Burp Cloths

Burp Cloths are easy to make from scraps of flannel cotton.

 

Each of these is about the width of my shoulder and about 18 inches long.

 

I added lace to the end of one of them to be fancy. I had all of this blue and yellow fabric leftover from making baby boy things for a friend (5 years ago) so I decided lace would make it a little more girly... ha!

Lace Clutch with Bow Pin

I made this clutch on Saturday morning. It would be great for Lolita cosplay, Steampunk, weddings, garden parties, Sunday brunch...

The clutch has a magnetic closure and two inside pockets. One pocket zippers closed.

I used a really nice textured sea-foam teal fabric with vintage off-white lace. The teal fabric was originally a square sample of special-order home decor fabric.

The inside lining fabric is a very light silver-grey satin (leftover from my Warcraft costume).

The bow is a detachable pin!

Buttoned Wrist Cuffs

Button, button, who's got the...

...button?

Take a piece of wide trim with lace edges, roll over and stitch the short ends, add a button at one end and a button hole at the other end. Simple! Almost-instant cuffs.

These are cute accessories for a Steampunk or Lolita outfit. Or you can just wear them to make a fashion statement.

Vintage Lace Fingerless Gloves

I made these gloves to wear with my Steampunk Superwoman costume. The lace was something I found in a box of assorted lace my grandma had given to me, so the materials for this project did not cost me anything.

First I made one glove with my sewing machine. I draped the lace over my hand and wrist to estimate the size, cut a rectangle, then turned down the edges about 1/8" and straight-stitched them down. Then I sewed the seam (the inner wrist) with a thumb hole, tried it on, and adjusted. This took a while, but eventually I ended up with one glove.

Did I mention I finally got a serger?!

This baby is already making my sewing life SO much easier. I haven't used one of these since college and I didn't get one until now because 1) I didn't want to pay full price for a good one and 2) I didn't want to buy a really cheap one. I purchased this one from my mom's friend. Normally I wouldn't recommend buying sergers second-hand, but I knew owner, it had a manual with it, and I was able to give it a test run before hauling it away.

I digress. Back to the lacey gloves... I used the first glove to make a paper pattern for another glove. I cut out the piece of lace, trimmed the edge expecting a 1/4" seam allowance, then ran both edges through the serger (separately) in about a minute flat. Lastly, I placed the edges together and ran it through the sewing machine, leaving the thumb hole. Done!
I then changed the thread to black and made an extra black pair for Steampunk Batgirl.

That was over so fast that I made a third glove with the serger. The serged glove turned out much better than the straight-stitched glove! So then I fixed the first prototype glove by running the seam through the serger (keeping the thumb hole open). I have enough lace to make 7 extra pairs of white gloves, PLUS some black lace... this may be the start of a future Etsy store for me.

More information about sergers and how to use them:
http://sewing.about.cm/od/sergersoverlock/ss/serger.htm

Sunday Afternoon Capelet

I randomly whipped this up on Sunday afternoon. I was bored.

The pattern is the same I previously used for my purple Special Occasion Capelet, only I shortened it about an inch and a half.

I wanted to add white lace to it somehow; I considered adding trim to the bottom hem, but I didn't have any that looked quite right. But I did have some white lace fabric with big flowers on it and as I was holding it up against the green plaid the flowers reminded me of a corsage. So I cut out one flower and hand-sewed it onto the fabric as applique.

I added a big satin ribbon for a closure. The capelet feels Victorian-inspired. I think it would be fun to wear for tea.

See this capelet on AvalynArtistry.com

Christmas Tree Angel

I decided to make a new topper for our new 9-foot Christmas tree! I wanted to make either an angel or a star, and since a star needs to light up and that's really complicated I decided to make an angel out of random stuff in my craft room.

First I took a long strand of raffia string (I decided this looks like rustic angel hair) and folded it back and forth, then stuffed it through a large wooden bead (which sort of looks like an angel's head, if you have an imagination like mine). Then I twisted a piece of gold rope against itself (this is the crown or halo), cut it and hot-glued it on top and trimmed the raffia to look like hair.

For the body I made a cone out of white craft form. For wings I used a pretty piece of ribbon which I threaded through a hole in the back. I then bordered the hole with pieces of the same gold I used for the halo-crown to hide the ugly hole.

Next I got out a bunch of coordinating white and gold trim and lace and decided to figure out how to decorate the body to make a dress. I made a bit of a mess.

I started glueing pieces of lace over the white foam, starting with the bottom piece so the upper pieces would overlap like layers of a skirt. A strand of white "pearls" became a necklace for the angel.

Here is the finished angel, as an ornament. I need a ladder to get her up on top of my tree!

Dying Lace

It's rather hard to find different colours of lace in the same pattern, and even when you do it's only a select few generic colors.

Well these three up above were actually all came from the same white lace which I have dyed.  It's easier than I thought it would be.

I found these bottles of fabric dye for actualy pretty cheap.  $4 a bottle, but I only used a few drops which means i can get years of use from a single bottle.  Mixed dye with some water in a zip lock bag and let the fabric seep from 30 seconds to overnight (maybe excessive, but it doens't hurt for the strong dark colours).  I used a few drops for light baby colours and a teaspoon for the dark colors.

But you dont need all 4 bottles to create these different tones.  Just like mixing paint, modeling clay, and food dye, you can achieve different tones and colours by messing with colour ratios and mixtures.  Saturation changes can be achieved by changes to time duration.

These shades of pink and red were produced by this single red dye.  By partially dunking in a piece of lace into a dark solution, and quickly diluting it into a bucket of water for the rest of the lace to consume results in the tie-dye effect in the middle lace.  There's a reason they tell you not to pour the dye directly onto the fabric . . . but that little accident showed me how to produce that unique pattern. 

Queen's Party Hat - Happy Birthday Crystal

My friend Crystal wanted to go to Chucky-Cheese for her birthday, with Party Hats.  So I made her a special hat just for the birthday girl.

I was looking for some kind of "paper lace" that I read about in a book, and walking through a craft store I found the closest thing.  Paper doilies for a tea party. 

I cascaded it out like scales on a mermaid, pulling it out to give it some depth.  Next time I might buy white dollies and paint it sea green and aqua marina to really go for a mermaid look.

I couldn't use a store bought party hat as a base because it was just too small, so I used some scrapbook paper (in this case from a 8 bit video game theme).  It actually makes it pretty cool linning for the inside.

I used some ribbon instead of an elastic to let it stay on the head.  Unfortunatly I used some cheap ribbon so it wasn't very comfortable (lesson learned).  I also added some strings of pearls to make it more wild.

Lace Top Hat

I just tried to make this hat, cause it was too cute of an idea to pass up. I think it turned up pretty well.
Oh look it's Hannah again, I ended up giving her the hat before she left for Japan to teach for a year. 



I made my own hat frame out of red plastic canvas (it's a grid for needle point work).  1 circle, 1 donut cut circle, and one long strip. Tied it all together with fishing wire.  Slap on some lace slathered withe glue and let that try.

Add some decorations like a red feather (a white feather that i coloUred with a red sharpie) and some extra red mesh.

-Rini

Materials:  Plastic Canvas, Lace fabric, Satin Mesh, Feathers, Fishing wire (grabbed some clean strands from my dad's tackle box)