Sunday 15 July 2012

Little yellow flowers

Good evening friends!
It's almost 2 am over here but I just had to show you the skirt I made last night... I went shopping with Julia, and stumbled over the cutest fabric, dark red with tiniest yellow flowers on it and it was love at first sight...
I had an idea of what kind of skirt I wanted and I just went looking for the right tutorial and - brace yourselves! - I found the best, most understandable, easiest tutorial ever! Dana from danamadeit.com explains it so well, I believe even people who sew for the first time can get it.... I got through it without a single mistake (and usually it takes about one to three breakdowns before something is actually finished...) and it went quite quickly!
Have a look!



Trust me I have been dancing all day and made it twirl! The best thing about the tutorial is that you end up with a pattern that you can use over and over again for excessive amounts of skirts :) Which is perfect since I am obsessed with skirts, and now it looks as if I will never have to buy one ever again :)
Happy sewing and goodnight!! (I ordered some fabric on sale and now I can't wait for it to arrive so I can make more of those!!!!!)

Friday 27 April 2012

A new lampshade

Hello lovely people!
I'm really excited to share my first home-project with you! As you might know we just moved into a new place and I have decided to make all my lampshades myself. So far we have bought the very cheap Ikea light hanging fixtures to at least have light, as obviously 4 handmade (or hand decorated) lampshades don't just craft themselves over night...
So I had to do some research and pinned quite a few lampshades that interested me. Surprise surprise, the crochet ones inspired me most and after I saw this gorgeous lampshade from Solveig in Norway I just couldn't stop thinking about it.



And then we happened to find a perfect lampshade in a thrift store and I got straight on the project!
My pattern is simpler than hers because I have very basic crochet skills...(But I am working superhard to figure it out for my next lampshade!) I started it off with a round of single crochets and continued with a round of double crochets. And that's how I continued it all the way through. I started decreasing from the very beginning, always keeping it tight around the wire frame. I never decreased in the double crochet rounds, only in the single crochet ones.
Here is an in progress picture almost halfway through:


And here is a close-up so you can see the pattern. It really is very simple, these are the only two stitches I know and it worked for the whole thing.


And here we go for the finished shade!!! At first I was worried it would look a little grandma-like (and it kind of does!) but I love it!


That room feels more finished now, even though it is far from done! I really like the soft light it casts and the orange border... And I'm telling you anyone who has been crocheting for a day can make this, it really is super simple... The best thing about it is that I now have many more ideas for the next ones and I can't wait to try them all! So here we go two last pictures for you all. One down, three more to go...




Did you make any lampshades lately? Have you got much better ideas for hand crafted lampshades? Let me know!! I hope to be back with number 2 soon...

Sunday 22 January 2012

Tomorrow is today

As promised yesterday, here is a close up picture of the heart pendants I also made.



Mikko at i try DIY wrote a tutorial for how to make these! Which is really great because my tutorials still need tons of work. Also she connected it to leather cord which I think looks absolutely great. If you want pictures of how to connect the hex nuts with the jump rings I have some pictures and explanations for you in my own tutorial I wrote a while ago for hex nut earrings. The only difference between her pendant and mine is that I used bigger jump rings to get that double feel that you can see in the picture... If you make some I would love to see them!
For tonight I'm still working on my bracelet collection because obviously I have the hex nut bug and I'll let you know soon what came out of it!
(But for today it's about hearts! Hardware-store-valentine's-day here I coome!)