The Pedro Bag

My craft group, the super-awesome and lovely Crafty Foxes, regularly do craft swaps. Pretty much every six weeks, a random topic is chosen, everyone who’s keen signs up, and the magic hat of number (a.k.a. random.org) draws out who’s making for who. Then we have six weeks to make something for the person who’s name we’ve been given, in the theme of the swap. So much fun!

The latest swap has just ended. The theme was ‘Favourite Movies’. We each listed our three favourite movies, and had to make something for our mystery swap partner using one (or more) of their three favourite movies. My swap partner was Ria – she’s new to the Crafty Foxes, and I’d never met her before, which added to the fun! Her three fave movies were Beetlejuice, Scott Palmer vs The World, and Napolean Dynamite. My first thought was to make Scott Palmer inspired magnets. But that just wasn’t coming together as I’d planned it out in my head (don’t you hate it when that happens, and a vision just refuses to let itself become reality?!). I toyed briefly with the idea of doing something inspired by Beetlejuice’s black-and-white striped outfit, but since I’d never met Ria I had no idea of her style, and there was just too much potential for that not to work out so well. So I gave in and went with what was probably more-or-less inevitable – the ‘Vote For Pedro’ slogan from Napolean Dynamite. Predictable, no? But still so fun. 🙂

First, I took a white shirt of Steve’s that he didn’t want any more.

(The red ‘P’ was just put there for the photo, by the way.)

Next, I took some red felt and cut out the words. I had contemplated screen printing them on, but rough applique just appealed to me more, for some reason.

Add them together, with some blue-and-white gingham for a shoulder strap and some red satin type stuff (left over from making bridesmaids dresses for my lovely friend Susan’s wedding earlier this year), a bit of Velcro to fasten it with, and you’ve got yourself a bag!

And yes, I know the lettering is a bit rough-looking. That was planned – I wanted to see how it would look if I just stitched down the centre of each letter. I quite like it, actually – it’s got that whole arts-and-crafts vibe about it. 🙂 (Admittedly it does look better in real life than it does in the photo, I think.)

I found it kind of amusing that it’s all red, white and blue, since that the current Sew Weekly theme for this week.

Speaking of which, I finished my creation for the latest Sew Weekly challenge tonight. Yay! I’m pretty happy with it – I think it’s going to be a wardrobe favourite. 🙂 But you’ll have to wait until Sunday to see it – Steve and I have a standing date on Sunday afternoon’s to get photos of my latest Sew Weekly creations, and there is no chance I can convince him to take photos before then.

The inaugural Sew-a-skirt workshop!

For ages, I’d been um-ing and ah-ing about running a workshop on how to make a basic A-line skirt. It seemed like quite a lot of lovely girls I know want to learn how to sew, and a basic A-line is a pretty good starting place (in my opinion, anyway!), but would they be interested in a workshop on it? But finally, I bit the bullet and put forward the suggestion to my craft group, the awesome Crafty Foxes. Instant success! Turns out a whole lot of awesome girls were interested! In fact, I was a little bit overwhelmed by the response. So I planned a second workshop as well. 🙂 (After all, with limited space and sewing machinery, I figure I can only teach three people at a time.)

We held the first workshop on Saturday, with two lovely attendees being my guinea pigs for it all – Emi and Katia. I taught them how to take measurements, how to draft a basic skirt pattern to their measurements, and how to cut out and sew up a skirt from that pattern. Lots of fun, although they found the mathematics involved with pattern drafting unexpected and challenging! They each walked away with two made-to-measure skirt patterns though – one for a basic straight skirt, and the other an A-line skirt modification. And, of course, the skirts they made from the A-line pattern! 🙂 And we had heaps of fun doing it all!

Here’s some photos from the day:

Drafting up a pattern....

More pattern drafting

Sewing skirts up

Learning to use an overlocker

Katia's completed skirt! Purple stretch fine-wale corduroy with pink and orange lace stripes

Emi's completed skirt! Black heavy weight cotton drill with a green-with-white-polka-dots ribbon trim

The second workshop is happening this Sunday, so stay tuned for more awesome skirt-sewing results! 🙂

Crafty Foxes are go!

Random thing to do on a Sunday – get up super-early to get all dolled up in 1950’s styles, and wander around Wellington with a group of girls, getting your photo taken. Provides great entertainment for everyone wandering by, I tells ya!

Background: I’m a member of a craft group called Crafty Foxes. We meet every second Wednesday at a cafe in town, to hang out and chat and work on whatever crafts we bought along with us to do that night. And every so often, we do other stuff as well, just coz we can. Like today, for example! One of the girls, Natalia (aka Tilly) is a photographer. A while back, she thought it would be a fun idea to get a group of the Crafty Foxes to get all dressed up rebel 1950’s retro, and do a craft-themed photo shoot. So, we did. 😉

Naturally, me being me, I figured I may as well take on the challenge, and made dresses for us all to wear. Good excuse to use some of those re-released vintage patterns I’ve been buying. 😉 (Luckily, there were only 5 of us taking part.)

So, for Nat K, I made a stunning green-and-black patterned dress. Full skirt, fitted bodice, wide v-neck with detailing over the shoulders. Looked absolutely gorgeous on her – I’m quite proud of it, actually! 🙂

For Hiliare – snow leopard print sleeveless, v-neck pencil-skirt dress. Very retro cute and elegant with her red hair and high heels!

Teresa – black satin-look strapless dress. Fitted bodice, full skirt.

Sarah – not really a dress person, so I made her a full blue skirt, which she wore with a black top, and a black-and-white-polka-dot cardi. Cute!

And for myself, I got lazy and wore a green-and-white-gingham-with-cherries halter neck dress I made to wear to my baby bro’s wedding last year. Heh.

So yes, today.

Tilly decided to do my hair all crazy-like retro. Big, high rolled fringe, bobbed ponytail in the back. Winged eyeliner, bright red lippy, bright red nail polish, bright red shoes (and of course, the bright red hair which was looking rather flame-coloured today, since the roots were fading and it was pulled up and back, which made it look all intentional flame-coloured. Kinda cool, I thought! Although it took two washes to get all the hair dye out!!). And of course, being the middle of winter and wandering through town wearing a backless summer halter dress and with that sort of hair and makeup, people kinda looked! Lucky there was a group of us – we kinda acted it up. Lots of fun. 😉

Can’t wait to see the photos – Tilly’s sending them out to us in a week or so, so stay tuned for a couple of them on here!