A Day (and a half) In The Making

Phew! As I type this up I'm struggling since my fingers are so sore and probably slightly swollen. I made myself a new purse the other day and it had a little bit of hand sewing to finish it off and my fingers dislike me now for it. I started working on the pattern the other night after supper, and started the purse right from when I got up in the morning, with only breaks for food. I wasn't stopping until it was done.

Totally worth it.

BAM! Check it.

My old record purse was falling apart and I wanted something new. Record purses don't fare well in the winter anyway (the records crack much easier) and I used this one far past the point of it looking good or being responsible. One of the straps was worn away to just threads and it was going to let go any day.

I kept seeing people around with these really good looking bags, with two huge side pockets and a zipped pocket in the middle. After searching 'purses' on pinterest and scrolling for ages, I finally found a reference picture to go by.

Not the most helpful of pictures without zoom..

From there I sketched out the pattern (which took a while, I kept getting stuck on one piece until my fella miraculously solved the mystery!) and made a pattern to size.

One of the pieces.

From there it was pretty basic putting together-ness..

And after ages I finally got my finished product!!

From the side. My zipper pull will always be a key. 

I love the detail on the strap. It's simple but came out looking great. 

The outer pockets are lined with snap closures.

Top down. 3 huge pockets!! This purse holds everything, it's fantastic.

Since we were taking pictures of the purse anyway, I wanted to get one of my shirt.. I seriously love this pattern, it's so comfy and fits like a dream!

But because I'm a nut case, one thing led to another and we ended up taking blurry pictures of me being a moron.

If you actually sat through this ridiculously long post, thank you! 

Favourite Things: Winter Edition

Okay, it's cold out. Officially. I have switched out of my moto jacket and into my winter coat. Scarves, hats and gloves are now not only fashionable but necessary.  My favourite things this season?

Cozy winter tights in all sorts of colours and patterns. I'm waiting on this pair to come in the mail. (Ebay, if you're wondering)

Cranberry scented everything! My collection of cranberry scents includes parfume, hand lotion, lipgloss, and this home fragrance oil. Mmmmm.

Cute outfits with cozy sweaters.

This insane sweater! Now I normally don't like this style of sweater much (people make a lot of bad color choices with them I find, neon pink and purple and floor length? Guh!) but the colors in this one are gorgeous. So much so that I am planning a trip to Value Village on their sale day (Nov 19th for Canadians) to get as many brown sweaters as I can to make this. 

The Body Shops new highlighter pencils. I have the palest one, it's a beautiful creamy shimmery highlight that is going to be a regular in my makeup collection this season.

My Purple Urchin mango body butter. It smells amazing and feels just as nice. Support local, make healthy choices with your skin care, and check these ladies out!

And an awesome tutorial I have coming up for you for some super cute holiday jewelry! But you won't see that until after the craft fair when I have everything done. ;)

Gotta Start Somewhere

Back when I was in junior/high school and was really just starting to sew clothing, one of my favourite things to do was draw up these 'dolls' in paint (and eventually a bit of photoshop). You could get bases (aka: the body) from various places online and draw on makeup, hair, clothes, etc. Eventually I started them for my fashion croquis. I thought it was great fun, and they're funny to look back on to see what I was interested in.

Slytherin for life!

Scarf Fun

When I was a child we used to have 2 big bags of scarves that I would wrap around myself in various ways and make all sorts of outfits with, and my mom has dozens of pictures in an album of this. That's part of the reason why I love how scarves as clothing are coming back in fashion. Tie them together, tie them around yourself.. They're lightweight, come in many patterns, and super versatile!

D&G Summer 2012

Link to tute no longer working on the Glamourai page, if you have a good link I'd love it.

I went to Value Village today and got a couple cute scarves that I wanted to remodel into shirts, here's to hoping they turn out good!

MMM Post #4

So I just noticed that I had forgotten to schedule this post to go out so it's been sitting as a draft for much longer than intended. Keeping with MMM (though a few days it was just pajamas that got the homemade treatment) I'm happy to see there's only a few days left. I miss wearing my other clothes. Not that I haven't enjoyed wearing my clothes this whole time, but I'm sick of wearing some things so frequently. 

I've realized that I can wear things I made every day, and I intend to put my homemade clothing into circulation more often. Here's the most recent thing I've finished..

The only problem with making an adorable new sweater for MMM is the fact that it's sweltering outside!

I'm off tomorrow, and I fully intend to work on the pile of unfinished things: resizing and recycling a favourite tshirt of mine, a skirt getting made out of a sarong that the Mr's mom got me from the Dominican last year, and a few other things I'm not sure how they'll turn out exactly...

I hope the rest of you who have been participating have had as much fun as I have! 

MMM Post #3

Hello everyone! It feels like it's been forever since my last post, shame on me! I'll have everyone proudly know that I'm still following the MMM challenge without falling off the wagon at all, though most things have been repeats. Here's a few of the non repeats for you though :).

From yesterday, it was far too hot in our apartment so this lightweight knit jersey skirt did just the trick.

 

I finally, finally made something out of this fabric. I've had it for so many years it's not even funny. Probably close to 6 years. I forced myself to make something out of it after having half made several things and gave up on all of them, for some reason.

Aaaand because I went to see The Avengers on Saturday with my brother and the Mr, I thought this shirt was an apt choice. Also, holy hell was the Avengers amazing or what?! God I love comic book movies.

That's all my new stuff for now! I have a cake in the oven and a newly drafted pattern beside me, once I the cake is finished (I accidentally had the stove on 50 degrees too low the whole cooking time!! So I had to turn it up and leave it in extra) I'll start working on a shirt that's guaranteed to be comfy, I think :).

Little Black Dress

Our trip back to Cape Breton is in a little over a month and I'm getting very excited. Since I'm (most probably) going to be helping with the pictures for the wedding I figured I'd get something to wear that would blend in a bit (black & white) instead of what I was originally planning. So I spent a few days looking online at dresses to either make or buy. I do plan on making a little black dress (its on my 50 crafts list.. Which is sadly not looking too good) but I ended up buying one in the end.

The winner:

From www.nastygal.com, I think its so pretty. Even though it's a little tight, it's nice for summer and I'll be able to wear it on multiple occasions. And its a miracle dress that hides all the bumps :P

The runner-ups:

As you can see the others are even less casual (first polka dot one would have been okay), but it's fun to online shop sometimes right? I'll eventually get around to making my own LBD once I come across some nice fabric, until then, I can rock this sweet little dress around town!

Now to only find some shoes to go with it...

MMM Post #2

I decided to change it from weekly posts to a couple days at a time. That way it's not a huge post at the end of the week with nothing in between :).


May 6:

(I couldn't seem to get a good picture this day of my outfit so I put it on a hanger after work :P.)
Made by me: grey tanktop, resized/refashioned hoodie. For once I'm wearing a necklace not made by me, but one my aunt gave me. It's honestly one of the coolest necklaces I own! She was going to sell it at a flea market once and I told her I would buy it before it got on the table. Haha. I'll have to get a better picture of it sometime but this will give you the idea.

It makes an awesome jingly noise when I walk and is the perfect long necklace to spruce up shirts. I really should try my hand at making one similar to it so I can have it in other colors. :)

May 7:

Made by me: shredded shirt and the dino necklace :). One thing I've learned about these shirts is the more you wear them the longer they get! This is the oldest one I have (the 2nd I made, the first I didn't like and I got rid of) and it hangs past my knees in the back. Its kind of amazing, actually! I feel bad though, I went for quite the walk this day (to the mall to get new headphones) and I ended up breaking my poor dinos arms off. I figured it would happen eventually cause my purse strap sits right where he does but still.. Poor little guy! I'll have to make him some more.

May 8:

It was a super rainy day here and I was running out of clothes to wear before doing repeats so I used the weather as an excuse to wear my super snug spider web hoodie. A couple years ago Value Village was selling a whole bunch of stretchy fleece throw blankets in halloween patterns (spider webs, skulls, candy corn, etc). I used 2 blankets for the hoodie since the fabric only stretched one day and I regret to this day not buying more. ($5 a blanket, roughly a meter by a meter and a half, not bad!). I still have one blanket in the skull and crossbones fabric left and have a list of things it will be to decide between. I didn't get the chance to take a picture so here's an old one from my craftster account.

This is comfier than anything I've ever made.

May 9:

Today is my day off, finally! And my only one.. Boo! I got around to cutting and pinning the sleeves for a shirt (which I'll sew when I finish this post :P), and then I'll get my butt moving on the next thing. Since I'm just sitting inside all day I'm repeating my shirt from the first day, the grey tshirt.

I threw out a lot of things I made that I didn't really wear before the move to reduce the sheer amount of stuff that I have, but I'm really starting to regret it. Not only because of this challenge, but because I don't feel like I documented their existence well enough. And some things that I think are amazing! Why didn't I fix the little things and give them the love they deserve?? Oh well.. I can only hope that someone out there is loving them now.

MMM Week #1

May 1st:
Made by me: 'The Used' hoodie (recycled from a tshirt), grey and silver damask tshirt (which can't really be seen, but I showed it here), and my sewing machine necklace. Also: Def Leppard record purse to be listed on etsy. It went with the outfit ;P.

May 2nd:
Made by me: brown jersey hoodie (that used to be covered in gold micro glitter but many washes left the fabric plain brown, boo), pink tshirt that I didn't make but drew all over (shown here), fun. necklace and a button bobby pin.

The Mr. got a new road bike to take to work since the car is gone (new to us, the bike is actually from '85) that is so big I need to use the door frame to climb up onto it. Hahaha. Mad skillz.

May 3rd:
Made by me: Revamped an XL shirt I found at Value Village cause of how cool the straps are, and it's a little rockabilly what with the polka dots, wrap over front, side tie and all. Plus the gold puzzle piece necklace. Also: A cute zombie octopus plushie I got during a craft swap. I loves him so :3.

May 4th:
Made by me: One of the comfiest sweaters I've made. Plus the necklace :).

Thats a picture of my bass there, most of the stickers on it are of bands I don't listen to any more, but I find it has a lot of character and lots of memories attached to them so I doubt I'll be peeling them off any time soon.

May 5th:
The shrug from my tutorial here. I just noticed I'm wearing the same shirt with it from that tutorial as well.. I really need more plain black tshirts apparently!! Hahaha.

The weather seems to be getting nicer, which is good if I want to actually get through a whole month of self made clothing cause damn, this is tricky already! I've lots of dresses and skirts but if its chilly I won't want to wear them (in all honesty, I don't want to wear them now! I'm not a dress kinda gal, especially not when I have to sit on the bus for 2 hours a day. :P). I hope with this month I'll get through a lot of the things that I've been meaning to finish.

So that's the first week (as I plan to go from Sunday-Saturday). What do you think? How are you doing, if you're doing this challenge??? I've got a shirt half finished, another revamp that shouldn't take too long after that, and some gorgeous sweater fabric I want to get started on sooner than later. (A sweater? Sweater-dress? Comfy skirt? I don't know. I bought quite a bit of it though so I'll hopefully get a few things out of it).

On a last note, oh my god. Do I look tired in some of these pictures or what? It's cause I am. I don't know how fashion bloggers do it, constantly taking pictures of themselves. I don't have the time to take these pictures at normal hours so I end up doing it after work and looking all sleepy and gross. Off to bed with me!