Refashioning: Moschino Inspired - Adding a Reverse Applique Graphic

Continuing in the Moschino vein...here is a "Moschino Cheap and Chic" shirt that I bought last week.

It's interesting because the graphic heart is actually a stretchy mesh that was frame-embroidered into the shirt, and the shirt part was cut away to make a sort of "peekaboo" situation. That is why I'm calling this "reverse applique." Instead of adding a piece of fabric into an item, the designer subtracted a piece of fabric. Does that make sense?

Studying the back, I saw that the designer had placed the mesh BEHIND the shirt. You can tell this because you can see seam allowance around the heart from the inside of the shirt here:

Okay, so this post isn't going to be so much about a success story as it is a process of learning and trying something new. Hopefully, it will give you an idea or two.

I had this T-Shirt in my "Get Rid Of" pile, so I grabbed it to use for practice.

I wish I had black stretchy lace, but. . .I don't right now. I do have a bunch of this white stretchy lace, though, so I cut a piece to use.

I folded the shirt in half to find the center of the shirt and I drew a line down the center with tailor's chalk.

Then, I ironed some tear away stabilizer to the wrong side of the front of the shirt.

Then, I ironed some stabilizer onto the wrong side of my piece of lace.

This is how the pieces will be set up inside the shirt. The lace will be behind with the right side of the lace touching the back of the shirt. (In this picture, the shirt is inside out.)

Hard to see, but I drew a second line perpendicular to the center line to use as reference in keeping my embroidery hoop straight.

This part took forever. Hooping both the lace and the shirt and making sure everything was straight and even. . .no easy task!

This looks like I centered the shirt wrongly because the line is going slightly diagonally. Actually, the shirt is hooped almost perfectly. The line itself ended up being a little off.

Here is a peek at the back of the hoop inside the shirt. See how the lace is in the back?

I put the hoop into the machine.

This was my first time ever attempting a frame--let alone a reverse applique--so it seemed to me that I should stitch the first round using just a simple once-over straight line, and also making sure that the heart was 9.8cm across. When I would go back over it with a thicker satin stitch, I will have made the heart 10cm across. This was to make sure that the satin stitch would actually pick up both the shirt and the lace and not leave any gaps. (This will make more sense later.)

Okay, so here is my first round: the simple once-over straight stitch.

After that step, I pulled the hoop out of the machine and pulled the red T-Shirt away from its backing stabilizer. Using thread trimming scissors, I cut the heart portion out of the middle. I tried cutting up as closely to the stitch line as possible, but these scissors are not really made for trimming fabric, only thread. I do have some actual "duckbill" applique trimming scissors on order, but. . .I was too impatient to wait for them! (You will see later how I should have waited.)

Okay, so now I programmed my machine to sew a thicker satin stitch heart that was 10cm across.

See how the machine is stitching perfectly over the former straight line? That's why I did the first line at 9.8cm and the satin stitch at 10cm.

Okay, here's the problem: I should have cut a little more closely to the first stitch line because see how much red is sticking out from under the satin stitch? There are three ways to eliminate this:

(1) Use the same color thread as the shirt (in this case, red). That will make the excess red part less noticable.

(2) Set both stitch lines at the same centimeters across (in this case, 10cm). That way, the cut line will be farther into the satin stitch margins. I didn't know where my margins were when going from straight to satin--because I'd never done this before. I had tried to anticipate marginal error by doing the first stitch at 9.8. Next time, I'll try doing them both at 10cm and see what happens.

(3) Use actual trimming scissors. Trimming scissors are curved, which allows a person to cut much more closely to seams without the handle of the scissors getting in the way. "Duckbill" scissors are even better, because they lift the cut fabric out and away from the project so you can get even closer to seams.

Anyways. . .here is the shirt from the inside.

I tore away all the stabilizer.

And cut around the lace (just like was done to the Moschino shirt).

The finished shirt.

You can see my fingers behind the lace. So there you have it! A reverse applique!

Was it a total success? No. This was just a practice. But I learned a lot, so I thought I'd pass it on!

The End!

Make Your Own Ribbon Bulletin Board

This post is nothing new, but maybe it will still give you an idea.

I get three fashion magazines that come to my house. I guess I'm old school and like to see trends and fashion ideas in actual print vs. having a Pinterest board (which. . .yes. . .I have some of those too). Anyways, I used to clip out my favorite ideas and keep them in a 3-ring notebook. Well. . .the main problem with that is that I never look at it! It stays tucked away on its shelf out of sight. That doesn't really help me. I realized that I need something more immediate. I needed a bulletin board.

Before I even started pricing cork boards and push pins, I realized that I had all the materials to make a ribbon bulletin board. Why go out and buy something that I could just make? That's what this post is going to show you: How to make your own ribbon bulletin board.

First of all, I had this old canvas frame that wasn't being used. You don't have to have one covered in canvas. (But let's face it. If you are female and have friends, chances are you have been to one of those group painting classes and you probably have an outcome of that event at home right now that you HATE, so. . .why not repurpose it?) :) It just needs to be made of wood so you can push staples into it--you could probably also use a decent piece of cardboard. I also grabbed a piece of shiny pink table cloth to cover it, but you can use any fabric. (You may remember that I used this same fabric to make a sewing machine cover.)

I laid the fabric down and cut around it leaving about two to three inches around. That would give me just enough to fold up around the frame.

Then I spayed some adhesive to the back of the fabric. You don't have to do this part, but it helps to keep the fabric from slipping as you attach it to the frame.

Then I folded up the edges of the fabric around the frame.

Okay, I would advise you if you do this to use a staple gun or AT LEAST a normal sized stapler. All we have in our house is this tiny Swingline stapler, and. . .it took a while because about only one in five staples actually took!

This is after all the fabric had been stapled up around the frame.

Next I took some ribbon and diagonally stretched it across the frame. I stapled either end to the frame.

After stapling the ribbon to the sides, I pulled and stapled the tail parts around to the back.

And that's basically it. You just keep adding ribbon in rows until you are satisfied with how it looks.

Be sure to go back the other direction.

Almost finished. I'm pretty proud of how good it looks as I didn't measure distances or anything. Not bad for eyeballing and using an almost worthless stapler!

This is the back. You can see I stapled all the ribbon tails to the back.

The last step was to add buttons to each intersection of ribbon. This just keeps the pictures in place that you tuck into the ribbon.

All done!

Well. . .almost.

Now it's on the wall, and I can easily see inspiring ideas. 

(Right now I'm into collars.)

My plan is that once this is filled up, I can take a picture of it and put that into an archive of sorts, take these down, and start a new board. I plan on doing this twice a year or so. Anyways, we'll see. For now, I like being able to see my ideas easily!

And then the obligatory social media question:

What do you/will you use your bulletin board for?

The End!