I'm late, I'm late!

My eldest son was recently invited to the 13th birthday party of a girl at school. It was to be a Mad Hatter's Tea Party and every guest was instructed to dress as a particular Alice in Wonderland character. Mr 12 was assigned 'The White Rabbit'. 

If I was feeling less than excited about conjuring up a white rabbit costume, it didn't last long. I heard a sentence from my son that I have waited twelve years to hear: "Mum, can you teach me how to sew so I can make a white rabbit costume?" Music to my ears!

The first step was a visit to Remida creative reuse centre in Perth to gather supplies. I took both my boys and their friend since it was school holidays. I love seeing their inspiration being fired up as they imagine what they could make from all the goodies there. The problem is holding them back so we can fit it all in the car!

We managed to find everything we needed for the costume apart from the ears, glasses and red binding for the tunic, all of which we had at home. That means this costume was essentially free, apart from my yearly membership fee of course.

The tunic is made from strong, white nylon fabric. We folded it over, cut the top a bit wider than my son's shoulders and tapered out slightly to just below hip level. We cut another piece the same and made a hole through both pieces just big enough to get his head through. These were sewn together (by my son) at the neckline, then one piece pulled through to give a clean finish. We used wadding at the front between the two layers. I sewed the cross on the front and bound all the edges with red lycra binding from my stash.

While I was doing that, my son used a heart template to trace and cut out the small hearts from red sticky paper. The larger heart was traced on the computer screen from one we found on the internet. The paper wasn't sticking strongly enough to the fabric so I stitched around each one to hold it in place. The sides of the tunic were held together with a small line of stitching.

The ruffle was made from four long strips of net curtaining, approximately 15cm wide. We cut a piece of 1cm wide elastic a bit longer than my son's neck measurement. The net strips were placed on top of one another, the elastic stretched to maximum capacity and sewn with zig-zag down the centre of the strips. We then joined the ends of the ruffle together and it could be easily put on over the head.

Next the clock. We used a piece of plastic poster board and drew two circles to cut out with a scalpel. The top and back of the clock was covered in gold stickers. I cut the numbers freehand from black stickers. Red arrows for hands and done!

We were both thrilled with the way the costume turned out and we had such a nice time together sewing, sticking, chatting and laughing. The party was last night. All the characters looked fantastic and it was reportedly "The best party ever and no one believed we'd made the costume!" Success all round I'd say.

Fun times felting - One Year One Outfit challenge

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking part in the 'One Year One Outfit' (OYOO) challenge. This involves creating an entire outfit this year that has been sourced only from locally grown and sustainably produced materials. I bought supplies for felting a skirt a while back, but had suffered too much from newbie felting nerves to actually make anything. I mentioned this to fellow OYOOer, Sue of Fadanista, who made the excellent suggestion of getting together for a felting session.

It was a bit of a case of the blind leading the blind, although we both had a tiny amount of felting experience. Sue wrote recently about a felting session she had with a textile artist friend and we used her notes from that as our guide. We decided to begin with my felt and work on it together. This turned out to be an excellent strategy as the rubbing and rolling process was far easier with two people. However, my piece took so long we will need to reconvene to make Sue's felt.

We began by pulling off thin fibres from the wool roving (above) and laying them on a piece of bubble wrap, which was placed over a towel. I had drawn my skirt front and back on a piece of vinyl as a guide for the size. This worked well as a guide, but I should have made it bigger to allow for shrinkage - oops!

The fibres were placed over the pattern guide, the first layer in one direction, the second at 90 degrees to the first, and so on until we had four layers. I had three colours of wool roving, which I separated and placed, lightest to darkest, to create an ombre effect. I also added a few tufts of my dog Truffle's fur between the third and fourth layers at the bottom. Non-wool materials can be felted into wool felt in small amounts.

So fluffy and lovely!

The next step, once I'd laid out the front and back of the skirt, was to cover the wool with netting. We used tulle, but apparently flyscreen also works well.

Then we rolled up our sleeves for action. Using scrunched up plastic bags, we scattered hot water and rubbed olive oil soap (other soap can also be used, but this was local) over the netting until the wool was completely wet. We then did a sustained bout of circular rubbing all over the piece. The netting holds everything in place, but we checked from time to time that it was not felting to the wool. It wasn't.

It was lovely working with the olive oil soap, soft wool and warm water on a cool morning, not to mention the good company. The fibres began to felt together fairly quickly so we neatened up the edges by pushing them towards the main piece. The imprint of the bubble wrap could be seen on the felt at this stage, but this disappeared after further steps. 

At this point we rearranged the felt so it had a piece of netting on both sides. It was placed back on the bubble wrap and the towel, then the whole lot was rolled around a pool noodle to make a cylinder. I haven't got a picture of this as Sue and I took one end of the noodle each and rolled back and forth 1000 times, while moving our hands in and out to cover the length of the noodle. Obviously this was far more cumbersome with my largish piece of felt than with the small pieces we'd done in the past and I was especially glad of Sue's help here. I was also glad of her Fitbit wrist pedometer, which made counting the back and forth rolls so much easier!

My front and back skirt pieces partially felted together in the middle, but that was fine.

The wool was well and truly felting by now. We rinsed it well in cold water and microwaved it for 2 x 30 seconds. The felt was then placed in a plastic bag and whacked down on to the table a few times. This caused much hilarity as it kept bursting out of the bag and showering droplets everywhere. I guess that was a good test of its integrity!

This is the felt before we hung it over a chair to dry.

The full piece. I love the way the ombre effect turned out and the little black Truffle speckles.

The striations of different colour wool add interest too.

I did make my skirt pieces approximately 8-10cm larger than the pattern pieces, but the felt shrunk by more than this amount once it was completely dry. I am not letting this concern me and will simply make more felt at our next session to use as strips along the skirt's sides. I only used about half the wool roving that I had bought (approximately $8 worth) so have plenty more to play with in the future. 

My felt did end up quite thin and translucent in places so I returned to Bilby Yarns, where I bought my wool, and asked the opinion of the very knowledgeable lady there. She said it was fine, but may need lining to stand up to being worn as a skirt. Not knowing how to find locally-produced lining material, I may just ponder that problem for a while before finalising my skirt plans.

In the meantime I have other things to take up my time. I've started knitting for the first time in 25 years! Well I have to wear something on my top half for the OYOO. While at Bilby Yarns, I bought some beautiful West Australian wool in my felt colours to make a jumper. Progress is slow. Better get back to it!

Thank you Sue for the fun morning and the use of her beautiful garden.

A cosy jacket for my mum (Burdastyle 12/2012, #140)

My gorgeous Mum turned 70 last week! I know, neither of us can believe it. She certainly doesn't look her age.

Anyway, as usual I headed to the sewing machine to make the majority of her presents. This jacket, Burdastyle Magazine 12/2012, Jacket #140, was a request Mum made while she was flipping through my magazine. She wanted something warm that she could use as a jacket and a dressing gown when she was on holiday in cooler places than our hometown of Perth.

Burdastyle Transform Jacket

The pattern suggested 'fulled loden' fabric should be used for this jacket. I have been informed by a helpful reader that this is quite readily available in Germany, but is difficult to find here. It's also apparently a bit scratchy to wear. I wanted something cosy and soft, so I chose this grey polar fleece.

The majority of the vertical seams are sewn wrong sides together so the seam allowance is exposed on the outside as a feature. I carefully trimmed the seam allowances after stitching so they would be neat on the outside. The edges of the hood, hem, pockets and cuffs are left raw. I finished these with pale grey grosgrain ribbon, which was a nice detail.

I like the way the cuffs fold right back.

I made the jacket a size smaller than I would usually wear as my Mum is a little squirt. The jacket is quite snug on me, but fits her well.

The hood is very roomy and forms the collar when it's folded down.

This jacket is super warm. I nearly expired taking these photos!

As well as the jacket, I made this tea towel. It has hand prints of all the grandchildren, done in fabric paint. I used free motion sewing to write the names of the children and to applique '2013' on to the bottom corner. I made bias tape to bind the edges.

This basic idea for this came from 'Make it Perfect', but I changed it a bit.

There were a couple of other 'bought' presents. But I think mum appreciated these - and the hand made card and birthday cake :)

Tumble dyed baby outfit

This was a quick little refashion and sewing project for my darling baby niece. I had found the leggings at an op shop for $1. I decided to make them more girly by spraying some Tumble dye flowers on to the legs. I just made a simple flower cut-out from some printer paper and held it in place by hand while I sprayed the dye. I used some scrap knit fabric to blot the excess dye from the paper.

I used pink and yellow dye, which mixed in places to make orange. When I'd finished the leggings I decided that they just had to have a top to make a proper outfit. I found an old baby pattern (Kwik Sew 2596) and made this cute little top from some more knit fabric scraps. Then, I used the blotting fabric, now covered with pink, yellow and orange dye, to cut out little flowers. I sewed these on to the top and pants with a quick spiral stitch.

A very quick and cute baby outfit. It was fun to make too. I can't stop using these Tumble dyes - my wardrobe needs to watch out!

Click below to see my other Tumble dye projects.

Ombre dyed, polka dot t-shirt


Tumble dyeing with a stencil

Tumble dying with a stencil to make a cool t-shirt

After watching me making my ombre dyed, polka dot t-shirt, my boys were desperate to get in on some Tumble Dye action. After some discussion, they decided on a Party Rock Gym design. There are images all over the internet for this and, after looking at a few, I came up with this design of my own using MS Word and Powerpoint.

If you would like to use my design, you can download it here and resize as necessary.

I printed the design on to normal paper, covered it in clear Contact plastic film (only to keep it strong enough to be used more than once) and cut out the lines with a scalpel.

The inside bits of the letters are saved and stuck to the bottom corner of the stencil. If you can, I would recommend cutting out letters as I've done for the circular part of the design, leaving a bit of paper to hold any middle bits in place, as for the 'P', 'A', 'R' etc. The little connector bits hardly show in the finished product.

After being asked at least 67 times if it was ready yet, I finally finished cutting out the stencil! It was then laid on to a square of t-shirt fabric, placed outside on newspaper and I let the boys loose with the dye spraying!

They were actually really careful and loved doing it.

My tips for children using these dyes would be:

• Make sure the nozzle is pointing in the direction you want the dye to go (yes, we learned this the hard way!); 
• Spray approximately 10cm from the fabric;
• Don't saturate the fabric with dye as it will run under the stencil, just gradually build up to the intensity you want; 
• You can mix colours to get fantastic effects, but be careful not to mix more than two colours or you get muddy brown.
• It's worth dyeing a square of fabric, rather than the actual t-shirt in case of mistakes and resulting meltdowns (we had both!).

When the dyeing was finished, we blotted off excess dye that was pooling on the stencil using paper towel and carefully lifted the stencil away from the fabric. I ironed the designs to set the dye, trimmed the edges, then stitched them on to t-shirts (which I'd also made, it was a busy day!) for the boys.

I used a strip of the trimmed fabric to sew a zig-zag along the side of the t-shirt for extra coolness!! I've been saving all my dye-covered scraps to use as embellishments for future projects.

The boys are SO thrilled with their t-shirts. They wore them to their hip hop class and proudly announced that they'd made them themselves when the teacher admired them!

A very rewarding project, which could be adapted for varying ages.

Ombre dyed, polka dot t-shirt

How much fun is this for spring?

I bought some new spray dyes for fabric. They are called Tumble Dyes and they come in a wide range of colours. They are really easy to apply - just spray straight from the bottle. I ordered these four gorgeous colours from Dharma Trading in the US, (along with a few other things ;) They were not expensive and the postage to Australia was very reasonable.

My mind is spinning with possibilities for these, but to start with I tried this simple t-shirt. I decided to make my t-shirt, but this could easily be done on an existing t-shirt.

Here's what to do:

Fold a piece of paper into four and draw some circles (or whatever shape you fancy). I used my old school Math-o-mat. A circle punch would be even better.

Cut out the circles and place them on your t-shirt. I Tumble-dyed my t-shirt before I sewed it together. This gives a neater dye finish at the seams, but is not necessary if you have a ready-made t-shirt. Place the dots randomly or in a pattern. Remember to place some card or newspaper inside your shirt if you are using an existing one.

After blowing some of my circles away while spraying the dye, I decided to weigh them down using metal washers. If you have freezer paper you could iron the circles on to your fabric before dyeing.

Hold the bottle 10-15cm from the fabric and spray away. I sprayed more at the top of the t-shirt and less near the bottom to create the ombre effect.

Once the spray has dried, remove the circles and iron the fabric (or place in a warm dryer) to heat-set the dye.

Make your t-shirt. I used white trim for the neckband, but you could dye some to match or contrast with your design.

Told you it was simple!

Have you Tumble dyed anything lately?