Clay fever

Somehow I manged to pick up a new crafting hobby. Actually according to my mother it's just a rekindling of an old hobby. When I was about 4 my mom had gotten tons of tools and such because I wanted to sculpt with clay. However she had to take it away when I threw a fit because the pieces weren't coming out quite as perfect as I wanted. Apparently I would not hear that at 4 I didn't have the fine motor skills to make the detailed designs I had seen. Well several years later I still faintly remember wanting to sculpt and now I have!

After a night trip out to walmart I came back with a $10 set of colored clay and $6 in grey normal clay. The colored clay has one oz pieces of 10 different colors and 2oz pieces of white and black.

All the clay is to be baked in the oven at 275 deg F for 15 min. I found out that my oven runs a bit low so I had to set it slightly past 275 deg F but not at 300 deg F.

Since I had significantly more grey clay I started with this since I remember having so many issues creating things I thought this is a good way to practice. I started by finding a tutorial for a rose and made a rose. Then another rose then a bow.

To make the bow I made tiny balls then flattened them with my finger and attached them to the rose for the petals, shaping as i go.

Next since that turned out so well I wanted to make a little Chibi girl.

This involved two balls one large than the other. The larger one for the head, slightly smaller one for the body. Then making a snake to cut the pieces of hair from. I also added a headband and a little bow for the hair. Next I cut little slits in the bottom of the body to simulate a pleated skirt.


After this I had enough courage to try with the colored clay. I decided to mix the colored clay with the grey to get slightly softer colors as well as stretch the colored clay further.

The first thing I tried was another chibi girl with curly hair and a rose on her headband. 

After her came another chibi girl with straight hair and a larger bow. I made her to resemble the lolita outfit I wore to a convention.







Then I decided to go very intricate and make a tiny tardis. I decided to make this into a necklace by butting an eye pin into it. I got quite a few of the eye pins from walmart for $2.

While I was waiting for the tardis to come out of the oven I decided I wanted to paint the grey clay pieces. All I had close by was a bunch of dollar store nail polish. So first I painted the roses red and blue, then the bows black and blue. And the little chibi girl blue for the body and headband and bow. The white nail polish over the top of the body as a shirt and the bow. Also used the white on the face. Then used the black for the hair and eyes and red for the lips.

The penny is in the middle for size comparison.
I think next I will make a necklace set as well as items to possibly try my hand at a decoden like box.

JSK -no pattern needed!

I decided I wanted to make a jumper skirt (JSK in the lolita world) I found this pinstripe cotton fabric at walmart for $1.50 per yard. So I got 5 yards of it. The fabric is inexpensive because it seems to want to unravel quite easily although it has a nice texture.

I decided I wanted to make it fit around the waist using shirring. Shirring is elastic sewn into the fabric to make it punch up a bit.

First I cut out a length for the top. then the same length but half the width for the insert in the top(facing). I did this to have clean lines for the neckline.
Then I took the measurement of the length and multiplied it by about 2 and pleated more fabric to make the skirt.

I made two straps and sewed a bit of lace to each side of the straps. I secured the straps to the top of the shirt by sewing them between the top and the facing for the top.  

I also top-stitched the top and added lace between the straps.

Next I decided I wanted to add an underskirt. So I cut out a rectangle the width of the top and decided to add box pleats at the bottom of it to form the under skirt. I saw a neat tool online called a quick pleater. Since I'm poor I can't buy it so I tried to make one out of cardboard. It worked for the duration of the project and promptly fell apart after.

I sewed both skirts together with a basting stitch then sewed it to the top. The next time I do this. I won't sew the skirt to the top till I am totally done.

After sewing the bottom to the top. I used elastic thread to sew strips across the top from right under the chest to right above the hip.




After sewing in all of the elastic I sewed both sides of the dress together. Next time I will sew each skirt together then sew it to the other parts. I then got help measuring where the straps should be places. Sewed the other end of the straps into the dress.

Finally I wanted a scallop pattern at the bottom so I gathered a bit of the fabric of the top skirt in 6 places and hand sewed each of them into place. I then made bows out of the same fabric to attach at each of these 6 gathers. 


I'm thinking about adding a (removable) black sash to it and wearing it with a black blouse so it can coordinate with my black shoes.

lolita without brand names?

So lately I've been very interested in Lolita fashion. However on my poor budget there is no way I can afford to buy name brand items, who needs name brand anyway? Some of the dresses can cost over $300 for just one dress! I've made quite a few items lately so I need to catch up on my posts. This will be about two different skirts I tried.

The first skirt I attempted is a simple black circle skirt with a ruffle at the bottom.

Not many pictures since I just used the calculated radius to cut out a waist and the rest of the skirt. I also decided against adding the lace lying in the picture after consulting a lolita fashion forum. 

The next skirt I made is more of an alteration. I found a fun ankle length swishy skirt at the thrift store.

I cut off the waste band at about 4 inches. I had to also cut around the zipper.







I then sewed darts into the waistband so it would fit snug around my entire waist, in the hope of creating a high waist skirt.

Next I pleated the remainder of the skirt and sewed it to the bottom of the waistband so that the length of the skirt was about knee length.

Halloween.... a bit late

Time has just gotten away from me. I meant to post this sometime back in 2011 :)
The boulder outfit had 4 different elements: pants, wrist/ankle bands, belt and hair

1. Pants

To make these I just used the same technique as all of my Kung Fu pants only shorter. 

First, I fold the fabric into 4 such that i have a double fold on one side, then cut a semi circle for the crotch and down at an angle to the bottom. Next I sew the two halves together at the crotch then sew one seem to form both legs. After adding a bit of elastic I have baggy shorts.

After forming the pants I added some yellow ribbon to the ends of the leg holes to emulate a cuff. I added some extra fabric to the bottom so I didn't have to sew onto the elastic portion. I wanted to be able to snap it so it would be tight but this didn't quite work out so I ended up just having it sewed partly around. 

2. Ankle and wrist bands

In order to make both bands I formed a tube with the same fabric as the pants and sewed velcro to the ends to make it easy to attach.

This was much more difficult then I expected and took me several tries to get it right. I realized that I needed to use a continuous strip of velcro otherwise it would pucker at the place the velcro broke.

Also it took a while to get the size of the tubes right since the arms and legs do not increase in in diameter linearly.

3.Belt

For the belt I needed to stabilize it, so I sewed the lighter green fabric to a fake leather fabric that I had found a remnant of in walmart. This is the same fabric I used to make the water bag for my katara costume a while back.

I then cut out the 'loin cloth' strips from the brown fabric and hemmed them.

Next I cut out a wide piece of darker green fabric and gathered it to match the width to the belt. I then took the front brown strip and sewed it to the gathered portion of the belt.
I then attached the green gathered portion to the rest of the belt

After attaching the front brown section, I measured to make sure the cloths would lie evenly and sewed on the back section.

Next I added snaps to the wrong side of the stiff belt and right side of gathered portion so the belt could be held in place.












Next I needed to add the details to the belt. I used puffy fabric paint in yellow to get the relief I wanted on the belt. I used paper as a straight edge to get the edges painted.

Then used the paper with circles cut out to make the 'jewels' on the belt.

I let it dry for about 24 hours before removing the paper for each part. The other bits of the belt are rolled up and pinned to the underside of the belt so they didn't get paint on them.

4. Hair 

In order to make the top bun for the hair I used the same ribbon from the bottom of the pants and sewed it onto a strip of fabric.

 I the used hot glue to attach some foam to the top of a cardboard piece. Then wrapped bits of hair around it to form a bun.






I hot glued another piece of cardboard around the first to secure the hair and added strips of fabric to the bottom in order to be able to secure it to the hair.







Next I glued the fabric around the last layer of cardboard.






So this was the last sewing element.

The day of the Halloween party I drew the design on his back using silver eye liner to outline the pattern and non-toxic grey marker to color it in. I also used black eye liner to draw in facial hair that was missing like the side burns.