Self-Stitched-September Item 5

One of the most recent challenges for Sew Weekly was the Autumn palette challenge. As it's going into Spring here, it seems a bit silly to be putting together a Autumn palette, so I've put together a Spring palette. I have been buying three colours lately: oranges, pinks and reds. So, I have three palettes: Burnt, Rose and Blood

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

I've been thinking about making a bias tape skirt for a while now. I've seen them worn by people a few times, but I've never seen one for sale. So, I thought I would make one myself. I fell in love with the fabrics I used to make the bias tape while standing in line at Spotlight. It's quilting cotton, and were pieces designed as 'stash builders.' And, perfectly suited to my 'burnt' palette. I ended up making 44m of bias tape for this skirt, and used almost all of it - I think I have about 2 meters left.

I used my A-Line skirt pattern for the basis of this skirt, and just held the bias strips in place as I sewed. I sewed the bias strips on closer together near the hem, and further apart as I got higher. (Please excuse the rumpled shots: I had worn the skirt on Friday night, forgot to photograph it, and it spent the weekend crumpled at the end of my bed)

The Facts

Fabric: for bias tape: 3x 110x70cm pieces@ $7.00 each, total $21.00; remnant of orange poplin, $ 3.50
Pattern: Self drafted A-Line skirt pattern
Year: 2011
Notions: Zipper, $3; thread from stash.
Time to complete: 4 hours
First worn: September 2011
Wear again? Yes

Total Cost: $ 27.50

Veil

The last thing that I needed to complete my Stomp costume was a veil - to complete the murderess bride look.

After a quick search of the interwoobs, I found the ehow tutorial for a veil here, and decided that it sounded easy. And you know what? It was

I'm not going to repeat their instructions here, because they are already available. I will, however, post my pictures.

The veil was incredibly easy to make. I used curtain elastic rather than bridal tulle, and was really pleased with the result.

So, I cut a rectangle of curtain lace (mine was 213cm long), and folded it in quarters.

I cut a curve along the not folded edge.

Next, I bound the edges with silver bias binding. I used a clear thread and a wide, short zig zag stitch.

Lastly, I folded the veil unevenly in half, so that one edge was longer than the other (and, I forgot to take photos - bad blogger that I am). I sewed a really long hand stitch along the fold line, and gathered it to the length of the comb I was attaching it to. I finished the edges off, and then hot glue gunned it into place.

White raglan sleeve shrug

This is a really, really, quick item to make.

On my drive home from the TEDx conference I went to the day of STOMP, the charity dance event my big project is for, I realised that a) it was colder than I had been expecting for late October; b) I didn't have anything that would go with my dress to cover my arms with, and c) it was almost 6pm on a Saturday night so all the shops were closed.

I remembered that I had seen a refashion of the sleeves of a raglan sweater into a shrug. (I just went searching, and the original blog post I read is here. The original instructions are for a knitted item, rather than for knit fabric.) Lacking any raglan sleeves, I raided my pattern stash for any patterns with raglan sleeves, so that I could make some from scratch.

And, as luck would have it, I came across this pattern, that I bought at an op-shop (thrift store) a fortnight ago. I must have sensed that I would need it. Or, perhaps (more likely), I bought a bunch of patterns 'that might be useful one day, and it's for charity, and they're only 50c.' It's Knitwit 1150, and It has a copyright date of 1979.

So, I took the pattern out, traced around the sleeve, size 6, and cut out two sleeves. I used white stretch lycra that was in my stash, but in all honesty, I have no idea what I ever sewed with stretch lycra in the past. It was clearly used though, because it had that weird 'I've-had-patterns-cut-out-of-me-so-I'm-not-a-straight-line' edge thing going on. 

Next, I bound the edges of the sleeves (the bits that would be sitting on my back) with baby pink bias binding from my stash. I think the binding was originally used to finish off a corset I made many years ago.

Again, I remembered a tutorial I had read about sewing on bias binding, available here, found through craftgossip. I have, in the past used bias binding, but until I read the post, I must admit, I'd mostly forgotten how. 

Once the sleeves were bound, I added some lace from the leftovers from my Stomp dress to the ends of the sleeves. Partly because the shrug was aimed to go with the Stomp dress, partly because I had a feeling that the sleeves were going to be too short without the extra length of the lace (I like my sleeves to sit on my wrist or low on my palms), partly because I had run out of bias binding, and mostly because I was feeling lazy, and didn't want to hem them properly.

Because I was running a bit behind schedule at this point, I forgot to take a photo of the lace. Sorry.

Lastly, I sewed the seams closed. I used a 1.5 stitch length, and a 1.5 stitch width for the zig zag stitch. So that I didn't pull the seams as I sewed them, I pinned them to a piece of tissue paper. 

Lastly, I tried the sleeves on my dress form, and decided that I just had to sew the ends of the arms closed at the ends, to join the two pieces and finish my shrug. Again, no photos. The tissue paper then tore away like the perforations on a stamp.

And, with that, I had a raglan sleeve shrug that had taken me less than an hour to make, and only used items from my stash. 

Plus, it looked awesome with my dress.