Upcycling is everywhere with money being tight and people becoming more concerned about waste. Fashion is taking a massive u-turn as folks turn from the catwalk to the charity shop in a bid to have something no one else does. The perfect find can be tricky but there are ways to end up with that one-off everyone else will want.
Adventures in dressmaking offers up a dress a day. An ambitious target that they almost live up to with an impressive amount of information on all things sew-flavoured.
The tutorial on how to take apart and reuse a garment takes a simple mumu dress and helps you turn it into something sassy. Step-by-step photos help you on your way with clear and concise instructions.
Excellent stuff for those of us who need to find affordable fashion from almost empty pockets.
A lonely egg sitting in its egg cup slowly cooling while you're waiting for your toast to cook. It's a tragic part of many a morning and quite frankly it has to stop.
You could go out into the woods with a pocketful of rodent meat and a owl call whistle to tempt an owl to come and perch warmly on your egg while you wait or you could sew yourself an owl egg cosy. The choice is yours.
If you go for option two then Lucy Kate Craft Owl Egg Cosy pattern is a cute and kooky owl-flavoured option. Offering templates and a detailed photo walk-through, so you don't have to wing it, the pattern is also free so you can save money and buy yourself dozens more eggs to perch your fibre-based feathered friends on.
Give a hoot about the cosiness of your eggs. Eggscellent.
The bean bag is a ubiquitous beast. You can find them lurking in all kinds of homes as squishy, mobile furniture that seems to fit in anywhere. Fancy crafting a bean bag that is big enough to slip into a snooze on? Of course you do.
The Bean Bag Sofa (which also serves as a bed) is an Instructables How To from Dan, one of the founders of the handy hands on website.
Grab bean bag beans, sturdy cloth, an impressive amount of velco and a sewing machine and get bagging some beans for the ultimate in bean-based home comfort.
Quite simply it's "the biggest baddest beanbag evah" and an offer of being shown how to create something with that kind of title is too hard to resist.
After being in the presence of quilting brilliance at the recent V&A quilts exhibition many of us non-quilters have been raring to get in on the action. Once you start looking for quilt tutorials they're everywhere so I'll start you off with a bit of circular quilting fun.
Cluck Cluck Sew offer their Raw Edge Quilt tutorial as a bit of a different spin on your square-upon-square quilting formula. The effect of the quartered circles of fabric on the square background is rather fabulous.
It does look a little fiddly at times but if you're willing to sit down and pour some time into your quilt then why not go the whole way. Cluck Cluck Sew's writer, Allison, suggests you plonk yourself in front of the TV and get sewing.
One thing that really stands out is the way she matches her fabrics. If you're a little lost of what goes with what you can learn some good lessons from the ones she chooses.
One small quilt for you, one giant leap for your quilting skills.
Sewing patterns can sometimes afflict people with sewing-pattern fear. I've seen it and it's not pretty.
In an attempt to lure some of you would be sewing folk out from behind the dressmaker's dummy I have found you a pattern that requires no fiddly cutting out whatsoever. Praise the square!
This simple but effective Museum Tunic pattern, from Anna Maria Horner, is made entirely from humble squares of fabric. The whole thing is utterly square until you get your sewing mitts on it. Its shaping is all down to how you stitch it.
You'll have your seamstress badge squared away in no time (sorry).
Fancy adding a bit of flower power to your run-of-the-mill clothes? A little bit of colour can go a long way to changing the shelflife of a comfy but dowdy wearable.
I came across the easy four-step Petal Tee tutorial on Ruffles and Stuff recently and thought it was the perfect way to inject a bit of summer into your clothes.
The petals can be cut from the smallest remnants of some of your favourite fabrics or bits of clothing you love but are falling apart.
Then all you do is lay them along the neckline of the garment, zigzag stitch them in place and voila! Fabric flower power.
Zips. Zippers. Call them what you will they're fiddly beasts and no mistaking. How are you meant to tame them? They're just so scary with all those teeth!
Stand back! Here comes Craft to save you from the snapping jaws of the dreaded zip monster.
Craft's Nicole Vasbinder (Queen of Puff Puffs) sits you down (preferably with a nice cup of tea, I'd say) and takes you through the whole rigmarole of dealing with zips.
From coil zips to invisible zips, she explains how to shorten them, centre them and make them do your will.
Possibly the most useful zip 101 ever. Dread the tiny teeth no more and get fastening.
digg this |
del.icio.us this
| 
Stumble It!
