Serious Craft Blog

Lately, I haven't had much time for crafting "R&D", ie messing around. But I managed to do some quickie projects after getting inspired from my first visit to Urbanic on Abbot Kinney in Venice, CA.

I am in looove with this boutique! It's one of the nicest stationery stores I have ever visited. I've been to Abbot Kinney dozens of times, but somehow this was the first time I actually noticed this shop. For shame...

Through Urbanic, I discovered a stationery brand called O-Check, from Korea. They have adoraaable papers and notebooks and stamps and and and... I love their frenchy, minimalistic, classical styles. I have a long-standing romance with papers—I wanted to buy all their paper pads! Go check out Urbanic if you're in town!

I think it was on the O-Check blog that I saw a photo of a simple notecard that had some machine stitching on it that looked simplistic, but elegant. I wanted to give it a try with some of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine that I pretty much have never, ever used.

Kind of cute, yea? It takes like 1 minute to sew each one, and you can totally have fun with all kinds of designs and colors! You can make greeting cards, note paper, letter paper, letterheads, etc etc. I totally dig that leafy stitch one below.

One of the cool stuffs O-Check has are these patterned tape. They have 'em as regular glossy tapes and masking tapes. I got a roll of the glossy ones with a red grid printed on it. It's so cool, but I don't know how to use it. So I stuck some on this clear glass bathroom tile I picked up from Home Depot the other day. Now it's a cup coaster! I actually like it a lot. And it's so simple to make! Costs like $3 bucks per tile at HD.

Alright, that's enough fun. Gotta get back to work!

I'm all for supporting independent pattern makers--but frankly, there just aren't that many out there! So what's a sewer to do when she needs to make two fast dresses for her and her mom to attend a semi-impromptu wedding in a month's time?

Why yes, I am one of those pattern makers I myself speak of...but unfortunately, I don't have dressmaking skillz nor the time to experiment.... Even a search on Etsy returns only commercial patterns for adult clothing. Outside of that, I can only think of the beautiful Colette Patterns--but there's still a huge niche right there open for more filling! *hint hint*

And so, I resort to the grimey pattern books at my local Jo-Ann and picked out a couple of seemingly easy dress patterns. I found a very pretty fuschia gradient satin fabric off the sale bin for $5/yd (!!!) as well. The fabric is very pretty to look at, though later I found that it's hellish to sew with its not-so-superior quality.

Anyway, here's what it turned out like.

Would you like some cheese with that?

Not totally shabby yea? I picked the strapless top of style "C", but the bubble skirt bottom of style "A". Extracting the parts of the instructions I needed wasn't so hard. The pattern itself is somewhat straightforward. The biggest hassle with the design itself is doing all the ruffles. But guess what?! If you have a sewing machine RUFFLE & PLEAT FOOT, then your job is significantly easier. The ruffle foot is one of the best craft purchases I have ever made! More about that some other time.

The pattern has a lot of steps. There's about three layers of fabric for the top part--two layers of lining and one outer layer. Pain in the butt sort of. The zipper is where I had the greatest difficulty. I am not afraid of zipper sewing, but the satiny fabric is daunting to use. It has a tendency to catch on the machine needle or the teeth and pull the threads in the fabric, which makes the fabric look awful. It's like when you pull your stockings. I was getting pulls all over the place as I was sewing the zipper. So frustrating. This fabric is also not good if you want to remove basting stitches or mistakes. The "ink" on the front of the fabric scrapes off. Those little holes from the stitches will show if you look closely. Conclusion: Don't buy cheapo shiny fabric that is one side printed, unless you're pretty confident. It's also crazy staticky. Fortunately I had some anti-static lining fabric to use for the inside.

One last gripe: use a stiffer lining fabric. The one I chose is rather thin and slippery, meaning it doesn't stay on the top of my body so well. The lining tends to slip up because it is lighter than the outer fabric. I will probably have to add some tiny stitches to stitch all the layers together on the bust part. Some bra tape should also help keep things where they should be. Also, the size turned out way bigger and needed altering, so I probably should've gone one size down--don't trust the size chart to the T.

One bonus: Instead of a plain bubble skirt bottom, I used some tiny safety pins to pin up parts of the fabric. Now it's one of those fancy shmancy bubbly skirt things. The pins are totally removable and repositionable, great for my indecisiveness!

Overall, I would recommend this pattern if you have fair sewing skills and a lot of patience. It's a pretty time consuming one, and requires both machine and hand sewing. But it would save you a lot of money vs buying an evening dress someplace. Total expenditure: $10 pattern + $15 fabric + $5 misc = $30-ish. Sometimes patterns are on sale for like 3 bucks even.

So that's dress #1, for myself. I've still got my mom's one to go. It's a different, more 'conservative' pattern. More to come.

A thousand apologies for keeping you guys waiting! Wow it has been so chaotic for me lately. If you've read my previous entry you'll know what I'm talking about... Between trying to do damage control on my systems and doing on my web work and maintaining hyperart, I've barely even had time to step outside of the apartment!

Anyways. There were so many great comments by you folks! I saw several idea suggestions for tote bags. It's funny, because this morning, while I was half asleep in bed, I thought of a good tote bag idea. Perfect! Once I can clear some time up again I'll work on a free tutorial for this.

Without further ado...our winners! ::drumroll::

Winner of QUICKIE Clutch
Commenter Abby says... love your clutches...totally my style...I've been looking for some sort of sunglasses holder pattern, including a drawstring?
Winner of Old-World Map Cup Coasters
Facebook Fan... Amber Lee of WhiteFlint, MI
Winner of OTTIE Stationery Set
Twitter Follower... lovelylildeer, "Rebecca"

Congratulations! I'll be contacting each of you for your mailing infos.

Wow, we had so many entries between the comments and tweets and facebook fans and newsletter signups. And thank you so much to everyone who participated! I think this very first hyperart giveaway was so fun and helpful, I want to keep doing it! So now I'm going to go ponder about what to do next. So come back soon! I'll be working on that tote tute also. :)

:: hyperart

Sorry folks, if you are waiting for the results of the contest... I'll definitely post them soon, I had a very. unlucky. day. today.... Please understand!

Gosh, where do I begin? Time for some venting!

I woke up ready to roll and work on my freelancing web stuff, when I noticed my music wouldn't play. I realized my secondary data harddrive was flaking out. Now, if you followed my rants from last week, you'll know that last Thursday my primary harddrive had failed. As if that wasn't bad enough, today, this Thursday, my secondary drive fails! Come on now, can't a hardworking girl get a break? I just rebuilt the main drive! I didn't even get a chance to back up the data drive to the new main drive yet and it fails! Gosh... I guess there is a techie saying that goes like, when one drive fails, the rest go down with it. So I ended up spending half the day running around and buying a drive enclosure and doing data recovery.

As I was in the heat of rsyncing and copying files over, things really started to get hot. I mean, literally. Because my apartment building was on fire!

Whoa! I walked out into a cloud of smoke, so I ran with my two bunnies and caught up with E as he was heading home from work. The flames were from the opposite end of our building. Very fortunately, no one was hurt. We were evacuated for a while but homes were for the most part okay.

Did I say no one got hurt? That was a mistake. My poor bunny, Baby, as he was hopping outside on the grass while we were waiting around, got his paw caught on something, I'm not sure what. His paw started bleeding. :( We took him home when it was safe again and washed him up and patched up his little hand. He's all sulking now...poor Baby!

Man what a day! And I'm still backing up my data. That drive is full of value I cannot afford to lose. I'm running out of drives to back up to and to fail on me!

It seems that everytime I prepare a full list of things to do, those things never end up getting done... I'd like to live a little less spontaneously sometimes, please?

Sorry for being a drama queen in this long rant! *sigh* Better things to come, promise!

So I was just pondering what to talk about next here, when E came out of the pooper and showed me the back cover of Condé Nast Traveler magazine's July 09 issue. I gasped in amusement to see the most unexpected of relationships displayed in gorgeous Annie Leibovitz photography on shiny cover paper—my former boss, Sally Ride, and Louis Vuitton. In an AD. Together.

Say what? Let's double check the wording... No, I'm not seeing things. It truly is Sally Ride, and those truly are LV bags. And Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell too from Apollo 11 and 13, respectively.

Photo Credit: LOUIS VUITTON/ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

It's part of Louis Vuitton's Core Values Campaign, with this particular 'value' commemorating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Check out some videos and really stunning photography of the astronauts chatting in the middle of the California dessert at Louis Vuitton Journeys. The motto is "Some Journeys Change Mankind Forever".

Whether or not I'm a fan of LV, this is a pretty impressive campaign that brings together some rather unexpected elements—astronauts (very smart people) and expensive handbags (often bought by less smart people).

Sometimes I still think about what an opportunity it was to have worked for this woman for her company, Sally Ride Science. I mean, she's only the first American woman in space, and like, I only worked there for like, five years [/sarcasm]. Do check the company out if you have kids and you want to keep them interested in math and science. They have great programs and really fun science festivals all over the US of A!