More Rings

Spring arrived and I felt like making some more jewelry.

Ringing in the New Year

So, it's April. My last jewelry post was in November. How the time flies! I have made tons of rings since then. I have sold tons of rings since then. Here are some pictures of them.

 Aissa made the one with the evil eyes. It was his first attempt at jewelry-making. What a natural!

I also spent the winter knitting. Yes, it wasn't as long and snowy as most Minnesota winters, but I still have a lot to show for it.

A warm cowl.

Three great scarflaces (necklaces/scarves).

Mittens that apparently are designed based on the one Kristen Stewart wears in Twilight. I made them not for that reason. I made them because they're awesome.

Yes. I knit a whole sweater. Lots of free time in Algeria meant that I did all this in just 3 weeks!

And. I now have my own business cards. And they're beautiful. Doesn't it make you want to just buy lots and lots?

You Reap What You Sew

I have gotten back into sewing! I now own a sewing machine AND a serger thanks to craigslist, and I got both for a total of $40. I started out with small projects since I hadn't sewn regularly since high school, but finally got around to some real clothing projects.

After getting back from Algeria, I was inspired by the traditional Berber dresses. Aissa's family had one made for me while we were there, but the style isn't something I could really wear everyday around Minneapolis without looking like I was heading to a costume party. I wanted to make an American-style Berber dress. So after picking up some awesome fabric, a $1 dress pattern, and a basket-full of ric-rac, I was ready to go. I always used to make up my own patterns as I went, so I didn't have much experience with real patterns. However, this was called "Sew Simple" so I hoped it would be so simple. Minus the darts, it was. I had a hell of a time getting the bust darts to lay right, but I have to blame myself. I serged them rather than all that pinning and basting and re-stitching. I still cut corners anywhere I can, but I had to kick myself afterwards when they looked like I had an Austin Powers fem-bot bra on! After hours of pulling out stitches and re-stitching, I finally got them looking presentable. Done and done. Here it is!

I felt so excited about finally successfully completing a real sewing project, I got started immediately on the next one. I bought some great travel themed postage stamp fabric at the Junk Bonanza two years ago, and haven't done much with it except make a Kindle case and a necklace for my mom.

So, I decided to make myself an apron. I have wanted one for a while now and just hadn't gotten around to buying one. I looked at some patterns online to get an idea of sizing, but then mostly just guessed and cut and stitched. And the result was perfect. I look adorable. I love myself sometimes.

(Don't worry, I have shorts on underneath. No inappropriate cooking going on here!)

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.