18 years in the making
Have you ever belittled yourself for procrastinating or not finishing things you started? What’s the longest amount of time you’ve ever needed to complete a craft project? I’m thinking I could be in the running for the record, not that it’s anything to brag about… I made this jacket when I was trialling a pattern for my year 12 formal (the jacket I eventually made was in horrible wine coloured satin and I embroidered a heart on the sleeve with beads.. eww .. I’m shuddering just thinking about it as it did nothing for my colouring and I would never wear my heart on my sleeve now…).Anyway, as I never throw anything out, I kept the trial jacket which is in a fairly cheap and yukky navy cottony fabric, and recently decided to make it into an African-esque top. After taking it in a bit to get rid of the horrible 80s shape (or lack of), I unearthed some textile crayons which were even older than
the jacket (I think they date back to when I was in Brownies actually) and drew random geometric patterns all over it in white, then found some white embroidery cotton which a neighbour had given me in, um, about 1985, and accentuated the seam lines and around the neck in (crappy) cross stitch. I ended up chopping bits off the hem as it was a bit too long, and I used those to cover some self-cover buttons and make button loops*.
The scarf on my head is f
ro
m Laos – I hand-dyed it in real indigo! (or rather, the girl at the craft centre bound it for me to get the tie-dye pattern right and I swished it back and forth in the smelly indigo mixture for a bit).This picture of Liya Kebede in
an Yves Saint Laurent campaign from 2002 was sort of the inspiration for this top, but I’m not sure if you can see it so well... of course I have the actual photos in Vogues from that time but did I think to scan them when I found them in my stash of magazines when I was cleaning out my wardrobe? No, I did not. Are you surprised?*And the rest is now being used as makeup remover pads. Waste not, want not. Hmm.. wonder if there’s a market for makeup remover pads with pseudo-African designs?? Sounds like another business scheme I’ll have to look into.
Wow! That's so cool, it looks professional from the picture, even if you think not :)I think my longest is maybe by knitting? I was given needles and wool to make a scarf for christmas 3 years ago… and I still have 1 foot left to make :S I left it for a whole year, doing nothing, and came back to it last year (managing a metre quite quickly 😀 )Yeah….But AMAZING 😀 http://toruu-tania.blogspot.com/
Love the headscarf – very creative!Charlotte xxThe Style Rail
Hi! Glad you are on board for SSS, of course you can still participate if you don't sigh up to Flickr, no problem. The Flickr group is just a simple way for many of the participants to share and see each others outfits without trawling round the squillions of blogs to do so. I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure you can still view the group without signing up to Flickr, it's hard for me to check because every time I enter the Flickr site my laptop automatically knows it's me and loads my settings. In short, the Flickr group is a way of managing the 'evidence', not the challenge itself!xxx
nice headscarf! and i like the top! :)Love,vintage-birdy.blogspot.com{no, it's not about birds}
Gorgeous blue top – love the embellishments and you've given me ideas… I have a lovely solid blue cotton waiting to be stitched up but apparently it looks too 'surgical'(not my evaluation but now I can only visualise it in scrubs). I have just sewn an essential button and button loop onto a red dress (made two years ago) but 18 years in the making is an impressive record!
That jacket is to die for! I love the fact that you kept the trial jacket all these years because you could see some potential there – and don't get me started on those fabric crayons – brilliant!