This was supposed to be a "finished things" post...

...but I haven't really finished anything recently! Well yes, I finished the yellow minion (weeks ago, before I even came home) and the stole (also weeks ago, when I went to my grandparent's) but I just didn't get around to blogging until now. Also, I don't have any nice pictures of the minion since I conveniently left it in my apartment, so here's the only snapshot I took before hurriedly packing my things and leaving for my parent's:

I gave up on finishing the purple one before Lilly's birthday, but I made a "free-hand"-amigurumi minion for one of the kids I worked with:

That's a thermos and my mother's laptop behind
him, just to give you an idea of the size

I also finally got around to taking pictures of my stole, I like how it turned out although I would have liked it a bit longer - I just gave up when my third ball of yarn was finished.

I really like how it looks from behind

Well, that ought to have caught you up to what I have finished so far. I would have loved to show you the finished green corset, but guess what: I'm about one seem away from finishing it (and have been for about a week now) but still haven't done it. Want to know why? I have two brothers and the three of us share a car, or rather a van. So when my older brother wanted to fix up the car to take it to a camping trip to Spain, of course his siblings jumped in, and since I'm not that good with the technical stuff (we have a bluetooth-connectable stereo in our twenty-year-old car, yay!) I offered to take over renewing the curtains. My brother ordered the fabric and I set to hours and hours of ironing, sewing, and ironing again. Did I mention I was ironing a lot? So, in order to pretty things up a little (and motivate myself) I created even more work for myself by deciding that every tie for the curtains had to have a little crocheted flower attached. Yay for flowers! 

Pretty little daisies... :)

My younger brother was against the flowers (probably not manly enough for an eighteen-year-old ;) ) but my older brother and I liked it, so we kept them. But crocheting, and then sewing each of the flowers onto the tie and then the tie onto the curtain by hand took time, and afterwards I didn't really feel like sewing some more for my own amusement, hence the lack of progress.

BUT!


Some progress there was, and (even if I can't show you the finished result) I'd like to show you some pictures. Before risking bright green checkered nightmares, I worked on my darker green corset. The last thing I told you was that I made one row of eyelets, here's how I did it:

I made the holes with a stretcher I usually
wear in my ear...

...then widened them with an awl i found
in my father's toolbox.

I then stitched around the holes using a thicker, dark green thread I found in my grandmother's sewing box, I think it's supposed to be used for mending socks, but I find it quite handy for lacing- or buttonholes. I put in the hooks and eyes - I know, I'm cheating -

- and tried it on. In hindsight, I really should have listened to The Laced Angel and put in some more room at the hips, but for a first try, it's not that bad, I think.

Phone-camera in a badly lit hallway...

...where could that ever go wrong?

Now all I have to do is finish the top and bottom edges, and then it'll be wearable! :) But as I said, motivation for that last seam still eludes me. Bear with me, it will get done! (someday ;) )

How to fix ripped jeans

I did promise a tutorial, didn't I? Sorry it took so long, my brother came home from spending one year in England on monday, I'm still working in that internship that just takes a lot of my time and I am actually writing this from my (more or less) broken laptop where the space-key gets stuck every 50th word or so and that I hooked up to a monitor since the laptop's monitor is broken.
In any case, before going out and buying three new pairs of pants (gotta love going shoppig with my mom) on friday, I had to fix the one pair I own that I didn't leave behind in my apartment when moving into my parent's for the summer.

I put my hand behind the hole to show you where it is

 I don't know where you usually rip your jeans (if you do so at all) but mine always rip between the legs, because I mostly use my bike to get around and that's where the friction is. On the one hand, it's a nice spot because you don't have to be too neat with your patchwork because nobody's gonna see it anyway, on the other hand it's a spot that's just a pain to reach with a sewing machine. But practice makes perfect, and after doing this for about 20 times I think I found a fairly effective way of dealing with holes in my jeans.

As you can see from the patches, I've fixed these before

Turn your pants inside out and look for the rips (two in my case). Cut out rectangles of fabric (some old jeans you can cut to pieces come in handy) that will cover the entire slit and the surrounding area.

Pin them on where you need them. This might take several tries, but be patient, it'll be much neater in the end if you don't rush this point.

Sew along the edges using a zig-zag-stitch for strength. Don't worry when you have to sew over old patches, a sewing machine can take more than two layers of denim without problems.

The patches from the inside...

You can stop at this point if you feel like it, if you used a matching coloured thread your patch will be pretty much invisible. But if the hole stems from friction, the upper threads will just wear away more until you're back to one layer (the patch) and have to worry about wearing that away as well, so unless the hole you're fixing is at your knee, there are a couple more steps to take. 

...and from the outside.

You can see where I fixed a previous hole because I didn't have any matching thread, but spotting the stitch lines from the other two patches is a little harder, don't you think?
Turn your pants right sides out, let's stabilize these b****es!

 Using a large zig-zag stitch or something like that (just make sure it covers a lot of space, I've done stabilizing using different embroidery patterns on my mother's sewing machine when I felt like it, but you can also just sew back and forth in a straight stitch if that works better for you, just as long as you do it perpendicularly to the slit) i sewed over the rip a couple of times, virtually fixing the threads to the patch with a lot of tiny stitches and thus stabilizing the whole thing.

 On the right are the finished patches as seen from the inside, so you can see the stabilizing stitches a little better. The patch in the middle has them as well, only done in a lighter coloured thread.

I've been fixing my jeans like that ever since I started sewing, and I'm proud to say that because of patches, I can still wear jeans I bought at the age of fifteen. And in case any of you were wondering: it doesn't chafe since we made the patches out of denim fabric. It helps saving money because you don't have to buy new pants everytime the old ones rip, and it saves me from having to throw away my favorite pair of jeans already. I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and it helps you save either your favourite clothes or your wallet (or both) :)

Decisions, decisions...

I have two projects I'd really like to tell you about, but only time for one short post. Hm...
First of all sorry for not writing for so long, I had some exams to write and then my laptop broke down just in time for my arrival home, plus I just started an internship which takes up a lot of my time, so I didn't really get any sewing done despite being in close proximity to a real sewing machine for about a week. Until today, when I decided to finally get some work done on my corset.
I found a really neat technique for constructing corsets online (I'll post my sources as soon as I have time to find them), it goes like this:

Starting with pieces one and two, (shown are three and four)
sandwich fabric and lining of the first piece between the
fabric and lining of the second piece, respective right sides
together

A peek at piece three ;)

Then just sew a seam along the side, press, open, press both sides flat, repeat. It's a quick and easy way to construct corsets and you don't even have to worry about finishing any raw edges :)
Bonus: you can very easily add boning channels, I did one for every seam, we'll see how that works out.

Stitching a boning channel, finished one on the right

As I said, I'm using zip-ties for boning, feels pretty good so far, we'll see how they look and feel when wearing the corset.

Preparing the boning: I clipped of the closures and smoothed
the clipped ends with some sandpaper

I put another boning channel into the back edges and marked where I wanted my eyelets to go.

Looks pretty good so far, what do you think?

I did the eyelets by hand since I don't have any grommets lying around and it is much quicker this way than going to a store, buying some and then spending the evening in the basement hammering them in. I got one row done while watching TV with my mum tonight, and I'm sure I'll have the other row finished soon enough.
I still need some hooks and eyes for closure, though (I know, I'm cheating again) so I'll have to go to a fabric store soon in any case.
This weekend I'll be at my grandparents, so no sewing and no blogging, although I'll probably get some work done on my stole (almost done now!) and my minion, I'll keep you updated on those projects. When I come back, I'll post a tutorial on how to fix ripped jeans - the other thing I finally got done tonight ;)
Have a nice and productive weekend, everyone, I'll see you soon!