I haven’t been updating this blog for a long time… but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything much. The truth is, I want to talk about arts and craft and my unquenchable thirst or it, but I hate to see a blog with jst words and no pictures. I don’t have the time to look through and put the pictures in a nice layout, therefore I just usually abandon my urge to update.

I do have a couple of projects I would love to post up, the things I’ve done over the past few weeks. Most of them are bored doodles, still I flip through and I get inspired, eventhough they’re mine. I have also been sewing a lot lately, and I enjoyed the time spent so much. I’ve justified to my mom the reason for me buying so many fabrics, it’s because there can’t never be enough fabrics - you constantly need a lot of them to mix and match and see alternatives to your sewing. My mom thought I had a lot - at one point I just kept on buying them - that she asked me to stop, but I knew I will always need them for at least something.

I realize my love affair for fabric starts at an early age. Mostly it’s just the patterns on them that drew me to them. I knew that I’ve felt excited and awed at the sight of those pretty fbrics whenever my mom and I went hunting for our Baju Raya. I always wanted to keep them -  but couldn’t give my mom a correct answer when she asked me for what? In her undersanding, there’s no such thing as collecting fabric ‘just because’. At that time I was collecting a lot of pretty notebooks and paper and stationaries.

My first own fabric I bought was a beautiful purple saree that I treasured and hung on the walls of my dorm room. My friends joked that room looked like a harem. I don’t mind if nothing is done to them - I just liked hving them around and reveling in their prettiness.

I have been colleting fabric still, and I know its a part time job. The sight of them makes me happy and make my head spin with all the possibilities that I can do with it.

End of this month I’m going on a fabric spree. I jst can’t wait.

One thing I realize is that I’m a huge lover of nice fabrics and patterns.

Filed under: Rambling | No Comments »

This was taken in December, where the scarf was just starting and I did it because I needed something to keep my busy and occupied.

The end result is fashioned by my culture shock sister, in New York:

I can’t believe that my scarf went to New York before me. Seriously, there’s some injustice here.

yarns: 50% australian wool/acrylic 7016, 7012 (1 ball each)
needles: 4.5 mm / us 7 straight needles.

As I’m a total beginner, the scarf has a lot of flaws: I wasn’t meticulous with the stitches and kept on adding more that it sort of tapered out in the middle. My only way to decrease them? Not knitting that stitch, whic resulted in a ocuple of unknitted ‘hoops’.

Also, I judged poorly and finished the ball before the end of the row - which resulted in me having to tie the two yarns together to continue. Now you can see a tiny little ribbon in the middle of the row, center of the scarf.

Next up, bigger needles liek srsly!

Filed under: Knitting | No Comments »

My youngest sister has a favorite phrase, you guessed it: Let me backtrack. It is used whenever she has said something hurtful or very sarcastic, which is often. It is always started with a slight pause, like:

Her: Damn that dress looks ugly on you.
Her: *pauses* Let me backtrack. It just doesn’t look right.

Since I’m a lover of the color red - this is one of my favorite works.

Filed under: Stencil | No Comments »

My first attempt at making my own clothes. Verdict: Still a looooong way to go.

Pattern: Butterick 3644, a simple, easy sew tennis dress with a pair of shorts.
Notions:  Zippers,  hooks and elastic (optional for shorts)

I used the super cheap lining fabric to do this because I just wanted to see how I fared before I tried it on cotton. The fabric was a bit slippery and too flimsy for it to stay still when I was cutting the pieces out. This is not a good choice of fabric for a beginner, like me.

I also tried out my rotary cutter for the first time, and it was awful! I had no idea whether the blade was blunt, or I handled it wrongly, or rotary cutters just aren’t any good (which I seriously doubt). I ended up not cutting out the notches (and figured out how to match the pieces while sewing.)

Other things used: Tracing paper and wheel - which took a bit getting used to.  I didn’t think I pressed the wheel hard enough because I hardly see any lines. This was a tedious act only because it is hard to trace on such fabric.

This pattern says size 4 - and I am a size 8-10, so I added a couple of inches around, and tried (but failed) to resized the armhole, only to find out that the original size is just nice for me. The dress ended out to be a large, breezy shift dress.

I am using it as a nightgown.

Important things learned:

1) Prepare the fabric before any cutting!
2) Press the seams religiously.
3) cutting must be precise (hello awkward neck facings)
4) don’t rush and be hasty (i need to be told this 569493 times)

Filed under: Sewing, Fabric | No Comments »

Meet Bijoux, she’s a lady. An optimist, who thinks that life is too short to feel sad for more than 12 minutes. A fighter in a war of Moody Depression vs. Hey, Let’s Just Make Life Works. A botanist and a marine lover, she is enchanted by hydrangeas.

Here is Lucyus. The eldest brother, therefore responsible, kind and well-rounded. He is gentle and mild, reads Architectural books and enjoys fishing. A Biology major, to which he got his Protozoa inspiration.

Last but dfinitely not least, Kleeman. Uninhibited, a rebel and unpredictable, he’s the bad boy in the family. Walks with a cagey, guarded energy. Been in and out of juvenile centers a couple of times, which explains the cell effect.

Filed under: Rambling, Papercraft, Illustrations | No Comments »

A t-shirt requested by a friend. Not one of my proudest work. Simply said, I was off my game and had no idea why I took this on.

The rainbow was hard to figure out, other than making multiple stencils, but as challenging as it was to figure out the colors and to paint it on, it felt rewarding. The skull was a brainbreaking issue - I ended having a few skull stencils of various expressions and styles.

I used Pebeo fabric paint which smells really nice and goes on smoothly and thick. The colors were really vibrant as well.

Filed under: Stencil | No Comments »

I’ve been in a shopping bind lately. And, being a reader, there’s nothing more amazing than the feeling of buying a really good book.

Following the success of my stitch n bitch book, I decided to buy the Reader’s Digest complete Guide to Sewing book due to its cult following. I’m all revved up from reading the book, it has soooooo many things and information that I get a tad overwhelmed. Still, it explained to me in DETAILS about everything I need to know on patterns, pattern reading and cutting. It made me feel confident enough to try tackling patterns on my own. In fact, I can’t wait to start something by today!

I’m glad I bought this book. This would be very useful for me later on.

Added (February 2008): I’m not kidding when I say this book is amazing, and I haven’t even started on any sewing projects! Because I’m a reader, reading this book is enjoyable because of all the illustratons and step-by-step instructions. It coveres every details, from the measurements, to preparing fabrics before cutting, to adjusting the patterns, cutting, and basic hand stitches.

The second part of the book talks about all you need to know on sewing. This part is divided into chapters - pockets, hems, sleeves, zippers, necklines, etc, basically, every single anatomy of an outfit! The only thing I’ve tried so far is the pockets, and it helped me figure out how to attach my own DIY pocket without any pattern.

Filed under: Sewing, Rambling, Books | No Comments »

This is my first cutout stencil - it was fun to make and I didn’t really complain much!

This is also the first time I used black tshirt, so before I painted it yellow I primed the t-shirt with a white Pebeo paint. The hardest part about layering paint is that you have to consider the bridges, especially with a cutout stencil. I didn’t use white paint for the bridges and instead piledon the yellow which caused the paint to bleed a little. Oh well, haste gets you nowhere.

I didn’t heat set the paint carefully before wearing it, and now the paint is cracked in places. Thankfully, my sisters commented that it made the t-shirt looks ‘vintage’. HAHA.

Stencil taken from an Arsenal merchandise website.

Filed under: Stencil | No Comments »

I was never interested to try knitting. I’ve been wanting to learn to sew for ages, yes, and I was interested enough to try cross-stitch, but never knitting and crocheting. I never knew why. I guess it just looked hard, boring, and not accessible.

But during my boring late nights at my job, I started surfing the web. I would first say that I’m not an extremely talented person, although, God knows I wish to be one. I’m a person of mediocre talent and creativity, but for the love of me I just LOVE doing crafty stuff. Even the words crafty always catches my eyes. I was in a funk lately with all the obsessive night shifts and pay covers I’ve been doing, that I’ve been missing out on my crafts. The last time I ever get crafty was the series of t shirts I stenciled - 2 of which I haven’t had the time to put up yet. I was bored and itching to start doing anything crafty, but I couldn’t drag my sewing machine or bring in my stencil paraphernalia to work!

That’s when I started to think about starting up knitting. Honestly, one of the major reasons I didn’t before was because knitting looks seriously daunting. I had no idea on how to start - I know no one offline who knows how to knit. So I started browsing the internet, reading up on how these people started knitting.

I resolved to get the Stitch N Bitch book because so many people recommended it. I was also taken on the cute title. So on a whim, one Saturday I decided to buy the book. But first, a quick drop to the neighborhood sewing and haberdashery shop that my mom and I always frequent.

But what I thought to be a quick drop turned to be a full on knitting lesson. I asked for a beginner’s knitting supplies, and the lady - Ayi - started taking the yarn off and putting it on the needle. Then she proceeded to knit and THEN prods me to try. My hands were shaking when I first took on it - I was NEVER a quick learner and prefer to learn by myself before doing it in front of people, plus, the only one who ever taught me crafty stuff was Mom, and she even said I was a slow learner! - but withing minutes I was doing the stitches.

Ayi taught me enough that I felt confident about being able to knit a couple of inches, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I still wanted the book and I knew I saw it once at Borders.

The book is SUBLIME. In fact, I was lucky that I had the best of both world when I learned to knit, because learning by book and being taught were two awesome ways, and when combined, made things so much easier. I remember steps faster with the stitches Ayi taught, but with the book I learned the ‘technical’ aspects of knitting; the name of the stitches, the anatomy of the stitch, what not to do. There are certain things I do that do not follow the book, my cast-on stitch follows the way Ayi taught me, but most of the things I learned were from the book itself, for example, purling.

The instructions were easy, because I managed to follow them, although I sometimes have to read it 30 more times before getting it right (binding off for instance!) but that’s maybe because my brains are a bit unorganized.

I probably did a whole lot of frogging the first few times, in fact until the yarns have sort of fluffed up. And I tried on making the stockinette stitch and the ribbing stitch then frogged them too.

Right about now I am making a simple striped garter scarf for my sister. It is my first knitting project and so far it’s turning out great. Although I did a couple of mistakes and weren’t focused which results in many little nooses in the first 60 rows or so hahaha but the rest were all okay.

I realized I like knitting for a different reason than the other crafts I was doing (painting, stenciling, sewing). This time around I am not concentrating on the finished project, like I always am with other things, but I’m more on enjoying the moment. I do want to see the finished result, but at the same time I don’t really rush on to it like I would with other things. With stenciling I always rush - I have to think about the cleaning up for instance. Same goes for painting. and for sewing I just couldn’t wait to wear the bags. but knitting makes me think of nothing and everything in particular. It’s near therapeutic, I might say, without the pounding heart and sweat.

I can’t wait to show you the finished result. and hopefully I will go on with the knitting in years to come!

Filed under: Rambling, Knitting, Books | No Comments »

Yep, can’t help it. If I could, I’d have bought one fabric per day - there’s just soo many pretty patterns to look at and have! Above are the fabrics I managed to pick up on my last month in UTP; my favorite fabric store in Jusco never fails me. The only complaint I have is that I have no idea why cotton fabric is so expensive! It’s only cotton.

I learned a thing or two about fabric yesterday. There are certain terms that now makes sense to me. For instance, there is a difference between wovens and prints (I’m a prints girl), and I learned what a colorway is.

My fabric obsession will finally be tempered down come after Eid, when my mom takes our beloved sewing machine to get serviced and oiled!

Filed under: Fabric | No Comments »