Showing posts with label buttons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buttons. Show all posts

Thursday, August 11, 2011

5 Days of Art - Part 1: Sewing

Sew.... last week when both my sweet girls were away with grandparents and my husband was at football practice I got to drag art & sewing supplies out all over the house and just create to my hearts content, without a single interruption.
Oh my goodness. Now you guys know, I love my babies and I was truly elated to have them back .....but that quiet "me time" was sooo much appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed.

I did mend a few things, hem a dress, and repair a wind suit jacket but the really fun stuff was in altering some of my shirts.

Since shirt style trends are longer these days I've had a few shirts that were cute but too short just taking up space in my closet for a while. I decided to take two of them and see what I could create with some simple changes.

This is what the first shirt looked like before. It's a lovely soft material in a deep eggplant purple with a light lavender camesol attached underneath.
 I have a basket full of old lace and trim pieces that I pull out every once in a while for projects. I decided to use the lace to add length to the shirt and embellish it.
 Layer number one.
 And a second layer, because the first one just didn't feel like enough. ;)
 Then with the same lace, I scrunched and wrapped and stitched until I had a full flower. I cut out a circle from a piece of soft white fabric and sewed on a pin so that the flower could be removed from the shirt for washing. It can also be used separately on a hat or different outfit.
 In one of my jars of buttons (oooh I love buttons!) I found some pearelescent pieces that detached from their gold rings.
 So I took several different sizes and glued them to the center of my flower along with a couple of tiny silver pieces.
 And here you can see it all put together, a lovely longer embellished shirt.
 I also had a green shirt that I did something similar to. I used part of an old skirt for this one, adding a layer to the shirt's length and then using a few strips from the same fabric to create little rosettes of varied sizes. I did sew the rosettes to this shirt instead of making three individual pins.
I always love these kind of wearable art projects.

More to come tomorrow from my 5 Days of Art   .... on to another creative medium.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

My Crafty Weekend

Thanks to my friend Melissa for hanging out with me Friday evening and inspiring me to have a totally "crafty weekend"! We had a great time playing in the studio and making artsy stuff, including a bracelet made out of old buttons. Now this got me to thinking about other things I could make and stuff I could recycle...............Hmmmm, well on Saturday I came across an unattractive old pair of shoes in my closet and knew right away that I could give them new life as a classy & kinda funky pair of attention grabbers. No trash can or charity bin for these guys.....nope, they got a complete makeover and now I've fallen in love with them. Check it out.


The completed pair.

I used samples of upholstry fabric and some of my grandma's old buttons.

And this is what they looked like before. What do you think?