glitter, sparkles and glue

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:44:18 GMT

okay dokee!

i am FINALLY finished the bags for jean's wedding!

i made 5 total. 4 full sized totes for the maid of honour, the moms, and for jenny, cause she was supposed to be in the wedding, and 1 little tote for the flower girl.

the little one

one of the big ones

they're made of shot taffeta, so they range from red to black depending on the light. the taffeta was interfaced with heavy weight interfacing, and i ironed a layer of that iron on batting stuff onto the black cotton lining.

the appliques are black vinyl, and took forever both to cut out and to sew! each bag has the recipient's name sewn onto the back, but we wanted it to be subtle, so i matched the thread shade to the fabric really closely. here's an altered photo to get a better idea -

each bag has a zippered pocket (using old-new stock red zippers) and an iron on message from jean and justin.

the straps aren't interfaced (the thought of turning interfaced tubes terrified me!), but they have strapping threaded through them to add strength and to keep them from folding or anything.

i'm REALLY REALLY happy with them. they were a lot more work than i'd anticipated, but i think it shows in all the little details. the taffeta was a pain in the butt, and i'm not too happy about the wrinkles, but there's nothing i can do about it.... i learned that the hard way when i melted some of it while putting the interfacing on, thank god i bought extra fabric!

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:40:46 GMT

not work safe!!!

Mon, 14 May 2007 00:17:47 GMT

http://countdown.tentwostudios.com/

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:07:34 GMT

i haven't posted anything crafty in soo soo long....

here's a bunch, warning! LOTS OF PICTURES!

first, some flower pins that i did for a swap on craftster.....

this one's my favourite, though i'm also in love with the daisy with the acrylic centre. and the fun fur one is cool!

more flower pins, all crocheted, but not for the swap.

the green one's my favourite.

speaking of crocheting... i did this at (canadian) thanksgiving, so you can tell how long it's been since i've posted pictures! i was really happy with this. he doesn't like being too girly, and i usually suck at toning the girliness down, but this worked out well.

he wanted brown. this is kinda more the true colour.

some kippot that i've been making.... there's more, but they really aren't that exciting. they're really quick and easy to do, and my best friend wear's them every day, so he's always looking for variety. i've perfected my pattern for cloth ones, so i'll start on those next. the brown one is made using regular acrylis yarn and crochet cotton together, and i'm really liking the effect. i tried it out to find a way to use up all the crochet cotton i never use. i'm in the middle of a scarf with varigated rainbow cotton and black acrylic, it's really cute.

slightly boring lanyards i made for everyone at work, but i love the silvery snowflakes on the fabric!

and the cards i made everyone, with fun foam snowflakes, glittery cardstock and beads.

this isn't new, i made it a few years ago, when i was tinier, but i finally remembered to make someone wear it for pictures. i love it so much. it's a deconstructed giant sweatshirt that's now much less giant.

and, last but not least, postcards for the What Would the Mail Carrier Think? Postcard Swap with the theme of feminism/women. i used images from the '20s, b&w copied, then added colour and glitter. i've added clear contact paper as well, to keep all the glitter from leaving a trail in post offices throughout the world! but i took the picture before i added it, to cut down on glare.

i LOVE this image, but i didn't copy enough of it. i didn't even realize that the chorus line was all wearing wings until i started colouring them!

and if you like the idea of a postcard swap, check out the postcard swap i'm currently organizing on craftster- http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=22408.0 if you've been a craftster member for more than a month, and you're not a "bad swapper", you're welcome to join!

it's valentine themed! i'm super excited!

as far as i can tell, i'm not breaking any community rules by posting that. i'll take it out if needed though. i'm just really excited.

and that's it for now. i have more, but there are already a million pictures on here. and i'm in the middle of multiple projects, including some stuff for upcoming swaps, a purse made using an image transfer marker to make it look really cool, and lovely resin valentines stuff!

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:07:22 GMT

halloween!!!

so i'll jump on the halloween posting bandwagon, i love halloween!

my pre-requisite cupcakes for work. it's all i'm capable of making, so i make them for every holiday. i even found little cupcake cups with skeletons on them and pumpkin shaped sprinkles!

most of my decorations pictures from work are kinda crappy, though i did decorate a lot more than just this little bit. that's fine though, because this is what i'm most proud of. i bought a tree from the thrift store and spray painted it black. i had wanted to do a full size tree, but the spray painting was making me lightheaded, so i just did the top portion. maybe one day i'll do the bottom. i also thought about just spray painting some of the bottom pieces so that i can make a wreath out of those branches.

i found these skeleton hands somewhere, and i melted holes in them so that i could hang them.

the garland is made of dried peeps marshmallow ghosts and black pony beads. it was much more of a hassle than i'd anticipated (surprise, surprise!) and i ended up having to use a shotglass full of canola oil to dip my needle in for every ghost that i strung and pull the needle thorough with pliers.

and then i bought those cheap fake fangs and melted holes in them and used pipecleaners to make them so that they were half opened and ready to bite, and now they're biting the branches.

and then i found sticky eyeballs to stick on the ends of the branches.

i wanted to have the gum drop garlands that i'd posted about, but after i posted that, i lost the gumdrops! somewhere in my house is a tub of gumdrops, but i honestly cannot find them. so i'll save them for next year or something! thanks for all your suggestions everyone! i ended up using some of the ideas for the peeps instead, so they didn't go entirely to waste.

and then i made halloween stockings. this is the first real "stenciling" i've ever done, and i was quite impressed with it. i was out of silkscreen emulsion, and the studio was too much of a disaster to be able to silkscreen anyway, so i did stenciling.

and here's my bat costume. it was originally going to be very simple, but i went really overboard. i was looking for an excuse to make the hair falls!

the hair was a bit of a pain in the ass, but i still love it. it was so much fun to dance with. my real hair is pretty short, i forgot how fun it is to wave your hair around. i made 5 hair falls in total, four that were attached to tiny little buns (which got tinier the more days i wore it, this really damaged my hair!), as well as a fall that was pinned across the back of my head. the back one was grey and black yarn, and then each bun had two, one that was entirely black yarn and very simple and the top one that was grey and black yarn and black gimp with the bats and the beads and stuff. i made little bat beads by cutting bat rings and glueing them together with a bead in the centre, and i tied 3 fake bats into the falls (it would have been more, but i lost my pliers and it was extremely difficult to get the needle through them with out it!) and i strung a bunch of black pony beads into them.

the bat hat was just tiny, and i was really impressed with it, since i did it in less than 15 minutes with only a vague idea of what to do with it. i suddenly realized it was 1:30 in the morning and i had to get up at 6 and wear it, so i panicked. it doesn't cover up ALL my real hair, but the vast majority, the only place where it's showing is at the very top between the buns.

and i made the wings too. i figured out what i wanted them to look like, and drew it out. then i drew it onto the vinyl, and sewed bias tape around the lines. then i inserted the wire into the bias tape, and sewed the other side of the vinyl on for the right side, and top stitched all around the wire from the front. you can't see the side with the extra stitching, because it's against my back. i wanted to make them small, because i was wearing them to work, to a parade and to a youth dance that i volunteered for and i didn't want them to get wrecked of always be hitting people.

the end result.

i had a tutu that i wore to work as well, but i didn't wear it to the dance or the parade, it was just too much hassle. i found it at a thrift store, and it was super super long and someone had ironed on ugly ass patches all over it, so i pulled them all off and shortened it quite a bit. i love the tulle, it's old and really soft, not scratchy at all, and i love the three bands of black velvet ribbon at the bottom. i made a new waistband using black satin blanket binding, and it's drawstring with a fat black satin ribbon.

everyone posts pictures of their helpers, but my cat was extremely unhelpful! she desperately wanted to get her paws on that yarn! last night as i was doing my makeup, after putting the falls on, the climbed all the way up my jeans trying to get at them. but she's awfully cute. now she's helping me post this, and it's still not very helpful because she's sitting between me and the keyboard. i blame all spelling mistakes on sofie!

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:07:03 GMT

i just thought i'd share for those of you who sell their stuff. i won't have enough stuff ready for the jury date, but some of you might!

i got this e-mail today, and i thought i'd pass it on. you can call the number below for more info, but from what i can remember, seamrippers is a craft collective here in vancouver. they have a creative studio space, do some workshops, and recently had a gallery opening of craft based art (which i missed, and i am still so upset!)

hello boys and girls,

i believe that i mentioned this a few weeks ago but now i really mean it. we at the Seamrippers Craft Collective are having our very first craft fair. it is scheduled for Saturday November 13th from 3pm until 10pm. and in true seamrippers style it will be followed by a dance party.

and we are looking for crafters to take part in this event. so if you make art or crafts or something in between please let us know.

the tables cost $10 (cheap) and we are encouraging trades. if you've never done a craft fair before we'll be gentle.

the jury date is Sunday October the 24th between 4 and 7pm at 436 west pender. bring a sample of the stuff you make so we can get an idea of what we have to work with. please contact us if you are interested or this date doesn't work for you. email us (please include 'craft fair' in the subject line, it makes our lives way easier) or phone us at (604) 689-SEAM (7326).

hope to hear from you all soon,
georgie

crossposted to craftgrrl, shemadethis and little_ms_me

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 21:01:05 GMT

the femme affinity group is pleased to announce that our second zine, femme vitale 2, is completed and ready for the masses!

this zine is 40 pages, half letter size, chock full of over 15 contributor's writings and drawings about femme and what it means to them.

highlights include:

Elaine Miller's "A Femme's List of Incidental Skills (Or: Things This Femme Can Do)", first published in "Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity" edited by Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002,

my paperdoll,

a drawing and writing about being a femme trans-boy,

a rant about femmephobia in the queer community,

a detachable sticker on the cover, which can be removed and affixed anywhere you'd like to show your femme pride,

and much much more.

this zine is a minimum donation of $4.50cdn funds, with shipping to canada, and $4.00US funds, with shipping to the US. this price includes your paypal fees. unfortunately, the combination of the sticker on the front and the awkward size to mail made this zine a bit pricier thn we had planned, but i promise you, it's worth it! any amounts over and above the cost of making the zine and distributing it will be used to 1) pay off the small debt we had from our last zine or 2) pay for future femme awareness activities in vancouver!

this zine is not available in any distros, only through me!

you can paypal your payment to glittermary AT shaw DOT ca and i will send your zine out immediately. you can also e-mail me at that same address for info if you can't do paypal, or if you live outside of canada or the US.

copies have already been sent out to contributors, if you are a contributor and you haven't received it, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

trades are not technically being considered for this zine, since it was done by a group, and trades won't help the group pay the printing bill, BUT if you have trades of zines relating to femme identifty, being genderqueer, being crafty (including how to craft zines), or anything to do with trans issues, i might personally be interested in paying for your copy of the zine for you, in exchange for your trade. i'll be picky though, because i can't afford to buy everyone's zine for them.

thanks for reading ALLL THE WAY to the bottom!

aprons and zines (NOT WORKSAFE)

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 08:30:07 GMT

none of these were done with my new ruffle foot, but they definitely inspired me to buy it and make more!

last month a friend and i put together a compilation zine for a femme group that we're part of, and ran around at all the vancouver pride events selling them. i, of course, decided that we needed a fun way to sell them, so i made us cute aprons!

SLIGHT NUDITY, NOT WORKSAFE.

this is the apron i made for myself for the first day to match my tutu i also made. i love the look of the serger stitch contrasting. and then i used the same pink to make myself ruffle butt underwear.

i screenprinted the word femme in black onto the change pocket. there are two zippers to hold the money and my smokes, cause my outfit didn't really have any pockets!
and i made two pockets big enough to hold the zines.

this is the apron i made my friend.

it actually had three pockets to hold zines and only one change pocket.

i screenprinted femme in a matching pink, using acrylic ink. i asked about this in this community a while ago. the colour wasn't as deep as i would have liked, but i honestly think that's because i used broadcloth, not cotton fabric. and i didn't bother using the fabric medium either, because this one was finished at 3am the day she wore it.

instead of doing the contrast serger stitching, this apron was all zig zagged over the straight stitching, just to add interest.

the colour in these pictures is a bit wonky, the apron actually perfectly matched her pasties in this picture. (which was a total lucky fluke!)

and then for the next day, i was wearing red pants, so i didn't want to wear the pink apron, so i made a plain black apron.

i put two zippered pockets for change, etc in this one, but i didn't gather the ribbon trim.

and this is the zine we were selling.

while two of us put it together, it was basically my layout ideas. (that sounds really conceited, i didn't mean that. she totally did a ton of work too, it was just my style) as usual, i used photocopied vintage fabric as the backgrounds.

but i think what i was most excited about was having my paper doll in the zine. i changed her a little bit, compared to when i posted her here. i took off her bra and gave her a couple bra options, and added hot pants, a garter belt and stockings.

every cover had a sticker on it that is removable, we just cut around them on the page of stickers and glued the paper backing to the cover.

it was fun!

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 04:29:28 GMT

i wanted to share my new favourite sewing toy!

i just got it today and already i'm wondering how i ever lived without it!

it's a gathering/ruffling foot!

it looks like this.

there are actually two different kinds of gathering feet, a single layer foot and a double layer foot. you can still do single layer on a double layer foot, and they cost the same, so i don't know why anyone would bother buying the single layer foot. this is a double layer foot.

to do one layer, you just set the foot down on your fabric just like you always do when you're sewing.

as you sew, it will gather the fabric for you.

see?

you can gather tightly or loosely, just experiment with your stitch length. the longer your stitch length, the tighter the gathering will be. it's recommended that you always use 10" strips while experimenting, so that you can go back and measure the gathered piece to see how much smaller it is comparatively. that will help you figure out how much fabric you need. also, different thickness of fabric will gather differently, so you have to do a sample for each type of fabric before you start sewing with it. the thinner the fabric, the more it will gather. i tried gathering two pieces on top of each other of this sheet, and it didn't gather nearly as much.

and you can also do the double layer gathering, where you are gathering the fabric, and sewing it onto a flat piece at the same time. i'm still getting the hang of this one, it's a bit trickier.

for this, set up the piece to be gathered just like you did for the single layer gathering. then guide the top/flat layer (ie, a waistband) through the little slit in the foot.

as you sew, the machine will gather the bottom fabric and sew it to the top fabric.

see! here's the end result!

i found that this worked much better if the top flat layer is thicker than the bottom layer.

isn't that cool? i'm so excited! and it was sooo cheap! $7! i checked the singer website, and it was twice that, in american funds, and i would have had to pay for shipping. it was totally worth finding parking at the sewing machine store! this is a fairly standard foot, i believe it can be used on pretty much any low-shank, screw on foot machine.

when i think about how many hours i have spent gathering ruffles, $7 is a minuscule amount of money to pay.

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 22:51:12 GMT

i know i just posted, but i haven't posted here in a while, and have a bunch of stuff to show off, so i'll do a couple of posts, because i know how annoying it is to be on a slow connection and be trying to look at a post with a ton of pictures.

this is a bunch of paper craft type stuff i've done lately, lots of mail stuff since it seems that everyone i know has moved away... not really, but it feels like it. damn going back to school!

i made two of these matchbox things, i was inspired by the tutorial here -http://www.lisavollrath.com/articles/042.html.
i based mine on the 4 box drawer, but i did 8 boxes to make it bigger.

this one is coated in duct tape. i used silicone sealant to glue everything together, i didn't know what else to use on duct tape! i fooled around with a picture of my friend in photoshop, and then taped it on. i added the label with her nickname, so it totally fit the picture where she was showing off her ass.

all the drawers open. i wrote letters on long skinny pieces of paper, then folded them up and numbered them and put them in the drawers. a filled a couple of the drawers with little toys.

i used wire and electrical components to make the handles on the drawers.

this one was the first one i did, and i used some expensive stamps that i'd bought at a stamp party to decorate it.

i used embroidery floss and beads to make the drawer pulls on this one, they looked so pretty. i used red beads on the iside of each drawer too, to keep the cardboard from ripping. i stamped the ends of the drawers simply by pressing them onto the stamp pad, i like the way they turned out.

a close up of the stamping i did.

this was also inspired by the same website, the tutorial is here - http://www.lisavollrath.com/articles/039.html

personally that one isn't my style at all, so i just went with the idea. i left my coffee filters plain, and used these cool little book screws to put it together. this way, you could take the book apart if you wanted to watercolour on some of the pages. you can't write on them with pen, but the filters are so thin that you can write on a piece of paper, put it into the little pocket, and read it through the filter.

for the cover i used posterboard, but i covered it with a photocopy of some tweed fabric i have, the back is what the tweed actually looked like copied, and the front is a reversal of the tweed photocopied.

this is a postcard i sent a friend, the flower is from a piece of vintage fabric that i photocopied, then i covered the rest of the card in big pink glitter and put clear contact paper over it so the glitter wouldn't fall off in the mail. i miss doing fun postcards, i used to do them all the time. the best ones i've ever done were the toaster (when a friend slept with a "straight" girl) and a snowglobe of vancouver where the snow actually fell when you moved thecard.

this is a letter i wrote, once again using photocopies of vintage fabric to embellish it.

and this is a very simple card i made for a friend's birthday, in about 15 minutes cause i was late! i did the writing with my label maker, screwed the picture around in photoshop and used the lacing to hold the picture on. no glue required! i'm totally obsessed with putting grommets on things right now.

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 08:56:55 GMT

this is my first attempt at felt flowers, which i'm quite proud of and the wedding dress i made for my upstairs neighbour, which i'm also quite proud of.

i made felt flowers for impishremorse in exchange for copies of her alice in wonderland colouring book. a very good trade in my opinion, i hope she liked the flowers! (and i hope she got the package already, or else i'm ruining the surprise!)

the first three i made, in colours she said she liked. i ended up keeping the art deco-y looking one, because it was less "flowery" and i didn't know if she would like it, but also because i loved it.

and the fourth one i made. i like the stiching on all of them with contrast thread. i don't know if you can see that the leaves have veins stiched on them with lighter green thread as well.

this dress i made for my upstairs neighbor, she and her partner got married in our backyard in july. it was originally going to be the wedding dress, but a week before the wedding she decided that she'd been deluding herself, and she really did want to big white wedding gown. so she bought a wedding gown off the rack somewhere and wore this for the dinner after the wedding.

she wanted something very simple, just delicate and pretty, and she looked through tons of fashion/wedding magazines and pattern catalogues and couldn't find anything. she ended up finding a picture in a gardening magazine where a woman was wearing a dress like this, and we just lowered the neckline and back and made it up as we went along.

i didn't use a patern, because she's so tiny (very typical japanese body type), i thought it would be more hassle to make the pattern fit her than to make it myself. i made a couple of samples before i made the dress.

i learned how to do invisible zippers for her dress, and now i wish i'd learned years earlier! they are so easy! with all the samples i made, i'm now a master at invisible zippers.

it was lined entirely in cotton fabric, because the gauze was so sheer. i was quite proud of how nice the lining looked.

a close up of the fabric, it was so pretty and such a good deal, $3 a yard, the lining ended up costing double that!

a better pic of the front, when it didn't need ironing as badly!

as pretty as the fabric was, it was a bit of a bitch to work with. i think if i did it again, i would have an underfabric that it was sewn directly to. the fabric stretched so much, that the lining didn't fit inside it at the straps, so we had to do an emergency fitting and then put patches in the straps so that it would still be fully lined!

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 01:46:49 GMT

okay, i have a question for you crafty folks....

i bought a vinyl tablecloth, a cheap one with flannelly backing on it. it's a really cool pattern on it, and i want to make stuff out of it. but i can't get the creases out from the way it was folded in the package!

does anyone know how to get the creases out? i'm scared to iron it, because it's basically plastic. and i tried putting it in the dryer on no heat, but that's not really working either.

please help! it would be perfect, if only i could get the creases out!

and just so this isn't text only- the only duct tape project i've ever finished (the rest always looked so crappy, i gave up).

it's a book cover, and i'm very proud of it.

with a pretty shooting star. all i had was yellow and black, and i didn't want it to be too bumble bee-ish.

the star goes all the way around onto the side as well.

the inside.

newspaper dress and scrabble-y goodness

Sun, 27 Jun 2004 09:51:41 GMT

recent projects.....

this was for a contest at work to make something new out of something you would otherwise throw away. i didn't win the contest, and i'm a little disapointed, but not really. i just made it for fun, but i think i'd feel better if the winners had been more creative! the 1st prize went to someone who made magazine holders out of cereal boxes and painted them up all tacky, 2nd prize went to someone who made a stanley cup out of cookie tins and painted them all silver and 3rd prize went to someone who made a log reindeer. i thought the first two were kind of neat (even if they were tacky), and i wouldn't have minded losing to them, but i was pretty disgusted by the reindeer. how creative is that? you see them at every craft show and in front of every trailer. but oh well.

more details of the dress

for the top i folded paper into strips and pinned them on and wove them together directly onto the dress form, so that it is fitted to her. then i carefully taped them and cut up a slit up the back so that i could take it on and off.

for the bottom i cut the paper into strips, then wove them together into 4 big sheets and taped them into a skirt shape.

the pleats were cut into strips, then pleated, taped on, and then i cut thin strips from black parts of the paper to make a ribbon. it took me 3 and a half newspapers, three or four rolls of tape and about 8-10 hours in front of the tv.

and scrabble coasters for a (VERY LATE) chanukah present that i finally finished.

sorry these are kinda blurry, i didn't realize the pictures were so shoddy until i'd already given him the present!

they're made of resin, with balsa wood scrabble stickers and blue glitter inside.

i even put little rubber things on the bottom so that they wouldn't scratch the table.

this was a going away present for the same person, who is moving. he's a scrabble fiend. i colour copied a scrabble board at 75% percent, then had it laminated. i copied all the letters at 75%, then stuck them onto magnet sheets and cut them all out. i made four little corners to hold the board up when there are no letters on it, and i silkscreened his name onto fabric in scrabble letters, then made a bag out of it. and i glued magnets to the back of the hook, so that he can hang the bag full of scrabble letters from his fridge and still be able to pull letters without seeing what they are.

and we made him a card with his name silkscreened on it in scrabble letters.

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 03:28:01 GMT

i spent all of last weekend doing crafty stuff, new projects and FINALLY finishing the ones that were put aside to do the costumes i posted about last time.

so i thought i'd share.....(there's lots of pictures! i'm sorry!)

the first is we made for a friend who was having this nightmare experience with a filling, the dentist was on holidays, the filling fell out, it was too swollen, etc etc. it went on for several weeks of her eating only liquid food, so we made her a card to cheer her up. i know it's kind of gruesome, but i really liked how it turned out.

i bought the frames at a thrift store and they were actually kinda pricey by thrift store standards (like $7 each or something), but i loved them. i bought cork by the foot at revy, then cut cardboard pieces to fit into the frames. then i used rubber cement to glue the cork onto the cardboard.

i know everyone makes them, but i had to. i love the name of the record, and i used nail polish to paint the little plastic subtraction signs and equal signs from a magnetic numbers set to match the record label. i ended up taking the purple second hand off because i'd put so much paint on it that it won't tell the correct time anymore. i used the clock mechanism from a $3 ikea clock because it was way cheaper than a clock kit!

i made her ages ago, but never got around to putting her on magnets. i covered her and her clothes with packing tape to protect them.

at the craft store, so i had to use them. i'm going to make more of the eyelash magnets using cartoon eyes, i think they'll look better. it's so hard to resist the allure of marble magnets!

then i thought since i was taking pictures of magnets, i'd post some older ones i've done.

we made a ton of these years ago as an activity at a youth group i used to facilitate. i still think they're awesome.

wooden stars from the dollar store painted, then slathered with beads and glue. i have a bunch of these, but most of them are on my filing cabinet at work.

hope you like them! i've been on a huge magnet kick lately and i'm in the middle of two more magnet projects. amusingly enough, my fortune at dinner tonight was "your magnetic personality will draw people to you".

this weekend i'm busy screenprinting (with emulsion and everything!) and finishing a recycled project for a contest at work, so i'll post those next weekend.

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 02:38:50 GMT

Most shirt patterns with puffed sleeves are button up shirts, but puffed sleeves look cute on all different kinds of shirts. here's a simple way to change any pattern to make puffed sleeves.

This tutorial is for puffed sleeves that are not gathered at the bottom.

The sleeve pattern.

step 1- cut a slit in the sleeve pattern at the very centre of the sleeve, all the way down to the cuff.

step 2- tape the pattern to another piece of paper, leaving a tapered space between the two pieces of the pattern. the bottom of thesleeve pieces should be touching, otherwise your sleeve will be too loose around your arm.

step 3- do the same thing about an inch on either side of the middle slit. you could theoretically just do one slit, and make the v bigger, but then the gathering won't be as evem.

when you sew the sleeve piece into the arm hole, you will have to gather the top of the sleeve to fit. (to gather, use the largest machine stitch you have and baste between the slits. then pull on the ends of the thread to gather the fabric together)

If you want the sleeve to be gathered at the bottom, you will need to make the V's differently. This is what the pattern will look like.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 05:46:46 GMT

i thought i'd share the costumes my mom, my sister and i made for a community theatre play. the costume designer for a play ended up in the hospital, without even starting on the costumes. the director waiting a few weeks before contacting mom, and then asked her and my sister to do the costumes within 3 weeks. that wouldn't be too bad, except that the play is set in barkerville during the gold rush and has a cast of about 10, with 5 of them can can girls! but mom and my sister were both incredibly busy, with work and other volunteer stuff. enter aymi. when they first got the call mom called me and asked me if i wanted to help, and i said no, i don't have time. by the friday 4 days before the final dress rehearsal, it didn't matter if i had time. so i worked on costumes all weekend. i think i averaged about 4 hours sleep each night and maybe 1 meal a day? mom helped for a few days, working mostly on the guys clothes, and my sister came home monday and helped, and my mom's friend came over and created work due to her incompetence, but the costumes got finished, and they're gorgeous.

the bloomers (i made 5 pairs. one pair was already done, so i just needed to add lace to them. one less thing to make!)

the dresses (luckily my sister had cut out all the skirts and mostly sewn them together, thank god, so i just needed to make the underskirts and put waistbands on them. she helped a lot with the skirts when she got home from her conference. most of the women had their own corsets and one of the actresses had made her own dress, so we just had to make her a corset and an underskirt. i don't have pic of her dress or underskirt)
the red dress
the blue dress
the purple dress (the ruffles are actually purple, about the same colour as her feather. my camera colours are just a little wonky)
the gold dress (i did make a matching gold corset for it, but it was taking too long and looked like crap because the actress has no chest to fill it out, so i went out and bought one)

then all of the can can dresses needed headpieces, so here they are. i had only hand sewn the hair clip onto one of them when i took the picture though.

this one is my favourite. i love the peacock feather. it's for the head dancer, so it was a bit fancier.

i also had to make a bonnet for the lead, and i'm super proud of it. it turned out really well.

it started with just a regular straw hat, i took the ugly ribbon off and cut it up. then i hand stitched black satin around the edges to bind them (sewing through the straw was a royal pain in the butt!), and glued mint green ribbon that matched the green and black dress onto the front to cover the rough edges. i wish i had used satin ribbon on the edges, but i didn't have any at the time. then i bought satin ribbon and wrapped it around the bonnet, made a bow, added some feathers and hot glued the hell out of it, then sewed long pieces of ribbon to the bottom sides to tie it below her chin.

the bow and feathers.

the inside of the boonet (what you see from the front)

i did a lot of altering stuff for the townspeople dresses too. my favourite is the bustle i added to this dress.
i love bustles. i keep making myself skirts with little bustles in the back.

(you can kind of see one of the bonnets i made in the first picture. i made 5 of those damn things too, all in different colours)

one of my cats helped us sew all weekend.

so the show opened last wednesday, and the costumes look pretty good. the show is fun, it's a musical, and the hertie gertie girls do some fun dances. it was crazy, it was fun, i'm reminded why i quit theatre, but i'm also reminded of how much i loved it. i do miss it.

also, i bought a new sewing machine! it's beautiful. it's baby blue! i don't know how to work it!
i'm frantically searching online for a manual. it came with the guarantee certificate that says it was purchased in prince rupert, british columbia, canada on may 24, 1969. it's a kenmore C877-07. so cool. it seems to have the ability to do lots of fun stitches, it came with all of these attachments that snap into a spot in the top.

has anyone ever used a machine like this before? please help!

i got a free machine too, that doesn't work, but it's pretty. i'm gonna take it apart and figure it out.

so that's what i've been busy with. i have a ton of half finished projects that were set aside for these costumes, including screen printing, an altered book, a record clock and new bedding for our bedroom. that's what next weekend is for!

Mon, 31 May 2004 04:22:40 GMT

this is the journal i use only for the crafty communities i'm a member of. i don't write in it much, if at all.

if you would like to see my real journal, it's little_ms_me.

please read the info page before you ask to be added, i'm tired of ignorant people.

if you checked this out because you liked something i posted in a community, thanks! i'm flattered! i always like to meet new crafty people, so feel free to comment on my other journal.

follow up on vulva themed crafts

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 05:33:06 GMT

thanks to everyone who had ideas about my friend’s gift (I posted about it here, here, and here.)

i finished the first part of her gift, and made myself one too! we’re still planning on decorating a pair of underwear to match the bustier, but we really wanted to get part of it done before she left for her surgery.

the finished result- (a 6.5” x 8.5” pillow)

this is the pillow for my friend. my partner picked out the fabric and it’s super super soft, but you can’t really see the details as clearly as you can in the other pillow.

and this is my pillow, which ended up being much more graphic. (and is actually more a cherry red, but my camera warped the colour)

they're actually anatomically correct, just cartoony.

wanna know how i made it?

i used an adapted quilting technique that i’ve always wanted to play with. For some reason, i think it’s a japanese technique, but i think that’s wrong. all my quilting books are packed up ready to move in two weeks, otherwise i’d look it up. it’s supposed to be done with cotton fabrics, but i used a stretch for the top fabric so that i could pad it more.

the basic idea is that you are stuffing between two layers of fabric, a top and a bottom. you sew two pieces together, then cut little holes in the bottom fabric, push stuffing in and hand sew it back up.

i drew the vulva, then heat transferred it onto the bottom fabric. then i pinned the two fabrics together and i sewed along all the lines of the drawing.
(this picture shows the transferred pattern and some stitching)

(this picture shows all the stitching except for a square frame around the edges)

then i sewed the back of the pillow onto the two front pieces around three sides (for the first pillow, i waited until i had stuffed it before i stitched the pillow back on, and it was much much more difficult to sew a straight line!).

then i cut little slits in the backing fabric (only!) between each line of stitching and used the end of a small paintbrush to push little bits of stuffing into the space. when it was full, i hand stitched that slit closed.
i didn't stuff the clit, because i put the bead there instead. in the furry pillow, i didn't stuff the vagina, but in the solid red one, the fabric was kinda buckling, so i did, but it's not stuffed as full as the rest.

after i did all that, i turned the pillow right way out (this took a bit of struggling!). then i sewed the large bead clit onto the front piece (careful not to sew it all the way through to the back!). i stuffed the pillow, then hand sewed the bottom closed.

i’d like to make one in some sort of shiny burgundy knit. it would be soo pretty.

i was so inspired by everyone’s ideas, and now i have a ton of new projects i can’t wait to start. thanks again!

crossposted in craftgrrl, vaginapagina and vagina_art

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 23:55:40 GMT

I never got around to posting these, so I though I'd share, even if it is a bit late. we made quilts for some of our christmas presents this year. other than the moose quilt, it was almost all scraps and pieces i already had, so all the patterns had to be created to fit the size of the fabric pieces, which was a bit challenging. i'm very happy with them, it had been so long since i'd made a quilt. and now i'm all inspired, so i'm making my sister a quilt with Harry Potter fabric right now.

My partner's mom's quilt, with celestial print rectangles and border and all her favourite colours. i designed the quilt, then reese did almost of the sewing, his first quilt! the only thing he'd sewn before this was boxers.

My dad's quilt, with moose print flannel and brown fabric paint stamped moose on tan coloured twill (i still had to hand sew the bottom in the pic). I was SOOO glad i had taught reese how to sew, i ran out of time and he ended up doing a lot of the final piecing on this one.

My mom's quilt, with all the cat fabrics that I've been collecting over the years.

Close up of the top of the quilt. (with my little brother holding it, the only person in the family who's tall enough to hold it up!)

Close up of the bottom of the quilt.

All of the quilts are backed with fleece, so they're nice and cosy and no binding was needed!

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:54:41 GMT

here's my take on the beer can cuff that's been floating around....

i liked the one from craftser, but i was worried that it wouldn't hold up all that well over time, cause aluminum is pretty fragile. their instructions just basically cut the aluminum to wrap around your wrist, but i thought that taking it on and off all the time would bend it and weaken it. so i made this instead.

CAUTION: lots of images behind the cut, cause i made up a tutorial.

You need:
-leather or suede (i go to the thrift store and buy old leather skirts and and pants)
-2 small d-rings
-beer can
-sewing machine
-scissors (i used a rotary cutter for the leather, but you don't have to)
-knife

*** all of the measurements are for a wrist the is aprox 8# around***

first, take the can and use the knife to carefully cut off the top and bottom.

use your scissors to cut down the can, then unroll it to make a rectangle.

then cut a piece out of the can that is 3.25# x 1.5#, with image centered. i found it easier to use a pencil to score the lines before i cut them, just to keep it straight, but i'm a perfectionist.

then cut the leather in a strip that is 2.25# x 8#. (if your wrist is smaller than 8# around, cut this strip a bit smaller) from that strip cut two pieces that are 2.25# x .75#.

then take each of the little pieces and fold them around the 1.5# ends of the beer can.

use your sewing machine with a denim or leather needle set to about 2.5 stitch length to sew those pieces on.

now centre the beer can on the larger piece of leather and fold the edges over. use clothespins to hold the fold in place (pins will make holes in the leather)

sew down both sides. this pictures shows how it will look.

now cut 2 more strips of leather, one that is 1# x 1.5# and one that is 1# x 5# (at least, if your wrist is bigger, you should make this longer). fold the piece that is 1.5# long in half and put the d-rings in the fold. then sew the ends to one end of the bracelet. on the other end of the bracelet sew the 5# strip on. you can use your scissors to make the end curved like in the picture.

please excuse how wierd my wrist looks, it's hard to take pictures of your own wrist!

the end result!

and close up, cause i love the beer can.

i highly suggest making a few samples before you use the can you actually wanna wear! i really like my end result, but i threw out the canadian one and i will never ever wear the green ginger-ale one. i used contrasting thread on it so that you could see how i stitched it, but i don't like it at all! i really wanna make one of these with snaps, but i don't have any, so i compromised.