sewing room

The above machines are ones I have bought or been given over the years I love them all lined up in a row.  I don't care that some don't work they are beautufl to me.

 This is parts of my sewing room.  It is a tiny room with a lot of stuff in it.  I have been working on it for few months to get a lot of stuff out of storage so I can get back to actually making things again.  The last three years going back to collage did not leave much time for personal projects.  So much so I have a basket of half sewn items literally that have not been touch in three years I want to get finished soon and put the patterns away.  Hopefully I have not lost any pieces.

Making items for a dance

 

So I go junking a lot at thrift shops and garage sales the fabric in this dress is a mixture of a 2 year olds dress the purple skirt part that I cut apart for the bodice and a embroidered cream lace curtain I used for the skirt.  The pink was gifted to me for the jacket and the brown under skirt and cream lining are just scrapes I had.

I made some buttons for the dress and the jacket.  This was just made out of the fabric scrapes from cutting out the bodice.  I  fussy cut the scrapes to center the flowers on the button

The button loops are just a crochet chain of 20,  I should have made them 15 in retrospect.

 This is the dress when it was quickly pinned on my dress form.  This is a dress that you can not buy the pattern for.  You might be able to find something similar.  But this pattern is one we draped and drafted.

 This is the dress still under construction while having the jacket half made.  Originally I wanted the buttons on the back of the jacket but after some modifications to the pattern I flipped the jacket piece around and put them on the front.

 Daughter trying on the dress  was still working out some kinks in the dress.  This dress is fully boned.



 Here is the dress done with some of the accessories she and her sisters made to go with the dress.

 Here is my daughter Starr working on making the neck lace you can see in the above and below photos.

My oldest daughter China made these Hair pieces for her to wear to the dance.

 These are the matching earrings China made for Starr.

This is the corsage that all three of my daughters worke don together to match the outfit.

 

Below is the Necklace that Starr made for her younger sister to wear to the dance.

 This is the matching earrings.

 Starr made her younger sister a corsage and hair piece to wear with her dress.  Her dress I didn't have to make as I found it thrift shopping for 15 dollars.

 

 sorry blurry photo

 My kids don't wear shoes in the house she had red shoes to go to the dance in that match the flowers on the dress.

remake of mom's dress

 My youngest sister in law got married today.  She has the kindest soul she  is who took care of my mother in law while she was dieing.  She is very dear to me.  My middle daughter wanted to wear something special to the wedding as did I .  So I made the  dress you see in these first photos for her to wear and I wore one of my mother in laws vintage dresses from the early to late 60's.

This dress in these pictures is a re-make of one that my mother in law wore as a teen ager.  You can see from the original post about that dress it had lots of age damage.

My daughter did wear the original once to a sadies dance.  But we could tell that it should never be worn again which was heart breaking to us.  It is a dress for good memories of that dance and mom now.  The original was brown and green the new version is brown and hot pink.

The fabric for this dress I used two sheer curtains and 1 ink satin sheet I found thrift shopping.  No one I think could tell that without me telling them first.  In fact most people where surprised when I told them that.  The back of the dress has 6 hand covered buttons and the front 4.  It is also boned in the bodice.  I used the original hem of the curtain as the hem of the skirt.  The header of the curtain I made some hair decorations out of but my daughter had already removed them from her hair when I took these photos.

The belt she is wearing is a vintage 1980's belt but it matched well.

The below pictures are of the dress when it was under construction.  You can see the flowers I was talking about in these photos that I used in the hair.  At the time I was debating on using them on the dress.  So they where pined on to see what they looked like.

I lengthened this version of the dress as my daughter wanted it a little longer.  If I make it again I will lengthen the torso as well to make it a few inches longer so the waist I feel more correct for her height.   My mother in law a was a petite woman in height.
We also added a little extra room in the over bodice to make it easier to lift the arms. The straps on the under bodice I also doubled in width to give them a little more strength.

These two photos the one above and the one to the left show off the color better.  These photos where taken one day after work at the costume shop when I stayed late to work on this dress and a few other co works and boss stayed late to work on a play we were doing.

 The picture below is from the one time my daughter wore the original dress for the first and last time.

Cherry Blossom Painted Re-Purposed Jeans

My middle daughter wanted help re-purpsing a pair of jeans she hated she hates plain Jane blue pants.  She got some ideas together and collected the acrylic paint and she and I set to work on this sitting on the garage floor to do this.  We used a few shades of pink , purple, red, white, cream, black, yellow and green.  Since we are currently visiting my in laws didn't want to make a mess of their lovely home.  Laid garbage bags on the floor so as not to get it dirty either with paint splatter.  If I had been at my own home I would have just laid this on the lawn and not cared about the splatter as it would go away into the grass.

Forgot to take a photo of the jeans before we started they are just a pair of faded jeans no stains on them and no holes all the staining you see we added with paint.

First we splattered and rubbed white paint into the jeans to give a distressed look.   You could do this with bleach too but that weakens the jeans this gives the look of that but let's the jeans have their full life.  Do this front and back.   Tools used paint brush and tooth brush to splatter and rub thick paint comes out white thin watered down acrylic paint looks sort of like bleach marks.

 Then we painted black branches on the jeans just free handed that, no drawing ahead of time, just used a normal medium acrylic paint brush flat edge.

I don't have a real good camera any more it got lost at Devils Gate  on a hike it fell in the water a few summers back the reason I don't post much anymore.  So sorry if the photos are not the best.

 

 You can see above on my daughter's shorts she was testing out on her shorts before she put on the jeans... not far in advance meaning she was wearing the shorts and no paint was on them when we started she tested while she was wearing them a few seconds before putting it on the jeans,

 

We used a hair dryer to dry this faster between steps. All steps are done both front and back.

Next came adding the 5 petaled flowers which we used white pink purple and red mixed in different amounts to get the desired look.  We used the back of the handle to make the petals.  But you could use 5 dowels rubber banded or taped together to go faster just would be more uniform in appearance.  We were going over the petals twice in some cases to add shading.

Once again my daughter was testing on her shorts.  I made jokes that she was going to get two for the price of one with this project if she kept it up. She didn't care about the shorts as she planned to toss them after this project as they are too small.  Because of this testing and cleaning of the brushed on her shorts she got way more paint on her than I did but I think she had more fun because of it too.

Below you can see the hair dryer inside the jeans to help dry the paint faster so we could turn the jeans over and work on the other side.

Hard to see in this photos below but we had added black, white and yellow centers to the flowers.  For this we used paint straight from the tube no thinning this was to give it  texture and tool was a tooth pick you could do this faster too but putting 5 tooth picks around a dowel or straw and having the tooth picks over hang the edge so you could do all 5 dots at once.  We also added green leaves with a touch of yellow and added a little brown to the branches where they showed through the flowers.  Tool used was a flat edge brush for both leaves and branches.

All done painting in this photo except we turned them inside out and placed them in the dryer to heat set the paint.  Then washed and dried them to soften the paint.

Later she wants me to add grommets and pink or black lacing to these jeans for a corseted look to the legs of the jeans.  She also plans on wearing these jeans with the legs pegged.  She likes them tons more now than she did before we did this to them.