Making Leather Jewelry - Necklace and Earrings

I've been addicted to "leather jewelry" lists on Pinterest, and a friend had a birthday recently, so I thought I'd try my hand at making some.

So. . .like some of my projects, I forget to photographically document until I'm already well into the project, so. . .let me catch you up.

I used my dressform as a scale model for drafting a paper pattern.

So. . .this is where there are pictures missing. I traced the pattern onto leather using disappearing ink (which. . .a word about disappearing ink: It disappears REALLY quickly! So make sure you don't use it and then go get something to drink, because it WILL be gone!) 

Then, I cut it out with scissors, and then I cut the fringe part with a rotary cutter and a ruler. (You can see I'd already finished the fringe in the picture below, but this was my attempt at going backwards and photo documenting. You're welcome.)

This picture is when I actually realized I needed to take pictures, so I'm trying to give you the basic idea with this picture.

I cut a reinforcement piece for the top of the necklace and then glued it on.

1. 

2.

3.

While that was drying, I started on the earrings.

Those little strips are reinforcement pieces I glued to the tops.

See?

Back to the necklace. I gathered some jewelry pieces to use to attach the necklace together.

Using a leather punch, I punched two holes at the top of the necklace.

And magically, I have already attached the hardware! (This took a lot longer than it seems.)

Then, as further embellishment, I took a flower. . .

 . . .and sewed a safety pin to the back of it.

Then, I attached the flower to the necklace. I used a safety pin in case my friend didn't want to have a flower on the necklace. . .and she can use the flower by itself as well.

Then, I punched two holes at the tops of both earrings.

The hardware for the earrings.

A finished earring.

The finished set.

And without the flower attached.

(Don't you wish you were nicer to me so I would make you these things too? Ha!)

The back. (It's adjustable.)

And I even made the bag (out of a perfume ad in a magazine)!

I'm so crafty!

The End!

Refashioning: Jake the Pirate Costume from a Lady's Suit

I love my job, but sometimes it requires doing the most random things.

I am a secretary for my church. We had a Disney themed Easter egg hunt this past Saturday. My pastor's wife asked me to make a Jake and the Neverland Pirates vest for one of the teenagers to wear.

This is what Jake the Pirate looks like:

So, I was going to buy all the fabric needed, but as I was out driving, I thought I would stop into a thrift store just to see what they had. They had this lady's suit for $.50. It was just about the right size in the bodice, so I thought...why make a whole vest from scratch, when I could just work around something already made?

I went to Wal-Mart and got a few other supplies: yellow blanket binding, four yellow buttons, yellow thread, and iron-on facing...or what I thought was iron-on facing...

First step was to cut out the shoulder pads and cut off the sleeves.

It had patch pockets on the front that needed taking off as well. They were attached from the back to the front, so this is what I did to take care of this problem: 

This bottom hem would be covered in yellow binding, so it didn't matter that it was showing on the front.

Okay, next, I had to remove the collar because if you scroll back up to the Jake picture, you will see that it isn't right.

So, fortunately, since the skirt came with the blazer, I had enough fabric to make a new collar. I cut the elastic off the top of the skirt.

Okay, using the original collar as as sort of guide, I drew a new collar around it on paper I pieced together.

The first collar wasn't quite right. It sat too low. (Wow. I look very frazzled in this picture!)

So, through trial and error, I finally drew a collar pattern that I thought would work.

The main thing I wanted was for the collar to stand up a little bit in the back. The original pattern didn't do that.

Okay, so this is the part that really started to stress me out. I thought I had bought iron-on facing, because when I asked the lady at Wal-Mart, "Wear is your iron-on facing?" she lead me to the roll of the stuff I bought. . .which was actually iron-on adhesive! Grrrr. . .But I didn't have all this time to run back to Wal-Mart and get the right thing, because as I said before, I was at work. Meaning: I had other things I had to get done besides making vests! So, in the words of Tim Gunn, it was a "Make-It-Work moment.". . .

So I made two large pieces of double-sided fabric, essentially. It didn't have the body I wanted for the collar to stand up nicely, but at least it had a little stiffness--albeit heavy. I laid the double-sided fabric on top of each other and pinned my pattern to it and cut out the pieces.

Then, I stitched up the back seam of the collar pieces. 

Here is the middle back of the neck of the vest, denoted with a pin.

Then, I sewed the binding onto the vest, and very casually mitered the corners. (Again, not a lot of time to do it perfectly.)

Excuse my foot in this picture.

Then, I sewed the binding onto the collar.

Remember that pin in the middle back of the neck of the vest? I matched that to the middle seam of the collar, pinned them both together, and sewed them together.

Then, I tacked down the points of the bottom of the collar. (You can see the one on the left was tacked and the one on the right wasn't yet.)

I had left about 1/2" of sleeve so that I could use that as seam allowance. I folded that 1/2" under and sewed both sleeves up.

Last step: buttons!

This was a peasant blouse that I reworked to make the Jake shirt. (Forgot to take pictures of this process.)

I made the headband and cummerbund out of some Wal-Mart poly-satin.

And here is what he looked like at the egg hunt! If I had had him in person to fit things on, I would have taken the vest in a bit, but anyways, he looks cute!

And here I am at the same egg hunt. I am supposed to be Cruella Deville, but the white hairspray I used turned out grey. Oh well! (That "fur stole" is a tube of faux fur that I made in about two minutes at the last possible second!)

The End!