I’m #87!

I am well aware that I’m waay too late to be posting something about Fashion Week.

Too bad!  I just found out that my dress and purse (both made by me) made it into Toronto Fashion‘s trend watch.

Photography by Lewis Mirrett. Taken from here.

Fanny Pack DIY

Fanny packs.

I don’t know, man, it’s your call: Totally Useful vs. Dressing Like Mom Did in 1991.  There are pros and cons to both of those perspectives, so do whatever works best for you.

Take these scraps of fabric:

From L to R: Waistband straps, the purse, and the attachment clips. FYI, my purse ended up longer than the standard fanny pack, so you might want to cut yours into 6x10" pieces instead.

Take both of the long skinny straps and sew each of them lengthwise, wrong sides together (we aren’t going to hem the straps; we’ll just let them fray to their hearts’ content).

Oh, have you used this type of adjustable belt buckle before?

I think it's called a "parachute" or "side release" buckle. The piece on the left is the "female" piece, and the one on the right is the "male." I'm sure I don't need to explain why (everyone knows that females are curvy and that males have three spiked prongs).

Attach the zipper to the bag (the square-shaped pieces of fabric), right sides together.

It’ll look like this:

Take one of the straps, and feed it through the “female” buckle piece.

Pin and sew both ends of the strap to the right side (as opposed to the wrong side) of the bag, up near the zipper.

Take the other strap, and pin & sew one end of it to the same side of the bag, but near the opposite end of the zipper.

Fold the bag together, right sides facing, and sew the edges together.  Keep the straps tucked inside, and remember to leave the zipper partially open so that you can turn it right-side-out without swearing!

Turn it right side out, and attach the “male” clip to the long strap.

First, feed it through the hole that's closest to the prongs...

And then cram it through the bottom hole.

Ta-Daa!!!

And with your hands all freed up, you can finally take up Kangaroo Boxing for sport. Go get ‘em, Tough Guy!

Upcycle a Large Blouse

Take a really large blouse.

Cut off the sleeves, Raglan style, and cut off the collar too.

I can't believe how hard it was to find a non-baseball-related picture of a Raglan sleeve for that link.

Cut off the bottom of the blouse, too.  Um, twice, if necessary.

The strip that is so cleverly titled "this one" will be your neck tie. That bottom piece should be acknowledged as well, as you will be using it to make a loophole on the back of the blouse. Warning: I don't really cover how to make and attach the loophole to the back of the blouse. I'm hoping you'll be able to MacGyver it yourself out of the rest of this tute.

Hem the sides and bottom of the blouse.

Take the “this one” strip, and sew it together lengthwise into a long skinny tube.

Turn it inside out.

Do you know the safety-pin trick for turning out a long skinny tube of fabric?

Attach a safety-pin to one end of the tube.

And stuff him into the tube, feeding him through until your little safety-pin friend makes it through to the other side!

Aww look - he's taking a little trip!

Oh, the tales he'll have for us!

Pin the strap to the front of the blouse, right sides facing together.

Sew it.

On the back of the blouse, you’ll want to attach a loophole for the strap to feed through.  Like I said, I didn’t really include this step in the tutorial, so just take some of your leftover fabric (from the sleeve or something) and sew a tube that fits onto the back of the blouse.

Feed both ends of the strap through the loophole and tie them around your neck into a lovely bow!

It's not really a bra-friendly blouse.

Depending on how adventurous you are, maybe you should think about investing in some double-sided tape for your boobs.

Easy Summer Blouse Tutorial Part 2

This blouse is similar to last week’s summer blouse, but is less revealing.  So you could conceivably wear it in public, if you’re into that whole “leaving the house” kind of thing.

Start with these guys:

From left to right: chest band (which I cut a bit more loosely, just 'cause), two pieces that will become one body of your blouse, and four straps to tie up around your shoulders.

Take the chest band and sew it together along the short sides.

Take the two body pieces and sew them together to form one looooonngg rectangle.  Cut a rounded corner off of one end (this will be on the outside of the blouse and will look really cute – scroll down to the last pic if you think I’m lying).

Measure your bust, add 12 inches and divide by two.  Take that number (let’s pretend it’s 24″) and fold over the unrounded end of your fabric that many inches.

You catch my drift.

Keep folding until it’s all folded up.

Pin together the overlapping parts so that you have one big tube.

Gather  the tube so that it will fit inside the chest band.

I tried gathering it using a hand stitch, and it was really annoying.  And that’s coming from someone who has clocked many hundreds of hours of hand sewing for various quilting projects, so clearly I’m crazy about hand sewing.  Don’t hand sew; use a machine to gather your fabric.

Fold the chest band lengthwise with raw edges facing up.  Place the chest band over the gathered tube and pin it in place, right sides facing together.

Um, sew it together.

Take your strap strips and sew them like I showed you in the last tutorial (fold them in lengthwise, fold lengthwise again, pin and sew).  Pin them in place approximately 3-4″ from the edges of the blouse.

See those X markings? Pin the straps there. Repeat this step on the back of the blouse.

Sew them in place along the stitch line (where the chest band meets the body).

Those bimbos were right: modeling is way harder than geometry.

Make a Lined Tote Bag out of Two Shirts DIY

Take two shirts of similar size.  Make sure one of them has long sleeves (the long-sleeved shirt will be the outside part of the bag, and the other shirt will be the lining, so make sure you like to look at the long-sleeved shirt).

Cut off the tops of the two shirts.

I would highly recommend not using a stretchy sweater for the long-sleeved shirt. Sewing two stretchy shirts together totally sucks.

Turn the short-sleeved shirt inside out.  Cut off the sleeves and sew the open sides shut so that it looks like a rectangular tube.

It must be a psychedelic rectangular tube.

With the long-sleeved shirt right-side-out, and the rectangular tube inside-out, place the tube over the long-sleeved shirt.

Pin the top openings together and sew.

Unfold the two shirts from each other so that everything is right-side-out.

Sew along the bottom hem of each shirt to seal them off.

Does the sweater look panicked? Like, "Aaah!! What have you done to my face?!? I'm a monsteerrrrrr!!!"

Tuck the inside shirt into the outside shirt’s opening.

Now you have two choices: you can simply tie the sleeves together and call it a day like a lazy jerk (not pictured: being a lazy jerk), or you can add a clever detail to the sleeves that will attach them together and look cute.

Take some flat bracelets that you never wear, and pin the edge of each sleeve around those bracelets.

And then sew it.

And there’s your tote bag.

Wouldn't that look awesome if you used a button down shirt?

Upcycled Denim Vest Tutorial

A really easy denim vest DIY.

Take an old pair of pants and cut them off at the knees.  I took a donated pair of boot cut jeans that were two sizes too big and I cut them to measure 16″ long.

I also cut off the button closures from three other pairs of jeans (won’t my roommates be surprised when they get dressed this morning?), and a couple of waistbands just for the hell of it.

Not pictured: the waistbands.

Cut open the pant legs on one side, right behind the inseam.  The inseam will be the opening of your vest.

Fold one leg on top of the other and cut out a neckline and armholes.

Make the armholes big!

Sew the legs together along what will be the back seam (the side that doesn’t have the inseam attached to it).  Sew the shoulders together too.

I sewed the shoulders together with the right sides facing out because I wanted to keep the fray visible.

Pin and sew the button closures down the front of the vest.  Pin and sew the waistbands to the armholes.

And if you want to be especially awesome, sew on an embroidered tiger or dragon applique to the back of the vest.

How to Stripe a Shirt

Take a shirt.

Tape it up.

Oh, and stuff it with paper.

Spray it with a spray bottle of watered down fabric paint (it just has to be watered down enough to be squirtable).

Use several colours of paint, if you wish.

Repeat with the other side.  You can either wait for the first side to dry, or just go balls deep and do everything all at once; it’s messier if you do it all at once, but it’s also faster.  Your preference.

Wait for it to dry, then peel off the tape.

This is the back of the shirt.

Another technique you might be interested in is the Pollock-Paint-Pour, where you drip and splatter the paint onto the shirt instead of spraying.

You could probably attempt a more artful Pollock-Paint-Pour technique than what I did here. Yes, all I did was dump the leftover contents of my spray bottle. And yes, it all came out in one big blob.

After the shirt is dry, you should heat-set the paint.  Turn the shirt inside out, place a towel on it and iron for 3-4 minutes.  Then wash it to remove the excess paint.

Easy Denim Skirt DIY

Here’s a really awesome denim skirt DIY.  It looks kinda crazy, but it’s super simple to put together.

Take two pairs of jeans in coordinated colours.  Cut one pair off just above the knees, and remove its inseam (just cut it) and the excess butt fabric.

Butt fabric. Heh.

Take the other pair of jeans, and chop off the legs at the crotch, as well as the outside seams.

The big one on the right will be the skirt's body.

Pin the smaller front piece to the front of the skirt’s body.

Alternately, you could pin the back piece to the front of the skirt. Of course, that just opens the door to all kinds of craziness. Next thing you know, dogs will be marrying cats and people will be shitting themselves and forming protest committees over the very idea. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

Sew it.

And when you’re going over the thick parts (like the waistband), be careful; you don’t want the needle to break off and poke your eye.  If I were you, I’d take my foot off the sewing pedal and feed it through with the machine’s hand dial thingy.

Also, if I were you, I’d double stitch along the side seams, just so the fraying doesn’t get out of control.

Repeat pinning and sewing with the back side.

Turn it inside out and trim off the excess fabric.

Ugh. If you really want to, you can zigzag stitch along all the rough edges of the fabric in order to prevent fraying. I didn't, because screw that.

And there’s the skirt.

God, try taking a picture of your own legs.

Anyway, the skirt looks awesome. Believe.

Easy Denim Bracelet DIY

Take three strips of contrasting denim, approximately 30″ long (that was a tad too long for me, but I have the daintiest wrists in all of Toronto town.  Some day I’ll show you my trophy) and maybe 3/4″ wide.

Oh, and that belt loop. Pretend you didn't see it; it's sort of like that octopus in Hobo With a Shotgun.

Sew the three strips together at one end.

Braid them.

And no, I didn’t take a picture of me braiding them, I just assumed you knew how to braid.  If not, you’re on your own (seriously, I was going to drop in a link here, but I just spent the last ten minutes looking for a quick n’ easy braiding tutorial online, and all I could find were long and complicated braiding tutorials.  Oh fine. Here’s an unnecessarily long video tute by Threadbanger, and here’s a windbaggy how-to by Squidoo that at least has an easy to understand image).

When you’re finished braiding, sew both ends together.

Trim off the excess and stretch the bracelet out (it’ll tighten the braid and give you some cool fraying action).

Wrap it around your wrist a few times (like, two or three times).

You should be happy I'm including instructions on how to wear a bracelet. Otherwise you'd be sooo screwed.

Yet Another Clutch Tutorial

There are tons of clutch tutorials on the internet.  Tons.  The only reason why I’m posting one of my own, is to complement my tutorial on how to add fringe to a clutch.

Take these scraps of fabric:

You got yer 12" zipper, yer 12" strap that will become yer wrist loop, yer vintage floral lining and yer clutch body (which comes complete with yer hand-made zip up pocket).

Take the body and lining and, with wrong sides together, sew a zigzag stitch along the top and bottom.  This is to hem them together.

Alternately, you can serge for this step.

Take your zipper, and right sides together (of the zipper and clutch – not the lining!), pin and sew the zipper to the clutch.

Oh, and while we’re at it, let me show you how to get past that pesky zipper head without screwing up your sewing line.

Making sure that the needle is fully down, lift up your sewing foot:

I mean your sewing machine needle foot, not your walking around town foot. But you should lift that foot too, because you don't want to be sewing over your finger right now.

And move that zipper head down the line until it’s past the needle.

Ya got three choices around here: Coal mine, moonshine, or movin' on down the line. You're looking at the Loretta Lynn of zipper heads.

Put the foot back down and get back to sewing, soldier!

Repeat zipper attachment process with other side of zipper:

Turn clutch right side out, and sew a reinforcement stitch along the outside of the zipper:

I accidentally did this step at the very end of the project. Yeah, it pretty much sucked.

Turn your clutch inside out again, and pin the wrist strap to the edge of the clutch, like so:

Open ends of the wrist strap get pinned to the outside edge of the clutch, and it all gets sewn together.

See?

Trim and zigzag hem the edge.

Repeat with the other side (it’ll be easier because you won’t be dealing with that bratty wrist strap).

Remember when you are sewing something that has a zipper, to always keep the zipper partially open when you sew the sides shut.  Otherwise you’ll have a really hard time trying to open that zipper from the wrong side and you’ll be stuck with some stupid, good-for-nothin’, inside out bag.  Worthless!

Turn your bag right side out, and voila!

Look! Another clutch!