Project a Day: #4 Re-vamping Old Jewellery

Hiya friends, I hope you had a lovely Tuesday! Our lovely winter rain is persisting and as the weather turns from cold to freezing, I find myself wanting to crochet the whole time. This presents a problem as I have work that needs to get done! Any-hooo... I was visiting with my mom today and she keeps telling me how she's got no accessories. They're all either old, faded or broken. I told her to gather up all the jewellery that she wants to throw out and give it to me. I laid them out on the table, brainstormed a while, fetched my beading gear and started off.

 -my mom bought this necklace a while ago and loved it so much that she couldn't stop wearing it. You can see in the detail cloud above that most all of the silver plaiting has been worn off and some of the beads have lost their colour-

-I simply removed all the useable beads from the old necklace and chucked what was left. Having measured the length of the old necklace, I cut a chain and attached a lobster clasp. I then measured the middle of the chain and started adding the old bead to the new chain working from the middle outward. Then I added charms I knew my mom would love and a hint of purple to give it a fresh new look. No surprise she loves this one too!

It's really fun to re-vamp old favourite accessories and it's kind to your environment to reduce, re-use, recycle!

xxx

Project a Day: #3 Winter Flower Brooch

Winter is here my friends! It's been raining quite a bit and today was freezing! As I was thinking of the cold, I realized that I've never made fabric flowers with winter wovens and chunky thick fabric before. This one was a bit of an experiment to see how these fabric would work technically. It is a bit difficult to sew by hand, as the fabric becomes thicker when scrunched together and even thicker the more layers you add. Not that practical as a product for selling because of the tedious sewing work. It was also very time consuming.

 -I used scraps of fabric (thrifted), bits and bobs to add accents and I ended up using different buttons than shown in the top image. The buttons I used are also thrifted and oh so vintage-

xxx

Project a Day: #2 Crochet Aviator's Hat

What a mission to find cute patterns for baby boys! I had to improvise with this one. It was quite difficult to find the right sizes for babies and as I hadn't met my cousin Christa's little boy, Lucian yet, this was no easy task. I came across this(puppy dog hat pattern) pattern but I wanted to make an Aviator's hat because his baby shower theme was Little Traveler and they themselves do a lot of traveling. So I used the base of this pattern and instead of adding the ears and face, I added a little flap and sewed it up with a couple of buttons.

 -these earthy tones suited my idea of a Little Traveler. Once again, I used a mix of acrylic yarns both from my stash and thrifted-

 

-For the added flap I literally just added sc rows until I was happy with the length. I then folded it up and sewed it in place with these cute boyish buttons. When I was just about finished, I thought "oh, crap! this looks way too small!" I told my Cousin she can always give it to Alandra to put on one of her dolls and then I'll make Lucian a bigger one. My parents thought this was hilarious, I didn't think it funny at all! It took quite some doing to make this little hat-

xxx

Project a Day: #1 Crochet Poncho

And here we go again! My new 30 Day Challenge is one filled with projects. Gifts made for friends and family, half finished projects to be completed, new stock to be made and so forth. In this challenge I will share patterns found on the web, patterns I wrote, quick DIY's and simply the things made a day.

This first project is a crochet poncho for my Cousin, Christa's little girl, Alandra. She turned three last week Thursday. When I found this pattern on Pinterest, I new I was going to be needing it soon. If you want to make this easy little poncho, just click on the links provided for the step-by-step tutorial. This project took me about six hours to complete which makes it perfect for a weekend project or even the long road. I found this pattern to be quite clear and easy to follow, no funny business.

 -These colours reminded me of Autumn back in Pretoria, such rich and warm colours. Perfect for winter in South Africa. I used a mix of acrylic yarns from my stash and the maroon yarn is thrifted. As these are of different thickness, I used the DK yarn according to the pattern, the thinner yarns I added a dc stitch(making it 3 dc stitches per chain space) and the maroon I held double throughout- 

 -Project #1 is done and dusted! I will try to get my Cousin to take a picture of Alandra wearing her lovely new poncho, so I can post it here for you guys to see how cute is looks on-

xxx

30 Days of Dresses: Dress #31

Hiya friends, it's weekend! And it's pouring, the winter is finally here. Dave is baking pancake tonight, I can't wait! I LOVE pancakes! So a few posts ago, I told you I was a challenged to make Dave wear a dress for my 30 Days of Dresses and that he accepted this challenge. Well, here it is! Dave in a dress and not just any dress. My Gran (Ouma Paulina) has been following this Dress Challenge from beginning to end and every time I posted a new dress she asked "when is the green one coming?". Here we have two flies with one swat! 

-hehehe! just look at that pose! thank you so much for all your help, my Lovey. for reminding me to take the dress photo when I forgot and for encouraging me when I didn't want to. I love you-

That concludes the 30 Days of Dresses challenge.

Thank you for joining me, the past 30 Days and for all your kindness.

xxx