Don't forget!

Just a reminder to enter the giveaway for Naked Fashion (that's a book, not something dirty! Shame on you for thinking that!)! You have until tomorrow!

Short and sweet

As most of you would know, I'm something of a hoarder (although I prefer to think of it as "collecting"). Some of my favourite things to collect are vintage sewing patterns such as this one.


Admittedly I rarely get to actually use any of the patterns I buy, because I never seem to have the time but also because I already have so many clothes that it seems wasteful to make more. Also, I often rework the things that I have, so I rarely make things from scratch any more. However, I felt I needed a pair of shorts in a basic colour to get through the summer, and I just happened to have some black moire taffeta lying around (bought last year or so for a few dollars at an op shop - of course), so I thought I'd give the bloomers from these shortie pyjamas a go (pattern piece D).


Here's how they turned out! Sorry that the pictures are a bit dark, it's hard to get detail shots of black clothing!
Front:


Back:


Side:


African-inspired-Frida Kahlo-style at the Botanical Gardens while styling for a fashion shoot for couturing.com

The pattern was so easy that the shorts only took me about an hour. There are only two pieces to sew together - ie one for each leg - but I adapted it somewhat, having already made pyjama shorts as a test run (which I won't show you as they are super daggy). I added about 16 cm to the leg width and instead of putting in elastic around the legs, made three tucks to take in the fullness. The waist is elastic, so that was easy too (I took a few centimetres off the waist as the crotch was way too long!). If you're interested in making these shorts, I could try to scan the pattern, so let me know - or you could always try scaling up piece D in the pic above, if you like a challenge!

Giveaway! Naked Fashion

It's my blog's birthday (terrible two!), it's Friday, and I have a spare copy of this book. What better reasons are there for a giveaway?

If you are interested in sustainable fashion and fair trade (which I gather you are as you are reading my blog!) then Naked Fashion is the book for you. It's put together by Safia Minney of People Tree and features heaps of info and images about fair trade and interviews from all sorts of people who are working to make the fashion industry kinder to the planet and its people. There's even a double page feature by me! (Look, I'm on this list of contributors!) I talked about how I worked with People Tree and Japanese Vogue on a designer collaboration a few years ago. And there's a photo of me in there by Cheryl of Busichic!

The giveaway is for anyone living in Australia and all you have to do is leave me a comment by next Friday (February 10). You can comment here on my blog, on my Facebook page, or on Twitter ( @Leeyong_Soo ), or even send me an email (fourthdaughter@gmail.com). Go, go, go!

Spinderella, cut it up one time

While I'm all for slow fashion, I don't know about waiting eight YEARS for a piece of clothing. But that's what it took to create this golden silk cape. Eight years, and a MILLION golden orb spiders. I quite like spiders, so that doesn't freak me out, but the thought of how time consuming this must have been does. This is an amazing story, so please read more about it here (where the photo is from also, and you can see the cape on a model as well as close ups of the intricate embroidery which decorates it) and if you are in the UK, please, PLEASE do not miss your chance to see it at the Victoria & Albert museum where it is currently on show.

I do have to wonder, as per the comment of one of the readers on the website, whether this project did anything to highlight environmental issues - if anyone goes to visit the exhibition, please let me know! (Clare, I am pointedly thinking of you!)

Twinkletoes DIY style

Are you a fan of A Pair & a Spare? I have been ever since some friends got me hooked on its DIY goodness and the super style of its creator (how many ladies do you know who can wear a bathmat as a dress and look amazing?). One of the projects that most caught my eye (admittedly because it was shiny, and shiny things distract me) were the boots with glitter heels. Not owning any boots that I could doctor in this way, I instead turned to some shoes that were not getting much wear because they looked like this:

I got them years ago at Gap when I lived in Tokyo, but have since learned enough about my personal style to know that I just don't do great big bows on anything, let alone wedge heels. So they were a prime target for some revamping. I unpicked the bows from them (and put them away, as they will no doubt come in handy for a future project), bought some glue and unearthed a bag of glitter from out of the garage.


I know what you're probably thinking - why did there just happen to have a huge bag of glitter in the garage? Well, my dad used to be an industrial chemist at a flooring company, and some of the flooring had glitter in it (maybe they were outfitting discos? It was the '70s, after all). And let's just say that this bag was, um, left over, so dad brought it home with him. I noticed it when I was cleaning out the garage years ago. I might have mentioned just a few times that I come from a family of hoarders. You never know when you're going to need a jumbo sized bag of gold glitter, which would be why no one had thrown it out!

Now this is where I stopped taking photos for you, mainly because there's a proper tutorial on A Pair and a Spare, but also because my hands were too busy holding shoes and covering them with glue and dipping them into the bag of glitter and trying to patch up the gaps which you can see in this photo.


Basically I spread craft glue over the outside-facing part of the wedges, extending it to just inside the instep as you can see here on my left foot.

This was mainly because I got lazy, but I decided I could say it was part of the design! I quite like it, although I do need to tidy it up a bit as I didn't spread the glue on very precisely.



I was also going to add something like bright pink tassels or pom poms to the front of the shoes and change the straps but haven't got around to that. What do you think, do you like my new sparkly shoes just as they are, or do they need more bling?

The seminal Seminole experience

What do you do when someone gives you an entire shoebox (and they had large feet) full of bias binding in all the colours of the rainbow? This was my dilemma (yeah, first world problems) a few months ago when the grandmother of someone I know moved house and got rid of all her haberdashery from her seamstressing career by offloading it into the impatiently waiting arms of my sister, who then, as she had no room either, offloaded it to me (yes, I can hear your wails of envy and gnashing of teeth as it's something akin to every DIYers fantasy, I know).
Having recently drooled over The Folkwear Book of Ethnic Clothing, I was not short of ideas for how to use all this trimming - in fact it was like I'd sent a wish out to the universe and, for a change, it had delivered, as I had fallen in love with the skirts worn by Florida's Seminole Indians (like in the pic below) and the book gives instructions for how to create similar patterns using - such a coincidence - bias binding! (This pic is not from the book, I found it here while trawling the internet)




One of my many freelance jobs is as regular columnist Miss Sew & Sew at Peppermint magazine, and quite a while ago I created a circle skirt out of a bedsheet for that column (let me know if you want me to put up a scan of the article, I didn't get round to it for this post). Being plain navy and mid-calf length, it wasn't the kind of thing I would normally wear, so it ended up sitting in my wardrobe until I realised that it would be the perfect base for a Seminole-inspired skirt. I won't tell you how long it took to stitch all the bias binding on, as I didn't time myself, but let's say I had three weeks of summer holidays and watched quite a few crappy DVDs while pinning metres (kilometres?) of the stuff to the skirt, which now looks like this.




If you would like to make your own version of the skirt, it's not hard - you really just need to cut a huge circle with a hole in the middle for your waist, but as I'd cut the hole too big, I needed to gather the skirt material to fit me and attach a waistband and a zip. But if you're starting from scratch it would be much easier just to cut the hole big enough to slide over your hips and then stitch elastic to the waistline (directly on to the fabric using zig zag stitch, or slid through a casing).


If you are going to do that, make sure you put the elastic in the waistline last, because you want the skirt as flat as possible while you are attaching all the bias binding.


I love how swingy it is! I have never worn this kind of thing before but all the colours make me very happy - as does the knowledge that this project is completed!! But now what do I do to give me an excuse to watch crappy DVDs? Oh, that's right, muck around with iPhoto to make my pictures look vintage, just like this!



And there's always another project in store - the cherry-adorned headband I'm wearing in these shots belongs to Lisa at Couturing.com and we used it for a Mexican-inspired shoot the other day (more on that another time).


Pretty cute, don't you think? Hmm, I have a few plain hairbands just lying around...and stacks of beads and decorative stuff that would look cute on hairbands... and some crappy DVDs to watch...

Hey Dude!

Hi guys, and I do mean GUYS specifically. You see, recently my sister's friend was out with a guy and who knows how they got to talking about me, but it turned out that this particular extremely intelligent, informed and no doubt exceedingly handsome and charming man reads this blog so recognised my name when the friend mentioned it! 

This news was something of a surprise to me as I don't think I have ever had any comments from readers of the male persuasion and didn't think this blog would appeal as there is nary a mention of AFL, cricket, rugby, soccer, or any of the stuff that boys apparently like, despite lots of mentions of cats, op shopping, vintage clothes, earrings, making stuff out of crap and other more girly pursuits. So in honour of this momentous occasion I have composed a little poem.

Hey guys,

Don't be shy

If you like DIY

Drop by 

And say hi!

Don't worry, now that that's out of my system I'll save my DIYing for clothes and accessories and leave poems alone. But please do say hi if you're one of my male readers, and you can send a pic of you doing DIY if you like, as there was no image for this post! (Female readers are welcome to do the same. Hey, I'm lucky to have any readers at all, I'm not picky about who comments!!)