I gots mad skillz

Lately I've been working on honing a few skills before I tackle my next pattern project, mainly my button hole making skills. There have been a few semi successful attempts in the past, but I figure a little practice couldn't hurt. At first I was practicing with scraps, but I figured why not try to make something useful in the process. After a little brainstorming and an afternoon all by myself this adorable plaid cuff is what I came up with.

{ All done up}

{Stretched out}

In hindsight I think I should have made the button holes a tad bit bigger, I've already stretched them out by constantly taking it on and off. Other than that they've held up quite well. As for design aspects of the cuff I kind of went wild with the sewing machine and made a neat loop-de-loo design just for fun. I definitely had fun making it and I can see making a few more in the not to distant future.

I would also like to point out that I'm trying my best to work on delivering better quality pics (through better camera work and digital editing). What can I say? I've been working at a portrait studio for the past three months, something was bound to rub off on me.

oh well

I promised a while back that I would post pictures of what I made for Christmas, not everything has gone according to plan though. Long story short, I ran out of time to make a knit hat for my sister, so I got her a book on digital photography. My parent got her a camera that she is in love with but doesn't fully grasp the technical aspects of it, here's hoping she'll crack it open and learn from it. My mom's present I managed to finish the night before going to visit, however in all the craziness of wrapping and packing, I forgot to take pictures (as well as to bring my camera for the visit itself). The only finished picture I have is that from my camera phone, and I'm not paying 50 cents to post some crappy camera phone image on my blog. My sister took some pictures, but I don't know when those will be sent to me (if they're sent to me), so for now here are a few in progress pictures. The finished embroidery was about 7 inches long, and about 5 1/2 inches tall, its a portrait of our family's animal companion, a welsh corgi named Dylan. Please excuse the blue markings, its just water soluble pen that I used to sketch out the outline.

{Close up}

{From a distance, ignore the pink flower I was experimenting}

As for my dad (AKA: the hardest person to shop/craft for on earth) I was quite fortunate one night while trolling around on etsy to come upon the greatest t-shirt ever for my father the ex-utica resident. I figured, at least its something handmade that he'll really enjoy, rather than the typical store bought gadgets that he might use. Of course I decide to order it like two days before my trip, no way on earth could it have gotten here in time, but when I showed my mom a picture she broke out in a fit of laughter. Dad decided he would rather wait and be surprised. I'm not sure what the legalities of posting a picture of the item is so I'm just going to leave links for now. The seller was great, I highly recommend GossipGossip, my order was here within four days, and it looked great, lets hope dad enjoys it as much as I do.

First post of the year

Well I'm going to kick off the new year with a post about things I made last year that I haven't posted. A while back I picked up five simplicity patterns at Jo-Ann's for a dollar each (woohoo savings!). Last week I actually decided to use one of them in order to use up some stretchy thermal fabric that I recently acquired. After much deliberation I decided to use simplicity 3790 (View A).

So I took my measurements, compared it to the sizes, cut everything out and did all that good stuff. The one change I made while doing this was to forgo putting in the inset piece in order to achieve more versatile looks with the shirt.

All in all its a really simple pattern, no confusion whatsoever, but lord almighty this thing was HUGE. I mean, it fits in the sense that its not falling off of me, but its bigger than I would like ideally.

Now before I show you the shirt I'm going to flaunt my fabric choice which the BF has deemed classically unsophisticated (he meant in in a good way). The moment I saw this fabric the inner child in me was awakened and demanded that I buy a whole bunch of this fabric. And I did. Pictures do not do the colors justice. The yellow own is more lemon-lime neon in person.

Now for the shirt, please forgive my "modeling"




So its big, but its not bad. Once I make a sash type of belt to go with it I can see myself wearing it a whole bunch.

I wanted to give this pattern another go taking into account what I now know about the sizing of the actual pattern. I made View B (3 sizes smaller) from the pattern using this awesome moose/outdoorsy type of print- again, I left out the inset.

Next time I take pictures of something I've made, I'll make sure to straighten everything out a bit more. The bottom band appears to be traveling upwards in these pictures due to stretching and running around.

Well that is all for now, hopefully I'll be posting finished x-mas projects soon so stay tuned.