetimeinbetween]

A bit late, and I apologise!! >_<  these were the socks I made from the knitting loom mentioned in my last post.  I had already made a sock before these ones which didn't turn out very well so these were my second try :) I also decided to make them stripy which was just a matter of knotting the different wool on the end every 7 rows. It was so easy and so fast! I'm totally making knee high ones when winter starts to roll in again :D

[thetimeinbetween]

A little something I made for my boyfriend for Valentines Day <3 (with the white roses he got for me in the background ^3^)

I forgot to take photos of the progress but it was just made from an old green cotton duvet cover and the black ears/arms/legs and the white 'zip' were made from iron-on mending tape I got from the supermarket.

[thetimeinbetween]

Decorating the Jeans

This is a very short follow up from my last post on creating skinny jeans.  I didn't want to include it in the tutorial as it's unrelated, optional and may not be to everyone's personal taste.

As you can see from the preview, using the denim material that was left over from narrowing the jeans, I created fin-like shapes for the sides. 

So recapping from the end of the tutorial, I cut off the excess denim:

   I then folded the triangles in half and laid them along the outside seam of the jeans with the folded edge facing to the back.

I then went on to sew it on by hand as it was a little too fiddly to be done with a sewing machine.  I folded a little bit of the seam over to hide the fraying edges.

I also sewed a couple of buttons straight through to the actual trousers so to keep the 'fins' from poking out too much.

And that was it! Very simple, but it gives a little uniqueness to a plain old pair of jeans.

[thetimeinbetween]

50s Dress

Recently, I've been growing really interested in the 1940s and 1950s eras.  I love the swing/blues/rock and roll music and I adore the fashion.  

A couple of months ago, I saw a dress in Tesco that was on sale and because I loved the pattern so much, I bought it...even though it was a size 20 and I'm a 10...  But it was bought with the intention of it being a small sewing project and an excuse to use my sewing machine :)

Here's how it started off (my new years resolution is definitely to take better photos :S).  I wanted it pretty much how it was, I just needed to fit it around my waist and remove the edges of the sleeves.

The first step was to pin it all together.  This was done simply by trying the dress on inside out and grabbing parts along the waist until it was the right size then pinning it with a safety pin so I didn't stick holes in myself when I took it off.  To make sure the skirt still flowed nicely after the waistband had been shortened, I made sure equal amounts were taken off from the left, right and back of the dress.

  The width of the sleeves were worked out by trying the dress on, marking where i wanted them to end with chalk and then pinning them down.

  Now all that was left was to sew it all together.  As the sleeves needed to be sewn particularly close the edge, I needed to flatten the hem to make it easier for the fabric to stay in place when it came to the sewing.  Rather than using a large iron to sew such a fiddly part of the dress, I used my hair straighteners, which basically do the same job :)

I also tend to replace any safety pins with sewing pins just before I put it through the sewing machine as they are easier to remove even when they are under the sewing foot.

Sewing it all together...

  The finished dress!

[thetimeinbetween]

DIY Ankle Boots

  I’m a bit of a hoarder.  I’m a lot better than I used to be, but I still hoard a lot of clothes and shoes in the hope that I’ll find a way of reviving them into something that I like or something that actually fits me.

I’ve recycled quite a few items of clothing over the last few years but I’ve never done anything to shoes because, well, there’s not much you can actually do with shoes unless you have all the proper tools and materials.  But the hoarder in side of me willed me to do something with these boots because I knew deep down inside that I should probably throw them away as I hardly ever wear them.

So here they are- they’re not too bad, just not my style anymore.

(Apologies for the blurry photos, I know now not to trust my cameras tiny screen to judge whether they are in focus or not -_-)

   The first thing I did was try them on to work out where the best place was to cut them.  I cut the boots about 2cm above where I wanted the ankle boots to end so I could use the extra length for a hem.

  The zip wasn’t as hard to cut through as I thought it would be which was good and the leather material is fake so that was easy enough to cut through too.

 Here you can see how I plan to use the extra material to hem the boots:

  The fake leather was super easy to sew too.

  To make sure the zipper doesn’t come straight off the zip when the boots are done up, I just sewed some cotton around the top of the zip.

  And they’re done!  They really were so easy to do and only took about an hour to do both :)

 Here are the final results:

  I’ll have to find some fancy bow that I can do with really long laces now :)

Or just tuck them inside…