How To Make A Basic Draped Shirt With No Sewing

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 9, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

So I’ve been a little bit obsessed with making wrap shirts lately. It’s such a fun thing to experiment with especially because there is pretty much no sewing involved!

This one has cute bow shapes on the sleeves.

All you need for this is a large square amount of fabric, some scissors and a little ribbon.

Take your piece of fabric and fold it in half. Cut a neck hole along the fold.

From this point on I put it on my mannequin to hold while I was working so I could see the shape.

Round out the neck hold so it’s more flattering.

Along the shoulder area cut 2 horizontal lines.

Pinch the fabric in between the cuts together into a bow and tie the ribbon around the middle.

Now make a cut on each side around the wait area.

Now take the corners of the fabric which are at the back and poke them through the waist holes.

And tie them in a knot.

Done!

So when it’s laid out flat, this is what it looks like:

And then on it looks like this:

Tight at the back and the draped and pretty at the front!

How fun was that!? No sewing effort required and you could do so many things like this by draping and tying the fabric in different ways!

Easy Bow Back T-Shirt Surgery Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | May 21, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

Depending on your side of the world, it’s warming up or cooling down. It’s cooling down here but I refuse to accept that and so I’m still making Summer clothes >_>

I had this big shirt that I bought from the thrift store laying around and while it was super comfy, it wasn’t super feminine so I decided it was time for a make over.

You need:

Shirt
Lace
Needle and thread
Scissors

So step one is to cut a deeper neckline on the back. I cut a deep v neck and then hand stitched up the seam again.

Gather up the fabric right down the middle and stitch it together.

Wrap the gather in lace and stitch it in place.

Done!

Yay for make overs and t-shirt surgery. I am thinking of doing similar things with some of James’ old gigantic shirts.

Now it’s a little more feminine but still super comfortable and very airy for summer. Triple win!

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How To Sew A Basic Stretch Lace Shirt – Sew Fun!

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 26, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

Yay sewing tutorial! Today is part one of a shirt and skirt set remake! I’m classing this as being part of the Sew Fun series but keep in mind it’s not so much for complete beginners, it’s more intermediate so I’m going to be skipping some basic steps along the way. There will hopefully be more beginners tutorials as soon as I have time to sew.

A few weeks ago I bought a skirt and shirt from Supre and I really liked the comfy stretchy lace they were made from. It’s perfect for summer and also super comfortable to wear. It’s a crazy easy pattern and I had managed to find some lace fabric on sale so I decided to make a couple of others so I could mix and match them together.

The shirt is a very simple shift design. It relies completely on stretch to fit and has a stretch cotton for lining as well.

For this I am using purple stretch lace and pink stretch cotton for the lining. Keep in mind that I can’t advise you how much fabric you will need because it will depend on your size. I used less than 1m of each fabric for both the skirt and shirt if that gives an indication.

To get the pattern I laid out the old shirt and cut around it leaving 1cm for seam allowances. It is made up of a front piece, back piece and two sleeves. You can make one of these yourself by using the same basic shapes as I’m cutting out but fitted to your measurements.

Lottie was extremely helpful as per usual by napping on my fabric.

This is the front piece shape in both the main fabric and lining, note the large scoop neckline.

The back piece is the same with a much smaller curve for the neckline.

The sleeve pieces don’t require lining and the are standard cap sleeves.

As this is stretch lace I’m not bothering to top stitch most of the seams, just overlocking and sewing where it’s actually needed.

So to begin with I placed the front panel and it’s lining with the good sides together and overlocked the scoop neck. I did the same with the back pieces.

I folded them right way out again and you can see it creates a nice neckline seam.

Next, I overlocked the front and back pieces (and their linings) together at the shoulder seam.

I then opened it out again and pinned the cap sleeve along the seam. Sleeves can be a pain in the arse to sew straight so I always advise to do them as soon into the pattern as possible so you don’t find yourself trying to sew in tight spaces later.

I overlocked the sleeves on. Opened out flat you can see how it attached to the front and back section below.

This is what it looked like folded up the right way at this point.

I turned the whole thing inside out, overlocked the edges of the sleeves to avoid future fraying and then overlocked the shirt down the sides so it was sealed together into an actual shirt shape.

Then it was just a matter of tidying up. I added a hem to the bottom of the shirt.

And one to the edges of the sleeves. I also top stitched the neckline in place because it looked nicer.

Done!

This took me around half an hour to do including the cutting in the beginning so it really is a nice and easy pattern and if I ever have time I might churn out a heap of them in different colours because they are SO comfortable!

Looking good together!

And it looks good on too! In the next post I’ll show you how I did the matching skirt as well!

Lottie approves!

Make Your Own Needle Felt Hat

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 21, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

Ok it’s the time of year where I get really into hats again. It’s probably because I’ve been watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and I want ALL THE CLOCHES.

So… I decided to give making one a try. It didn’t turn out too badly actually and now that I know how much the felt shrinks I think I’m going to get a bit more adventurous next time and make something more impressive.

I used the easiest technique: needle felting.

Basically I made a big circle and stabbed at it until it was fairly sturdy, then I built upwards to eventually close in the top with more felt.

It took a lot of needling, more than I’ve done for any project but for something like a hat you really want the felt to be tight and secure.

Looking slightly more hat-ish at this point.

Once the main hat shape was done I started to shape a small brim.

To force the shape more I needled directly on the brim line.

Lastly I added a little white band that ended in a bow out of some more wool roving which was twisted together.

Taadaa cute!

I love the colour and shape of how it turned out. I’m thinking of doing some more traditionally 1920’s styles next to let our my inner Phryne!

One of these days I’m going to bob my hair, find a companion and solve some kind of murder mystery!

Stripy Knitted Neckerchief Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 20, 2013 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

Neckerchiefs! I love them! Knitted neckerchief is really hard to type without wanting to spell it knitted kneckerchief…

But back on track, for today’s project let’s make a stripy knitted neckerchief! This design and length is great because it can double as an usamimi. Winner!

You need:

2 colours of yarn
Knitting needles
Crochet hook or a yarn needle

Start by knitting a triangle of the first colour. Do this by starting with one stitch and increasing one stitch at the beginning of each row until you have 12 stitches on the needle.

Knit this in a stockinette stitch.

Change colours and then knit for 10 rows.

Change colours, knit for 10 rows etc until it’s long enough to go around your neck and down the other side.

Decrease one stitch every row until you have one stitch on the needle. I think it’s nice to end on the same colour you started. Do not change colours or tie off.

Now increase one stitch every row until you have 13 again and continue making stripes in each colour until it’s as long as the first half you made.

Decrease every row until you have one left and tie off.

So what you want to have is a really long snake with two pointy ends and a thinner part in the middle. You should be able to fold it in half and have them match up perfectly.

So fold it in half and stitch around the edges. I found the easiest way to do it was to use a crochet hook and single crochet around the edge to seal the two pieces together. You could also easily blanket stitch. I chose to do it in the lighter cream colour but contrasting would be cute too.

Now here’s the important part. When you reach the end you want to skip stitching the two halves together for one square of colour. I continued crocheting past that square but I just did it to the top piece rather than stitching them together.

Stitch all the way around the other side and again make sure that you skip the same square on the other side.

What you will end up with is a hole you can poke through:

Easy!

So all you need to do to wear it is poke one end through that hole to form a big loop!

Like this!

Yay! Now put it around you neck or your head as an usamimi and you’re good to go 😀

Hope you enjoyed it and let me know if you try it out!

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Needle Felted Flower Cardigan Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 10, 2013 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

Spring! Nice warm weather! Except it’s Melbourne and we’re having none of that! But who cares, let’s pretend! So after needle felting those gloves last time, I wanted to do some more using the same technique so I found an old cardigan that needed some updating and off I went 😀

Old Cardigan:

The technique is the same as last time. A circle of yellow, a leaf and this time I added in vine to connect them all.

After I did the basic shapes I went back to add in the swirls etc.

Taadaa!

Easy!

This took maybe half an hour and now the cardigan goes with a whole new range of outfits. It’s worth thrifting a few more of them in different colours!