They’re really rock styled but I love them and depending on the stockings you use and the colours you could do so many other versions for different styles!

So let’s get started!

You need:

• Thick stockings
• Thread
• Scissors
• Pins

You need some stockings to start with. The kind of stockings you use is very important, they need to have a very high denier and not be prone to running. The thicker the better!

Lay out the stockings flat on the floor.

Start by putting pins at even spaces down the side of the leg. The pins are where you will be cutting the bow shapes so make sure you have enough and space them as thick as you want the bows.

I did twice as many as shown in the photo for lots of bows.

Make small snips where the pins are. The longer the cuts are the more revealing the stockings will be. Remember that once they’re on your legs they tend to stretch so do less than you think you’ll need. You can always cut them bigger later but it’s harder to go backwards!

Now to make them into bow shapes. Take a piece of thread and push it through the first tab of the stockings.

Pull it tight and tie it in a knot. The tab will crumple up like a bow. If you want them to be exactly perfect you can pleat and stitch each one but that will take a very long time and really looks pretty much the same in the finished project.

Tie the thread tightly and knot it off. Cut any loose edges and you should have something like this:

Keep oing until you’ve done them all.

When the stocking is flattened out it should look like this:

If you are concerned about fraying and ladders a quick fit is to dot a tiny bit of clear nail polish at the corners where the ends of the cuts are. This will dry unnoticeable but will prevent anything from unraveling.

Try them on to make sure they fit and make the snips bigger if you want to!

When you’re all finished put them on and enjoy!

This is such a different style than I’m used to but it’s so much fun!

I think at the moment my casual style is leaning towards back and rockish.

While my dressy style is much more princessy.

Either way these were really easy to make and I look forward to trying some more different things to do with stockings soon!

This is original old boring cardigan:You need:

• Contrasting elastic
• Needle/Thread/Sewing machine
• Old boring cardigan

I thought about adding some other decorations but ended up sticking to something more classic.

First snip off all of the buttons.

Pin the elastic around the edge of the cardigan. Make sure to try it on so it all sits flat.

Stitch it in place along the side closest to the edge. I decided to just stitch the one edge so I could still use the button holes underneath. Fold the edges of the elastic over the bottom too so they are hidden.

Add two more strips of elastic horizontally like little fake pockets. Make sure to fold their edges over too so they’re not exposed.

Stitch in place. If you want you can stitch the buttons back in place too or just use a brooch to hold it closed. To fix the bunchy sleeve problem I re-hemmed the edges so they sat flat instead of being gathered.

Taadaa!

Cute and much more interesting than Old Boring Black Cardigan. Now it’s Exciting Awesome Classic Cardigan.

Dear Violet,

THX for making me over LOL. I’m glad you actually take me out of the cupboard now, let’s be BFFs 😀 😀 😀

Love,

<3<3<3<3<3 Awesome Classic Cardigan<3<3<3<3<3

Now if I could just teach the cardigan that text speak isn’t appropriate to use in letters. Baby steps…

You need:

• Fabric
• Elastic for the waist
• Lace for decoration
• A sewing machine is recommended but you could hand sew this if you didn’t mind taking the extra time.

Place the bad sides of the fabric together and stitch down the short edge on one side. You should either fold the seam over again and stitch in place or zigzag stitch down the edge to prevent it from fraying later.

They should form one very long rectangle now when unfolded.

When scrunched to the same length of the elastic it should look like this.

Now we need to make it an even ruffle. Some machines have a ruffling foot and some people prefer to do this by hand.

The easiest way for a beginner to get an even ruffle is to use the gathering technique. Anchor the thread at one end of the side you want to ruffle. To anchor sew straight then reverse the stitch back up the line you made then continue down again the correct direction. This will prevent it unraveling later.

Sew a straight line right down it around 1cm from the top. When you get to the end, don’t anchor it and sew right off the edge.

Cut the threads to be quite long. Grab the top thread with your hand and gently push the end of the fabric away. It will begin to gather up on the thread. Keep pulling the thread and pushing the fabric until the gather is the length you need.

If you have weak thread I would suggest sewing two stitch lines to gather because it can be really frustrating to get almost to the end and have the thread snap!

Ok so you should gather the top so it’s as long as your elastic is when stretched out. To find this out, lay the fabric down and stretch the elastic with your hands over the top, if they’re roughly the same length you’re good to move on to the next step.

Now we need to sew the fabric and elastic together. Place the gathered end of the fabric (right side up) on top of the end of the elastic. Anchor them together with a couple of stitches.

As you sew them together you should use one hand to stretch the elastic out under the gathered fabric. It can be a little tricky to get the hang of but I find this gives a much better result that zigzaging unstretched as some people prefer.

Try to keep your stitching as straight as possible but don’t stress too much because this will all be covered later.

You should have just enough fabric to go the length of the stretched elastic so stitch to the end and tie off.

So now you’ve got a big long ruffle attached to a piece of elastic.

At this point you want to pull out the gathering thread you used because it should all be securely on the elastic now!

Up close the raw edges look pretty crappy so we’ll hide them now

The easiest way to do this is to take a piece of lace and stitch it on either side of the raw edge. The top stitch line is on the elastic and the bottom is on the gathered fabric.

You want to stretch the elastic out as you go again so the lace will ruffle up when it’s unstretched. Sew on either side on the lace and you’ll end up with something like this:

See that the ends of the fabric are totally incased? That will help prevent fraying so the skirt will last longer.

Now we need to finish off the bottom of the skirt. I had some left over lace so I folded the bottom of the fabric over to create a seam and stitched the lace on too. You can add anything you like here which fits the style you’re aiming for. Just make sure you either zigzag the edge of the fabric or fold the seam over twice so the edge is encased that way it won’t all come undone in the wash!

Now all you need to do is sew down the side and it’s finished! Fold the skirt in half with the good side in. Stitch down the side starting from the elastic and moving to the bottom seam. Make sure it all matches up well otherwise you’ll get an odd shaped skirt. Either zigzag down this edge too or fold again and stitch so it’s not exposed.

Turn it around the right way and you’re all finished!

Now you have a cute skirt and the know how to make one in any style you like!

See I told you it wasn’t that hard!

Very easy once you get the hang of it so you can make them quickly!

Of course keep in mind that if you made yours out of curtains like I did you should probably avoid taking your photos in front of the same curtains or else you will suddenly have the awesome ability to camouflage!

POWERS ACTIVATE!!!

Fail. Either way I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and let me know how you go with it! Can’t wait to see what you guys make!

Back when we lived in Brisbane I spent months knitting these big blankets to use as throw rugs on our couches. When we moved they got shoved in the cupboard and eventually made their way to Melbourne with us. They probably would have actually been useful here with us having a real winter but I forgot about them completely so they lived in space bags until now!I used the same technique as last time, folding the corners in together to make the sleeves. The blanket was longer than it was wide so that made it a bit trickier.

I used a yarn needle to stitch it all together evenly.

The shape and fact that there was a thinner red stripe at one end actually make it a lot more jumper like because when laid out it naturally formed a folded collar. Totally looks like I planned it 😉 … which I totally did if anyone asks…

So there you go! I prefer this one to the blue one because it drapes beautifully and I really like chunky knits. The only problem I have is that it’s not quite wide enough so I might knit on some longer sleeves if I can find some matching yarn again.

Ugh that reminds me that I need to go through my yarn stash… it’s getting out of control and I haven’t made anything for ages!

Bad Violet, it’s Winter so get knitting!!

First thing, a note about working with knitted fabrics like this, be VERY careful. Honestly don’t cut knitted fabric unless you’re going to be very quick in sewing it back up otherwise you will find things unravelling. You will need to either overlock all of the seams or you should use a princess seaming technique to seal in all raw edges completely.So, to turn the dress into a poncho, the first thing I did was snip off the side seams.

I folded the bottom up to work out how long the end result would be.

And snipped it off 😀

Then snipped it in half again..

… to make big sleeves!

I trimmed so it all fit together well.

Then started sewing up the seams.

All the pieces laid out look like this:

Sewn together and seamed:

To top it off I added some tassels to the edge out of left over yarn. Easy!

It’s nice and warm for the current season and now at least I can wear it!

What do you guys think? Do you prefer stuff like this or completely done from scratch clothes?