The August whiplash challenge is called ‘wardrobe surgery’ and involves refashioning an exisiting piece of clothing by deconstruction/reconstruction or embellishment/decoration.

I looked through my old clothes and found this long skirt that I used to love in the mid ’90s, but now it’s hopelessly high-waisted and really doesn’t do anything for my body type:

Yuck! I hope it didn’t always look this bad on me! It’s so unflattering…

Here it is laid out on the floor (inside out) so you can see the shape of it: 

How did I turn this into the cute strapless dress shown below?

First I took in the side seams between the original waistband and the new hip area. I added two vertical darts at the front between the bust and waist to fit the bodice more closely, and then added two more vertical darts at the back from the shoulder blades to just below the waist, to fit the curve of my back.

I turned the old elasticated waistband inside the dress (which helps to keep it from falling down – always a risk with a strapless top), and took the bottom of the dress up by 12cm to bring it up to knee length. I used the excess fabric cut from the bottom of the dress to make straps, but the dress looked better without, so I removed them again. I was also considering making a fabric flower to accessorise, but I think the dress looks classy the way it is, so I’m going to keep it simple.

I love the fit of this dress! I can never buy dresses because of my pear-shaped figure, but this does exactly what a dress should do – fits around my top half, and floats over the areas I don’t want to emphasise. It took a lot of pinning and re-pinning (and in some cases unpicking seams and trying again) before I got the dress to fit like this, but it was worth it!

I’m entering this into the deconstruct/reconstruct category on whiplash.

I whipped these up last night by threading size 15 seed beads (colour: heather mix) onto memory wire rings. I superglued the first and last bead onto the wire and that’s it! Memory wire is great – the resulting rings are adjustable to any size finger.

I call this a lip balm holster because with it hanging from your belt you can “quick draw” the lip balm from the holster and have immediate access in those emergency lip balm situations 🙂

I crocheted this first one a while ago with size 20 crochet cotton. I just spiraled around the bottom in single crochet until it was wide enough and then turned the corner and spiraled up the sides. I attached a large lobster claw clasp with a crocheted chain, and voila! It was easy to make, but took a while because of the number of tiny stitches involved.

After the success of my crocheted bag a couple of weeks ago, I had some thread left over, and thought maybe I could make a matching lip balm holder with the excess. This one was really quick to make and works well if the lip balm has a nice coloured case (this is an Avon orange lip balm so the colour shows through well, although not really in the above picture). I crocheted a small split ring to the top of the holster and then used a memory wire ring as the clip – it’s easy to slide it over a belt loop and it’s much easier to open than a keychain ring.

The best part about these holsters is it stops the lip balm from melting in your pocket!

Okay, I’m not sure if this is a gimmick or a really cool idea, but I would be so tempted to try the Needle Lite crochet hook if I could find one for the right price.

It’s a crochet hook! And it lights up! What more can I say…

(Found via MAKE: Blog)

The whiplash bag competition results are have finally been announced and, although I didn’t win, my crochet and satin evening bag got a special mention in the ‘Skill’ category! I really didn’t expect to win, especially after seeing the quality of some of the other entries, so this is a real confidence booster for me.

Here’s my almost-winning design:

Congrats to the winners and thanks to the Whip up panel for noticing me.

I haven’t done any crafting this week, as we’ve been on vacation.

Before we left, Dave asked me to make him a detachable cushion for the observing chair he’s made to use with his telescope. Previously, he had stretched black vinyl over the foam padding and tacked it to the base of the seat, but it looked a bit messy and stopped the seat from folding away properly.

I reused the old foam, and we had still some black vinyl after making the previous cushion, so the project didn’t cost anything. I found online instructions for how to make a box cushion and used them (modified as I didn’t need a zip) to figure out the size of fabric pieces I would need to cut. That was the hardest part – after the cutting, it took about 10 minutes to run the whole thing up on the sewing machine. I didn’t even pin the pieces – the vinyl surface is a sort of mock-leather look, so it wasn’t slippery. I just held the 2 pieces right-sides together and fed them through the sewing machine to make each seam.

I left one seam open to turn the cushion right-side out and insert the foam, then I hand-stitched the final seam. I bought a curved upholstery needle for the task, but the holes it left in the fabric were too large and I didn’t want the cushion to lose its water-resistance, so I used a regular needle and had to push it through the vinyl with a thimble, which was hard work! There’s probably a better way to do it, but this worked fine as a one-off.

Finally, we attached self-adhesive velcro to the seat of the chair and the underside of the cushion, so the cushion will stay in place when in use, but is easily removed so the chair can be folded away.

I’m pleased with how it turned out, especially as it was so quick to make. It’s already been field-tested (literally – in a field!) and rained on while we were on vacation, and Dave seems happy too. I think I need to find more ‘quick’ projects like this. I like the instant gratification.

I’ve been thinking of crocheting a bag for a while, since I saw a bag pattern on the Bernat site. I didn’t like how thin the strap was in the pattern, or that the bag had no way to close, so I knew I’d have to make up my own pattern. The July whiplash challenge to make a bag came along at just the right time to get me started.

I wanted a small bag to hold essentials (purse, keys, phone, etc) that wouldn’t be too bulky for when I go out in the evening, but that wouldn’t look too ‘dressy’ for everyday use. 15x15cm seemed about the right size.

I crocheted the bag with black size 10 crochet cotton and a 1.5mm hook, using a modified cross treble stitch. I wanted an open crochet pattern so that the lining could show through, and the gaps around the ‘X’ stitches worked out well for that. I made up the pattern as I went along – decreasing the Xs to make the flap of the bag was an interesting challenge.

I used a small piece of gorgeous periwinkle blue satin for the lining, and covered the button with the same fabric to tie everything together. The strap is 350 rows of single crochet stitches, crocheted tightly for strength.

The materials for this bag only cost $5, but crocheting all those Xs took a long time! I think it was worth it though – I’m really pleased with how well it turned out and I’m looking forward to using it.

I’m entering this bag into the whiplash contest in the skill category.

Here’s my work in progress for this week. I’ve wanted to paint a portrait of my cat, Maui, ever since I got my paints for Christmas, but haven’t got around to it yet. As this will only be my second painting ever, I’ve been too nervous that I will mess it up. This is going to be a long process before it gets finished. So far I have I underpainted the canvas, sketched the outline and blocked in some colours. I’m really encouraged because, even though it’s very rough, it actually looks quite like Maui already!

Hoping I get a change to work on it some more soon. More to follow…