The Hello Kitty Sweatshop

Yesterday Beka and I were struck by a sudden inspiration to make hats. A friend of ours has a pair of hats from Japan that look like animals, so we borrowed one in order to make our own -- but instead of just any old animal we decided to go for "Hello Kitty" in various color combinations.

What transpired as a result of our half-baked idea ended up being hours and hours in front of the sewing machine, with fleece and felt flying everywhere. But we both ended up with two of the cutest hats imaginable as a result of our long-winded efforts. Materials required: fleece for the hat, felt for the decorations, and yarn for ... pom-poms?

We measured the hat we borrowed, and drew up a pattern for it. It ended up needing a fair amount of alterations, but with Beka having a small head and me having a HUGE head, it was inevitable when we were both using the same pattern.

The body of the had was quite simple with four identical pieces shaped like a bloated triangle to create the round shape plus a fifth piece: a long wide band to make the brim. Oh, and those little pieces? Those are the ears!

We had planned on making hats of two color schemes: black and white. The black version lent well to "girl-punk" style, and the white version I decided to do "traditional" Hello Kitty, so once the body of the hats were made I began sewing on the faces by hand.

Meanwhile Beka was doing a trial run of putting together some pom-poms, a craft which neither of us have done since our Elementary School days. I also remembered a technique for "faking" a bow where you sew two layers of fabric plus interfacing or another stiffener together, then scrunch it up in the middle with a ribbon wrapped around tight. Beka did a real bow on her black hat with actual ribbon, but I used pink felt and the aforementioned "fake" to do my bows

It kept going, and going, and going. After adding eyes, noses, whiskers, bows, and in one case even a pair of ear flaps and pom-poms, we almost missed dinnertime! But eventually we did finish.

Here are the traditional style Hello Kitty hats in white (note: Hello Kitty actually has a yellow nose, but we only had black and pink felt. I'm not going to quibble about it cause it looks cute as is).

And here are the "punk-rock" Hello Kitty hats in black, including mine with the ear-flaps and pom-poms. Beka made a set of pom-poms, and might add those to her white hat later. She is still considering adding ear flaps to the black hat, but is as yet undecided.

And then of course we had to go out to show off the awesome fruits of our awesome labors.

Meow.

Hula Hoops, YES, I made Hula Hoops

Another day and I'm not packing. I spent all of this weekend at Lafayette's Festival International de Louisiane (and not packing). While I was hanging out downtown enjoying wonderful live music from all over the francophone world, I spent a lot of time with a friend Beka, who has recently gotten very interested in hula hooping. She brought a bunch of hula hoops that she had made to the festival, and we were hula-ing up a storm during a lot of the performances.

Beka offered to make me a hula hoop of my own to take back up north, and so today we decided to throw ourselves a hula hoop making party! She came over with all the ingredients:

First of all the tubing: generic 3/4" polyethylene sprinkler tubing from Home Depot.

Next: couplings and electrical tape to secure the ends of the cut tubing.

And finally the decorative tape for the finishing touches.

First Beka cut the tubing to be the proper length. My utility knife was sad and dull, so we just grabbed an extra steak knife from the kitchen and used some sawing action and good old fashioned elbow grease. Since we're coating the tubing in tape there's no need to make the cut particularly neat.

Next is to connect the two raw ends of the tubing together. Beka had found a nifty trick to get the tubing to slide on to the couplings easier, which was to boil some water and dip the ends of the tubing into the water for a few seconds.

And Voila!

We have hula hoops!

But they're not finished yet. Now it's time to make them pretty. So we start with the first round of tape.

Beka brought glitter and hologram tape in addition to colored gaffer's tape. The sparkly tape is a lot more high-maintenance than the gaff tape, which is much more forgiving when wrapping around a hoop. The glitter tape bunches at the edge, and apparently can come unstuck at the edges when worn down by extensive use. Other people recommend using the gaff tape to cover the edges of the glitter tape so as to hold it down and prevent such problems. Beka has used that technique on all of her hoops, and none of her hoops had glitter tape coming off during the hours and hours of use they got at the international festival this weekend, so I can attest to the fact that it works! Here she is wrapping red gaffer's tape around the blue glitter tape already applied to her hoop.

We kept at it for hours. We made 9 hoops in total: 5 full sized and 4 small hoops which Beka wants to practice juggling with.

Almost done!

And here are the results. How beautiful!

And of course now we get to play with them!

Sewing vs. Packing, Part 1

I made a rule for myself today: only one box of spare fabric for when I move home. That means I either have to give away, throw away, or use up a significant pile in the meantime. Luckily I gave myself enough time to pack up all of my belongings that I have plenty to travel, party, and sew in between my spurts of packing productivity.

Today as I was sorting through my unused fabric and tenaciously saved remnants, and pulled out a leftover piece from a dress I made back in college. Based on halter-top pattern from Nicole Miller designing for a pattern company I don't remember now, I changed the back to simplify it to look like a classic halter. Here I am enjoying it at the First East Bad Ideas Ball back in 2004 alongside Anisa, the eponymous creator of "Anisa Knits".

But I had plenty of fabric left over as it turns out, and I happened to come across a pattern that I must not have seen in years, packed in along with some other fabric I also hadn't seen in years (Where does it all come from? Where does it all go?)

A few months ago I discovered that I adore cowl-neck tops. They're very flattering on my figure, in my own opinion. The "2 Hour" label made it look quick and easy (and hopefully not too cheap and cheesy), and I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I made sure to measure myself again before cutting out the pieces, but it still came out far too big. I had to take it in a good 2-3 inches all around in order to avoid the "bag lady" look. And I think I was rather successful:

No, I hadn't yet washed my hair that day.

And a back view for good measure. I wasn't thrilled about the seam the pattern caused, but it is the back and I certainly don't have to look at it.

See what I mean about cowl necks being flattering on me? I adore this fabric even though I'm pretty sure it's spandex or something like that, but it does have this divine embossed velvet flower pattern in black all over, and just enough glitter to sparkle but not enough to make a mess.

But yikes! Did you catch that sunburn on my arms? I had quite the weekend at Festival International de Louisiane this weekend, and most of that came from the very last day when, despite a good 5 applications of SPF 70 sunscreen, I still failed to protect myself entirely.

I liked how this pattern turned out, and if I have more knit fabrics (which most of mine aren't) I'll have to use it again. I also like the look of this halter pattern more than the Nicole Miller pattern I used to make the dress back in college.

I have a bit more fabric left -- not enough for any garments, but enough for an accessory or two. Last time (back in college) I made a long band which I wrapped in my hair which turned out well. The photo is somewhere... else.

And it's late. I'm sleepy and I'm probably going to spend far too much time tomorrow sewing instead of packing. Can't wait!

An Altered Shirt

I was going through my dressers the other day looking for clothes to give to goodwill. One of the primary criteria for such selection is naturally "items I never wear". Now it's not like I never wear t-shirts, but I have an awful lot of t-shirts and I don't wear them particularly often. But I can't just give them away to goodwill since they have strong sentimental value from my college memories.

There is one t-shirt that I wear frequently: a pale blue shirt I picked up at an outdoor market in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It's an unlikely favorite since it's not a color I normally wear, but in a random spurt of creativity back in 2006 I performed a bit of personalization on it that simultaneously made it more comfortable, more chic, and much more interesting.



I attempted that same alteration once more with another shirt I had bought at a gift shop in Bratislava, Slovenia but failed miserably. Either the fabric was different or my methods were flawed and I ended up with a ruined shirt which I eventually just threw away.

But I thought I'd give it another shot in an effort to bring new "life" to an under-used part of my wardrobe. I grabbed a selection of shirts and headed to the fabric store to purchase some extra-wide double fold bias tape to create the edging that had been so attractive on my Ljubljana t-shirt.

I started with just a normal tshirt.



And I cut off the hemline at the bottom, the cuffs on the sleeves, and the collar piece.



Then I sewed the bias tape to the newly cut edges, with the outside of the tape facing the inside of the shirt fabric.



And then I folded the bias tape over the raw edge of the t-shirt and sewed it neatly to the outside of the shirt fabric.



And like every good seamstress should, I made sure to iron it when I was finished.



Voila!



I did three shirts yesterday and two this morning. I expect that they'll all get a lot more wear now that they're much cuter. As regular t-shirts I couldn't escape the feeling that I was dressed like the typical MIT student in the "free t-shirt and old jeans" look whenever I put them on -- if you know what it's like to be a student at MIT (or most engineering schools I suspect) that's practically the school uniform.

I might pull some more shirts out of the dresser to fix them up right, but in the meantime here's the finished roll-call:



One of my favorite East Campus t-shirts, from the "Backstage at EC" rush theme, and the back view:



The show t-shirt from my final show with the Shakespeare Ensemble, "Titus Andronicus" in which I played Tamora, Queen of the Goths.



And the back view. Little known fact: Shakespeare invented "your mom" jokes. Best part: that joke was about me! (or rather, my character)


The t-shirt I (sort of but not really) helped design for First East, the hall I lived on in East Campus for the first 2.5 years of my undergraduate career. It's a design inspired by the disco dance floor the hall collectively made for the Bad Ideas Competition (but unfortunately I was too busy with costume designing a show to help out with).

The t-shirt I had printed for the Shakespeare Ensemble production of "Othello" in which I played the amazing role of Iago during my sophomore year at MIT. Such a stressful and wonderful production. I loved it.

Oh yeah, I look hot.

An Invitation to a Shower

Oh, I had so much fun at Meg's bridal shower last weekend that I'm still reeling in the giddiness it gave me. Therefore this must be a good time to post the lovely (if I do say so myself) work I did on the invitations to the shower.

There are three other bridesmaids but I was quick to volunteer for the task of doing invitations, because I absolutely adooooore all things stationery and lettering. I still write letters to my friends and family -- when I'm not too busy writing them postcards.

I picked up two sets of invitations at a super-discount in some random liquidation sale in Lafayette -- the kind where half the boxes are already opened, some of the merchandise is expired, and all of it looks like it may have fallen off the back of a truck. The two sets were aqua with brown swirly decor and brown ribbons, or classic cream with cream colored ribbons. After much deliberation, I decided upon the aqua and brown. Meg's official wedding color is slate blue, but I doubted anyone would quibble with different colors for the bridal shower.

Now I couldn't just use the invitations as instructed. I don't have a picture of what the kit intended one to do (and I can't get a good one now since I'm stuck on the rig) but if you peek into this "example of a messy workspace" photo I took, you might be able to pick out a couple details from the picture on the lid of the box on the left side.


I had to find some way of throwing my own personal touch in them as well. After brainstorming and multiple shopping trips to Hobby Lobby, I came up with a plan. This plan involved a great deal of perusing the Scrapbooking aisles, and learning a lot more than I ever knew about scrapbooking and its accessories. I have never seriously entered the scrapbooking aisle before, which surprises me since I love stationery as I do. Perhaps its the sheer popularity of the art that turns me off. I much prefer the obscure and old-fashioned hobbies one might remember one's grandmother enjoying -- like crocheting lace doilies.

I started with the invitation holder/folder thing. Why do a simple bow with the ribbon meant to wrap around the folder, when I can do something different and more creative? So I found these things called "brads" in lovely "antique metal" finishings. Brads have two metal prongs in the back which you push through a small slot/hole and then fold to keep the brad in place, much like the reusable manila envelope closure ubiquitous in office-land.


So all I had to do was cut a slot through the folder, push the brad into place, and arrange the ribbon accordingly to achieve the lovely result:


The ribbon included was too long for such an undertaking, so I trimmed the extra off, sure that I could find somewhere where I might be able to use it.

While browsing the brads selection, I found another set of brads in the same finishing that were too perfect to pass up. Teeny tiny antique metal heart brads. I knew I'd find a place for them somewhere, and sure enough I did. Meg's sister planned a surprise scrapbook filled with memorable photos and helpful/heartwarming notes written on pretty paper to present to her at the shower from all her guests. I bought some handmade paper with flower petals pressed in the pulp to include in the invitations for such a purpose. Once I had the RSVP card, envelope, the decorative paper and a small instruction card all prepared I took the leftover ribbon, wrapped it around the pile, and used a teeny tiny heart brad to secure the bunch.


Gotta love my personalized Swiss Army knife.


Ah, Charming!

Once I had those assembled, I affixed the invitation itself to the inside of the folder using the double-sided tape provided by the kit, and slid the packet of RSVP supplies into the folder's pouch (which also conveniently hid the brads' tabs).


I used two separate fonts for the invitations: "Maynard" for the body text and "Lapointe's Road" for the decorative parts. I downloaded them for free ... from ... somewhere ...

And eventually I put all the pieces together and mailed them out, with precisely six weeks before the shower and in PLENTY of time to send in the RSVPs and the scrapbook insertions (Sigh. I still haven't written my note for Meg).


And in case you didn't get enough of my messy workspace, here's another photo for you to laugh at how untidy I can be mid-project. My poor housemate had to put up with my monopolization of the 6'x6' dining room table while I completed these pieces, and she is a saint in so many ways I cannot begin to count.


At least I had the foresight to cover our beloved table with an old sheet so as to prevent crafting-induced-damage to the beautiful wood! Perhaps the purple stains from the suit-making extravaganza taught me a lesson which stuck. No, not really. I just love the dining room table that much that I'll go out of my way to be kind to it.

We even used the color scheme from the invitations as a basis for the rest of our decorations. And here is my favorite photo from the entire event.


The shower went off splendidly. I would say "without a hitch" but unfortunately one of the bridesmaids, Meg's younger sister, got a horrible stomach flu the night before the shower and her fun was inevitably spoiled.

Aside from that, we had great fun. Huzzah!

P.S. Special THANKS! goes out to Rebecca who kindly lent me her printer for the project, and even kindlier isn't mad at the fact that I haven't returned it yet.