Starring Me as The Little Match Girl

I often have ideas that just don't work.  Something that I find really hard to do is let go of the thing once I see that it's not working (piles of unfinished projects residing in the closet of crafty delight are testament to this issue).  But stepping away from it for a while (some times years...sh.) and coming back from a new angle can make all the difference (maybe, kinda, sorta, sometimes).

When my sister was here she had come up with this crazy idea for a hooded scarf.  

We worked on it quite a bit.  We had lots of silly fun, then abandoned the project when all the work we put into it looked as though we hadn't done anything at all.  This week Something different started developing in my brain and I spent some time looking at pictures of hooded scarves on the google thing.  I realized that where we were going wrong was in trying to keep any semblance of the old sweater in tact.  There was too much fabric in all the wrong ways.  So With that in mind I pulled out the green sweater you see my husband modeling in the picture above and went at it with the scissors.  

The reason Sis and Husband are wearing different failures is because we liked the green sweater better and didn't want to ruin it by using it for our test run.  This was a good call.  But when I started digging in the closet of crafty delight for the hooded scarf project revisited the only one left was the green one so I decided to forgo the test run and sacrifice it on the alter of hope and good ideas.  So I got my scissors out and showed no fear!

I cut the sweater into it's obvious parts then refolded the body part so that when I cut it into the hood shape the pattern would be centered on my head.

That picture doesn't really show you anything does it.

I cut open the tube that was the body of the sweater so I had one big rectangle folded in half and inside out. I pinned right down the back so that I had a piece closed on two sides at right angles to each other.  Wow.  Did that make any sense at all?  When I stuck it on my head it looked like just what it was: a folded rectangle stuck on my head.

And since we are talking about stuck....a note about pins and trying things on.  Pins are an important tool when you are sewing.  They will help you do all kinds of things that fabric would refuse to do without them. But make no mistake about it THE PINS ARE OUT TO GET YOU.  Given the slightest opportunity they will attack.  Do not even entertain the thought that you will try something on with the pins on the inside.  Not for a second! Not even if you know full well that the pins will be a good foot away from your body.  They will seize the moment and hurt you in your most tender parts.  Pin cushions are a necessity! Those little plastic boxes your pins come in when you buy them are so cute...remove the pins (carefully) and use them for your earrings or something. Those pins have been sitting in the box for months on the craft store shelf waiting for you to open the lid on their escape plan.  Get them all into the pin cushion fast and then never turn your back. As soon as you aren't looking they head for the floor and from there they're going after your husband and that is never pretty.

Yes.  I tried the hood on with the pins on the inside and, yes, even though they were at least three inches away from my head they attacked.  So, sorry no picture of me with a rectangle on my head.

It became clear that a hood has a shape all it's own so I took the hood off my rain jacket and used it to figure out what that shape should really be.

At first I thought I would want the ribbed part to stick out in front of my face a bit but after checking out what I looked like in the rain coat hood I decided to cut pretty close to the size of the original.

I look so unhappy 

I pinned around the original hood, sewed a straight stitch along the line and cut away the excess.  Notice I didn't cut around the curve at the bottom.  A mistake that will be rectified later.  

I REMOVED ALL THE PINS! Then I tried it on again

I still don't look very happy.  But the hood is better.  It's a bit long but I know I'm going to want that extra length to attach the scarf part to.  

There's too much fabric in the back....worry about that later.  On to the scarf part!

I knew that the sleeves wouldn't be long enough to make the whole scarf but it was a good place to start so I cut them open and cut out the seam then pinned them to the hood.  

PINS ON THE OUTSIDE!

The full cut open sleeve is just too much 

I trimmed the sleeves down to a more reasonable scarf width. While I was at it I dissected the parts of the sweater I wasn't already using.  I cut everything away from the seams and ended up with a bunch of odd shaped pieces which I also trimmed,

then sewed all the little bits together into two roughly equal sized scarf halves.

TANGENT:  I love upcycling! I love seeing all the weird and wonderful things that people come up with to make from stuff that came before.  As with all things there are fashions and styles and such, ways that things get made.  One thing that I pretty much always hate, is the seam on the outside thing.  I will say that I have seen a few items on which it was done so well that I had to admit to liking it on those particular things but for the most part...ugh.  I absolutely love this But I think you can see where, if done by an amateur like me, it could go oh so wrong.  My solution to this is to run two rows of zigzag stitches over the edges of two overlapped pieces.  I'm not convinced this is the best solution but I want it to lay flat and this is the best I've come up with so far.

My best Emperor Palpatine impression

Scarf pieces pinned on.  See all that extra fabric on the back of my neck.  Appearantly there is a reason hoods are shaped the way they are.  

Pin and trim to make room for....the place where my neck and back come together....is there a word for that? 

testing....a bit better.  Time to attach the scarf pieces

Finished.  Aren't I a cute little match girl.  

I mailed it to my sister.  I'll post pictures if she sends one.  

Update: here she is!

The Ray Bradbury Poncho Skirt.

I love sewing.  Sometimes I just sit at the machine and sew pieces together and see what happens.  I don't have a lot of skills.  I'm learning things.  I took a three hour class once that was so totally worth it.  Mostly I just figure it out as I go.

I got inspired by this thing from the Dangerous Minds web site that floated across my Facebook newsfeed the other day. I have always liked Ray Bradbury. If you haven't read anything by him it's totally worth it.  Here's a list pick one.  The quote that really got to me was:

 "Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things"  

With that in mind, my newly made dress dummy (still haven't named her) hanging in my closet begging to be used, and a pile of sweaters left from the pweater project I just did this:

But, Angie, it's another stupid skirt what the hell did you need the dress dummy for? 

GOOD QUESTION!

I didn't plan on it becoming a skirt but plans don't always make the best results.  At least not mine.

I still really want a poncho.  Look at these.  Aren't they fun? Sure I could follow someones tutorial like I usually (sort of) do but they look so simple, I think I should be able to just figure it out.  HAHAHA! remember this thing? 

Ok forget that thing...if you can

To get started I plopped an old sweater that I was never going to wear again on the dummy (Esmirelda?).  

I figured a poncho is mostly a sweater with no sleeves so I cut open the seam that runs up the side and down the sleeve.

Then I folded it it and just sort of started randomly cutting.  (Don't think, just do)

Here is what it looks like back on the dummy (Loqueetia?)

And here it is all spread out.  

These are the sweater pieces left from the pweater project. They don't exactly match but there is no thinking allowed here just doing!

I grabbed a piece and  pinned it to the back of the cut up sweater.  When I flipped it over, it looked like this. 

It has potential....but I like curves so I did a bit of clipping 

That looked pretty interesting so I grabbed another sweater piece...

Oops Holes!  Nothing a few random polka dots won't fix.  

A couple of tips for working with sweaters:  Set your machine tension on 1.  I don't know enough about sewing machines to know why this works it just does.  Do some experimenting, you will see. Also, if you want things to match up, pin the crap out of them.  There are times when I want randomness and when I do I don't pin at all I just put things together and let it happen. For this I really wanted things to stay where I put them.  The feed dogs (yes they're really called that) are the grabby things under the presser foot that move the material through the machine.  They have a tendency to pull at sweater material and stretch it in ways that are hard to predict.  If you use lots of pins (I'm talking like one per inch) your sweaters will stay better.  

With two pieces and some polka dots I figured I should probably start some stitching...mostly cause I ran out of pins.  

And my machine decided to throw a hissy fit.  Clunking noises every time I tried to sew and huge wads of thread stuck underneath that I had to excavate with scissors taking care not to put  (more) holes in my fabric.  With the fabric out of the way I opened her up and... you know all that fuzz that gets in the dryer lint collector when you wash sweaters that happens in the sewing machine too.  ACK! 

Time to pull out the manual and the cute little screw driver and brush that came with my machine, take the little bugger apart and give her a good cleaning.  Now that I'm thinking about it, it might be a good idea to try blowing it out with some canned air, wish I had some.  

....20 minutes later...

Who was the sadist who invented this infernal machine? (Oh.  It was these guys.  I love the internet)

This thing has a Chinese puzzle box somewhere in it's ancestry. I know it it's only two pieces but if you don't fit them in exactly right, they just don't go.

I finally got it all back together and zig zagged all that  I had pinned.  I put it back on the dummy (Louise?) and it looks pretty good.  

Well, it's a work in progress.  At this point I sort of lost myself in the pinning and the sewing and the sewing and the pinning.  I forgot all about the pictures.  So skipping ahead a bit.  I had zig zagged sweater pieces all the way around and popped it back on the dummy (Loretta?) and just eyeballing it I cut around the bottom to make it all even.  (One bonus to working with sweaters, knits don't unravel!)

Yeah....this thing is um....a little weird.  Better try it on.  

Ah ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This just screams skirt to me.  I had to pull it down and see what it looked like.  

Guess I'm sewin' up some arm holes.  While I was at it I added some elastic at the waist.  I didn't do any cutting I just flipped down the neck hole and sewed over the lumps.  

TADA!!!

Hmmmm.  I might actually try doing this again with my intent on it being a skirt but I will definitely be paying more attention to the colors and patterns that I put together.  As well as the weight and texture of the material.  The pink sweater was way lighter that the rest of the pieces so it sort of feels like I'm wearing a giant bell.  In spite of my willingness to post photos of myself wearing this in the internet (where horrifying things live on and on and on and on...) I will not be wearing this out of the house.  Poncho Fail.  So much for not thinking.  Thanks a lot Ray.

Episode 9 in which Angie gets wrapped in duct tape

Most the of the things I have made over the years have required little to no skill beyond being able to sew in a straight line.  I've wanted to dig in to making some clothing type things but without a dress dummy it's hard to figure out how to drape things properly.  So the clothing I come up with is usually skirts and scarves and hats.  The only thing remotely top like that I have made thus far is this frightening thing

It's basically a big rectangle held together at the shoulder by two chinese frog type clasps that have been hanging around my grandmas button box for about 40 years.  It's nice and toasty warm and I wear it around the house when I have on my mom jeans and slippers.  But I would really like to make some thing I could leave the house in.  Dress dummies are not cheap.  So while my sister was here I asked her to help me make one.  I googled up some tutorials on how to make your own dress dummy and we headed to the craft store.  

It's silly for me to try and explain how to do it.  There are a ton of tutorials out there on different ways to do it, pick one and start taping!  

But before you do....PEE!!!!!

Did you hear me? You are about to be wrapped in duct tape for the next hour possibly two and once you get started there ain't no going back.  So have a nice long tall drink of water.  Then wait twenty minutes and go pee.  Then wait twenty more minutes and go again.  Squeeze it out! Now no more water for you til it's all over.  Your helper can taunt you with their many cocktails but you get nothing!

Also...before you start taping be sure you HAVE ENOUGH TAPE!  You will not be able to to run down to the gas and sip to pick up more duct tape.  Even if you are willing to be seen in public in your new duct tape outfit, walking is a challenge and sitting is not happenin'.  We got about halfway through before it became obvious that we were not going to have enough for the requisite three layers.  So I spent a very silly 30 minutes or so hobbling around my house like a tourquoise and purple penguin trying to remember where I put the duct tape I bought to fix the floor in the old apartment.  Found it! Still not enough.  Had to enlist the help of my lovely husband who swallowed his pride and walked into the craft store alone. (We ended up needing about 90 yards of tape.  I am 5'2" and size 10 if that helps you estimate.) And so the wrapping continued...WooHoo!

Three layers of duct tape wrapped to the shape of your body is HOT! Fortunately I had my brilliant sister with me who wrapped from the bottom up so I wouldn't over heat and we decided to use an extra piece of tshirt material I had lying around to protect my neck from the tape instead of the plastic wrap suggested by the tutorial because....ARE YOU FLIPPIN SERIOUS? PLASTIC WRAP? 

Pardon me while I digress for just a moment.  

Who do you think is going to be the type of person sitting around thinking "I really could use a dress dummy.  But the last hundred bucks I had just layin around went to pay for a school field trip, two pairs of boys size 16 pants and a very important plastic tiger, so it would be really great if I could make one out of duct tape?"  The Hot flash set that's who.  So to make things even worse than the fact that you just allowed yourself to be trussed up in tape for the sake of making some clothes that ultimately may still not fit properly, the goofy tutorial writers over at Threads think it would be a really good idea for you to wrap your neck in plastic wrap.  You know, the stuff the wrestling team in high school thought would help them lose weight, but just ended up making them smell bad and pass out.  

Yeah.  T-shirt.  Not plastic wrap.

Here I am all wrapped up.

Sis wearing an Angie suit ("It puts the lotion in the basket")

We didn't have any materials for a stand so we found a hanger that matched the width of my shoulders and popped it in there before adding the stuffing.  Of course now that I was free from my tape suit we had to take a break to go have a drink and get a hair cut.  

Our drinking companions at Kings Hardware.  Yikes!

The Hair cutters at Rudy's Did a great job but we forgot to take a pic.  We had other things on our minds 

Stuffing!  You are going to need A LOT! we had a couple bags of cheap foam stuffing which seemed like it should have been enough but ended up only filling the neck and shoulders once we pushed it down in there.  We ended up raiding my goodwill box to fill it with old clothes.  You have to really jam it in there.  Reach in and push stuff around so that all the curves are good and full.  

Then tape the ever lovin' crap out of it so it all stays in.  

New dress dummy and new hair!

The big surprise at the end of the process was having a look at my body shape from an external point of view.  When looking down at myself, all I see is belly.  Looking across at my "self"  I just see average-ish curves.  Totally weird and somewhat enlightening.  Night night dummy.  Hmmmm she needs a name....