Handcrapted · Sew-sew · Stichin' Post · Style · Trashion · Tutorials

Incredibly Basic Skirt Tutorial

Leggings are a blessing. They can stand in for pants or tights, hide unshaven legs and dance party bruises, and generally function as work-appropriate pajamas. For those of us who buy our leggings from cheap fast fashion chains and wear them daily, the unfortunate truth is that one pair of leggings won’t last a year.

I have a plethora of ripped, hole-y, basic black leggings strewn around my closet. (I like to keep them around so that I can wear them in a leggings emergency.) Recently I decided that they needed to move on. Like a sartorial organ donor, they needed to be stripped for parts and put to new use.

First up: I used the waistband from a pair of old leggings to help create an incredibly basic skirt. I grabbed a yard of rayon fabric from my stash and threw together a tutorial. The skirt turned out incredibly comfortable – as comfortable as leggings – and with any luck it won’t fall apart in the wash. (Let’s be honest, the vast majority of my homemade clothes are held together by luck.)

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Crafts · Handcrapted · Other People's Crap · Sew-sew · Stichin' Post · Style · Trashion · Tutorials

Sleep Mask Non-Tutorial

Any good vampire knows the importance of blocking out as much sunlight as possible from dawn until dusk. Unfortunately, after years of use and abuse my sturdy sleep mask finally turned into dust. What’s an undead creature of the night to do?

Bust out the stash and craft a new sleep mask!

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Handcrapted · Sew-sew

Perfect Pattern Weights

Stop squandering the waning moments of your life.  Stop pinning.

Why have I spent so much time pinning patterns to fabric?  I guess it’s how I learned when I was a clumsy little beast and prone to knocking my patterns askew all the time.  It takes time and bloodshed to use pins, which is pretty metal, but not really great for whacking out a stack of garments in one go.  To solve this problem, a cottage industry has emerged.  I’ve read tutorials on the internet for making your own pattern weights; some people even sell them.  They’re often stacks of metal washers wrapped perplexingly in ribbon or bias tape. Do you have time to beribbon the humble washer? No, no you don’t.

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