My Brother's Japanese Jacket

I lived in Japan for 9 months, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. They also have amazing textiles... so my family members all got a kimono. I regret not buying more, now that I can do all sorts of things with fabric, because I would have some amazing dresses by now! Next trip... though I'm starting to eye this one on the wall....

As he was unlikely to wear it as-is, my brother asked me to turn his kimono into a jacket.
No before picture, sorry, this post was semi-retroactive. It was a black kimono with a patterned bottom though. Phoenixes, even.
What I decided to do was unpick all of the pieces. It was a thin, silk kimono, so it wouldn't be a very warm jacket. I scoured the shops online and found a decent men's jacket that would fit my bro.

I wrapped the bottom pattern around the body of the jacket and pinned it into place

Pretty much a perfect fit!

It sounds odd, but the blacks matched really well, too, so the addition doesn't look out of place.

There was an extra motif, which I pinned to the sleeves of the jacket for extra detail.

Because of the thickness and shape of the sleeve, it was too hard to get all of this through my sewing machine. So I had to hand-sew all of it! This is the sleeve partially done:

It was going to look great when it was done!

I ran the back of the jacket through the machine- hand sewing would have taken forever!

And here it is, minus all of those pins:

Super Hero Nerd Refashion: from bedsheets to skirt

It's been a while! July, I think? I changed jobs and did 5 craft markets, which made life a bit busy. I spent a lot of time crafting things to sell and not sewing so many things for myself. Or blogging! Time to give it a go again.

You might remember the skirt refashion that I did to make my niece some superhero capes.
I started with these:

And now have these leftover:

The skirts were a bit short for me and sadly lacking in pockets. The more I looked at them, I thought they might be a bit young for me, too. The purple was too pastel for me (and the red was a better base colour). I decided to make a general nerd skirt, as I had patches from games and t-shirt logos that I could add on.

Then I found a set of Star Wars Stormtrooper bedsheets at the Op Shop fro $12 and I was inspired!

Got to keep the logo!

This top part of the sheet will make a good waist band, so I set it aside after I had cut a dress out of the fabric (but that's another post!).

I grabbed my rockabilly pattern and used the skirt as a template.

It uses a lot of fabric, so it would leave me plenty of room to sew patches onto.

But I had already cut two other skirts out of the fabric to make them for friends, so I got to use some of the Supergirl fabric from the capes to create a new panel. The more nerd the merrier!

The top of the fabric is still crinkled from when it had elastic in it! 

I pinned and sewed the patches on before I joined the skirt panels, so that it would be less unwieldy to maneuver through the machine. 

White zip for the white skirt.

It needed pockets, too, which I have decided are really required on everything. Skirts can feel so useless without them! 

But rather than add them into the seams or go any further I decided I didn't want to wear this skirt... It's sat in my unfinished pile for months now and I honestly think I'll cut it up and make shopping bags out of it instead. My sense of style has changed and I've moved away from the huge skirts for the moment.

An odd blog update, but there it is. I have finished photos of a few more things to update on posts so I had better hop to it!

Happy New Year #lovelypennypatterns

Op Shop Refashion: Denim pants to skirt

This refashion has been sitting on my pile for a while. I wanted to turn this pair of denim shorts into a skirt. The first step was to cut the legs open.

The front seam doesn't sit very well when you convert it, so I have to open it up and stitch it flat.

I has to rethink how this would work, given that it was raw edges that I was pinning down. I decided to seal them instead. 

 This would mean that the edges wouldn't fray and would be more comfortable to wear.

 After that I patched the gaps with dyed cotton napkins and a bit of lace.

 Back and front: 

 This is destined for my Christmas craft stall! 

#lovelypennypatterns

Salvaging and Refashioning a Top

For my Whirligig fabric, I had created an under dress that was then chopped up for a skirt. This top is what remains of it, and I am loathe to just throw it out. Everyone needs shirts, right?

All of the edges are overlocked and the pieces are joined at the shoulders. Part of the reason that I rejected it as a dress was that the darts would not sit properly with the weight of the skirt dragging it down. It sat funny over my bust and was a little bit tight. Luckily I hadn't sewed the side seams, so it can still be salvaged.
If I don't make a long top or dress I'll have to cut the zip short at the bottom. A shame, but I don't make many dresses so it isn't likely to be worth my effort unpicking the whole thing.
So how to salvage this?
I think this will be an everyday top, so I want it to be longer than the cropped shirts that I make to match my high waist work skirts. This way I can wear it with shorts.

The shoulders and arm holes were too tight, despite me cutting very generous seam allowances, so I put inserts on both sides of the shoulders. I like quirky, which is why they don't match. I am still thinking that there may be an overlay anyway, which will disguise this. It will need to include some orange though, or it will look extremely out of place!

When I pin the sides together on the manikin it looks fine. But dressmakers manikins rarely fit every body type - I often add padding to the bust of mine to fit my figure.

This fabric is also too light for a top on its own: I had issues for the Poison Ivy Cosplay that I did with it too. Heavier fabric sits better and also disguises any unsightly bulges or bra lace. With the Poison Ivy top I covered it with leaves until this wasn't obvious anymore. I'll have to do something else with this top.

I tried it on again, now that it didn't have the weight of the skirt attached, to see whether it fit any better.
It was better but still not amazing.
I needed to add fabric in the sides to make the top bigger around. Given the orange strip on the shoulder, this seemed to be the obvious colour.
I'm trying very hard not to buy things at the moment, both to use what I have and to save money. But I did a big clean out one weekend and re-arranged everything. I now have a box of scraps, two boxes of fabric aaaaaaand a BOX OF TIES! Time to upcycle 😁I really like this idea, from Pinterest. 

I turned to my stash for inspiration.

I buy more almost every time I go to an op shop. Some of them are silk! The patterns are so gorgeous and I have found ones from England, Italy and America. It was easy to dive into the box to find some things to add to my new top.

I thought about putting a bottom fringe of ties on it, which would look cool and add length, but I might not have enough of the right colours. It looks great on this skirt on Pinterest

A couple of possibilities:

Now that's an idea!

The shapes and colours remind me of the game I'm currently playing, Horizon: Zero Dawn. It has all these fabulous geometric shapes and colours, beads and braids. Maybe this can be inspired by it.

I pinned some ties onto the shirt on the dress manikin and left it for a while, fiddling inbetween working on other things. But it just wasn't speaking to me.
And then I found this great fabric top at the op shop. 

I recognised the print from the Aboriginal art workshop in Maningrida straight away. And the top, it turns out, is from a local dressmaker, Raw Cloth. What a find for a few dollars! I rather liked how they colours all went together:

Lots and lots of pinning. The bottom edge is really cute!

And when I wondered at some point where all of my pins were, I remembered... they were here!

Hmm, really like that neckline. There is no such thing as too many colours.

And then lots and lots of sewing, but it came together! I didn't think I could keep the tail though...

I'm particularly happy with the back, it all aligned nicely.

There is still some sewing to go, but you get the idea! A completely different top is on the way.

#lovelypennypatterns