See [...]]]> Heyyy, wanna make a fun fringy skirt that flicks when you move your hips? I have been a bit sad recently because I don’t have money for things like new clothes, even if they are awesome clothes like City Chic‘s fringed skirt (which has now sold out on the website!)

See how rad this skirt is? When I saw it on Hayley I knew I HAD to have it or something like it in my wardrobe. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy the City Chic skirt, but fortunately I did have some scrap fabric and a t-shirt sitting around going to waste. I figured I’d quit whinging and DIY myself a fringe skirt! If you want to make one too I’ve written out instructions under the cut.

Required:
Sharp scissors
Jersey fabric (I used five scraps of jersey from Reverse Garbage that were around 50x50cm each)
T-shirt that fits comfortably over your hips and thighs
Elastic – enough to fit around your waist/hips comfortably (I used some about 2cm wide)
Safety pin
Pins
Sewing machine
Jersey needle
Basic sewing skills

Cut your fabric into strips that are 10cm wide or thereabouts. If you want longer fringe, cut your strips wider! Mark your fabric with chalk or a water soluble pen to make sure all your fringing is relatively even.

Don’t worry if you are using scraps of fabric that aren’t long enough to wrap around your thighs. You can sew each bit of fringe together.

Cut slits into your fabric to create a fringe. Don’t worry too much about cutting straight, you won’t notice it from far away. My scissors need oiling and my hand is pretty weak, so my cuts look quite jagged but it all works out int the end!

You can see I’ve alternated skinny and wide chunks, and there’s a reason for that!

I chopped out all the skinny chunks!

Leaving me with a gappy fringe. I also chopped the corner off each bit.

Pretty soon you end up with a pile of fringey bits! You can start to see how they look all layered on top of each other.

This is a shirt I have previously ruined by cutting the neck out of. It gets to live on as a skirt! It fits snugly around my hips and thighs, and hits mid thigh. If you want your skirt to be longer, you need to find a bigger shirt!

Chop off the arms and the shoulders. You should be left with a tube of fabric – INSTASKIRT. Because I wanted to get a little more length out of this shirt I chopped over the sleeves, and ran a seam up the side to close it up. It doesn’t matter if you can see the former armhole seam, it’s going to be covered by fringing.

If you are using a bigger shirt and it’s too loose on your hips, run it in up the side seams. Put it on inside out and do the old “pinch measurement” test. It’s totally unscientific. You can use a tape measure if you feel more comfortable :P

We need to sew a casing along that cut edge in order to put elastic in it when we’re finished. I folded the top edge along and sewed a seam with a knit (or zig zag stitch) leaving just enough space for my elastic to sit inside snugly.

Don’t put the elastic in yet! It’ll make everything more fiddly when you’re sewing on the fringe.

It’s time to sew the fringe on the skirt! First you’ve got to check you’ve got a width of fringing that will wrap around the skirt, front and back. Is yours not wide enough?

Then slap a couple of pieces end to end and sew them! This photo shows the pieces sewn together and then pinned to the skirt. I hope it makes sense ;)

Pin the fringe all around the skirt upside down with all the seams facing up. You can arrange it to drop below the hem, or flush with the hem, or above the hem… it’s up to you.

Using a knit (or zig zag) stitch sew the fringe around. When you get to the end and start to overlap the beginning of the fringe, cut the excess off and save it to connect to another bit of too-short fringing.

Rinse and repeat, taking care not to catch any of the lower layers of fringing as you add more layers of fringe! You don’t have to worry too much about spacing each layer evenly, it’s a pretty forgiving effect. If you prefer for all the angled ends to be facing in one direction, pay close attention when you sew each layer of fringing. I wasn’t paying attention so my fringe is all over the place. It’s ok! It still looks rad.

When you’ve finished attaching all your layers of fringe, go get a safety pin. Attach it to your elastic and thread it through the waist band casing. I’m sorry I didn’t photograph this but I hope it’s clear! Adjust the elastic so that the skirt sits comfortably, and then secure the elastic ends by sewing over them a few times. Close up the waist band casing.

PUT YOUR SKIRT ON!

MOVE YOUR HIPS!
(This gif is cracking me up at the moment because it looks like I’m dancing to Röyksopp!)

Thanks Kate for letting me use your sewing machine, and for taking silly photos of me.

I hope you make a flippy fringe skirt and show me photos! It’s such a fun skirt, and I’m really chuffed with how it turned out :D

Today is my Dad’s birthday! I’m not sure I’ve posted photos from when I was a little girl, but today is probably the best day to do this because my Dad’s moustache was hilarious and there’s no better day to make fun of your father than [...]]]>

Today is my Dad’s birthday! I’m not sure I’ve posted photos from when I was a little girl, but today is probably the best day to do this because my Dad’s moustache was hilarious and there’s no better day to make fun of your father than his birthday!

The day I was born. Look at that mo!

Dawwww. And taken with a proper Polaroid camera, none of this Poladroid business!

A photo from more recent years to show his fashion sense (and facial hair) situation has improved! That’s my Mum behind him, I guess I get a lot of my ~~unique~~ personality from them. :P

Happy birthday Boonge!

Today is my husband’s 30th birthday – he storms into his third decade on earth with panache!

My sister celebrated her birthday on November 3, or Melbourne Cup day. She was rather sozzled :P

I have discovered that a big part of what I do involves buttloads of time and love. People must think I’m crazy for spending hours drawing tiny lines or baking things from scratch, but it’s one of the only ways my primitive consciousness knows how to [...]]]>

I have discovered that a big part of what I do involves buttloads of time and love. People must think I’m crazy for spending hours drawing tiny lines or baking things from scratch, but it’s one of the only ways my primitive consciousness knows how to properly convey love and affection. A small part of me frets that people don’t value what I do – I worry that people throw away the things I make for them as if they were Hallmark products, but in the end I have no control over that. The only thing I really have control over is my love, and even if they did throw away my gifts I’d still spend time making them.

I have been incredibly busy lately, which is awesome, but I fell behind in making cards for Mother’s Day. So yesterday was spent drawing furiously… and making cupcakes. I finished icing the cupcakes and gluing the cards about half an hour before we left to have lunch at my sister’s place today… I was frazzled and half resentful because I feared how my gifts would be received. I needn’t have worried – my family always appreciate what I do, and I am so grateful for that because otherwise I’d be one bitter headcase :P

Thanks to the women in my life, including most of all – my Mum and Nana. You are brilliant, and my very limited vocabulary can not express how much I am indebted to you for helping me become who I am.

If you want to show someone you really think they are tops but you can’t express it in words, print off this recipe and make them some amazing cupcakes. They’ll get it :)

I [...]]]> Tonight I’m giving the gifts we bought in Melbourne to my family, as well as Mum’s birthday present because she was born on this fabulous day. I am pretty sure none of them will check my blog today, so I’m going to post photos!

I didn’t do quite so much elaborate drawing on these because my pens are running out of ink. The materials are pretty simple: brown paper, duct tape (best ever!), string, brown card, round corner stamp, scallop scissors and pens and markers. I used an awl to punch the holes too.

The lacing is my favourite part. I think I might incorporate this on future things.

This is Mum’s birthday present – a hand bound book for her to write her creative ideas in. It lays flat too, I can’t stand notebooks that don’t lay flat!

This is the best part of making little books. I just love sewing the signatures together! I’m still perfecting my binding technique, but if you want to try to make books you should check out Dave’s book tutorial. It’s incredibly helpful!

I don’t have any of the proper book binding materials – I used things I had lying around to substitute :D

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Cox & Cox have some really cute and innovative ideas for wedding favours. They’re also favours you can put together yourself, without being out of pocket thanks to the horrendous exchange rate!

1. Wedding [...]]]>

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Cox & Cox have some really cute and innovative ideas for wedding favours. They’re also favours you can put together yourself, without being out of pocket thanks to the horrendous exchange rate!

1. Wedding Matches – You can print on some nice card stock and create a box for these matches (I’ve seen matches with pink tips too!) using fusible web or roll-on adhesive strips.

2. Name Place Vases & Hand-Made Cards – Wholesale flower markets usually have a really wide variety of vases for centrepieces and even smaller. These tiny vases shouldn’t set you back much, and if you’re buying in bulk you should get a discount. The hand made cards are so quaint and adorable! You can recycle paper you have on hand at home and create your own hand made paper by following a simple paper making tutorial. Grab a calligraphy pen or even a quill and pen the names yourself!

3. Sweet Talking Chocolates – You can buy bonbonniere chocolates and sweets in bulk from speciality wedding supply stores for a considerable discount. Print your own slogans and sayings using a laser printer or Gocco set and wrap them around the sweets, securing with fusible web or adhesive strips.

4. Love Origami – This is my favourite! Remember making these little origami style fortune tellers in primary school? I do! You can buy some really nice card stock from an art supply store or make your own paper, write or print your design, sayings and fortunes and follow these instructions to fold up your own love origami!