Fabulous Flamingos and an Exciting New Direction!

I mentioned last week on my Facebook page that last weekend I would be working on something fun that I'd dreamed up while I was on holidays.  Well it worked!  Here it is!!

Yes, what started out as a plain cardigan with boring buttons, with a bit of imagination became this Fabulous Flamingo Cardigan!!!

Watching the little flamingos come to life was quite fun - a very different feeling to creating a garment.

As you can imagine, there was a fair bit of hand sewing to be done.  Luckily last weekend I had an appointment at the hairdresser which means I was sitting with nothing to do for about an hour and a half while the colour did its thing.  So instead of contemplating my navel, I did some hand sewing.

Yes, I get champagne and snacks at my hairdresser!

And Stella helped me sew on the buttons.

Helped or hindered - I'm not quite sure...

This whole experience has really excited me!  And I've been dreaming ever since about all the fabulous things you could put on a cardigan - cupcakes, bows, hearts, birds, flowers, bunnies, pineapples, strawberries - really the list is endless... all with felt, beads and sequins!!!

By now you're probably wondering what the exciting new direction is...  well as well as continuing to sew and blog I will be

MAKING THESE CARDIGANS TO SELL!!!!!

In fact, I'm already working on three Fabulous Flamingo cardigans - one size AU8 (US4), one size AU10 (US6) and one size AU14 (US10).  Once they are finished I will be listing them for sale on my Facebook page for AU$85 + postage.  If the response is good, I'll then be working on the next design!

I really hope everyone is as excited about this as I am!

If you could have anything embellished onto a cardigan, what would it be?

Beccie
xxx

The AHhhh Cardigan - finishing details

So in yesterday's post I tried to explain how I embellished my cardigan - and I gave up because it was too hard.  Pictures tell a much clearer picture!

If you want to read about the start of this cardigan and see how it looked before I stitched stuff to it, go here.

So first I stitched on some pretty scalloped-edge lace

Then I stitched on this bobble trim - each bobble is about 1.5cm in diametre

 Then I stitched on a line of these natural coloured glass pearls.

Actually I did it twice.  The first time I stitched them on with the cardigan in my lap, and they all puckered and wouldn't sit right.  So second time around I put the cardigan on my dress form and stitched them on whist standing up.  Not quite as relaxing.  Thank god for good movies!

And in the end I had this - very atonal embellishment, which is just what I wanted so I could wear it with anything.

Gee - that was sooo much easier with pictures!  I purchased more bobble trim yesterday, because now I'm going to do the same trim around the sleeve cuffs.  THEN it will be finished!

Thanks for reading

Beccie

xxx 

PS. Please excuse the size of the font - blogger is playing silly buggers

"You can't always get what you want"

"But if you try some time, you just might find
You get what you need"

Thank you Rolling Stones for that sage piece of advice.

I have been searching searching searching online and in (god forbid) actual stores for a white cropped cardigan.  And do you think I can find one anywhere in the world?  No!  So last weekend I realised it was not going to happen before the end of winter, and I just needed to make my own.

Here is the cardigan that is my inspiration.  I've been looking for something just like this in length and shape.

Gorgeous knit cardigan by my favourite Australian designer, Alannah Hill

My aim was to copy this cardigan pretty exactly, and this meant my first explorations of pattern making!  I traced and pinned and cut and fiddled and came up with this, my calico pattern:

I did make a pattern piece for the sleeve too, just didn't bother pinning it to my dress form...

Now, retail fabric selection in Australia is not awesome, so I was unable to buy any actual knits to make my cardigan from, so instead I bought a lovely soft fluffy fabric that I think you are supposed to make baby rugs from... (and by the way, I bought WAY too much of it, so in the future I'm going to have a go at dying it).

It was pretty easy to sew, but very quickly I realised that I was going to have to bind each seam as there was fluff EVERYWHERE!  Here is my cardigan part way through construction:

You can see that my calico pattern wasn't awesome, and I had to take the cardigan in at the waist

And you can also see (if you look really closely) my seam binding on the darts

Then it was time for the sleeves.  Dun Dun DUN!!!!  SET IN SLEEVES!!!  One of my sewing nightmares.  All that gathering of the ease and making it fit... then sewing it together and turning it through and realising that its all puckered and looks AWFUL and you have to unpick it and START AGAIN!  Not with this fabric!!  It went together like a dream and any puckering was hidden by the fluffiness of the fabric!

Next problem was the buttons.  The fabric is soft and I didn't like the chances of my sewing machine doing buttonholes in it easily, so to get around that I stitched some wide bias tape behind where I would sew the buttons and do the buttonholes.  My machine did the buttonholes like a dream, I finished all the unfinished edges and ended up with this:

TAA DAA!!!!

Not that you can see from this photo, but Spotlight actually carries the exact same buttons from my Alannah Hill cardigan, but in white!  Beutron makes them...lucky score!!

To make it not so plain, I am doing some embellishments.  This really is a homage to my favourite designer's cardigans, so I have named it the AHhh! Cardigan.  Yes I do seem to name all the items of clothing I make...

So, back to the Rolling Stones, yes I didn't get what I wanted, (from a shop), but I did find that I got what I needed.  And that was a boost to my sewing confidence.  I now know that I can make simple patterns, do set in sleeves, and problem solve as I go.  And I'm also going to have a go at fabric dying!  

This cardigan was made for a particular outfit that I've also had some custom resin jewellery made for, by the divine Miss Renee from Lucy Luxxe.  I'm going to put the whole thing together this weekend and get some photos, so you can look forward to seeing the completed, embellished cardigan next week!

Thanks for reading

Beccie
xxx