DIY: Felt pencil scarf.

  

King Kwak draws, he makes a living out of it, so what better to make him for Christmas, than his very own pencil scarf. Not a skinny little slither of a teddy boy scarf but an actual pencil. Genius. I saw this scarf but I cannot knit, boo. I contemplate knitting from time to time, my mums a dab hand, and I was able to knit up a mean 20cm scarf when I was 5, but with time restraints I decided to cheat, as I knew my little Korean just had to have this. Off I hopped to the local shopping centre (it's the only place I go) and found the nicest, cheapest scarf I could get my hands on. I really wanted a yellow and black stripy scarf and searched every inch of the place, but could I find one? no, so red would do. I would like to say it is made of the finest lambs wool, but it is not. It was £6.99, so I imagine 100% acrylic, lovely, but it does look and feel nice. During the next nap time, when the King was safely out of sight, out came the felt basket (He bought me an African basket for Christmas, quite the upgrade from the ripped old office bag my felt lived in before) and I whipped up this beauty. Most of the time was spent sewing up the scarf, which I folded in half, and used a blanket stitch of red embroidery thread the entire length. I have used blanket stitches for all outer parts and a running stitch on inner parts. I tried to stuff the scarf in the end parts as much as possible, to make sure they were fastened well and to give the puffed appearance.

Casually hanging around.

Note: What you cannot see are the piles of winter coats, rain coats, bike helmets, school bags, book bags, comedy umbrellas and random rubbish, quickly thrown in front of the shoe cupboard. Bless, it does look nice and tidy for once.

Details, details:

So along came 2nd January, back to work, pat on the back, off you go day, and I wrapped my King in his new pencil scarf. But when he came home my boy was all sad, with little protests of 'they all stared at me'. Pesky tube travelling folk. I have since found the scarf, two weeks later hidden in my pretty much never used, nappy bag. I am going to have to wear it myself.

Cost: Scarf: £6.99 H&M, felt squares x5 colours: 30p each and embroidery threads x5 colours: 25p each both Fabricland. Mine only cost the price of the scarf, but if doing with no previously owned materials the Total: £9.74, which would allow a lot of leftover felt and thread. I would have preferred to use a scarf I already owned but we had recently given all non used scarves and similar to the local charity shop.

Supplies: One scarf, felt, embroidery threads, needle and scissors.

Time taken: One nap time: 2 hours. 

So would you also wear my pencil scarf with shame and stuff it somewhere out of sight? Have you ever made a gift which quite clearly went down very, very not well? Please share your stories.

Fashion DIY: My first ever project, A jersey maxi skirt.

I made a skirt, all by myself, my first ever proper full item of clothing I have ever made. Well not including the mini skirts we made aged 14, back when bright orange and lime satin were all the rage, and we didn't comprehend openings/ zips. The results being skirts that would not pull up past our knee's. But enough of that...

I made a skirt!!!!!!! woop.

It is a maxi skirt, made from jersey fabric which I hand sewed myself. Go me. I am really quite proud, but up close it is not perfect, and frankly there is no chance of Vivienne Westwood calling me to join her team. But I have worn it several times and it is fine.

I'd spotted a maxi skirt in a shop, but didn't want to spend the money. It was £13 from Primarni, what was I thinking? I had a little google and found this Tutorial (great blog). I decided to use jersey as I would not need to hem it. This was not out of laziness, purely as it my first project and I wanted it to be as straight forward as possible. I knew I wanted something with navy and stone and this fabric was perfect. I still scoured the shop for an hour, I LOVE haberdasheries. I bought 1metre, it was 1.7m width. I pretty much followed the tutorial, the only difference being I did not make it as wide. Instead I loosely put the fabric around me then added about a 20cm extra overlap and cut it there, I did not want it as poofy as the tutorial, I figured this would not work well with jersey. Once complete I added some belt loops as it will always be worn with a belt... (shhh: the waist stitching is D.O.D.G.Y). Two loops at the front, two crossed loops on the reverse, bish bash bosh, done. 
I used a basic stitch (note to self: go google the name of stitches) and I used embroidery thread throughout. Not sure why, would not use again, but it worked. To be honest I actually later went over the back seam with a sewing machine, it did not need it, but I had my dad's machine set up and I was wearing the skirt so thought it wouldn't hurt. When I have time in the future I will sew up the hem too, then it will be indestructible for ever I am sure.

The front:

The back:

The truth:

Featuring a cameo from the little chap who conveniently colour coordinated.
Terrible stitching isn't it. ha.

Cost: Fabric £4 per metre, elastic £1 per metre. Everything else I previously owned.
Supplies: 1metre Jersey (t-shirt type) fabric, 2cm width elastic, cotton, needles and scissors.
Time taken: 5 hours(ish). Consisting of 3 evenings, sewing whilst watching TV and sipping a fine wine. Or two. The moral of which, this did not require too much time or too much intelligence/ coherence.

So what do you think? Do you have any first DIY fashion successes and failures you would like to share with me? I would love to hear your stories/ see the results.