Rosette Tutorial

This is part of a much bigger project, but I'm going to be making a bunch of these really cute fabric rosettes and thought I'd share how I do it: 

Start with a 1" wide piece of a fabric. Mine was about 18" long. It is fine to make it out of several strips sewn together if you don't have a piece long enough.

Fold strip in half and iron. The dark spot on the fabric is where my pen leaked while measuring the piece. 

Find a 1/2" strip of cardboard. Mine was just from a normal sheet of cardboard and so was 11" long. Wrap the strip around it on an angle. I wasn't happy with how I started mine...there must be a better way to make it start angled, rather than even...but I just gradually angled mine and it turned out okay. 

When the whole strip is wrapped around the cardboard, iron over it once or twice to make the folds stay. Then carefully slip the fabric off the cardboard so it lays freely. This is the hardest part. I like to slip one end off just an inch or two and pin it down (I'm using my ugly, stained ironing board as a table) so I don't have to worry. The strip will want to unwrap itself, so you have to go slowly and make sure it is all flat and laying the way it was on the cardboard. 

This is the other end of it. I like pull it out a little bit (it will be wrapped pretty tightly over the cardboard). Just go slowly and stretch it carefully so everything remains in place. When you're happy with it, pin both ends down. 

Iron it down. I angle the iron and go up and down over the strip instead of running the iron length-wise over it because the fabric has a tendency to get messed up under the iron and you don't realize it until it is too late. This way you can take it just a bit at a time. 

Find a pencil and roll the strip around the pencil. It is a little tricky at first, but gets easier. 

Finished pencil roll.

This is where you get to decide how your rosette will look. Mine ended up a little looser than I had anticipated. I did a little cluster of them several months ago that are very tight and I was going more for that look, but I think I like the roll uncoil too much when taking it off the pencil. So...slip the roll off the pencil and either let it loosen up or keep it tight depending on how you want the final rosette to look. I did pull mine a little tighter than it is in the above picture. You can do a lot to tweak it right now.

This is a side view of it. Pretty cute, eh?

If you're wondering what to do with the loose end, I just wrap it over the bottom of the rosette. This works best if you follow the folds in the fabric already. In the picture the strip is wrapped over the edge at the pre-ironed crease. I just folded the raw end under itself and pinned while I worked more on the front. 

I like to iron mine down slightly and "smoosh" them a little bit. 

To finish the back, I cut a small circle out of brown felt (using the thread spool as my pattern) and after sewing the end down on the back (the part that had been pinned on) I sewed this circle over it. I'm not sure how I'm going to use these flowers yet, so I made two small parellel slits in the felt so I could tie a ribbon to it, attach it to something, etc...

You can't really see the slits, but they are there. The felt just gives it a nicer backing, stabilizes the shape, and gives you something so you can attach it to other objects. 

Finished rosette! 

Finished rosette on a nicer background. I know I should have put something else in the picture to give you an idea of the size, but this complete rosette turned out to be about 1 1/2" across. It can be done a lot tighter, and you can always add fabric (or cut it off) if you need to adjust the size. 

I really like this one and it turned out very nice, imho. :) 

I mentioned my room decor...mainly the branch on the wall with bird pillows and a nest. I'm thinking of making 6-8 of these rosettes and hanging them from different branches. I think it would help make it more whimsy and cute than "oh, look, she hung a branch on her wall and stuck some birds on it...that's kinda cheesy." By hanging rosettes from it, I'll be saying, "I'm not trying to look like I have a real branch with real birds on it, but I just thought it was cute." Haha, does that make sense? 

Anyways, I may not end up doing that, but I can always put this on a ribbon and use it as a headband or some other cool thing. I love how versatile and adorable these are! 

Bird Love

I can't remember where I saw this idea, but it was this little bird pillow. Think Twitter bird, except soft and squishable. My room is mostly abstract/modern but it has some natural influences too. The picture above my bed is a kinda quirky branch/leaf painting. The colors of my room (brown, green, gold) are obviously natural colors too. I'm trying to balance the funky/modern look with a nerdy/vintage feel and the whimsy/fun natural designs. A lot to attempt!
I was inspired to carry out my idea after seeing these dinosaur pillows from See Kate Sew. I'm not a fan of dinosaurs, but seeing all the different patterns and ideas made me think of how much I could do with a simple bird pattern.
I plan to have a tutorial here this week, but I'll start with some pictures of the birds I've done so far. I found this really neat branch that I'm going to hang on the wall and my sister had an old birds nest she gave me to put in it too, so that's going to be uber-cute with my birds.

It makes me inexplicably happy to see my bird contentedly sitting in her nest. 

And this one is reversible! 

This one has a coarser/tweedy fabric that I think is really cute. 

Doesn't this make you want to sew your own bird?!

Tunic ---> Skirt ---> Happiness

Last night I finished my tunic refashioning project. This evening I put the finishing touches on it.
I didn't take pictures during the project (my bad) but I do have after pictures.

Finished skirt

I decided how long I wanted it to be. My favorite length is just above the knee and I wanted this skirt to be about that length. I planned to have a 2" waistband, so I subtracted 2" from the total length to find out where to cut the tunic. The bottom already had a hem, so that was cool. I cut out the skirt body which was basically just measuring X inches from the bottom of the tunic (forgot the measurement...) and cutting a straight line.

Next step was the waistband. It was a great idea to use the buttons and button holes from the cuffs to make the waistband. I used my seam ripper to separate the cuff from the sleeve. Here's how I figured the waistband measurements:

I wanted the finished waist to be 31". The cuffs were only long enough for one quarter (from middle of front to side, for example) so I divided 31" by 4. Each cuff needed to cover 7 3/4" (not allowing for seams) and since each was about 11"...I was doing fine. These pieces were basically ready to go, but I still needed 15 1/2" to cover the back. I cut this out of the yoke of the tunic (at least I think it is the yoke...the panel between the shoulders that covers the upper back...) and made it 5" wide by about 18" long. The 5" allowed for doubling the fabric to create a nice seam at the top of the waist and then 1/2" on the inside and outside to fold under.

Somewhere along in here I messed up. I think I never trimmed the cuffs for the front waistband, so I added my 18" strip to the two 11" pieces and discovered I had more than enough...and cut a bunch off the 18 inches. When I tried it on, the side seams were all messed up. I didn't have enough fabric left to make a new 18" piece, so I just saved part of the piece I had already and made another one, so I had two 7 3/4 pieces for the back. After these, everything was pretty easy.

I sewed along the top of the band in the back to make it match the stitching on the edge of the cuff/band in the front. After attaching all the pieces of the waistband, I was ready to attach it to the skirt. This took a lot of fitting and pinning. I had quite a lot of extra fabric in the back but it looked really bad to have it gathered/pleated all the way around the back. I ended up with a several small tucks on the sides. Once it was pinned the sewing was very easy. I sewed the waistband to the skirt and it was basically done!

I just added a few things like...sewing up the front where it had previously buttoned down/up. I left about 4 inches at the bottom like most slits on skirts. I sewed it shut almost all the way to the top. I had to leave it open about 3 inches from the top to allow for getting it on and off. Sewing the front closed really helped it feel not so much like a shirt that I was wearing as a skirt and made me more comfortable to wear it without worrying about the openings between buttons.

Front sewn down almost to the bottom

Of course...being me, I couldn't just leave it like that. Way too boring. But the point of this skirt was to have some neutral that would go with lots of things. So I couldn't jazz it up with some random color. I decided to do something with the leftover fabric. I cut several strips of fabric out, about 14" long by the width of "As I Lay Dying" (the ruler width was too wide, so I grabbed the nearest thing....like a Faulkner novel). I just bought a little bottle of that fray-check stuff for my curtains, and so figured the easiest way to finish the strips would be to use the glue. Thankfully it didn't stain or leave any dark places. After the glue dried I gathered the strips using large straight stitching on my machine. Then I had to figure out how to arrange these cute ruffly things on the skirt. I had an ulterior motive for doing this embellishment: I had noticed a small dark spot on the skirt, it had been there when the skirt was tunic, it looked like a drop of ink or something. It was on the front, near the center, and it was rather annoying. So I just arranged the fabric in some cool way as to look neat and also cover the stain. I just sewed it down and voila! A lovely new skirt!

Embellishment on front

I wore it today and tonight added a couple things to it:

As I noted about, I left the front seam open at the top, from the waistband button to the next button below it and it bugged me today that when I sat in certain positions, the opening between the buttons wouldn't lay flat. Obviously it could get embarrassing too, so I added a small snap between the buttons to keep it closed.

I also wore it today with a belt which "cinched it up" a bit but I realized it would be nice to have the skirt a bit tighter without having to wear a belt. Hence I added about 2 inches of elastic in the back.

Elastic in back viewed from the outside

Elastic in back and the inside of the front waistband

Overall:

I love the neutral color, the length is perfect, I kept the great pockets, the swirly/ruffly/thingy on the front adds some character, and it is uber-comfy but yet nice enough I can wear it to work. I have visions of wearing it this winter with my high black boots too...or my black ballet flats...so I think it is going to be very versatile! :)

Finished skirt...in case you missed it at the beginning

Circle Skirts!

Casey at Elegant Musings is doing a Circle Skirt Sew-Along that I'm excited about. While I can't commit to actually doing it, I will be interested to follow it. Earlier this year I made my first circle skirt. There are a lot of things I like about it, but I'm not happy with how the waistband turned out. I used a pretty heavy fabric and didn't really reinforce the waist and so it stretches and doesn't stay as high or tight as I'd like it to be. In other words, after a few hours the band ends up around what is now considered the waist (more technically the hips) instead of my true waist. I wanted it to have a definite vintage feel, so this is quite a drawback. I haven't figured out how to fix it yet without a lot of trouble. So I'm interested to watch how Casey does her skirt and what I can learn from it for mine.

Crazy Project

I'll eventually describe some of the things I've done in my room, but my latest project has to do with the curtains. Three of my walls are green, and one is brown. The windows and most of the trim is a yellow/gold color. When I picked out my curtains, we really weren't sure how the room was going to turn out (style, feel, etc...) so I just went with these sheer-ish cream colored curtains. They've been fine, but are getting boring. I'm trying to go with a more modern, quirky, geometric look, hence an area rug with squares & circles and a nightstand with polka-dots. Staying with the circle thing, I had the brilliant idea to:
1) cut out circles from cool fabric
2) go over the edges of the circles with fabric glue to stop them from fraying
3) use some sort of adhesive to stick them to the curtains.
The people at Joann's Fabric were helpful in finding what I needed and I got several small sections of uber-cute fabric. Like I said, the colors in my room are brown, green and yellow. I'm also accenting with red, so I found fabric that incorporated all of these colors into them.
It was only after I got home and starting cutting out circles that I realized what a big project this was. I have about 14 circles per panel. This means:
cutting out 14 fabric circles + going over them with fabric glue + trimming off the dark rings that the glue leaves + cutting out 14 circles from the adhesive stuff = a ton of work
When I showed my family the fabrics, they were like, "oh wow...they are all different!" And I realized that everyone had assumed I would use the same fabric for all the dots...which just goes to show how random I am. :)
I have some pictures of some of the new things in my room, plus a couple shots of my curtain project:

My polka-dot nightstand. This lamp had been on my desk. I love it so much. I got it several years at a garage sale for $2. The color and style is perfect. There's an outlet on the base too, which is cool because I can charge my ipod next to my bed and not have to stumble across the room when the alarm goes off in the morning. :) 

 Details...It was pretty tedious to paint this stand. It had been baby blue and I had to do two coats of brown. My dad did most of the green dots with a homemade circular sponge-thingy he made. I bought a smaller sponge at the hardware store to do the yellow ones. It turned out really well, and I made it more interesting by making some circles go around the corner (like the half-circle in the top right of the photo below) and overlapping green and yellow ones. The green isn't as bright as I had hoped, but oh well. Not everything is perfect :) 

 More details...

 Weird, dark view of my tentative curtain plans (the circles are only pinned on)

 Forgot to rotate this one...just turn your head sideways...

 This is the picture hanging above my bed. It isn't geometric, but I like the nature aspect of it. 

 Got a new lamp for my desk, from Target. It took forever to find a cheap cute lamp that would take 60 watts. 

Just a cool view of the circles as I had them laid out. 

Tunic ---> Skirt

I have this khaki colored button-up tunic from Old Navy that I have not worn for a while. I used it a lot last year, but not this summer. Problems with it: It is just a little too short to wear without leggings. I love leggings, but they are really hot in the summer, especially since our house doesn't have AC. I also don't really want to wear leggings to work, so this tunic has basically been wasting valuable space in my tiny closet. I also recently noticed that I have almost no solid colored skirts. I have maroon, black and brown skirts, but besides that nothing. All three of them are full skirts, the maroon and brown being three-tiered gathered skirts. I like loose, flowy tops but if I wear anything like that with these skirts, I feel like a shapeless bag. So...I mention all of that to say that I'm thinking of converting this tunic to a skirt. Something more along the lines of a pencil skirt. I'd like a high waist too, so I can tuck my shirt in and wear a cute belt. Because my tunic is essentially a super-long blouse, I'm looking for tutorials about how to convert a blouse or man's shirt to a skirt because it is the same idea. I found a great tutorial over at Hawadaere Blog, here. I didn't want a zipper, and I was trying to think of a way to use the buttons and button holes already in the thing to fasten the skirt at the waist. So...I would totally follow the tutorial and do it today except that...
...She recommends that you cut the cuffs off the sleeves to use for the waistband (this is how you get the pre-made button and hole) and then just cut fabric from somewhere else on the item for the rest of the item because for most people, including me, 2 sleeve cuffs do not equal the circumference of the waist. The only problem I can foresee with this method is that there will be seams in the waistband at rather awkward places. Instead of having seams on each side, I think the seams will fall more in the front, with your long extra piece covering more than half of the band. This might not bother some people, but I really would rather have the seams at normal, even places.
So I need to think about how to deal with this. Most of the other tutorials I've found either require a zipper or interfacing (which I don't own and stupidly forgot to pick up at Joann's Fabric yesterday.
I'm just going to think it over for a few days before doing anything irreparable (like cutting my tunic in half...) because I have a habit of starting projects without thinking them through properly :-/

Hello World!

So I finally decided to start my own DIY/craft/sewing blog. Let me introduce myself:
I live with my parents and five siblings on a lovely farm in the Midwest. I was homeschooled and graduated last year. I now work part-time in the office at a nearby aerospace factory and really enjoy it. I just published my first novel, Path of Grass, through Amazon. I love economics and am teaching some homeschool students this fall. I'm fairly active politically, though not as much as I'd like to be.
This is my second Blogger blog...the first one was put to rest when I started my own website, www.savannahliston.com, which is where all my political and economic posts go.
Why I'm doing this: I love getting ideas from other creative people and wanted to give back, so to speak, by crediting them and sharing the things that they've inspired me to do. I'm also a pretty cheap person, so I'm always dreaming of ways to do pretty/fun things without buying anything new :)  I don't have a lot of technical sewing skills and anything more complicated than elastic generally scares me, but I like to do a lot of refashioning because there are usually already zippers and buttons installed :)
I'll be showing you some of my projects, finished and in process, soon...so check back soon!