Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA after the Christmas season. Work started to pick up and I've also been busy planning my Dapper Day outfit. For those of you unfamiliar with Dapper Day check them out at www.dapperday.com. It's an unofficial event at Disneyland where guest attend in their finest 1950s attire. This event was inspired by the vintage Disneyland posters where you see all the guest attending the parks in their Sunday best.
I've been working with my friend and her mother in law to manipulate an already existing pattern into a dress of my size. Unfortunately I don't have a super skinny waist so there were a lot of inches to be added to the pattern.
Note to self, tracing paper is your friend when you don't fit a pattern exactly.
My trip to JoAnn last week was a short but exciting one. If any of you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed I posted the add for 50% off Fiskars products during the Joann Labor Day sale and saying I was going to get it. Well, I did! I had to leave for a camping trip that afternoon so I made sure to go to JoAnn in the morning.
As soon as I stepped through the doors I couldn't help but notice the new spot for the licensed fabrics. Up front and plainly in sight. It definitely got my attention! I strolled through the aisle and was pretty giddy about what I saw so I snapped some photos because I really wanted to share with everyone the new selection of fabric that they had. I'm sure some of you may have already seen it since I'm not sure when the last time I was in JoAnn's was but I'm sure you can be excited about it again with me. :)
My sister's coworker birthday was yesterday and she had asked me to help her make a birthday sash. She wanted to add some lace to glam it up so I decided that I was going to sew a double layered sash. I started looking on Pintrest for some tutorials on how to sew a sash, but it seemed like everyone was posting No-sew Sash tutorials and sew tutorials for dress sashes. So I decided to make my own Sew Your Own Sash Tutorial.
What you'll need:
1 yard of fabric (36-38 inches wide) in their favorite color
*An alternative for the ribbon is to get just 1 yards to cover the front sides of the sash only. No need to cover the whole sash if you don't want to purchase 4 yards of ribbon. I was lucky enough to buy a whole bag full of ribbon at SCRAP-SF for 50 cents! :)
*If you don't want to purchase Iron-On Alphabets, an alternative is to use fabric glue and glitter or fabric puff paint.
Earth Day is around the corner and things just kind of lined up so that I havethe perfect ecofriendly post to honor Earth Day! So I've started interning with Ecomonster for the past couple of weeks now and I've learned so much! One of the things I found out about was FabMo.org, a nonprofit organization that gives away free "scrap" fabric that otherwise would have been thrown away by places such as textile companies. Here's a cool informative video about FabMo.
Lucky for me, when I found out about FabMo, their next event was a week away so I signed up for a selection slot right away. Their website is pretty easy to navigate and you can sign up for 45 minute slots available 3 days at least once a month. They have multiple time slots available to ensure that they don't get over crowded and so that you can always get a fresh batch of fabric to look through.
The parking lot is small but if you pick an early or late enough time there should still be plenty of parking spots. There's only one or out of their little warehouse area and immediately you can see a full table stacked with fabric. I'm not going to lie, I got a little giddy seeing it. At the door there were a few volunteers standing and talking to other folks searching the room and checking people in. A volunteer greeted me and checked me in an explained how things work since I told it was my first time there. You're free to walk around the room, majority of the fabric is in the middle table and back wall had some rugs and carpets, vinyls and other scraps in other sections. Then she showed me against the check in wall they had 3 different bag sizes and the suggested donation value. After that I was free to roam the room and stuff my bad full of goodies. :)
Huge piles of fabric to rummage through on the center table. they were organized by size and set in short stacks all across the table. Everyone kind of just roams around looking through stacks and that is exactly what I did too. There were stacks of fabrics in all sorts of sizes. The most popular sizes were place mat sizes (no cutting/sewing required).
Along the front there were baskets of trim and tassels all organized in boxes.
Roles of vinyls, fabrics, and rugs! After a few minutes the volunteers got everyone's attention and mentioned that the "Fabric Fairies" will come out and bring more fabrics if we organized the stacks to make sure that others can have an enjoyable experience looking through organized stacks of fabrics. Everyone laughed and all sorted the closest stack of fabric. Nothing but smiles and cheers at that time.
At the end of my 45 minutes I managed to grab a full bag of all sorts of goodies. I left my donation at the door on my way out and thanked them for such a great experience.
Here's my free* haul from FabMo. I'm in love with this place and I'm probably going to be going again next month and as long as my schedule allows me to attend their selection events. I can't wait to give these rescued designer fabrics a new life!
I love making fabric flowers but I never thought of making a fabric flower necklace until I saw it on pintrest. This is super easy and such a beautiful end result. My flower template is a little different from the original tutorial but this was the way I taught myself to make the flowers so I just kind of stuck with it for this tutorial. I also tried out the Fray Check for the first time and I kind of like it except for the fact that it's noticeable when it dries - granted Fray Check is probably better used for clothes that will be washed. Also, my pictures this time around are all a tint of blue...I'm not sure why but I tried to fix and adjust them as much as possible so please bear with me as I'm still learning the photography aspect of blogging.
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