Missoni Madness

One of my favorite things to do on Saturday morning, is go to the fabric market (de lapjesmarkt) in Utrecht (beautiful city in the center of The Nederlands). The fabric market has been held in Utrecht at the same location for over 400 years. And although most of the stalls offer inexpensive fabrics, like printed cotton or tricot, you can find top-of-the-line fabric and notions as well. Most of the time you can bargain a bit, and a lot of the fabric is cheap stuff starting at 1 euro per meter. For the real high quality stuff you have to bring serious cash and a bit of luck. But it's worth the money, especially for designer fabrics like this one by Missoni.


A more detailed shot. I don't think you can see it, but there's also gold and silver woven in every now and then.


Missoni is an Italian fashion house and they are famous for the multi-colored zig-zag knits. This fabric retails at about 40 to 50 euro's per meter, but you know me......of course I bought it for 25! But that is still a lot of money and so a lot of pressure to "make it work" (haha, Project Catwalk sneaks in at last). Lucky for me, the fall collection of McCalls came to my rescue with this great dress pattern.



As you can see, this is also in Missoni fabric! I don't have enough to make this long dress, so I'm going for a short sleeved sixties look. Something I can also wear with a turtle neck and tights when it get's colder. I'll keep you posted on my progress.
Next up.....the Vogue blouse!!!
Fleur

All that glitters...

...does not have to be gold, but it should definitely sparkle! I'm a real magpie, I loooooove glitterly things, to the point where as a teenager, I drove my parents insane, especially on holiday. I would run to every store that had beads, juwelry, semi-precious stones and silver. Oh, and seashells, and everything that was blue or turquiose. You get the picture, I think...
Right now, I'm suffering from a sports injury on my right foot, which happens to me my "sewing" foot. I can work the peddle with left, but it's not comfortable. We also getting ready to go on holiday and my sewing machine is not invited :(. So I needed another hobby (yes, you can never have to many hobby's, shoes (or boots) and.....jewelry!
Craftsy.com came to my rescue by offering an online beginners class about making jewelry for only 4 euro!!! So I reconnected with my ongoingchildhood obsession fascination and dove into the world of beading and wire wrappng. And it's awesome!!! Check out my first ever wire wraped earrings:




Are they not absolutely to-die-for!!!!! I'm so proud (and really surprised). These are actually partly recycled from a pair I already had that were too heavy and so I never wore them. Here are the originals in white.




(If you're interested, I can make one more pair in white)
The turquoise blue glass beads on the new pair I bought at our local Friday market, but I also bought a lot of stuff from this awesome webshop www.edelsteenkralen.nl(everything is English and German, too). This website deals in the best (semi)precious stones and beads, including cultured pearls and sterling silver wire. My initial order ran up to 35 euro, but there's enough there to make at least ten pair of all-real earrings and a necklace of those great pearls.












Here's some ideas I played around with after unpacking:








Other supplies I could easily find in a local book&crafts store, like these pliers, lay-out tray (beads need a good working surface, they go everywhere) and organising box. I bought them all on sale for 5 euro and 2 euro (also the box!)








I have many more great earrings to make, and I love it so much already, I'm strongly considering maybe starting an Etsy shop. But first I have to get a bit better at wrapping and work up the nerve to go all sterling silver (I working with silverplate or nickel-free wire now, silver requires a bit of an investment). So female friends and family, you know you're my favorite try-out audience. Get ready for some serious bling coming your way!
Happy wrapping.
Fleur

A hole-in-one

Nope, this is not a post about golf, this is about a dress I bought really really cheap because there were holes in it. And how I fixed it so it's as good as new.
Some inside information
In many clothing stores, there's a "B-choice" or "special discount" rack tucked away in a corner, where the store sells items that are damaged. Most common problem: broken zippers. They are really easy to replace, and if you don't want to do it, bring it to a seamstress and you have the exact same dress, usually for 25% of the original price.
If you find something that's broken, but not yet reduced in price, ALWAYS ask for a discount and don't settle on the usual 10%. It's broken, it's effectively worthless to the store, so make sure you get at least a discount that would cover the cost of having it professionally fixed (even if you'll fix it yourself)
On to the dress!




This particular dress had a more complex problem than a broken zipper: it had two holes/rips in one of the pleats in the skirt, made by a burnmark from a lamp in the store's display.








I loved it, it fit me exceptionally well and it was only 15 euro. If all failed, I could replace the entire skirt, but I had a different plan in mind. Brace yourself......




Yes, I gutted the dress, ripped it open, like a fish. Don't worry, it get's better. Because the skirt was pleated, it gave me room to move the damaged parts out of sight. I did stabilize the rips with iron-on fabric interfacing first before I started making new pleats. Next, I redistributed the fabric in two new pleats, hiding all the nasty parts.




Then, I measured the result and did the exact same thing on the other side.



Finally, I stitched every pleat and then restitched all the seams. And that's that! Nobody would ever know this dress was destined to be thrown away.


Now all I need is to wait till I finally go on holiday and the weather is nice enough to skip around in this dress in some gorgeous Italian town. Yay!!!!
Did any clothing fix-ups latey? I would love to see them.
Fleur