LAST OF THE FLOWER EMBELLISHING

I think I've got all the flower making out of my system now. Here's the last two necklaces I made. Again I followed the tutorials in the book The Artful Ribbon.











I've noticed lots of embellished t-shirts lately too. Lots of flowers, lace and ruffles. These four are from Anthropology. I love Anthropology but can't justify spending money their. They are a bit out of my price range. But they have some pretty stuff to look at and be inspired by.



This my attempt at creating my own flower embellished t-shirt. I bought two t-shirts of the same color, one in my size and the other in a large. I then created a template of circles. I cut the circles out of cardboard and used these to trace circles onto my large sized tshirt. After cutting out many circles in the three sizes I started to stack them together. I stacked one large, one medium and one small circle together. I then sewed these together in the middle. After having a bunch of these sewn together I started pinning them to the t-shirt. The key to getting them to look full is to clump your circles close together. The closer you sew these together the fuller it will be. Hopefully that makes sense. I really need to get better with taking pics of my work in process. I get so busy working I just forget.

Below are the circle sizes I used. Just click on the image to make larger and print these to use. It should print out at actual size.

FASHION IN DETAIL

I'm still on my month long kick of sewing. I've almost finished the four tunics and dress for my daughter and I finished putting the hooks in the two dresses I made for my self. At some point I need to take pics of those. I'd love to get outside to take some pics but it's always raining : (.  I also finished another flower necklace. When I get in this mood I start looking through my history of fashion books. I just discovered the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A for short, Fashion in Detail books. The books only show close up photos of garments. You really get to see the construction of the clothing. There are also diagram like drawings of the garment as well as detailed written descriptions about the history of the piece. Very interesting.



17th and 18th Century- Fashion in Detail



19th Century-Fashion in Detail It looks like this book is no longer in print. However Borders website has it but it is back ordered. Luckily I was able to order this book through my works library and they were able to find it for me. We have an awesome creative library here at work, one of the great perks.



Images from 19th Century Fashion in Detail



20th Century- Fashion in Detail

LIBERTY OF LONDON FOR TARGET

I finally made it over to Target to take a look at the Liberty of London collection exclusive for Target. Luckily for me I live in the midwest and this stuff isn't really flying off the shelves here. There were a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I disliked. It was fun seeing all the prints but I was disappointed in the clothing, the womens especially. Most of the womens clothings is made of polyester. It just seems a bit cheap. I had wished they had done more in cotton. Also the womens clothing runs large and the fit is a bit wonky. So needless to say I didn't pick up any clothing for myself.



I did get this wallet. It's pretty roomy and holds all my cards as well as my checkbook. However, be careful how much change you try to shove in the coin section. If you try to over stuff this wallet, the magnetic closure won't hold it shut. But it works for me.



I did pick this jumper up for my two year old. All the childrens clothing is made of cotton. Much better quality than the womens. However, the toddler clothing runs really, really small. My daughter wears a 2T and I ended up with having to purchase a 4T. I'm not sure what sizing guides they were going by. Odd sizing is my biggest complaint when clothes shopping. Old Navy is the worst. You could say it's because it's cheap clothing but I've found sizing issues in expensive clothing as well.



I so wish this skirt had come in Toddler sizes. This is in the girls clothing section. There are more options in girls clothing than there are in the baby/toddler clothes.

And finally, I checked out the bedding hoping to find just a set of sheets. All my store had where comforters and that's all they have on line as well. I would have loved to have created my own skirt or dress out of the material.

So overall I'd say I was 60% pleased with the collection. Loved looking through out the store for everything, loved all the fun signage, and loved listening to the highschool boy employee complaining the prints hurt his eyes. HaHa!

FLOWER NECKLACE BIBS

I decided to make something for myself this weekend and got carried away with making a bunch of these flower bibs. I love how floral necklace bibs are in right now. I LOVE Victorian fashion and these remind me of that. It's the attention to detail that draws me in. I also love fashions of the eighteenth century.

I made the flowers on all these necklaces from wired ribbon. They are really quite easy. I followed the tutorials in the book The Artful Ribbon by Candace Kling. I was fortunate to have gotten to take a class taught by her called Fabric Manipulation at the Surface Design Conference held a couple of years ago at the Kansas City Art Institute. I was super inspired after taking her class and had wished I had gone into Fiber as a major instead of Illustration. Oh well, I can't change the past.



I wish I had taken a pic of an individual flower but got caught up in working and forgot.



Here's what the back looks like. The book recommends using crinoline as backing to sew the flowers to. Use a heavy quilting thread when sewing down the flowers otherwise your thread could break. Once I had the flowers and leaves all sewn together I covered the crinoline with felt. You could sew this down or use a fabric glue. I chose glue.



Here's the finish. I decided to change the shear material where the jump rings are held to velvet ribbon that I had lying around. I happened to find the chain with pearls at Michael's and thought it would compliment the flowers.



There is no rule to making these. It comes down to laying things out on the table, moving it around, seeing how it all looks together and then sewing it all together.



I highly recommend this book. Even if you're not going to make ribbon flowers, the pictures are beauticul to look at.



Here's the second one I made. Love the single corsage look to this with the delicate chain. I also added yellow crystal beads.





This last one is my favorite. I wish the picture had tuned out better. I just could not get the lighting right. Though you can't see them in the pic, I added small black and grey crystal beads around the centers of the flowers. I added crystal buttons to the silver flowers.  I also used some freyed sating material on this one. That's what you see peeking out the bottom.



Check out the book below if you like Victorian fashion illustrations. This is fun to look at.

MORE HEADS

I made two more heads in the past week. I decided to put these two plus the blue head up on Etsy. I've also added a couple other items on Etsy.

I found out that I'll be participating in Plush You LA this year. It will be held at Munky King August 26.. I am very excited and have been thinking about what I want to do for that show. I also just found out that my movie concession guys will be in the July issue of Stuffed. Now I have the hard part of writing my story that goes along with them. Looks like the summer is gearing up to be busy. I better get all my other sewing projects done now.