The story behind the 25th Anninversary T-shirt

I can't believe it has been 25 years since we were married!

 (So young.... so THIN!)

We're having a casual party at home to celebrate with family and friends.
I want to look fancy but casual and comfortable.
I bought a v-neck gray t-shirt a while back and it is very comfortable.
I thought of  embellishing the neckline with beads.
I found this example and used her idea....
http://www.lovemaegan.com/2012/01/pearl-encrusted-deep-v-t-shirt-diy.html

Thanks Maegan!

I found I had some pearls which were too yellow and others that were whiter that looked good on the gray shirt. I also have some gray pearls in a few shades of gray, and some gray acrylic beads that provide a nice texture difference due to their matte finish. Also some silver lined beads and some white AB coins that really shine and have hints of other colors.

I started with medium sized beads, placing them about a finger width apart all around the neckline,

then filled in with other sizes. Used groups of 5 beads with a larger one in the middle, and voila!

And, I love it, but decided to add more. I hadn't added the smallest pearls yet, and had some silver 'stardust' beads I added as well:

I thought of filling in further with silver seed beads and maybe letting them 'escape' the boundary of the neckline a bit, maybe in tendrils..... how much is too much? I guess eventually the weight of the beads could become a factor.

The back of the neck was much less decorated... I figured it would be covered by my hair which also might get stuck in the beads... but chances are I'll end up with my hair 'up' at some point to keep cool, so I filled it in more:

Thanks for helping me decide whether to add more or not. I received 3 reviews by email. One was: 'add more', another: 'stop there', the other said to go either way.
So I added more, but kept the beads restrained to the neck binding.
I think I love it! As one person pointed out, it is a virtual necklace!

More comments welcome! Thanks.

New spiral garden

Just completed this tiered/spiral garden which has been in the planning stages for years!
The 'big snake' is an Alvin lift line which was used to haul the submarine out of the water by a huge A-frame winch on the R/V Atlantis .
My husband used to be an Alvin Pilot and he got these used and defective lift lines when the group no longer wanted them.
They are REALLY heavy and take a lot of muscle to move around.
 We have about 5 of them lining the driveway... you can see two of them in this picture.
The blue thing at the top of the spiral is a ceramic bird which is turned the wrong way in this picture. See below of a slightly better view.

We planted zucchini, cucumber, peas, and cantalope... all climbers.
The teepee arbor was made from a 4 stalked sasafrass we took down just for the purpose. It was getting big and would soon be shading the garden so we harvested it. I'll be adding more cross-pieces and twine to encourage the climbing.

Here's another shot of the entire 'farm' area:

 The garlic is coming up nicely and we've got 2 kinds of lettuce, 3 kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of peppers, broccoli, cilantro and parsley.
All is watered with a soaker system and surrounded by a simple wire fence. We're planning a nicer fence in the future.

Spring Burst

Well over a year ago, my husband helped me devise a rolling display stand. The base was an old office chair. It was a rectangular pillar of plywood waiting for my inspiration to decorate each side in a different theme.
Each side would get a mirror, a shelf, a fabric covered pouch, and 4 pegs to hang things on.
I got to the point where I'd covered three of the four pouches, I had the first side painted in a base coat(this is the 'winter' side which has snowflakes and hearts in pink and grey) but then got stuck.
I needed help attaching the mirrors and shelves. So recently my husband and I started doing just that. I ended up covering 3 sides!
Still many details to complete but the groundwork is laid and progress has been made.
Winter:

 

Night(you can see the unfinished side on the right):

Garden:

Last side will be 'Ocean' but no progress on the fabric pouch yet... maybe I should cover it with shells?

I've also been working on more bag designs. Here's the latest:

Really cute matching fabrics.
I used the tutorials here.
I really like the adjustable strap that goes with it.
I'm thinking of using the upholstery samples 10" squares might work great for a color blocked bag.

Finally today I'll share this T shirt. I used an old T-shirt of my husband's and cut off the neck band but retaining the binding at the back neck to reduce stretch.
Then I used my Sharpie marker and alcohol method to create the design, I am loving it!
Front:

 Back:

The neckline came out really cool! I used blue vertical marks all around. The sleeves got a rainbow. One sleeve one way, the other sleeve the other way. The 'sun' design on the back bled through to the front and some of the blue at the bottom of the back looks like sea and clouds which are both really great effects. The flowers on the bottom of the front are really nice too and the whole things really looks amazing.... if I do say so myself. Better than expected. Now the trick is to keep the color from fading. If this were a garment I didn't want Sharpie to stay on I probably couldn't get it out, right?

Yesterday, I took an old black T shirt and took off the sleeves and sewed up the bottom to make a shopping bag. but I just got the idea to bleach-dye it! so stay tuned!

more bags!

For a couple of years my cousin in Maine and I have been working on a bag design to use some woven fabric panels she got from a friend. A lining and a zipper were features we wanted to include. Another thing I wanted to try for was to not have to cut the panel at all, in case you wanted to take the bag apart later and use the panel in another way. not crucial but would be nice.
Another friend, who is a weaver, recently told me she had a woven panel she wanted to make a lining for. No zipper. She wanted some help with the sewing.

So I've been playing with some bag designs. Lined, some with zippers, I keep finding it difficult to make them look professional.


I started with a piece of fabric the same size as one of the woven panels (15x30).
I folded up a 12" pocket, leaving the rest for the flap. The flap seems a bit short but the actual woven panel has a long fringe and I didn't want it to hang below the bottom of the bag.
I used some upholstery samples I'd gotten from another friend. They are lovely fabrics with lots of body so I don't have to interface them.

With the two shown here I was playing with boxing the corners with different thicknesses. The black and white bag  has thinner boxed corners than the orange one.

 

I lined the bags by making a duplicate out of lining fabric, right up to the box corners.

 Then I put the lining inside and turned in all of the edges and top-stitched it to connect the lining to the bag.
I used some woven nylon strapping and attached the straps to the sides slightly to the back of center of the sides.

These bags are ok but I wanted to try a zipper.
Then my friend with the woven panel said she didn't want a zipper or boxed corners.
A simple sleeve to fit inside the 'envelope' made from the woven panel.

For my next try I decided to use one of the actual woven panels.
Here it is folded up like a bag with a zipper and some amazing embroidered fabric I had (another sample) that matched so well I had to use it for the lining.

I found an amazing tutorial for how to add a zipper here
and followed it... pretty much. I found I wanted some end pieces on the zipper placket and fudged some in. Next time I'll try it a little differently.
I sewed the lining to the bag by hand as I didn't want to see the stitching on the outside of the bag where the lining meets the flap. This worked well and would be good with or without a zipper. And the way that tutorial works, you could do either.

I ended up making a kumihimo braid strap which is just ok. I don't like the way one end is attached to the D-ring. I should have left the ends long and put beads on them instead of trying to hide them and cut them off.

For this bag, the flap is not lined, just the  bag.
Here's the results. Outside:

 And inside:

And zipped:

I don't like that it has very little body. It is very floppy. An interfacing would have helped, I think.
You can barely see the way I attached the handles to the side with some fake suede tabs cut from iron on elbow patches, but they came out pretty nice.

I did these a few weeks ago.

 Today I found new inspiration. I found this tutorial by accident and made 4 of these bags in 5 hours including a break for lunch and a couple of mistakes.
Here are the darlings:

The three small ones are all upholstery samples. The two small ones are using 10"x5" pieces and a 2"x4" piece for the tab. These take only 4 seams! AMAZINGLY EASY!
To be fair, the two zipper seams are  top-stitched, so that's actually 4 seams. And the other two seams get a zigzag edge after the fact so that's actually 4 more seams.... but they are all straight seams, and if you match things properly the first time instead of putting the zipper in facing the lining and having to rip it out and start over, they whip up like nothing! And so cute!
One needs a supply of zippers. I got some when I was at Mardens (omg, what a place!) with my cousin and then bought more on ebay. Now I have a nice supply at about $.50 each. The tutorial for the pouch mentions a link where you can get the 7" zippers needed for the small bags for about that price.

So after making a small pouch I decided to make another one a little bigger with some shiny quilted fabric, lined with a linen print. The shiny fabric had grommets I took advantage of, but had to put grommets in the lining, which needed a backing to hold the grommet. I ended up sewing around the grommets to hold the lining to the outer fabric which I hope will save those grommets in the lining from pulling out.

I made the other small pouch with some of the leftover of the shiny stuff.

Then I tried making one so big(14"x28") it is more of a pocketbook out of a different type of woven panel from my cousin. Although I did a poor job of attaching the piping(which is a change I made in the pattern... I made the last two seams with the raw edges on the outside, then covered the messiness with binding. I think this would be much nicer with a leather (or maybe leatherette? ... tee hee that is such a funny word!) binding and will replace it when I find some. It is hard to see the handle which is just made by looping the binding back to the top of the zipper as long as you want.
It is a really cute bag.

These items may appear on my other blog in a more finished form but I wanted to share the process here.