Ruffly waistband

Recently my blogsurfing has taken a turn away from knitters to sewers and fabric crafters.  Through several meanderings I discovered this blog, which is simply a delightful read.  Rachel's got crafts and cooking down pat, as well as a great eye for photography.  She's posted a few ruffly headbands, and after seeing the post on 100 Layer Cake, I decided to make a ruffly waistband to wear with a LBD I have.  With five weddings attended and four to go before year's end, my dress selection is getting scant; it's high time to get creative!

The wedding was last Friday, and what with the shorter week and preparing for the road trip up to Sacramento, it's quite a miracle I got to making this at all!  Luckily I had a couple fabrics in stash that I knew I wanted to use; the only thing I had to go out and get was the 2" grosgrain ribbon.

On Wednesday night, after preparing road trip goodies (guac + chips, hard-boiled eggs, edamame), making sure my camera battery was charged, and packing everything to take to work (I'd be leaving from the office) the next day, I sat down with my fabrics, ribbon, scissors, needle, and thread, and got to work.  My circles were all different sizes, and I layered the fabrics randomly -- sheer over sheer, solid over solid, sheer over solid, solid over sheer -- and sewed them down in random order as well.  I don't remember exactly how many circles I cut of each fabric, but I'd estimate about 30 sheer and 24 solid.  The final size of the ruffle blossom is about five inches.  Overall, it took about four hours.  I'm sure the time would diminish with more practice.  Et voila:

I'd purchased a light pink fabric, but decided against adding  it in favor of keeping the color scheme monochromatic.  I like how the sheer fabric adds just the right amount of bling to the whole blossom.  You can see that the ends are already starting to fray, but I kind of like that unfinished look, too.  And, hopefully, this isn't going to get tossed around so much that the ends'll ever get too bad!

I tied a small bow at one end of the ruffle-blossom, and slid it over to the side.  The full-length shots I took at the wedding came out blurry, so all I can offer is this one, taken awkwardly as I was sitting down.  But you kinda get the idea, right?

The ruffly waistband totally made my plain ol' dress -- which I usually wear to work! -- so much more wedding-apropriate. DC was impressed, too! 

Wanna make your own?  You can find the tutorial here.  Thank you, Rachel!

Happy heart days

The other day I was surfin' the 'nets and stumbled across this how-to on The Purl Bee; soon thereafter I realized that I have some fabric scraps and some blank cardstock:  I can do this!  And, in time!  Woot!

I dove into my stashes.  Fabric: small, odd-sized pieces, a few inches by a few inches, that I'd been saving for some kind of use one of these days... I'm especially pleased about being able to use the hot pink with multicolored cherry blossoms--something I brought home from Japan an embarrassing number of years ago.  Stationery: I cut some letter-writing paper in half to add more color.  I had some gold- and silver-splashed paper that worked wonderfully.

After just a bit of fudging with tension and stitch length I was off and running.   In a couple hours (measured by the passage of a couple of tween dramas), I had a dozen cards.



Here's a few things I did differently:

Because my fabric scraps were all different sizes,  I simply folded each piece in half and eyeballed a heart-shaped cut.  Then gave them all a quick press under the iron.

I put each fabric heart in place with a little bit of glue to avoid bunching or slipping off position.  This was helpful because there was a lot of turning involved to follow the curves and points of the shape.

I also played around with sewing the "fold" border onto the background cardstock at different edges, just to mix it up a bit.

This spool of thread in variegated reds added a fun, whimsical look, but also saved me both time and money in terms of not having to buy more than one spool, and not having to re-thread the sewing machine multiple times.  I chose to do zig-zag stitch for the cards' borders to show off the color changes.

The thread was the only item I purchased (with a 40% off coupon to boot), making the grand total for this project was something like eighty-four cents.  That's a whole lotta bang for under a buck!

I'm putting the last few in today's mail, and since they're all going domestic, my friends should receive them just in time.  (DC's was the prototype, which I managed to finish early and slip in his bag before he left for a conference on Wednesday.)  If you've got time today--or even tomorrow if you're going to hand-deliver--I highly recommend this quick and fun project!  Hearts will be glad!