how many strips does it take to...

Here are a few pics of the past 6 yrs of crocheting this "blanket".
There are 5 strips of black, one of navy and a few white squares making up that first row. Since I have no idea what my original design was going to be I'm going to change it to fit, Possibly ignoring the white blocks and using the blue as a border, then alternating black with a different color.

If you look closely these 7 strips  give me about 30'' of length. So I think I may need another 10-14 strips! When I used to do this on a regular basis it would take me about 1-2 weeks per strip. Thus I could finish this in about 5-7 months...

Picking up where I left off

When I was much younger I considered knitting. Then I realized I didn't have the patience for it so I switched to crocheting. Later in life I had the idea of making a blanket by making strips and then sewing them together. Each strip was about 1 skein's worth of yarn. I was using black and dark blue yarn. I have since forgotten the ultimate pattern. However crocheting is very relaxing and since I can't sleep and I came across it recently I decided to pick it up again for the times where I just need to relax.

I figure I can come up with a new pattern at a later date since I know it will take a while to make these strips (I started it over 6 yrs ago)

I'm using a f size crochet hook and am thinking of picking up a bigger one for any new project since my stitches tend to be on the tight side.


Hopefully once I can work a bit more consistently and be done sometime within the next 5 or 6 yrs :).

Cookin to dye for!

I have a skirt made out of muslin but apparently Esmeralda's skirt isn't natural colored!

What is a girl to do? Well into the kitchen with me.
I have this awesome electric kettle since I love to drink tea. It is much easier to boil small amounts of water in this than large amounts on the stove. To dye lots of fabric you need space. Over a year ago I got this notion that I really wanted to can my own jellies and such. More on that another day. To dye you need a very very large pot and preferably one you don't ever intend to put food in. Lucky me I have this!

So to start I boiled about 48 cups of water and added it to the large pot and kept it at a simmer. Then to use powder dye I need to dissolve it in water before adding to the dye bath.  I had 2 open packages of royal blue powder dye and 1 open package of purple powder dye from dying my 'magic skirt'. I decided to use the remainder of all 3 of these

I have this plastic container I no longer use to hold food. So i can use it for dissolving the dye into hot water. Whenever working with dye (especially concentrated dye) it is important to wear gloves.

The package holding the powder dye has tons of directions 

In those instructions it says I first need to wet the fabric with hot water. I also added a bit of laundry detergent since I didn't exactly wash the fabric before messing with it. 

 



It also says to add salt to the dye bath, 1 cup of it for 3 gallons. I now need to get more salt.

 In addiction to dying the skirt I realized that the scarf should be a very similar color and considering all the water and dye I was using already I added a bit of wine colored liquid dye to the mix (about 3 oz worth) after I had finished with the skirt.

However to dye the scarf I needed a scarf.
On the left you can see that I used my serger (with black thread) to serge this strip of fabric about 60" long. Then I turned it inside out (on the right). I figure once I add the coins it should hang properly.

mmm yummy. This is the scarf in the pot.

The more blueish fabric is the skirt the more purple is the scarf. Both these pictures are when they are wet. Th one on the left right after they have been rinsed until the water runs clear then wrung out. To the right is after a day of sitting in my sink. If they don't dry completely in a day or so I guess I'll throw them in the dryer.   

 


Both colors are significantly darker than I expected but we'll see if I can work with it when it is dry.

If not I may just start over!

accessories to fit

I was in the hair store the other say and managed to leave without any hair! (Granted i brought two friends who both left with stuff) Every time I'm there I look at the jewelry section.




I picked up this silver wrist cuff and a black headband. I figure for the headband I can cover it with fabric by sewing a cover with the fabric, slipping in the headband and hot gluing the fabric to the headband. The headband was $.99 and so was the wrist cuff :)

The cuff is a bit narrow but I figure it would work since I look a bit funny with a larger one.

Of course I need a gold one not a silver one...

I had some gold paint and I figure using q-tips wouldn't leave streak marks. You can see that the band is a bit decorative but not overly noticeable from far away and I'm hoping the paint will cover it.

It looks more or less gold. I painted both the inside and outside so you won't see silver if it tilts on my wrist.
After it dried you could still see the design so I coated it one more time with paint. If it still shows threw I give up :-p

megamisama

I love ah my goddess :) If you can't tell from my profile pic :). Especially Urd. I would like to cosplay as her one of these days and luckily over at world of elegance they have a few pictures of some of her outfits. I'm not quite daring enough to try her main outfit. (That slit is a bit much for me out the moment) I figure once I can figure out the best way to keep the outfit on I may try.

But now I would like to go with this more conservative outfit.
I figure still recognizable and I have almost everything except for the dress.

In order to figure out how to make this I'm using the stretchy material that I bought the other week. (Ok I may have gone back for more) My idea is that If i go with this fabric then I don't have to worry about darts and zippers and I should still get the same effect.

I had bought a dress for about $20 shipped from china to try and work out the pattern. The only patterns I found were on the internet in chinese. So I figure I can just cut appart the dress and work from there. Of course I tried it on when I got it and it was horribly sized. The hips were to narrow, the waist to big the bust to small. Only the arms fit (yes it was sleeveless).

After sewing the front and back together I end up with a bigger pattern then I expected. And had to pin and fit it. I figure if i make it a bit on the smaller side then it'll just stretch to fit because of the fabric. You can't see where it comes over but I promise you it is there. This really needs the trim to stand out properly.

I also cut out the neck but have yet to attach it to see how this works out. I cut 2 pieces and 1 piece from interfacing to make it stiff. I need to iron and sew them together before attaching to the dress.

One thing I have learned from this is that this material shows every little bulge. I will need to make some sort of lining or under-dress that will hold everything in place. otherwise this almost looks promising. I put 2 darts in the back but I think the way I added them with the serger made them not lie down properly. I also thing I should have measured better because they ended up being a bit lower then I needed them.  But I figure this isn't half bad for the first half of the first attempt. I may try to make a shirt in this fashion next to get time to work with the technique and have something else to wear.

what should I wear?

In the time it takes Cher in clueless to decide what to wear I can make a top :) I had a leftover strip of fabric from another project (post to come soon) and decided it was enough to make a top with. So I just folded it over and started sewing. This is where I'm really happy I bought my serger so I know the seams will hold and my shirt won't come apart during the day. Once I sewed the sides up, leaving room for the arm holes I put it on my mannequin and started to cut out a neckline. I decided I wanted it lower in the back than the front. After this I noticed that this would be a great top if i had abs of steel... but I don't. So I grabbed some black fabric to fill in the 'holes'.  So this is where that black part on the bottom came from. When I'm not holding my arms up there is a semi scalloped pattern between the green and black going on a diagonal.
I'm going to have to devise a new way to take pictures of myself or just leave the shirt on the mannequin for pictures.

So we have a side view to see the arm holes. The fun thing about making your own close is that the arm holes are never too big ;). I also put in a little bit of a dart. If you look closely you can see the scallop trying to appear in this picture.

And here is a view of the back :) I may go back and add black fabric to the back neckline or I may leave it. I'm slightly concerned that I made the cut a bit too wide. This can also be distracted from by adding a cross of fabric to the back so we'll see. I stitched around the neckline with my serger so it wouldn't pull at the fabric quite as much when I get into and out of it.

Hope you like it maybe I'll add one more picture later.

Tops

I'm excited about making quite a few new tops. I think this one turned out fairly well. After letting the seam sealant dry I trimmed all the excess thread hanging about. 


You can see front and back :)

 In the front I put a little teardrop cutout which was actually easier to do than I expected.  However after looking at it I realized it was a bit small and although was kinda cute didn't add to the shirt.

So I decided to make it bigger :)

like the way it looks now and am thinking of maybe putting some sort of tear shaped jewel in it. I do like this fabric and am going to think of other shirts I can make out of it :)
I think I am going to use this fabric to make a shirt/dress with a mandarin collar. I bought one from china but it didn't fit at all because the proportions are all off. So maybe making it out of stretchy fabric will help. 

Fabric!

I stop into walmart tonight with absolutely no intention of buying any fabric. Actually I was looking for rit dye since i need evening blue and teal. Unfortunally walmart didn't have it (Neither did the grocery store but it was worth a shot). However when I wondered over to the fabric they had an entire bin of fabric for $5 per bolt of about 5 yards. I thought it was a mistake at first but I asked the nice woman working there and she said it really was just $5! I managed to walk out with only 4 bolts though.

Since this fabric was really cheap I decided it is a good fabric to experiment on. (Granted I'm tempted to go back for more) I decided to make a shirt since if it works I can actually wear it. So I just took my fabric and cut out two pieces for a front and back.

Then I pinned it together at the shoulders and draped it over my mannequin.
After I just pinned it on the sides where I wanted to sew it. Since the fabric is stretchy it is easy to get off the mannequin with the pins still in it.

I just used my serger to serge all the seams as well as around any rough edge so there is a white trim to the blue shirt. After messing with it a bit with the serger I took seam glue and dabbed a bit on each place i had to cut the thread and now it is drying. When I wake up hopefully I'll have a shirt to wear :)

A snappy note

I figured adding snaps was a good way to close the skirt especially since I had them lying around. I used about 4 snaps and it closes wonderfully flush but it is still a bit loose so I'm hoping that under the corset it will stay put.

Putting in the snaps isn't that hard but the hard part is making sure they align with each other so when you snap it together one side isn't higher than the other.

I decided to put in 3 snaps towards the top and one about 2 inches lower so that it stays all the way closed through the opening without a row of about 6-9 snaps.



So next the skirt needs to be hemmed. Although I'm not sure if i should dye then hem or hem then dye....

A wig is born:)

And after several days of work I finally finished it tonight!

It is now that I'm done that I realize that these posts are missing quite a bit of information. You followed me from taking the tracks and sewing them to the 'wig' but this project started further back. With packs of loose hair

This is the $2 hair which is somehow better than the $1 right? The packaging was nicer and it came with a much better rubber band!... next time I'll just get the $1 hair :-p In any case It comes out of the plastic looking like pigtails.

Once I remove the little bits of cardboard I then have to separate it. And this is where that nice rubber band comes in handy

The next thing was setting up the sewing machine. I had to turn to my highest tension and set the stitch length to about 1.4 or 1.6 (still not sure which is best).

To make the tracks I realized the best thing is to measure them first then make them. Although this seems logical I couldn't quite figure out how to measure it at first. It wasn't till I was almost done that I realized exactly where everything was going.
So I took my see-through fabric which I picked up about half a yard of for $1.50 per yard. This amount made quite a few 3-4 in strips and I most likely could make an entire other set of tracks with this fabric if I knew what I was doing in the beginning... In any case the blue line is drawn with chalk to say where to start and where to stop.

The next thing is to start sewing the hair. I take about a medium sized pinch of hair. A wonderfully eyeballed measurement technique. and I hold it up to find the midpoint. This is where I will place the hair across the blue line on my fabric. Then I start to sew smoothing out the hair as I go and making sure that it doesn't catch on the presser foot or get tangled elsewhere. This is also the point where I am able to control how thin or thick the track is. And I continue this process with bits of hair until I reach the end of the blue line.

This is what it looks like after I've sewn the entire length of the line. You can see each section where I added another pinch of hair.

Then I must sew another 3 lines about 5mm away from each other. With the two sets of lines straddling the center. I could sew more lines however all the lines must go in the same direction so I have to clear the sewing machine with all the hair to put it back down and start from the 'top'. Sometimes I can do this without removing the presser foot but most times it's just easier to get the strands of hair untangled.

So this is what it looks like after sewing all 4 lines.

Then I fold it over so that two lines are on each side with the fabric on the outside and I pin it in place. Once it is pinned I tend to fold it and finger comb it to get all the straggly hairs out of the way and make sure that no random hair is bunched up and in my way for sewing.  Now I switch from a straight stitch to a zigzag stitch. It's not much of a zigzag since I set the stitch length to be about 1.6. I aim for the zigzag to be as close to the top as possible without actually sewing off the fabric.


After I sew I trim the excess fabric and I'm ready to sew it onto the wig!


This track was intended to be the final track going on the inside of the front rim.

And there it is.  Since it was sewn to the inside all you can see is the line of hair which will make it easier to blend. I decided not to do the back side because with this much hair there is no way it will be visible. Especially since I will not be doing a full ponytail.

It is fun to see out but to be safely away from tangles I keep it in a low pony tail. Now that I'm done creating it I had to play with it a bit :)
The next stage is to style it. And I know I will have to trim it but from these pictures once I put curls into it, it may not need much of a trim.