Blog

craft, knit

Knitting progress!

christinahopgood
Yesterday I finally finished knitting the front of my Nympheas jumper!
I immediately sewed it together and now it’s a vest!

 As you can see I’m quite pleased with myself!

 This is taking way longer than I thought it would.  My Miette cardigan didn’t take nearly this long!

This jumper is the Nympheas pattern by Susannah Hill, which you can find here on Ravelry. 
I now have to make sleeves and a neck band.  I’m going to make full-length sleeves instead of the cap sleeves on the pattern, so once I’m done I’ll upload my modifications!
Here’s my Ravelry project page for this.  Ravelry is my fave thing right now!
Uncategorized

A break from blogging

christinahopgood

Recently I haven’t been blogging much, or at all! It’s been a busy few weeks and I haven’t really had time to make anything or take photos!
I’ve been doing a lot of knitting, but I still haven’t finished a project I started MONTHS ago. It’s taking so long! I’m getting sick of it but will keep plugging away until I can unveil it.
I tried to sew a dress but it ended up way too big and I’m too bummed about it to try again! I’ll probably get to it in my holidays.
That overlocker I bought turned out to not work! It overlocks for about 10cm before it magically unthreads something and starts munching up fabric, not ideal! I’ll have to take it back.
Charles is currently in South Korea, at a conference. He gets back Saturday! I can’t wait to see all his photos and weird purchases.
And that’s it! I think I’ll just blog when I have something new to write, rather than busting my guts trying to make something when I really should be doing my CIT assignments… Like right now!
I’ll leave the regular blogging to the experts 🙂 who knows, I might start blogging daily!
Huggles!

diy, hair, haircut

How to cut your own hair straight!

christinahopgood
Last time I cut my hair, I did a layered cut.  Tutorial here!

This time, I wanted a straight cut.  I want my hair to be like Sarah’s in Labyrinth.  Here she is:

 See how nice and straight the cut is?  No layers in that cut.

Now my hair has layers quite high up, so I’ll need to grow it out a bit before the whole thing can be straight.
Onto the tutorial!

Here I am before my haircut, all raggy daggy ends!

Brush it all out so that there are no tangles.  If you have curly hair it might be best to straighten it at this point.  Mine is straight enough so I don’t need to.

Part your hair where you normally do so it won’t be crooked when you part it later.

Put it in a ponytail at the nape of your neck, making sure there are no lumps.

Grasp the elastic and pull it downwards.  Not outwards!

Stop when you have a little ponytail at the end.  The elastic is your guide for cutting!

Snippy snip!  Straight across.

Repeat the whole process a few times to even it out.  
Here’s what mine looked like when I finished!  Straight across the back.

At the front you can still see my higher layers, but eventually it’ll be all grown out!  I’m going to keep cutting it like this so that I can have hair like Sarah’s!
fashion, life, mod, sewing

Refashioning a big t-shirt

christinahopgood
I know there are heaps and heaps of tutorials on how to do this online… but I thought why not add to them!
As you know, I recently went to Sydney to see They Might Be Giants.  I bought a Flood t-shirt (a great album of theirs from 1990) but unfortunately they only had mens size large.  I am not a mens size large you guys!  I bought it with the intention of modifying it (or using it as a sleeping shirt).
It is even too big to sleep in!  I can imagine myself rolling around in it and getting all twisted.  See how huge it is on me?
Let the tutorial commence.
First find a t-shirt that you DO like the fit of.  Just make sure that it doesn’t have raglan sleeves: that is, make sure the sleeves don’t join to the neckline.  This will be important later.
Iron your shirts and fold them in half lengthways.  Put your little t-shirt on top and trace around it.  Fold the sleeves inwards and trace around the curve where your armhole is.
Take away your little t-shirt and pin your big t-shirt so it doesn’t slip around.  Cut around where your drew the outline, through all 4 layers. Make sure you leave a 1.5cm seam allowance!!  Since my t-shirt was super long, I just extended the line to the bottom of the shirt – so it can be either a long shirt or a short dress.
Now open it out and pin up the sides, with the RIGHT SIDES FACING.  If you do it with the wrong sides facing you’ll end up with an inside-out looking tshirt.  Sew up the side seams but don’t sew up the armholes!

Try it on for size.  I was really happy with how this fit so I proceeded.  If you’re not happy, take it in a little more.  If it’s too small, you can still unpick and sew closer to the edges.
 Yay it fits!

Now sleeves.  Take your small t-shirt sleeve and lay it on top of your big one, matching the edges together.  Trace and cut (leaving a seam allowance).

 You should get something that looks like this.  Turn them inside out and sew up the shortest edge.
Here’s the hardest bit.  Now turn your sleeve right-side out and your t-shirt inside out.  Put the sleeve INSIDE the t-shirt, matching the side seam of the shirt with the seam you just sewed on the sleeve.  The raw edges should match up.
 Pin it in place… it should look like this.  Complicated right?  It takes a few goes before you really understand what’s going on!

Sew around your armholes!  It took me a while to make the sleeves actually fit into the armholes, they kept being too big or small!  I had to adjust the size of the sleeves quite a bit.  But finally it worked!
Yay a dress!  Or a nightie?  I’m not sure if I’ll wear this out but I love it to bits!
fashion

Clothing’s Sustainability and Environmental Impacts

christinahopgood
Recently for my course I had to do an assignment called “Where do my clothes come from?”.  It was essentially an investigation into the processes that brought my clothes to me.  The particular item of clothing I chose to investigate was a coat from Valleygirl which cost me $30.  It was a polyester cotton blended fabric which was made to look like wool felt.

Design
Valleygirl’s website talks about how it’s a fash fashion chain that strives to bring the latest cutting-edge fashions (from catwalks, magazines, etc.) to the masses quickly and cheaply.  So the design for my coat was probably not even originally Valleygirl, but some copy of a high-end brand’s coat.

Fabric
The jacket was made from cotton/polyester.  Who knows where that was made!  Cotton is known for using a gargantuan amount of water (I’m sure you’ve heard the old factoid that it takes 2720 litres of water to produce one t-shirt) Actually, reading that article it’s kind of horrifying how much water goes into cotton.  Because it’s a crop, it also needs pesticides, and then it needs picking and processing, all of which takes a lot of power. 
Polyester is a man-made fibre created from fossil fuels, which are a finite resource. It also requires heavy chemicals and lots of power to create.  The one good thing about this fibre is that it can be recycled – but I wonder how much polyester fabric ends up in the recycling bin.

Construction
“Made in China” the label says.  As I wrote in my previous post about my dress comparisons, the wage for Chinese employees is quite low (depending on the province).  After reading “Overdressed“, I no longer expect anyone to be paid any more than minimum wage.  Plus, the price was $30 – I don’t even think it was marked down.  This is a jacket with a lining, collar, wrist bands, a back band, and a generally nice finish and fit.  

After all my research I was pretty upset with myself.  I don’t want to support this kind of brand, even if they do sometimes have things I like.  What I do want to support are local designers, crafters, and sewers, who make their products out of sustainable fabrics.  I want to support higher-end brands that are Australian made and beautifully made, and whose prices reflect the workmanship and care that goes into their pieces.  I think that after this assignment, I’m going to watch what I spend my hard earned money on, and hope that we can keep the local fashion scene alive.

What do you think?  Do you worry about where your clothes come from?