28 March 2015

Blouse alteration

I've been watching The Great British Sewing Bee  lately, which I endlessly love and everytime I watch it  I want to dust off my sewing machine and do something amazing. So last time I watched one of the episodes when I decided to do some garment alteration. I have many items piled up in my wardrobe which I don't wear but can't bin as they mean something to me or reminds me some special occasion or I have some items that I haven't even worn as they were given to me as a gift and aren't 'my cup of tea' if you know what I mean... So I've told myself why don't you change these slightly and make them either wearable or alter them to something completely different. Here is the first alteration and I hope you like it! 


I had this blouse only for couple months, but I didn't wear it as I didn't like the collar and wide sleeves, therefore these were first 2 things I removed from the blouse immediately. 


I used existing collar and sleeves as a pattern so I didn't have to measure the blouse again or create new pattern. As material I used black leatherette (faux leather) that you can buy in any shop with fabrics. You can buy various type of faux leather from heavy duty to very thin letherette. In my opinion medium  leatherette is the best as it still look like leather and it's easier to sew and shape. 



Once I cut the shape of sleeves and collar I pinned and sew onto the blouse and cut it to the wanted length/shape.


I've also added a piece of leatherette onto button's line matching the width of the line and sew on new black buttons on top of it. 


And that's it! The new blouse has been born :) I think it will be my favorite this summer :) 



27 March 2015

DIY Origami Rug

I always get excited to find any new Origami  DIY project on Pinterest and can't wait to dive into it. Last time I did  Felt Table mats and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to do something similar but in a bigger scale. So.. Here it is .. The Origami rug!




At the time I didn't realize that doing this project in bigger format will take weeks/ maybe months? I usually started at evenings after dinner while watching TV. I didn't have to concentrate as this requires repetition of the same thing on and on again. I felt like a machine! But I enjoyed doing it and I think the result is great, I love my new carpet in our dining room.

 My little helper likes it too!

Below are couple pictures from work in progress. If you want to try to give a go, please visit this amazing blog  'How about orange' where you can download pattern and follow easy steps.

 I have chosen different material rather then felt this time. I used thin carpet, which wasn't probably great choice as it wasn't easy to fold or cut, but at the end it is a carpet so I wanted to go for something durable. If you use felt you will have to reinforce  it with some heavy duty iron or sew on underlay.
Pattern and step by step can be found  here
What you can see below took me about 6 evenings to finish. Yes, there is a lot of cutting, folding, and cutting again involved but I am sure you will love the result of your work at the end, like I did.  

If you find any more interesting origami projects, feel free to share here. I can't wait to make more. Thank you for reading :)