Librarian Dream Dress

Story time:

So once upon a time during my junior year of college I was walking home from an afternoon class, you know just minding my own business and such. I decided to mildly dress up that day because it was nice out and because why not. I had on a high-waisted skirt that I had belted, and some top of which I don't quite remember. But anyway, I had almost gotten back to my apartment when I crossed the path of some younger children (by children, I mean like.... freshmen who were only a year or two younger than me) who were sitting on a roof yelling things at people. When I walked by, one girl looked at me and kind of scrambled to say "You look like a librarian." And all I could think to say back was, "Yes. Thanks. That's what I was going for."(because to be honest, I probably really was going for that) Then I smiled and continued on my way while she gave me the most condescending, bewildered look.

The reason why this throws me off is because I genuinely don't know... was that supposed to be an insult? A compliment? An observation? I take it as a compliment, but I think she was trying to offend me. Considering the fact that I lived at the library (No joke. Slept there, brushed my teeth there, you know, normal stuff) I take that to be a certain degree of praise.

Where was I even going with this story? We just don't know.

Oh, it has something to do with this dress I made:

That's right kids, I have finally made my first completely self-drafted dress. It was kind of an adventure since I've never gone fully pattern-less on a dress before, but I'm so stoked about the final outcome. It's like... If I was genuinely a stereotypical librarian like that girl had said, this would be my prefect dress. Hands down. Care to see how I made it? Then read on: (Prepare for an image heavy post, yo.)

After poking around the internet for a while and looking at some other patterns that I had, I found out that I needed a few different measurements to make the bodice. (Do you like my jank drawn on measurements here? Can you tell I went to art school yet?) They were:
1. How far I wanted the neck to come down
2. Width of the strap
3. Armpit hole length. I'm sure that there is a more technical term for this.
4. Bust divided by 4
5. Waist divided by 4 (which actually, I ended up just keeping the same length as my bust and fit it with darts later)
6. How far I wanted the bodice to come down

To all of these measurements, I added on seam allowance too, just because I was super paranoid about everything being too small.

For the skirt, I just used a circle skirt pattern that I had made for a previous project. If you've never made a circle skirt before, I've posted about it here.

Once I had my patterns made, I began cutting them out of my fabric. The fabric I got for a totally awesome deal-- I found about three yards of it at the thrift store for some ludicrous amount like... four bucks or something. It just looks so 70's to me and I love it. But since I had so much fabric, I had enough to line the bodice as well. So, I cut two of these on the fold of the fabric, and four that were not on the fold of the fabric.

Since the fabric wasn't quite big enough to cut my entire circle skirt out as one piece, I traced the pattern twice on the fold to make my skirt.

To attach the skirt to the bodice, I also cut out a waistband which was about... idk... 5 inches by my waist measurement (plus and inch for seams).

Once I had everything cut out, I started the whole assembly process. I first pinned the front of my bodice pieces to their corresponding back panels just at the shoulders and sewed that down. I then used darts in both the front and the back to taper the bodice so that it fit my waist better. This involved a little math and pinning and unpinning the sides and trying it on to make sure I wasn't taking it in too much. Basically, I just wanted that bottom edge to be the same width as the waistband I cut out.

See. Darts.

Next, I laid my pieces on top of one another right-sides together and made sure that everything lined up.

Once I was sure that everything lined up, I pinned down the armpit holes and neckline and sewed these together.

To turn the bodice right-side out again, I had to shove those back panels through that tiny opening that is the straps. I don't really know how to explain that, but does the picture kind of make sense? Basically, it was like the bodice had to give birth to itself.

But once I managed to deliver the top, it looked like this. So I lined up the sides and made sure that it looked fine in that regard.

To finish off the bodice, I had to do another thing that is kind of hard to explain. Instead of having raw, fuzzy edges on the inside, what I did was first pin just the two innermost layers together. This allowed me to open up the whole top, pin the outermost layers together, and sew the whole side seam as one straight line. I know that doesn't really make sense, but it's super hard to explain so hopefully the picture makes a bit of sense? Once that was done, all I did was topstitch the neckline and arm holes.

Once I tried on the bodice and made sure it fit, I attached the top to the bottom using my waistband piece, which I made nice looking by doing all my attaching on the inside of the dress.

The final step was just to pin in a zipper, make any last size adjustments with those pins, and then just sew the zipper in. I mean, there are still a few fit issues with this, but I'm still super stoked with the outcome. I didn't think that I'd ever trying making a dress completely from scratch, but here we are. What a time to be alive.

Dang roof girl, if only you could see me now...

So what do y'all think? Any advice on how I could do better for next time? Any advice on pattern-making is MORE than welcome because I am still such a novice.


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Denim Shirt Refashion

Because who doesn't love a good ol' refashion, right?

I feel like this refashion really captures the essence of how much of a piece of trash I am. Like....I actually made the whole thing almost a year ago, but didn't get around to photographing it until just recently. I know, I know, I am garbage. But I'm okay with that. Because who honestly has that kind of control over their life, right? Right? Ehhhhhh...

But anyway, here is the pièce de résistance:

And it isn't even that huge of a deal of a refashion. Like, I literally have no excuse as to why I didn't photograph this. I'm so sorry, I AM UNWORTHY.

My saving grace though is that I did take pictures along the way while making this, so at least I can explain what I did. I first started by putting the shirt on and pinning a line at my natural waist so that I could chop the top of the shirt from the bottom.

I then removed the pocket...

...and the sleeves. (Look, you can even tell how old this picture is. That's def the carpet from my old apartment from school last year.)

I then took a little more off the the sleeves and pinned where I wanted to take the shirt in at the sides before sewing in my new side seams and finishing off the new arm holes.

Finally, I pleated the bottom part of the shirt so that it was the same length as the top part of the shirt before attaching the two together ( I also decided to do some hemming of that bottom portion so that it didn't fray.)

So this was super quick, super simple, but I feel like it was a pretty legit improvement. Even if the original said "80's pinpoint" on the inside, I don't know what that means, but I'm on board for whatever that entails.


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Easy Jersey Scarf

Greetings friends :]

So I've been up to some larger sewing projects lately, as well as I finally finished a huge piece of artwork that I'm so stoked about, but in the meantime I have a little thing to whet your appetite.

I know that everyone and their mother (literally and figuratively) has seen and probably made a jersey scarf before. They're one of Pinterest's greatest lovechilds (lovechildren?) and it isn't any wonder why. They're crazy easy to make and turn out super cute. So, some time ago, I had a go and made one for myself.

Results: yes. Good.

And although I still have a mild fear of working with knit fabrics, I am happy to report that no one died in the process of making this.

Originally, I found this semi-tie-dye knit fabric in the clearance section of Joann's and I really loved the pattern and color to it. There was a little less than a yard left on the bolt, so I just bought it all. I don't really remember how much I paid for it, but I do remember that it was pretty cheap, which is always a good thing.

All I did to make the scarf was I started out by cutting off the selvage, which Kitty assisted in doing.

Then all I did was lay the fabric out, make a half twist, and sew the top edges together. Simple as that, yo.
I'll admit though that I did do the sewing by hand because I'm a big ol' baby wimp. One day I'll sew knits on my machine... but that day has not come yet....

And the end result is pretty lightweight and has just the right amount of slouch, which is v important in any scarf making venture. Trust me, I went to scarf college.


I know that this is just a silly, quick little project, but sometimes you need those kinds of things, right? Yes? Thoughts? Ah well.


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DIY Hi-Lo Circle Skirt

Some time ago, while I was perusing ye' olde Joann's, I came across something truly magical. I was walking down that random aisle of just.. things and junk where half of it is miscellaneous sale stuff and the other half is just... uncategorized  craft items? You know that aisle? And something caught my eye:

First thought: Is that plaid I spy?
Second thought: WAIT IS THAT FLANNEL??

Good news, self. It both.

They were just these 3 yard rolls of flannel that were only 5 bucks each, so I got two of them. Fast forward to present day and I finally made a thing:

I thought about making just another regular circle skirt because let's be real- you can never have enough of those. Or at least that's just what I keep telling myself so that I can sleep better at night. This time though, I decided to try out a hi-lo style and I'm per' excited about the result. So here is how it went!

I started off by rolling out my fabric just to see the dimensions and I made a paper pattern. For how to make the paper pattern and do your measurements, you can refer to my post about making circle skirts.

I then [with the help of Kitty] cut out just one quarter of my skirt. How I did this was instead of folding my fabric at all, I laid my quarter-skirt pattern out on just one layer of fabric and cut it out. No folding or anything required.

After cutting out the one quarter, I proceeded to flip and lay my pattern down again and cut out a second quarter. These two regular pieces are what I used for the high front of the skirt.

For the back of my skirt, the "lo" part of the hi-lo equation, I started out by tracing out my quarter-pattern twice right next to each other, flipping halfway through the process so that I traced out a half circle instead of just the quarter circles like I did for the front of the skirt. Now, instead of cutting the exact shape of my pattern, I cut it so that the back angled down further, so that it would create a low effect.

I forgot to photograph this part, but I assembled the skirt by just sewing my two front quarters together and then sewing them to the back half.

With my remaining fabric, I cut out a waistband that was about four inches wide by my waist+2 inches [actually, I think I only did it about an inch and a half bigger than my waist, but two inches is a safe bet if you're worried about it not fitting].

Like with all my waistbands, I folded the fabric in half and ironed it down.

I then opened it back up and folded the edges halfway to my center crease.

I attached the waistband to the skirt by encasing the top of the skirt fabric inside the little refolded waistband and running two lines of straight stitches around the whole deal. I should also note that I cut a line for the zipper in the middle back of the skirt before I attached the waistband.

To finish the skirt off, all I did was insert a zipper, make a matching bandanna for Kitty, and just like that we are matching wonder babies.

Now here, have a baby bird pose. Because we all needed that.

And some sweet hi-lo action. I should really stop taking photos at awful times of day when there is no light left. Shame on you Becca. Stop bringing dishonor to your family.

But anyway, there we have it! This skirt was pretty simple to make, and nothing beats the feeling of being a girly lumberjack child [if you've never tried that aesthetic, I highly recommend it.].


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White Blouse Refashion

Is it weird that I did not own a single plain white blouse before getting this shirt to refashion? I feel like there might be something wrong with that...

Ah well, the situation has been remedied, with a twist kind of?

I got this shirt from the thrift store for like a dollar or something, but it was way too big and lifeless on me. So after an afternoon of work and playing around with weird ideas, I think this is a much improved version:

Can you def tell that I got this over the summer and then let it sit on my refashion pile for forever? That's how I function.

I started by first putting the shirt on inside-out and pinning it in so that the overall fit was better. (Take note of that ominous black shape in the corner. Take a wild guess as to what happened next.)

Ah yes. Ah good. No sewing project is complete without Kitty putting his large body over top of everything. Wow.

After sewing up the sides, I folded up the collar and added a matching white button in line with the other buttons on the shirt. I also added a button hole on the other side of the collar, making sure the shirt would lay flat before cutting it out. I did the stitching for the button hole by hand because let's be real. I'm too much of a giant baby to try and add the hole by machine.

Using my pinking shears, I cut off the extra fabric from the sides of the shirt where I stitched it earlier. And here was where I decided to go a little different than just having a plain white blouse:

I took those extra pieces of fabric and right sides together, I pinned them and stitched the bottom and the pinked (is that even a term?) sides and left the tops open.

Then all I had to do was flip them right-sides out and top stitch all the way around.

Lastly, I just took the tie pieces, tucked them under the collar and hand stitched them on.

Aaaand, much improved now I'd say. My roommate gave me that brooch and I thought it would be perfect with this so why not. Like it looks fine just tied, but yeah. Fancy brooches are legit, right?

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Drawing with Toned Paper

Prior to going to college, I had never worked with toned paper before (please don't shun me).
Fear not though for I have seen the light. And oooh child. Yeah.

I've really been loving getting back into working with this type of paper. All toned paper is, in case anyone else out there is like poor little former-me, is colored drawing paper. Usually a mid tone, like grey or tan or something. And if you consider yourself an artist, or even a dabbler, trust me. It's great and you should try it, even if just for funzies.

I recently (as in like... a few months ago) decided to partake in a good ol' treat yo' self moment and purchased a tan toned sketchbook. And I dabbled around with creating a few things:

Such as some P-Cap eyes. Which, if you watched the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, hopefully you can recognize those intense attack eyebrows. I actually gave this one away to my good friend Ginger, so he's happily hanging on her wall.

But I kept this one for myself because get it? Toned paper? With a toned dude? Shut up, I'm witty okay.

The thing that I love about working with toned paper is that it gives you a good starting point for laying out all of your values. If you find drawing or shading to be daunting or scary because the white of your paper is taunting your very existence, then I highly recommend giving toned paper a go. It takes away the fear of the dreaded white canvas, which allows you to focus all of your attention on just plugging in your key highlights and shadows. Also, you don't have to do quite as much shading because your mid tone is already there. You don't have to blend it out and establish it for yourself.

Also, when working with color, you're able yo use more of your lighter hues because they appear much more rich and vivid on the toned surface, rather than being washed out like they tend to be on white paper.

One of my most favorite recent pieces I've done on tones paper is this moon and antlers, which actually got a good scan of because I decided to remove it from the actual sketchbook for once. I decided to frame the original and I have it hanging in my apartment which is kind of neat because I've never displayed my art in like... my actual living space before. This is a new thing for me.

But I have a confession. After I bought this tan sketchbook, I realized you can't just have one toned sketchbook in one color. That's like... art law right? Shhh, just go with my logic. So I decided to buy a hard bound grey sketchbook as well because treat yo' self.

And I christened it with this dudely dude. Because I unabashedly love drawing good-looking dudes. I'm not ashamed to admit that.


So really, I just wanted to take a moment to make a fangirl post about how much I love toned paper. But here is the take-away hopefully--

Pros of working with toned paper:
- Your mid value is established already, which allows you to spend more time on your highlights and shadows.
- You can use a wider range of colors due to the fact that light hues don't disappear.
- This is a really good type of paper if you find shading on white paper to be scary.

Cons of working with toned paper:
- None. There are no cons. Shhhhhh.


Also, side note, but I'm getting back in touch with my Esty account, so if anyone is interested in prints of these artworks, or of any of my works, please let me know!

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Zentangles Vol. 1

(Why volume one? Because shhhhh. There will probably most likely be more.)


So I realized that I haven't posted any of my artwork in a while, and I don't really know why that is. It's not like I stopped drawing once I graduated, though I do admit that now that I have a full time job, it does kind of put a strain on my free-time/ability to function.

So I've decided that I want to start posting my artwork again because why not. This is a creative space, no? :]


One thing that I've been doing a lot of lately is doodling random zentangles/ patterned pieces. Though I have a confession to make-- I didn't know they were called zentangles until like... two years ago. I always just referred to this type of art as just non-representational works (thanks, good ol' art history class) so now I feel so pretentious calling them zentangles. Don't judge meeeee. Eh.

The thing that I really like about zentangles is that I find them so mindless and stress relieving to do. There's no pressure to draw them "right." You don't have to worry about proportions or shading or have making them look like something specific. They're just so.... monotonous but in a really good way? Does that even make sense?

 The way that I usually start mine is that I typically choose a motif or a couple of motifs. Then I just repeat those shapes over and over until I have a general flow that I like. It also helps me to think about positive and negative space, and whether I'm leaving any room for the eye to "breathe" (such as how I left large spaces of plain black and white in the above ones).

And not all my designs are successful either. Like the one above? Not much of a fan. But I like to keep my mistakes and finish them because I sometimes the process of just creating something is what is important, not necessarily the finished product.

I also bought a 24 pack of sharpies not that long ago and am having fun just messing around with them. By no means is my coloring neat, but hey, at least this was fun.

(Fun fact-- this one was actually made from cutting up and collaging some weird demon money that this eccentric magic shop owner gave me....long story, not shady at all....)

And sometimes the zentangles find their way into my regular, more representational drawings. I actually thought about cutting my hair like that (that's why I drew this) but then I realized that I am a giant baby nerd and would miss my hair too much.

But like I said-- I hope to get better at posting my artwork some more. When I started this blog, I really thought I would be doing more of the artsy posting, but that got a little bit away from me. So my question is-- would y'all like to see more? Or would you like me to explain my process/any art processes? Because I'd love to do more of that if you all are interested :]


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