Refashioning: Comme de Garcons Inspired Shirt - How to Iron On Embroidered Patches (Small)

Okay, we all know I'm a fan of Moschino, right?

(The dress below is from Boutique Moschino and retails for $695.)

Well, I also really like the fantasy of the Japanese design house "Comme de Garcons." Their designs are just always out-of-the-box and graphic.

Anyways, the picture above is from a couture fashion show. They also have a cheaper casual line called "PLAY." The play line has this cute little heart with eyes on it as a logo.

It's a cheaper line, but the T-Shirts are still over $100.

Anyways....here is a project that literally anyone with an iron can do. (I realize that not everyone has an embroidery machine, so some of my embroidery posts are not helpful for the masses.)

I had this button-up blouse that I tried selling online, but no one ever bought it. I was only getting rid of it because I have a million black shirts. But I still really liked it, so I didn't want to just give it away.

It has these really interesting--almost epaulet-like--pleats on the shoulders.

I ordered these cute little heart iron-on patches off eBay. I think it was less than a $1 for both.

You may not have a dress form like I do, but if you want to do a project like this, all you need is yourself and a mirror. Hold the patches up and look at yourself until you get them in the right place...or whatever you consider to be the right place!

I liked them best like this.

Okay, so here's what you do. Everyone tells you to place the patch down right where you want it on the shirt (or whatever) and then hit it directly with the iron. I don't do this for several reasons. (1) You need to hold the iron on the patch for more than a few seconds to create a lasting bond. (2) A lot of times, when you iron the patch on from the top and hold the iron on too long, the iron messes the patch up (skid marks, melting, etc). Even if you hold the iron still. (3) A lot of times hitting the patch from the top messes up the surrounding fabric, and you get those funky waves that everyone hates. (4) Doing the majority of the ironing from the wrong side heats up the adhesive much better than ironing from the top of the patch down, because usually the clothing fabric is thinner than the patch....The problem with doing all the ironing from the wrong side is that you can never get the placement right.

So, here's how I do it.

First, I plug in my iron and hold the patch up to it (not touching) to get the adhesive sticky.

Then, I place the patch down where I want it.

Usually, that's all I have to do to get the patch in the right place, and I flip the clothing inside out, iron the back and I'm done.

However, these patches were a little tricky, so if you find yourself with some tricky patches, read on.

Since the patches weren't heating up, I decided to heat up the surface fabric instead.

That worked a little better. At least the patches were slightly adhering now.

Then, I VERY LIGHTLY touched each patch with the iron for barely a few seconds. I did this to make sure there was a good enough bond so I could turn the shirt inside out without the patches falling off.

Then, I ironed the heck out of the patches from the back!

Once you get the patches to stick, always let them cool a few seconds and fold the fabric away from each patch to make sure that it stuck well enough. Always remember to wash these items inside-out and hang them to dry. (Even if your patches say they can be tumble dried, they stay on better if you line dry them.)

There! Looks pretty Moschino-meets-Garcons to me!

The End!

Dolce and Gabbana Inspired: Red Lace and Tweed Romper

So this post is a little window into the creative process. I was stumped on what to do next after the Red Lace Dress I made a few days ago. I knew I wanted to incorporate some tweed into the next look not only because there was tweed in the D&G runway show, but also I liked how the red lace looked when placed over some houndstooth pants that I bought at a thrift store.

Most of the time when I get an idea for a project, I get a pretty clear picture of what I want in my head. Sometimes, I have to draw it out on paper. However, this time, neither of those processes was helping, so I actually draped my dress form with material to try to figure out what I was doing. I'd never done that before. 

Okay so here is the first pair of pants that I used to make a quick bodice. (I used another dress I own to make the pattern for the bodice.)

See, in my head, the bodice would be houndstooth and the skirt would be red, but I didn't love them together in real life when I draped them. I was afraid of that--hence the draping process.

So, I'm not sure if you have seen the Louis Vuitton show for fall/winter, but it has a couple tweed dresses with nude colored lace creeping around the hems, and I thought I might incorporate that look into my dress, but when I draped them (below), I couldn't get over how my dress was beginning to look more like the icky checkered/daisy "Sunday Meetin'" dress of the 90s.

I wasn't in love with covering the whole thing in lace either. It worked so much better when the dress was all red underneath. But I just really like the lace over houndstooth look, so I wasn't going to give up!

That was when I remembered I'd bought another grey tweed pair of fat man's pants at the thrift store too. I cut the legs apart at the crotch, cut the waist and pockets off, cut each leg apart down the inside seam, turned them upside down, sewed them together, cut the cuffs off, and made a skirt!

This was me trying the Louis Vuitton thing again. It was soooo not working! It's kind of an interesting idea, but when the lace is red, the hem-creeping thing looks clowny and dated. . .to me, at least. This one actually reminds me of Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter.

This was me seeing how it would look if both the greys showed through the red. Not digging it. Something about it, I kinda liked, but I couldn't figure out what.

For about 5 minutes, I gave up on the grey and tried this beige dress that I have that's too tight, but I don't want to pitch just yet. I dunno. I don't hate this look, but it wasn't what I was wanting to do. I wanted the houndstooth! 

I decided to sleep on it.

(Okay so in the next pictures, I skipped ahead to the very end product because once I figured out where I was going, I was too "in the zone" to take pictures! Also, I'm sure you are bored of looking at these so. . .)

I ended up not making a dress at all! I made a romper instead. Actually, I was completely done with the sleeves, bodice, and skirt and was about to hem the bottom when I realized that the skirt (having been made by two pant legs turned upside down) flaired out weirdly in the middle of the bottom hem, so I just cut it a little more, and sewed up the crotch into shorts. Then, I realized that I had no way to get into it, and I had to cut the back bodice down the middle and install a zipper! After that, I realized that I wanted pockets, so I copied the cuffing of the sleeves and sewed two cuffed pockets to the outside of the legs. I did this stupidly AFTER sewing the crotch up, so I had to finagle the machine through each pant leg! (I could have just taken the crotch seam out, but I have no idea where I put my seam ripper, and I was too lazy to do it properly.)

The last step was pegging the hem of the pant legs.

Now for some details. 

Here is the zipper in the back. I left it exposed because it was grey and I liked the look of it. Also, notice the symmetry of the flowers, especially the one in the middle that is bisected by the zipper. I was proud of that. I didn't do symmetrical flowers on the front, because the bodice is so short and the neckline is too scooped. There was no good place to put two symmetrical flowers, if you catch my meaning.

The back "skirt" has a pleat. This helps with range of motion and allows for easy on-and-off, but isn't bulky.

Blogger puts my pictures in sideways sometimes, for some reason. Anyways, this is a sideways view of the pegging of a pants leg. It needs to be ironed! I always forget these things when I'm taking pictures. . .

Okay, so I actually cheated on the cuff of this pocket. It is actually made from the bottom cuff of the original pants' leg. That was just one step that was already done for me, so I decided to use it!

On a dress form.

I cheated on the cuffs of the sleeves the same way! They are actually the cuffs of the original pants!

The End!

Korean Charlie Brown (2009)

Here is a video I made of a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown that I edited, directed, produced, filmed, costumed, set designed, etc. This was when I was a teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and this particular play was performed in May 2009. Most of them had ever been in plays before I coerced them the year before to do a small one act, Beauty IS a Beast (no footage available). I know Charlie Brown doesn't play the violin...but Jerry did...so I made this first scene to set his character, as most Koreans don't know of Charlie Brown. The whole video is about 1 hour and a half. It's broken up into smaller segments below.

Part 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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Extra #1

Extra #2

Extra #3

Extra #4

Extra #5

Extra #6

Extra #7

Extra #8

The End!