The Iron Craft Craft Challenge

I know, I know, I still haven't posted a photo of my dress yet. Every time I wear the dress somewhere I forget to take my camera, and every time I remember my camera I'm not wearing the dress, and every time I have both on me, I don't have someone else to take a photo. It's starting to drive me a little nuts, actually, because I have clothes I want to put on ebay and I can't just whack them on there without photos :P

I may just take a pic of myself in the mirror in the dress. It's probably simpler, but it looks so nice all puffed out, plus my room is a hole. As evidenced in this piccie here, of something I did manage to make over the holiday break (break from what?):

Yes, that's right, a zombie dress. Based off this little t-shirt here (PS, how adorable is that kid!). Here's a close-up of the front part of the dress:

And here's where my butt goes:

 I had a cotton minidress lying around that I'd gotten for free with a magazine. I laid it out flat on the ground and spray painted it green, making sure that I coated the bottom of the dress with more paint than the top so there was a graded look. I did manage to drip some paint on the dress (I find spray paint near impossible to use) but I think it suits it. Then I printed out some zombie silhouettes onto transfer paper, and ironed them onto the dress at the bottom.

Things I would do differently: I would make sure to use fabric paint instead of spray paint. I am a knob who bought cheap green spray from the local $2 shop, not thinking that 'enamel' is probably not best used on clothing. The dress is a bit stiff but it'll live. Also ironing the transfers onto enamel destroyed my iron. *sadface*
Also I would probably just do as the original t-shirt and cut out zombies for use as templates. The transfers didn't go well with the stiffened, yet still slightly stretchy cotton, so the zombies are surrounded by haloes of plastic.

In any case, while I haven't been exactly productive lately, I do plan to make some changes. I've set myself a goal this year to make at least one thing every week, and coincidentally within the first week of the year I found The Iron Craft Craft Challenge.
Basically, they will post a challenge every week: a pattern, a plan, or even just a theme, and people in the challenge will have a week to make it (or something in the theme of it). It seems to me like a good way to expand my crafting abilities. I run out of steam if I'm left to my own devices - I run in too many directions at once, and sometimes run out of ideas and have severe crafter's block. This will fix that.

The other good thing is that it will give me something to blog about, so I won't have so much blank space floating around here. And if I make anything that I think will be easy enough to explain, I will post tutorials, coz I'm nice like that.

So join me, one and all, as I try to focus some of my insanity with my hands!

PS. Totes promise to post a photo of that dress. Eventually.

2010 Volkwagen GTI

I sew.

I'm not great at it (though I'm not totally shit either) but I enjoy it. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and it's kind of fun, and that fills both columns in my therapist's "reasons to do things" graph.

I fight a not-exactly-epic-but-still-fucking-hard battle with depression and anxiety and a thousand other mental and emotional issues. Finding something I enjoy doing is a fight in and of itself. I figured I may as well add to the sense of mastery that I'm supposed to get from tasks, by actually setting myself goals and attempting to achieve them. But I gotta record them too, hence the blog.

So here I am, first post in, explaining what's gunna be here. Not much really. Just me bitching and whinging, with some occasional photos and descriptions of the latest things I've been making.

So. What have I been making? I'm most of the way through making a pair of hippy pants. The original tutorial can be found here and her pants look way better than mine. Probably because she used hippy-type fabric. When I went shopping for mine, all I knew was that I wanted black fabric and that I wanted to wear the pants in winter and spring so they had to be a bit warmer than whatever hers were made of. About halfway through doing the hems I realised I was making them out of tracksuit material. Fucking posh y'all. In any case, what I have so far looks like a thick sheet anyway, so I can't imagine I'll be wearing them in anything resembling public.

This is what they look like so far:


Yep. I told you. A fucking sheet. So I'm going to have to cut them down a bit. But for now I can't be bothered. I still need to buy some ribbon to use as a waistband/tie which means I can't finish them yet anyway, so they'll have to wait until next week when I can afford/be bothered to buy it.

About halfway through making the pants I realised that I have an annoying habit of never having my sewing kit with me when I need it. Not that it's far away - I live in a 3-room apartment - but I'm lazy, and fuck having to move 8 whole feet to get my sewing kit when I could just stay sitting on my fat pasty arse. So I grabbed a slap-band and made a little cover for it with some leftover material I had. Then I found a 2D re-endition of a sphere, printed it, pinned it to some leftover felt and cut it out. Now, when I can be bothered, I'll sew the bits together and make a ball that I'll somehow attach to the slap-band. Then I can just whack the band on my wrist when I'm sewing, and I'll have a pincushion on my arm and I won't have to get up and go to the loungeroom to get my kit whenever I start at the sewing machine. As I'm typing this, it occurred to me that I should make a leather apron to carry scissors and stuff in. I am a fucking genius.

Also in the making is a denim bag that I started on weeks back and then lost momentum with. I grabbed a zombie embroidery pattern from Urban Threads ( a totally kick-arse sewing site) and at some point in my facebook-addicted-week, I will start to sew a zombie on to my new little bag. Yay me. I can haz planz. :)