Posts Tagged ‘Tutorial’

Cancan hats are another trend that seems to be everywhere right now. Of course they’ve been around for practically forever with various names… straw boater, basher, skimmer, katie, senni etc. Here in Aus they are actually part of a lot of private school uniforms. I’ve always loved them because the remind me of picnics in the park with a nice cup of tea!

Anyway whatever you call it what I’m talking about is this:

Image courtesy of google, full credit to the owner.

Because they’re popular now they are quite expensive. So I decided to DIY my own ^_^

What you need:

• Round top straw sun hat
• Scissors
• Needle and thread
• Glue Gun
• Ribbon and lace for decoration if your hat isn’t decorated already.

You can easily pick up a big wide brim rounded straw sun hat for $2 from a thrift store and if you check out junk stores you can probably find one new for not much more than that! I happened to have one from back in my Country Lolita days that I had decorated with ribbon and lace but I’ve never actually worn it because the shape looked silly on me… time to make it all flat and pretty

Ok let’s get started!

At the top of the hat you will notice that the whole thing is made of a big spiral of straw which it stitches together. Carefully wedge your scissors into the top of the spiral and cut a few of the stitches.

Gently pull it apart, continue cutting stitches if you need to.

Start unraveling the sprial and cutting the stitches as you go ^_^

Keep going until you get to around this point:

When you get to here there are two options depending on the type of hat you started with. Some of these sun hats have very straight sides and some of them are basically a gigantic dome.

If you’re lucky enough to have one with straight sides then you can skip the next few steps.

If you have one with curved sides (like me) you will need to continue unraveling the hat until you to get to a point where the part that’s left is completely straight. This point might be different for you hat but mine was just above the ribbon band here:

Now you should get your needle ready and thread it.

Ok now it’s time to put it back together so the sides are straight and the top is flat!

Because the straw has been in a curved position for so long you will most likely need to bend it straight before you put it back together. Make sure to be gentle when you do this so you don’t damage it. I straightened it by putting it flat on the floor and gently bending it the other way.

Now you need to start winding the straw back into place. You can either do it the right way and stitch it in place or the quick way and hot glue it in place. Either way secure it as you go around.

You can see that the way I’ve put it back in place is much more vertical than the original pattern.

Keep going until you think your hat is tall enough and then do one more rotation around the top to make sure it is flat enough for the top of the hat not to be on an angle!

When you’re finished you should cut the excess straw off and secure the ends. I am going to cover the straw end with more decoration at the end so it doesn’t show.

Now let’s make the top! Get your left over straw and arrange it on a flat surface in a spiral.

You should measure the spiral to make sure it fits the top of your hat exactly and pin it in place.

Now stitch or glue your top in place.

Continue until it is the right shape and diameter. You should stitch the end of the straw around so it forms a circle like this:

Cut off the excess and this is what you get:

Do make sure that it fits the top of the hat before you cut the ends so you don’t have a gaping hole in your hat!

At this point I cut off the elastic string which holds the hat on your head because it was pointless and in the way.

Now on the inside of your hat, glue/stitch the top in place

You should get something like this:

Hurray it has a flat top!!

Now we’ve made the top shorter and flatter the large brim looks a bit silly! So let’s make it shorter

Find the edge and snip the stitches. It should come apart very easily.

I pulled out maybe 3 or 4 rows of it. Now secure the edge back in place.

And you get this…

Last step is decoration! I wanted a nice big rosette style thing on my hat so I cut off the long tulle tail…

And added another one of top. This also covers the join around the hat. Again hot glue or sewing is fine here.

TAADAA!

And there you have it, an adorable cancan hat that cost me nothing And I have another cute hat to add to my arsenal of bad-hair-day-hiding-tools

What do you guys think?

A few months ago a reader wrote in and asked me to write a “T-shirt Surgery” tutorial. If you haven’t head of t-shirt surgery it’s basically when you take a plain old t-shirt and you make it into something cooler and more fashionable. There is a community for it here where you can see some fantastic examples.

So anyway when I got the request I didn’t think it was something I would do because I don’t wear t-shirts often… but it stayed in my mind for ages and I kept thinking about it more and more until I had an idea When we were in Singapore for the Nuffnang Awards, Nuffnang Australia was lovely enough to give us all shirts. Mine had the slogan “I’m famous (in the blogosphere)” hahaha! I thought it was awesome but they only had large sizes so since then I’ve used it to sleep in… but no more!

So let’s get started in turning this….

Into this….

What you need:

• Large shirt (I’m using my Nuffnang one)
• Other shirt in a cute colour. I’m using an old pink Emily the Strange shirt
• Needle and thread
• Thin elastic
• Flowers or decoration
• Scissors
• Overlocker or sewing machine
• Shirt that actually fits you (for measuring)

Please note that I am hand stitching almost everything here because my sewing machine has been packed up for the move, if given the choice I would definitely use a machine for this project. I am going to redo the stitching when we get to the new house

First turn your white shirt inside out. Lay your white tee on a flat surface and place the shirt that fits you over the top. Line up the shoulder seams to make sure it’s in the right place.

Cut the bottom off in line with your nice shirt.

Cut up the side seems around 1.5cm away from your nice shirt’s seam, this is to give it enough room for the new seam we’re going to sew. You will notice when you’re cutting that the seam is probably not a straight line but instead it curves slightly. This curve will give the waist some shape so if you want to adjust this now is the time!

Cut until you reach just below the sleeves.

Following the line of the sleeves cut around at an angle. Now it just looks like a longer sleeve ^_^

Fold the shirt in half and repeat on the other side.

So this is what you should end up with… it pretty much just looks like a smaller shirt now ^_^

Now let’s cut a new neckline! Turn it the right way out so you can see what you’re working on. I chose a square neckline so I could show up pretty necklaces. I started by cutting out the collar carefully and then kept cutting until I reached the neckline I wanted.

Now get your coloured shirt and lay it out…

Cut the back section from the shirt, you want to remove all of the seams. You will end up with something this shape.

Lay the pink version over the white shirt. You should cut the sides and the neckline to match the white shirt. The pink part should be on the same side as the writing/pattern you want on the front of the shirt. You’ll end up with this:

Now you should use your overlocker (or sewing machine) to stitch up the sides. Start from the bottom and sew towards the sleeves, continue until there’s no hole left ^_^

Now at the top where the straps of the pink part are, there should be a strip of interfacing on the white shirt. Sew the pink to the white. Most shirts have it but if yours doesn’t just sew it into whatever seam is there.

You end up with this (although mine is terribly hand stitched).

Now move over to the sleeves, cut around 4cm off the ends. Repeat on the other side.

Measure a piece of thin elastic around the top of your arm and cut in two.

Sew the elastic around 4cm from the edge of the sleeve. While you sew stretch it to the correct size so when it’s unstretched it will form a ruffle. Mine looks a bit dodgy because it’s hand stitched >_<

So how you have something like this

Turn your shirt the right way out now and fold it in half down the middle with the pattern facing out. This next part is all about measuring. From the bottom of your pattern (my pattern is the slogan on the front) fold the shirt in 3 sections. Place a small marker at each fold.

Flatten the shirt out again but keep it folded in half. The pink strip below is marking how far in were going to cut, it should be as far in as the markers are apart. It’s a little hard to explain but it should kind of form a square.

Now do the actual cutting! DO NOT CUT THE PINK FABRIC! Only cut the white.

Repeat on the other side so you end up with this:

Now we’re going to make the sections into little bows

Cut 3 strips of the hem of the pink shirt.

Fold them in half and use them to form the center of the bow. Sew it all in place like this:

On the bottom bow place a small holding stitch through the white and pink so the bottom bow will keep it’s shape.

Now let’s go back to the neckline! Cut the rest of the hem off the pink shirt and measure it out like this:

Sew along the seams that are already there. Do the sides first and continue around the back.

Add a final piece to the front and cover the edges ^_^

I decided to add some chiffon flowers to the neckline just to girly it up some more. I’m going to add more as soon as I can unpack my craft supplies and dig them out

And so there you have it! Finished and much more my taste than the original

And of course it’s time to try it on!

Close up of the bows…

Mwahaha and no I’m not conceited enough to think I’m *actually* famous in the blogosphere, it’s just meant to be cute and funny

Well there you go, my first attempt at t-shirt surgery and I’m pretty happy with the results! So much so that I’m going to wear it tomorrow to the going away party that Nuffnang is throwing James and I I even made a little matching surprise but you’ll have to wait for the event to see! What do you all think?

This is a reader request post, see I’m slowly making my way through them all!

Lately everywhere I turn around someone is wearing one of these funny little pointy scarves…

Image found via Google, credit to the owner.

Apparently the points are supposed to look kind of like bunny ears depending on how they’re worn. They seem to be really popular in Gal fashions at the moment! I don’t know how much these go for but if they’re anything like other imported accessories they can get pretty pricey! Anyway a couple of you have requested a tutorial on how to save some money and make one so here it is! ^_^

What you need:

• Fabric (for an alternative see below)
• Scissors
• Thin wire
• Needle and thread

I decided to go one step further on the saving money front and instead of using fabric I saved time and effort by using a pair of stockings that I bought but didn’t end up fitting They had a cute patten so I’ve been looking for another way to use them and this is perfect!

So first step! If you’re using fabric, measure out how long you need the scarf to be (measure around your head and then add extra for the point little ears) and cut two long rectangles. Because I am using stockings I’ve skipped this step.

Now cut the ends into points. I folded mine in half to ensure that the ends were exactly the same shape.

If you are using normal fabric then sew down the straight sides to form a long tube (don’t sew the ends yet!). If you’re using stockings then you already have a long tube like below ^_^

Now get your thin wire ready! I am using 2 lengths of wire because the wire I had was too thin to shape the fabric properly. So cut a length of wire that is long enough to go all the way around the outside of your tube. Leave an extra few inches so there is room to tie the ends together.

Turn your tube inside out. Fold the wire in half.

Using your needle and thread, sew up the pointy end. Use a plain old running stitch, nothing fancy. I’m hand stitching because my sewing machines are all in storage but if you can use a machine or an over-locker I would definitely suggest it!

Now let’s start adding the wire, this is what will make the ear parts nice and stiff. Line the wire up with the point and starting from there use a blanket stitch to attach the wire to the edge of the fabric. When you stitch you should only pick up a few threads from the fabric, this will ensure that when you turn it inside out you can’t see gigantic stitches.

Keep going all the way down the side until you reach the other open edge. If you started out with fabric that you sewed together then you might  just be able to weave the wire through the stitches you already made.

When you get to the other end use a running stitch to close up one side and then continue with the wire up the edge. You should have a little wire overlapping the edge which we will use to close it up later.

Now repeat along the other side but stop when you reach the opening.

Now using the hole, turn the whole thing inside out…

This is roughly what you should end up with…

And as you can see I have left over wire poking out from the top.

Cut the wire down so it’s only 1cm longer than the tip, then twist the two ends together and fold them down. And you end up with this:

Now hold it flat, fold the raw edges in and sew up the gap like in the picture below. Try to hide your stitches as much as possible by only poking through a tiny bit of the exposed fabric. Make sure to sew the points of the wire really well so it doesn’t pop through ^_^

You hopefully end up with something like this…

Which will hold it’s shape like this!

And when you put it on you will look something like this

So there you have it! They are really quick and easy to make and very popular right now ^_^