A Little Camera Box Decoration

This week I'm taking part in a photographic course and I had some beads at home. What could come from it? :-)

I decorated the front seams. I backstitched each bead, it was rough particularly at the corners (too thick a layer of material).

Nothing special, more to amuse me than to form something beautiful:-P

Wedding Car and Little Dress

Sister's wedding's here:-)
The car I made the decoration for looks like this...

...and here you can see the little dress for my niece and the model I made it according to - I wanted the mum and baby to look similar:-)

Happy bride and cute little angel..
Btw. were you also wondering how many hands my mum has? :-P

Wedding Car Decoration

Mum ordered a decoration for sister's wedding car from me. She chose a picture on the Net and I had to get down to it:-)
I bought some organza, took my lapping foot and started. It took me quite a lot of time to find out how to work with this foot.
You must double fold the fabric in hand for the first four centimeters, put the footer down and sew it.

Then you unfold it and insert the edge in the foot's intestines. When I sew I slightly hold the fabric with my thumb and forefinger so that I could lead the edge in the footer without stopping sewing.

I'm not very skilful with this, so sometimes the lap unfolds (it's folded only once and the frayed edge is out). Folding the edge before the footer (once) and inserting it folded to the footer may help :-)

Here you can see - the damaged part on the left and the repaired one on the right. Fortunately, this shouldn't be very noticeable. I used this project for me to learn how to use my foot, let sister forgive me :-D and I know it won't be perfect.

The horizontal edges are bordered with satin lace, folded in the middle. I glued the ends before sewing them on. I can't find any other way for the lace not to fray out and unfold when I sew.

This will be the bow.

The center for the bow is from three layers of organza, for it not to be transparent.

At the wedding, we'll see, whether it will fit completed or not. Are you as curious as I am? :-D

A Little Wedding Dress

Sister is getting married soon. She wanted me to make a simple dress for her little daughter. She gave me an underdress and I made a pattern according to it, just a little bit bigger. And without sleeves.
I drew it on two layers of brocade and cut out. I made it shorter for the later decoration of the bottom.

I double folded the armholes and sewed. I also cut a stripe of gold fabric and sewed it on the silver brocade at the place of the future lacing. It should have been right side to right side :-D

I cut out two identical pieces with the inner shape of the neckline (each from two halves sewn together).

I pinned them together (right to right) and sewed along the outer line.

I cut a straight line inside the lacing's lining and turned it over to the wrong side.
I cut out the neckline and pinned the neck on. I don't know why exactly the neckline was bigger than the neck's inner line:-)

I took two pieces of golden brocade and made stripes for the bottom's decoration from them. I sewed them on, folded the lower side and sewed the dress together at the sides.

I made the eyelets at the lacing. In fact, the dress should be similar to the sister's wedding dress, so I made them by hand as well. I used a tailor's buttonhole stitch.

It's much better than a simple buttonhole stitch which I had been desperate of. It make a sort of a braid in the center and the stitches are nice and regular that way.
I cut out the holes and made all the eyelets.

I had to baste the neck to the body with a slanted stitch for it to be held on the place. I was taking only the lower gold fabric.

At the lacing I interrupted stitching. You can see that at the sewn part, all is clean and no frayed edges stick out behind.

The finished dress with the chemise sister made. As for a little angel... :-)

Red Wrist Weight

Second wrist weight.
These are the default pieces. You can see how the dark red piece is ironed.

The next step - serging the pockets. I sew the two light red pieces to the dark one as if they weren't cut.

Adding the twill tape isn't easy, so I want eliminate all possible problems. Here you see that after sewing the two (three) pieces together (and ironing flat), they have different edges - they have to be snipped to the same level.

A few hours later I got a new pair :-)
Originally, I had wanted the red colours to be switched, but then I found out I didn't have enough light red.

Blue Wrist Weight With Filling

What all a dressmaker should be able to do :-)
We bought an old iron slab and my boyfriend and I cut it in alike blocks.

This is the final appearance of the wrist weights. You can see how the weights are inserted in the little pockets. They can be combined arbitrarily to form different weight for a hand.

This young body-builder let me take a picture of him and the wrist bands on:)
They are really heavy.

Blue Wrist Weight

Boys felt they were too slow with heavy armour and at the fight at all, so they wanted me to make wrist bands with weights in them.
I made a pattern from the old wrist bands, then made one more pattern with folds included. I only could make half of it - it was already bigger than A4:-) The first pattern has been cut in two pieces to form a room for inserting the weights.

I serged the cut part of the first pattern. Then I ironed the folds at the second pattern and sewed it to the first piece at the marked lines. Ironed flat.

I bought a twill tape, folded it in the middle and ironed. This way I could be quite sure that when I sew at the upper half, the lower one will be caught too. I put it over the edge and sewed on.

The corners were quite difficult. I solved it like this: I sewed to the end of the side, then I sewed a bit back, I folded the tape as an arrow, pressed flat and went on sewing.

Then next step was velcro. I sewed on the tapes at the slots - I always sewed so that the tape was a cm longer than the unit (to leave a space for the weight). By the way, I wanted the wrist weights to be safe, so I sewed throught the velcro and the canvas several times.
At one end, I sewed in a metal loop, at the other I joined the soft part of the velcro with the scratchy one, pressed the seam flat and sewed to the rest with zig-zag stitch.

I bought soft duffel, cut out the shape of the wrist band (a little smaller), and sewed along the side without a twill tape. I didn't serge this piece.
This should protect a hand from being galled.

The fourth side of the wrist band was thicker and not well accessible because of the velcro bands - I decided to sew the twill tape on in hand.
You can see a stitch I used: I went up with the needle at the right side, caught a little bit at the edge of the tape, went down; at the wrong side I caught the tape from below and finished. The stitch has a zig-zag structure.
I started in the middle of the thread and tape (I made a slip knot on the thread). I sewed to the right, when finished untied the knot and sewed to the left.

At the corner I snipped the tape off leaving a small bit. I folded the end in and sewed. At this particular example I cut too much and the end frayed out. I ripped the tape off and did it again.

One should never be too lazy to repair their mistakes :-)

Pleated Skirt - Finished

You might remember I made the body of this skirt from a rectangle. Now I laid the skirt flat and cut the bottom to a more natural shape.

I wanted the bottom edge to be folded, but if I did it, it would destroy the pleats there. I decided to put a lace there, but as you can see, I didn't manage to keep the pleats anyway...

That's why I sewed the pleats again on the lace - I started in the middle of the lace, I sewed to one end of it, to the other and then back to the start. Cut the thread and repeat many times:)

I'll probably wear it only at home:-) The pleats aren't OK, don't keep the shape and maybe would suit more at some other place of the design.

However, this is my first actual skirt (if you don't count the fire costume and the tier skirt project that ended up at the bottom of my drawer... hopefully not forever:-) ), and I keep this thought in my mind to have a little apology for this brown thingy :-D

Pleated Skirt - Main Work

As I have the flag finished, I don't have a lot of urgent things to sew. I was drawing at school and a skirt design appeared. I wanted to make me a skirt for a long time..
The base is the same as at the fireshow skirt (but only from two pieces).
I made there a fake belt - I folded the upper edge of the shape and sewed through, then I folded it the right side to the right side, at the width of the belt-to-be.

I sewed a line and folded the belt back. I could afford this as the upper line of the skirt is straight.
I arranged the pieces at my hips with pins and got the right shape for the side seams. To make my work easier, I made them the same at both pieces:) I sewed one of them right and the other with one thread loose. I don't sew zippers very often.. I took one and basted it to the seam (through all layers). I put on a zipper foot and sewed from the bottom middle to the left and up along the basting. I cut the thread and made the other half symmetrically.
I'd thought I'd rip the seam out by pulling one of the threads, but I wasn't able to, I had to use a ripper..

I spent all day making pleats. They weren't many, but time consuming. I made the pleats and sewed a mm from the fold to make them stable. For the three pleats at the center back - sixteen lines sewed. Hooray:-P
When I had the front and back panel done, I could join them to the basic panel. I easily took it, put on the other piece and traced a line. I cut it out and sewed to the base.

The same at the front panel. Now I have a half-done skirt with open sides and unfinished bottom.

You can see I used a corduroy with hairs inside. Why? I don't like the look of the fabric:-D I made the skirt from what was left from the larp dress. Cheap fabric's ideal for experiments:)

I inserted this side pleat - I pinned it and sewed in. I had to do this because I didn't have enough fabric to make the skirt's body from only two parts.

All for today:-)