Wardrobe Refashion

I have signed up for two months on Wardrobe Refashion. The idea is that you don't buy any new clothes and instead make or revamp them. I need to do this anyway to reduce the stash so seemed like a plan.

The pledge

I Esther pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 2 months. I pledge that i shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovoated, recylcled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftyness brings! Signed Esther

Mum's visit, sewing show and Alpaca

Mum came to visit for a few days so we could go to the sewing show at the NEC. We never even got into the Hobby craft hall as we had run out of energy by then. We both got sucked in by tatting and lucet work and bought kits to do said crafts. Yes I know I probably have both somewhere but the tatting kit was only 3 pounds and the lucet had details on lots of different braids and i'm a sucker for braids.

I got some beading stuff, including a necklace kit i have promised to make for Mum, in return she is knitting me a stole which is lovely. Found places to get cravat pins for Tom though none had brought them to the show. Nearly bought some friendly plastic to make a Gou'ald hand device then forgot and ordered it on line when i got back !!

Fell in love with the babylock Embellisher for some reason no-one else seems to feel I NEED another specalist machine.

Mum is weaving plastic bag handbags at the moment. The base is old jeans.

That was Thursday. Friday we went over to Toft Alpaca before Mum went home and oggled the wool, yarn and ready made items. I picked up some leg wool to try felting as had been discussed at Knitwits a few weeks back and Mum bought a selection of yards to knits scarfs and the like from.

All in all a good few couple of days.

St patrick countdown - printables

Lisa Vollrath
is doing free printables as a countdown to St Patricks day. If you like papercrafts they look good so far.

Random thing from my stash

Found this half make item while I was looking for lining for Dave's coat. It was in a bag with more fabric that had a large sleeve pattern pinned to it plus calico lining. As you can see it is very wide, it has full length gores added in at the shoulders. I'm not sure if I meant it to be full like this or if it was originally to be a medieval robe which is heavily pleated in at the waist. I think I'll make it up as an over robe and see how it looks.

The marks are on the lens of the camera not the fabric

Red Coat

I spend the last part of the week make a coat for Dave, Julie's partner. I admit when he showed me the fabric which is a red uphostery fabric i wasn't convinced but it made up really well. It is lined with a polished cotton in a darkish karki from my stash as the first fabric I tried refused to dye.. good for mocking up but obviously too much artifical fibres in it but then what do you want for 50p a metre which is probably about what it cost.

Basic design was full length, gores in the centre back and sides of the skirt, double breasted fold over front. He wanted padding on the shoulders and elbows which I did with a thick layer of wadding and stitching over the top. There is a pleat in the centre back as he plans to wear it to fight I thought he needed the movement, it is sewn together at the waist to keep the fitted look..

The collar didn't work so well but I will re-do that for him. Partly a communication error and partly running out of time and doing it wrong about six times.. Actually it looked good on the dummy from behind but doens't come round the front enough and I think needs a couple of bones to keep it standing correctly.

I also didn't quite get all the buttons on but he is wearing leather armour over it this weekend and it does do up.

I hope he likes it.. i do and it looked very good on him.. It will look even better with a fixed collar though.. Has a warhammer / star trek feel to it some how. Here are some pics though only have them of it in progress as I was sewing till he rang the bell!!