Ah, January, the month after the holidays when I can finally craft for myself again. Fun discovery: Cake the Cat loves to help by sitting on all of the things. And I do mean ALL. Here are a couple of things I've been working on:
Black Leather Bat Chain Choker This first one was a quick jewelry project that I've had rolling around in the back of my mind for a while. The chain was a $1 H&M find that I shortened for the project. I cut the bat shape from a piece of soft, thin black leather I had leftover from another project. Sketched my shape onto paper(after tracing the natural curve of the chain when it was fastened around my neck), traced it onto the back of the leather, cut it out with my trusty Xacto, and attached the leather to the chain by the corners using a needle and some strong black thread. Easy, quick project that could be customized to any shape! |
Tulle Skirt for New Years outfit I was originally inspired by this tutorial here to sew a cute tulle skirt and decided to make it to wear for New Years. The original idea was to make this a circle skirt like the tutorial in that link, so as to avoid the tu-tu look and reduce the bulk at the waist. Unfortunately, I had an case of too many people giving me advice in the fabric store and I got confused and didn't get enough tulle. Damn my long legs and the inadequate width of fabric bolts! Undeterred, I reassessed my fabric and everything came together to make a knee-length gathered skirt instead. Basically, I sewed tubes of all three fabrics and pleated one end of each until it matched the maximum stretched circumference of my planned waistband. Then I layered them (hemming only the bottom layer of satin) and stitched them to the elastic with a zigzag stitch, stretching the elastic as I went to gather the fabric further to the final waist circumference. Easiest. Thing. Ever. I spent a lot of time playing with the layers of tulle in the store and am very happy with the result: layer of dark blue satin as underskirt, layer of pale green tulle, layer of pale aqua tulle. It gives a kind of depth to the color and makes you think of deep ocean water. Got a lot of compliments while we were out for NYE. :) |