It was an adequate day

to dye. I’m not overly sure this ‘ombre’ thing is my look but when I found some dye

and moved those donated blouses around for the umpteenth time

I thought  I’d give it a go. The top selected was a little grubby at the neckline

so that had to be removed first, though in hindsight I could have ombre’d from the top down. It was just the usual way — keep lowering the wetted garment into a bucket of dye in somewhat regular intervals.

Yeah. Insert your favourite horror movie title here…

I could only hope once rinsed and dried it would be more pink-y than red.

Those pinky/greeny sequins had to go. Pearls any time, sequins only after 6PM. That took a little longer than I thought, given the usual way these are attached means a snip of the thread at the back, a tug and there’s a hail of sequins to the floor.

I might just dig through the pink and red buttons to see if I have the right sizes and colors to gradate the buttons to match.

It will need some shaping too (given the winter weight is well and truly gone) but not today this week as there’s still too much garden work on my plate.

Like I’m ever gonna need a gym.

I’m not that kind of girl

Turns out hip bags are not really for me. Well. Perhaps it is just this one, which I like but isn’t working for me after all.  Never fear. Nothing goes to waste around Case de IWOM.

These buttery leather sleeves almost went into the winter refashion storage box. Then I came across this pattern in one of my early morning surfing for ideas sessions that I have about once a week to keep from going back to bed on the days Himself goes to work for the day 500 miles to the south.

The directions for the Phoebe bag are perfectly adequate but I will show you a few things I did different.

So I did not have to mark darts on the leather, I drew a 1/4 inch seam allowance on the pattern then cut accordingly. All you have to do is fold over RST and stitch a quarter inch seam allowance and you have stitched on the lines, which you can of course transfer using your favourite method.

I couldn’t get the leather sleeves to lie absolutely flat before cutting out the sides, but I can live with it.

So that the pieces would be easier to sew with just an ordinary 16 needle on my Janome Memory Craft 3500 I made sure to cut the two sides so that no seams from the original sleeves lined up at any point.

Aren’t we glad Himself goes through two golf gloves per season? The velcro is always in good shape — the leather not so much.

The bag from the Fiona Hip Belt (I’ve got three more of these exact same airline amenities bags!) was perfect for the heavy ticking lining, which means I did not bother with interfacing lest things get too bulky. I simply stitched down three sides, which also gave me an unzipped pocket behind the bag.

Nothing more useful in a bag than a hook on a strap!

 

All that was left before putting in all together was to unpick the former hip bag belt/former belt on the leather jacket

and sit down at the machine.

At present we are going with a Ma-musubi knot (know your furoshiki, girls). If that is too uncomfortable I can take care of that by trimming the strap edges and flat felling the seams in some way.

See ya in a few weeks!

Rains? No. Pours? You betcha!

 

I’ve got some real solid older female friends in this time zone. Gals who met me well over 20 years ago and with whom I have a real tight bond. Chicks who don’t have to like me and in any other world I’d never have met. My older sisters. My youngish aunties. ’Mentors’ isn’t the best word, but if I need, well, anything, these are my go-to peeps.

 

Women who bring me pieces of haddock and old clothes to refashion. This friend doesn’t ‘wear long tops anymore’ so these four cotton blouses are now mine to chop and change. She was going to give them to charity but they were ‘too nice’.

!!!

That’s the kind of friends you want to have. Fish and fabric.

What a shame I won’t get to anything shown in the last two posts before Himself and I get away for a bit. Must take advantage of the decent-at-last weather to catch up on garden work. I’ve only just swapped over to the spring/summer wardrobe so can think about what that needs and how my big a** pile of recent acquisitions can fit in.

SCORE!

I like Himself’s fall/winter to spring/summer clothes change over!

We are looking at two more of his Thomas Pink French cuff shirts for work, a pink tie, two Ts, a polo, five pair of boxers, a grey Banana Republic shirt and a heap of socks. Some brown socks, shoes and a brown strip shirt make up a very small charity bag since I am a winter.

The mind boggles. It also boggles about my AWOL Refashion Co-op post from yesterday, which is missing from the main page but can be found under the Editor list if you click on ‘iwom’. Must go write my fellow editors as to what happened and how to fix it! I still have a bit left to learn about RFC admin.

‘How about that sexy Dexter top?’

That was my husband’s answer to my muttering in front of my half of the closet. ‘What am I wearin’ today?’ I paused, as you do when you get thrown a curve ball like that, seeing how as snapping at your husband is something you should never do under any circumstances, even if it is a slightly chuckle-headed remark which falls from his lips. Dexter top? What the devil was he talking about?

Then I remembered him commenting during an episode that the fabric of the Land’s End waffle top I was wearing at the time was just like the fabric of the top Michael C. Hall’s character wears when he is (spoiler alert!) doing folk in. At the time I chose a thoughtful ‘So it is’ while being darn impressed that a guy with five years of law school and several accountancy qualifications (guy’s got more letters AFTER his name than IN his name) picked up on this.

It was only a short mental leap for me to get to ‘Oh, he means the Green Day top’.

Got more waffle tops. Might as well hack ‘em into something more stylish. Pretty. Dare I say sexy? Naturally I’d only be wearing these at home or if going out stuff the neckline with a scarf of some sort. Only Himself gets too see this much!

 

Unpicking the hem too a bit but it did give me an extra inch, which was good as this top was always just a smidge short. A trip in the washing machine will sort this out if past projects are anything to go by.

 

 

Sock it to me

Not the best of ideas going from our cold environs south and one time zone to the right for Easter weekend. I think my fingers feel the chill even more now so I decided to do something about that this morning. Plus, as much as I love standing in the cold at the driving range watching Himself smash balls 275 yards in a perfect straight line (well, 85% of them anyway) I just wasn’t going to be able to handle that today.

The argyles almost didn’t make it back from Madrid — I am in the habit of saving up throw-away socks and underwear and especially for long-weekend/carry-on only jaunts — but I felt these had potential for something as the rest of the fabric was fine.

They were a little short for my piano-player fingers so I took a missing-its-mate sock to elongate the basic shape.

The cuff was built in so I lettuced the edges of the stripe part slated to become the fingers

before stitching then cutting three V shapes

for the fingers.

Advice time: cut the slit for your thumb MUCH smaller than you think it needs to be

before lettucing that as well.

With Himself not home at this point I was unable to get you a two-handed action shot. Now that the time has changed we’ll be starting nine holes after work several times a week: I don’t play but it is great exercise and his course is the most beautiful in the East Nuek. It is a proper links course so the breeze off the waves often means I wear gloves right into July. Himself teases me — until I put my ungloved fingers on his cheek.

 

I can see more pairs of this style glove in my future.

So, that Ikea fail from the other day….

After I took apart the wrap, I pulled this 1USD pattern

and chose view C; however, when I laid it all out, the pattern pieces were not going to work. I’m good at these types of puzzles but it just wasn’t going to happen, so I took an entirely different path.

I can’t recall which formal thing Himself and I had to attend for his work which required me to wear a crush pink bolero. It was while I was working at Liberty so I could get damn fine fabric for my gowns when a gown was required. The majority of those dresses live — properly wrapped and with adequate protection from the damp — in my attic space. Even if I were to need them for formal events, they would, among other things, need remaking to fit my size (I’m a happy 14 and most dressed were from my 12 days).

Some have been refashioned: I used the crush green velvet from a long column dress to make a nifty waistcoat

I digress.

I put the cream and black jackets together right sides facing

and stitched a quarter inch from the edge

then made a pin of circle flowers

and that was that.

I can turn back the jacket edges if I like

 

and they stay put. Ish. I’m going to wear this about for a bit until I decide if it needs more but keeping it simple does give me plenty more options.

Not so sure

this idea is working. It might not be. I got this teal cardigan on a shopping trip with Mom  years back when I had to replenish the winter wardrobe on our return from HK.

(Trust me. It is teal. Bad light). Those beads always needed to go but since I don’t wear the sweater all that often it hasn’t been on my radar. This being an early-start day for Himself I chose it as my stay-up-you-silly-girl project.

I added these two-colored glass crackle beads I’ve had kicking around for ages

and now I am stuck. I think the little gaps need to be filled in with smaller seed beads but is that going to make it too 80s? Hmmm.

I wanted to wear this Friday when I have a nice lunch with my aunties. I think Auntie B is coming to grips with my refashioning. Auntie M. always has! If I don’t finish this one I’ll wear this instead.

Oh. Today’s title. Everything I needed to learn about attaching beads to fabric I learned from my fellow Liberty Sewing School tutor Di Vernon. She’s got some books and stuff out there too.

The alphabet has 25 more letters

You can sweep your failures under the (sewing machine) table or you can share them with the world. I’m not even going to post the link to the instructions on how to make this wrap. Why? The method of measuring for the armholes was WAY off and frankly, given how long I’ve been at this, not to mention being lucky enough to have the most excellent teachers over the decades, I am embarrassed to have missed it. As usual for this time of year I will blame the lack of light, the cold and the rain/snow/sleet/combos we get here in my neck of the woods.

Auntie B. gave me two fleece Ikea throws a few years ago and I instantly thought of that link in my re-f doc. Free fabric. Online (and therefore free) pattern. Pennies for the thread (which I always buy in huge spools). Nothing to lose really.

I may be in to long drapey things these days but — cream? What was I thinkin’? Must have been drinkin’ (brownie points for anybody who gets today’s musical reference: I’ll even give you a clue).

It got its seams ripped and I cut the fringed ends

to make some flowers. Terribly simple really — just roll & stitch! There’s seven of ‘em looking for a purpose.

I have a 85% complete idea in my head for a new shorter jacket but you’ll need to wait a few more days while my brain figures out the rest. I’ve cut view A in the cream fleece

and another view A in black leftover from another coat refashion. It’s over on my first refashion blog, A Year Without Clothes.

I made this Style jacket the first time in crush pink velvet. I gave it away but had a chunk left, on which I stitched my advanced goldwork piece when I was studying at the Royal School of Needlework.

I digress.

A while back a friend asked for a very-little-sewing sewing project and I recommended this tutorial.

I used to do lots of handwork in the evenings but fell out of the habbit. I play far too much solitairre, mah jong and brain training games on my iPad instead and THAT’S gotta stop. I cut…and cut…and cut black and cream flowery shapes from the pile of black and cream scraps.

I made an adjustment to the tutorial directions after pinning the flower to my 48 inch scarf (six inches longer than in the tutorial — thanks a lot for making me so tall, Mom and Dad): I moved all the smaller ones to the back of the neck

then trimmed down the base fabric. I have a long burgundy coat at the cleaners on which this is going to look great!

Must get back to that jacket.

Stay tuned.

For a better Hong Kong

When you have to chose only 13 collars from your stash of your husband’s work shirts given to the cause and you find you have enough make nearly TWO bags, you know there is a clothes horse in the family.

and you ain’t it. Sigh. I think he has more shoes than me if you count his golf shoes.

I have only six refashioning books total: this is one of the all Japanese text two from a bookstore in the Shin-Marunouchi Building (in the Chiyoda ward, designed by Sir Michael Hopkins of London) where I would wait for Himself to finish work when I tagged along on his week or two long Tokyo stints during our two years in Hong Kong (three out of six if I remember correctly. Yes. Himself has just provided confirmation). This particular book was bought in December of 2007. I remember because there was a men’s choir in the foyer of the building singing ‘O Holy Night’ in Japanese in what could be described as a marching band tempo. It was decidedly jolly. I can’t hear any version of that now without picturing those three dozen very solemn men in black trousers, white shirts and black bow ties. Their MD wore a red bow tie. I flipped through this book, trying all the time not to giggle and made a mental note not to send any more of Himself’s work shirts to charity.

FYI: A Year Without Clothes — i.e. a year without buying any clothes — did not start for another year after this. When a second year in Hong Kong was deemed necessary, I was NOT about to buy more hot weather clothes that would have little or no use once we returned to The Homeland, but you know all about that if you’ve read my first refashion blog so we shall move on.

Before I got pinning, I went from the two by six of the book’s directions

to two by five to make it more the size of my go-to bag (i.e. the one I grab when I am just walking down the local shops for a few bits and pieces). Park-n-Shop did not in fact offer this canvas bag in pink: when fellow Hong Kongians would ask which P&S sold these pink ones I would have to confess to dying it myself.

Almost forgot — the title of this post is the translation of the logo on the bag. I think. That’s what it says in English on the other side….

I wanted a little more strength to the bag — with just the collars it seems like it would be fine as a beach bag but I am looking to use this for groceries — so dug out this chunk of heavy cotton fabric and pinned my collars to it.

So long as I am not layered up, the handles on the pink bag will go over my shoulder. That’s rather useful so I deviated from the original and went with a two-collar handle for my version. As for the bottom, I interfaced a piece of the yellow, grabbed a random chunk from the pile due to be cut for the Dividing Day Quilt (more on that project — eventually — on my 2013 year-long craft blog) and cut a long narrow oval-ish shape to pin into the bottom.  I SO need to bring this with me on our next trip to Japan. How can I not?

As for Dorothea, she’s wearing one of my Thomas Pink shirts I’d already put two flowers on to cover a worn bit

but with more wear, it got more worn

…if that makes sense..and a third flower was required, which sort of balances the look a bit better. I think we’ll have to stop here before the petals overwhelm the rest of the shirt!