S1XTY6NE

When I was in high school, I loved sewing, and I named my fashion line "s1xty6ne," since I lived at house number 61. I wanted to study fashion design in college, but decided that I was too selfish to want to have other people wear the clothes I made. Last time I was in Connecticut, I took pictures of all the clothes I still had lying around. Some were ridiculous, all were awesome. Check them out below!

Dressy pants that my mom helped me make. The only thing I've ever made using a pattern.

A skirt I remade from some old dungarees I found in my Grandma's attic. The pocket came from some other jeans, and the retro numbers were found in some box in the attic.

I took an old XXL t-shirt from a our family reunion, took the sides in and added a slit and a shoe lace to add so style to the front.

The fabric came from the bottom of a skirt that my mom had hemmed shorter. The plastic frog came from my old toy box, and the one-arm strap came off an old canvas shopping bag.

I found some weird fabric in an old box, and made a weird halter top with "Feelin' Crabby" written in fabric paint and an orange satin crab that I probably stole from Jo-Ann Fabrics when I was a kid. Some orange ribbon to lace up the bottom added a finishing touch.

Some orange yarn, lace off an old curtain, and another old pair of jeans.

I tried making pleats unsuccessfully, and also wasted a whole bottle of fabric paint to add the Finnish flag to the pocket. I didn't wear this one very much.

This skirt was one of my favorites. I again cut up some old jeans that had the zipper missing. I added a zipper diagonally across the front, and embellished it with lots of random fabric pieces, some lace in the front slit, a plastic frog, and wrote "MMM Nice" on the back pocket in fabric marker. No idea why I chose that phrase. My cousin wore this a few times in NYC and got a lot of compliments.

This old pair of boy's jeans had had a rip fixed on the left thigh, so I ripped out the seam and left it as a high slit. I removed a back pocket, embellished it, and made the waist bigger with a chunk of denim and an embroidered 61.

This once was a large Old Navy t-shirt. I turned it inside out, took the sides in, cut the collar and sleeves off, and used dot fabric paint to put my brand on the front. 

I added a fabric T Rex and a big unnecessary yellow zipper to this old shirt of my brothers. I wore this one a lot.

This no-sew remaking strategy for big old t-shirts is easy. Just cut off the sleeves and some excess fabric on the sides, and then slit the fabric up to where you want to the armhole and tie them together to get a cowgirl style shirt. Not my favorite creation.

This was just an old pajama shirt that I (unevenly) added some no-stretch white fabric to to make a Finnish flag.

I knit giant armwarmrs/legwarmers on size 35 knitting needles.

This was my first attempt at knitting in the round. I didn't know that I was supposed to make sure my stitches weren't twisted, and of course they were. I kept going just to get the practice in, and then flattened the lump that resulted from the twist, added arms, and had a great weird tank top sweater with a built-in pregnancy bump or hunchback. It seems like it should be somehow cool, but it just wasn't. Now I know always to check my stitches when knitting on circular needles, and haven't made that mistake ever again.

This is my favorite creation. I took some more left-over fabric from an old skirt of my mom's (in the second picture you can see where the skirt's slit was), added fabric that had been used on my childhood bedroom curtains for straps, sewed a blue chair from my dollhouse on the front, and wrote "SIT" in the same blue fabric along the slit. How awesome and provocative was I in high school?! I wore it to school a few times with my mom's Dirndlkleid white cropped lacy shirt underneath.

 This was a spandex dress that I wore to Homecoming. I also wore it to school one day. And no teachers ever told me it was inappropriate... what was wrong with them?

I'm sure there are quite a few other things I created in high school, but these are some classics. In honor of this creativity I had in high school, I renamed my Etsy store to S1XTY6NE.

Getting Serious with Etsy

Well, not really serious, since my product descriptions are full of sarcasm and puns, but you know what I mean. Since I've been laid off, I have more time to devote to jewelry making and marketing myself, so that's what I'll be working on this fall. I've made some new awesome rings, and as winter nears I hope to start doing more knitting as well. I put in an Etsy widget that's visible at the bottom of this blog. So, now all I need to do is get my blog read by million of people, who will then see the link and be directed to my Etsy page. And the money will start rolling in!

Rings Around the Rosie

I have been having intense jewelry-making evenings lately - and have a lot of fun things to show as a result. (How dorky is it to call sitting on the couch with various pliers "intense?") Some of these will end up on my Etsy shop, others are too cool for the internet and will become part of my ever-growing, ridiculously-oversized jewelry collection. There is an 8-carrot ring in there that some guy with a great sense of humor will snap up on Etsy.

Etsy!

I finally opened my own Etsy store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/xen0phile

I hope to add a lot more in the next few months, and once winter comes around, there will be a lot more knitting in there. What fun! I hope people buy things.

5-Carrot Diamonds

In a conversation with my cousin a few months ago, I came up with the hilarious idea to make a ring of carrots and talk about it as my "5-carrot ring." Which is, of course, only funny when you know enough about diamonds to know that they are sized in a unit of measure (??) called a karat. Carrot, karat, haha.
I enlisted the help of my coworker's friend, who is an expert in polymer clay vegetable making. She came over one night and helped me make a bushel of carrots.

Before we even got started, Jill showed me this pin she made when she had her own vegetable jewelry company, and I knew that I had found the right person for the job. I mean, look at that magic! 

Cut the clay....

Make the carrots...

Stick them together in an artistic way...

And, the final results. A 5-carrot ring (on the left) for my cousin, and an 8-carrot ring for .... me? Etsy buyer? We will have to see. All that remains to be done here is to superglue the carrots onto a flat ring.

In exchange for the wonderful tutorial on clay carrots, I gifted Jill a pink wire ring I'd made. A fair trade? I think I definitely got the end of the deal!

Not Quiet on the Jewelry Front

The past few weeks have been full of jewelry making. I cleared the junk off my kitchen table and now have it covered in jewelry-making parts. I've made the first few things for the start of an Etsy store, and I've gifted some things to friends now. A wire ring takes just a few minutes free-hand and I created 2 Barbie accessories necklaces that will make someone very happy. In the last 2 months since I've updated this blog, here are the jewels I've created:

The one in the middle is a pin that belonged to my Grandma. Now it is a ring worn regularly. 

Neon orange floppy disk earrings and an old 5-inch floppy as a fascinator. I was inspired by the royal wedding. The first time I wore it, the cook and the waitress at a restaurant I went to argued about whether it was for graduation or for fashion. The cook, when I told him fashion was the reason, he said, "I knew it. I told her! I know fashion when I see it."

A new idea I had to combine jewelry and knitting. I liked it so much I've already made 2 others.

And I saved the best for last. These are what I might call my masterpieces. The pink Barbie necklace is made up of real accessories from my Barbie box back in Connecticut. For some reason, little child Anna decided to rip off her Barbie's head and cut all her hair off.  Cool? Weird? I vote cool, of course. The Ken necklace is made up of accessories I found while tag saleing. I got an entire Barbie suitcase full of dolls, accessories and even 2 My Little Pony toys for just $4. Mind you this included a Ken wheelchair. It was worth every penny!