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all Aussie adventures

16/09/2015 12:54 pm \ 68 Comments \ Carolyn

MY OUTFIT IS FINISHED!!!
And I am showing it all together here for the first time. Can I just say right here; wooooohooooot!
The challenge, as laid out by Nicki of this is moonlight, should you choose to accept it, and I did! was to make for yourself an entire outfit using ONLY locally sourced materials. Sounds simple, right? It has been anything but!
I’m very grateful to Nicki for conceiving this brilliant and very thought-provoking challenge, and for inviting me to take part. This has been one exceedingly amazing ride, has blown my mind more than any other dressmaking challenge I’ve ever done, and really pushed my creativity to the limit. At the beginning of the year I seriously did not think I would be taking my outfit to the levels I did…. I thought for sure I would be giving myself a pass on some things, for example; thread, and allowing myself to use regular Gutermann’s thread. As time went on though I toughened up, embraced the idea of going the whole hog; and I’m very pleased that I did manage to rise to the challenge and make the maximum possible from locally sourced products!
In fact, I’m quite proud and extremely happy! :))
For the challenge, I made:
a knitted alpaca cardigan/jacket
a merino felt dress
merino felt and pine shoes
a merino fleece bag
merino fleece undies and bra
In a nutshell, every single blinking thing I have on here is made by myself, using pretty close to 100% south-west Australian sourced materials

Those of us in Western Australia; Sue, Megan, Nicki and myself, have had to be quite innovative in our approach, I think. I mean, forget zips, thread, elastic… there is not even any freaking fabric made in WA! This was our single biggest hurdle, I think!
However, we are extremely fortunate in that we have wool available to us; lots and lots of wool! Australia has the world’s biggest wool economy… did you know that 80% of the world’s apparel wool is from Australia? and Australian merino is the world’s best quality woollen fibre. 22% of the country’s wool production is here in Western Australia (source)

Hardly surprising then that all four of us have used wool as the majority component in our outfits.
My dress, bag, underwear and shoe tops are made from Western Australian merino fleece. I made my wool felt fabric from the fleece as outlined in this post. My dress is made from natural undyed merino fleece felt, and I hand-embroidered the fleece all over with locally handspun, undyed merino yarn.

Anigozanthos manglesii

The embroidery design is my own; a random arrangement of of kangaroo paw motif, for our Western Australian state floral emblem.

My underwear features the only “colour” in my entire outfit; I dyed the decorative yellow edging and ties using sour grass picked from my own garden, as posted here.
All the other fleece, yarn and wood in my outfit I left in its naturally coloured state.

My cardigan is alpaca yarn, from the Fibre of the Gods, a tiny mill operating on a farm in Toodyay. This establishment produces alpaca yarn on their own property, from the fleece of their very own alpaca herd. I bought some of their yarn directly from off the farm and knitted my cardigan, as posted here.

My wooden shoe soles are hand carved by me, using Western Australian pine. The pine is grown by Bunnings on their own pine plantations down south and milled by Bunnings in Manjimup. I made my shoes and my bag from my merino fleece as outlined here My bag and shoe tops are also merino fleece, with a grid pattern made of naturally black sheep yarn.

And that’s it, in a nutshell!
Well, typing it all out like this has kinda brought it home to me for the first time; I am wearing a pretty-close-to 100% homegrown outfit, top to toe, for maybe the first time in my life! I’m kinda amazed, even at myself. It’s a little mind-blowing to me.
Final thoughts: I’ve learnt a tonne doing this challenge. Firstly, our local industries are precious and need our support. That goes for everywhere, not just here in WA! I personally am going to put more effort into supporting our local products regularly. I mean, I’m definitely not giving up my more “regular” sewing, but I am going to do this challenge again.
Secondly, that if you really put your mind towards doing something, keep yourself focused on getting a project done, to overcoming obstacles, then you probably can do it. Sometimes you need to sleep on it, think outside the box a bit. I learnt a lot as I was going along, and several times had to improvise a solution to a problem. There were moments when I questioned my sanity in doing this, when I wondered if my ideas were even going to work… a felt dress? unlined? felt underwear? sounds like the vision of a lunatic, or at least a recipe for disaster, for sure… well OK even I can admit that felt underwear is not really a practical nor a workable thing! … do NOT recommend. 😉
Also, I had lots of fun!! I LOVE a challenge and this challenge really stretched my capabilities; which is the very best sort of challenge, in my opinion! I thought hard and long about each aspect of my outfut and tried very hard to honour the materials, to minimise my waste and to make something truly Western Australian in feel and flavour as well as provenance.
There were also moments when I realised I had to accept a small defeat; in the case of this outfit; the glue holding pieces of wood together in my shoes (from NSW, Australia), the nails holding the felt to the soles of my shoes (China) and the cotton jersey liner for my undies (China). They are very tiny elements so I’m not going to beat myself up over them too much.
I guess the important thing is that I gave everything careful consideration, and really thought about provenance and the possibility of substituting local products in as many instances as I was able. As well, I wanted to produce something stylish and lovely, that I knew I would love wearing and feel proud and happy in. I genuinely love my outfit, and feel pretty pleased with my efforts!
Lastly; maybe I’m on a bit of a post-challenge high, but I’m quite excited about attempting this again next year… in fact I already have ideas and plans!
Mad? maybe, but quite happy to be so!

Details:
Cardigan; the Caramel cardigan, in Fibre of the Gods natural alpaca, grown, shorn, washed, carded and spun in Toodyay, Western Australia and hand-knitted by me, details here
Dress; my own design based upon Burda 8511, made from merino felt made by me and hand embroidered with locally handspun merino yarn from Bilby Yarns, details here
Shoes; my own design, pine soles from Bunnings hand carved by me, felt tops made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Bag; my own design, in felt made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Underwear; my own design, knickers derived from the Tried & True knickers pattern by the Makers Journal, in felt made from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here

Posted in: fashion, knitting, sewing, shoes \ Tagged: accessories, bag, Burda 8511, caramel, cardigan, dress, felting, knitting, one year one outfit, own design, shoes, Sienna

I made matching shoes and bag

06/09/2015 8:51 am \ 55 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve finished the next coupla components in my 1 year 1 outfit project!
First up; shoes!
Following the same formula that I used for my previous two pairs of shoes; these have a carved wooden base and a fabric top. For the soles I used Western Australian pine from Bunnings.
I actually had several pieces of wood from which to choose for this project; my Dad had given me some marri from their block; and I also, albeit briefly, considered jarrah as another truly Western Australian product. Also, my brother had given me some jacaranda logs from when he had to lop a branch from the tree in their back yard. But I eventually decided to go with pine … why? Well it’s the softest, lightest and easiest to work with! and our ancient old bandsaw has finally given out, meaning it was going to be a ginormous struggle to cut the marri or jacaranda or jarrah either on any of our other equipment. These are all pretty rock hard woods, also both marri and jarrah weigh a tonne and you’d only want very thin soles of it for a shoe. Pine was the path of least resistance. I have definitely not ruled out using the other wood that I have for future pairs of shoes though. I just need to get better at woodworking first 🙂

personalised soles 🙂

Craig helped me with the big cutting and I did the finer shaping using the belt sander, and hand-sanding out the heel groove and some grooves for the ball of my feet. I also carved my initials, just for fun 🙂
The upper is 100% Western Australian Merino wool felt; made from natural, undyed, white fleece and natural, undyed, handspun black sheep’s wool as outlined in this post. By the way; I incorrectly stated in my previous post on my dress that the wool I used for the felt was Corriedale, and I have since discovered that it was pure Merino wool, sorry! I’ve corrected the error in that post now. And am actually rather thrilled to be wrong, to be honest!
Anyway my black and white “plaid” was the thickest and strongest of the felts that I made, so I kept it for these more demanding of my outfit components. Sadly, I realised that it’s still not particularly sturdy and is probably going to stretch out pretty quickly :(( But I’ve devised a devious plan to cope with the inevitability of The Stretch, mwahahahaha… see that central seam running right down the top/middle? well as it stretches out I can just unpick it, cinch in the top seam a bit, trim and re-stitch. Simple! And when it has stretched out past the point of saving, which it will; then I can easily unscrew the screws from the sides, remove the whole felt top and substitute something sturdier like leather. Hopefully I can somehow find a nice piece of thick WA leather, so that my shoes will still be eligible as a 1 year 1 outfit piece!

OK: confession time… I did have to cheat on a few minor parts of this project; the glue holding the pine layers together is made in NSW, and the screws holding the felt upper to the wooden soles are made in *embarrassed whisper* China. I did investigate making these; and concluded that to make my own local glue and “nails” is both possible and achievable. You can make your own glue using boiled animal bones, sap, or milk and vinegar; and I could have made wooden “nails” using jarrah or pine dowel. And originally I was seriously gung-ho about doing just that; until my Dad and my husband advised me to get real.

You see, the wooden soles are honestly such a hugely time-consuming and difficult component for me to make that I really really wanted them to hold together firm and fast and be perfectly secure; and NOT EVER fall apart. A rank woodworking beginner like me could all-too-easily destroy my carefully hand carved soles trying to ram wooden dowel “nails”, with hot homemade glue dripping everywhere; and even then if I was miraculously successful; they could later on just fall out or snap at a moment’s notice. Which, according to my experienced father and my husband; is pretty darn likely.
And I would, um, yeah; be sad. Understatement of the year, right there.
Anyway, I went the route of properly manufactured wood glue and steel screws… but I just want to say, for the record, that I did investigate the 100% hardcore approach, and gave it serious and careful thought.
And I do not regret not going there either, not one little bit, sorry! You can only do so much!
What is more! I will also be gluing some thick rubber to the soles to protect them from damage. I haven’t done that yet, I plan to “show” them first in this virginal state. But I will.

Exhibit two; a bag!

And it perfectly matches my shoes, hehe. Isn’t that the old fashion must-do advice for a lady from the 50’s or something? I seem to remember reading somewhere that a lady would never dream of sashaying out with non-matching shoes and bag. Ancient stuff, I know; we definitely do not adhere to such a strict dress code anymore! But I had enough felt for it so here I am, totally regressing to the standards of a previous era.
ooo yea.
It’s just a simple, um, something-bag? A sort of rustic briefcase? I don’t know the correct term to describe this kind of bag. A fold-over, almost-envelope, with rectangular side gusset thingies to make it box-like. It’s all held together and decorated with blanket stitch. For the handhold; I cut and blanket-stitch edged three slits that line up with each other through all layers. Ta da! Simple, but it does the trick.

I like the way the felt is thick enough that it can stand up by itself… just.
I am toying with a few extra components for my 1year1outfit project, but minor things that may or may not come to anything. However, they may; fingers crossed. If all else fails, at least I do have a complete outfit now!

Posted in: fashion, sewing, shoes, Uncategorized \ Tagged: accessories, bag, felting, one year one outfit, own design, shoes, wool

Denim slides!

22/08/2014 11:56 am \ 64 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made some shoes!!! This is my first foray into “proper” footwear. Yeah, I made slippers recently, but I’m not counting those. And technically these are slides, which are pretty basic things on the shoe scale, really.
But still. They are real shoes! Wooooooooooooooo!
ok, I’m sorry, calming down now. I’m just a bit excited about them 🙂
So, for ages I’ve dreamt longingly about having a go at making my own shoes. However cool stuff like shoe-making courses are just not on offer here in Perth. Well that’s just that and it can’t be helped, but life is too short to not do stuff that you really want to do, right? so I just decided to GO FOR IT! havva go, just DO it, whatever, even without a teacher or the tools or even the faintest idea of what I was doing.
The choice of denim; well every time, and I mean every time my friend J and I go out on girly shopping trips, as we head into our favourite shoe stores I say for the eleventy-billionth time; “ooh, I really would like a pair of denim- or denim-coloured shoes.” I’ve often though they would be sooooo useful and would go with a lot of my wardrobe. I mean, we all know denim jeans go with everything, right? So, it stands to reason, denim shoes should go with everything too. And; quick aside; honestly, why has that thought not occurred to shoe-makers yet? Because so far my search for denim-y shoes has been one big, long, mournful FAIL. It’s sad, but they are a non-existent beast. Or should that be a pair of non-existent beasts, maybe? I still wanted them though.
And now I have some!
Now; before I introduce my procedure for making these, obviously I am no expert and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m making it up as I go along with educated guesses, and I don’t have the proper equipment, like lasts or an industrial sewing machine. I’m sure shoe-making experts would look at my efforts here and roll about, laughing helplessly at how awful they are. It’s true, they are far from perfect. Hopefully I can improve!

For the bases I used two balsa wood blocks from Bunnings; chosen mainly because I spotted them and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I drew a template of each of my feet, overlaid/combined them to draw a single “master” template. I used a coping saw to cut out the main chunks and get the right shape; and then three sheets of sandpaper to smooth and contour, ranging from super rough to light. I used the roughest sandpaper to do most of the contouring for my foot pads and heel pads to sit in the base nice and snug and comfortable.
Shaping/contouring the wooden bases to be equal-sized and -shaped mirror images to each other and to fit my feet was the MOST time consuming part of the whole thing. Really, ten progress photos slotted in here would be a fair and accurate representation of this step rather than just one; but that would be extremely boring, so just a few then…

I used an pair of old jeans for the denim.
I cut long strips for the side coverings, and topstitched the ends down using orange thread, to match the orange thread usually used in jeans topstitching. Glued it in place using PVA exterior wood glue. I chose this glue because it was not too quick-drying therefore easy to work with, and yet is still super hardwearing and durable and dries to a hard, water-resistant finish. Not waterproof, mind you. NOT that I’m planning to wear my shoes to slosh about in puddles or anything like that, aiyiyi perish the thought!
Clipped the curves etc, to minimise overlapping, so the edges would lie as flat as possible; and glued them down, upper and under.

Made a template for the top bits via the auditioning of a thousand “muslins”; well, not really, but it felt like it. The winning design was cut so as to make a feature of the existing jeans’ side seam with the allowances double top-stitched down in that distinctive shade of Levi’s orange. The tops are double layered; lined with plain denim, sewn right sides together then turned out and under-stitched. The excess at the sides was trimmed to wrap right around underneath my foot then glued in place.

I made a padded insert by trimming a purchased foam shoe insert from Coles to fit, then stitching to a piece of denim around the edge using orange thread. The ends were clipped, turned under and everything glued in place.

I covered the curved part of the sole with denim…

Finally, I cut thick rubber floor matting (Bunnings) to fit the soles using a stanley knife, and glued this in place. This will be quite hard-wearing and will stand up to a lot of knocks, hopefully.

Making these was an interesting experiment, and a learning exercise in how not to do a few things. Yes, a second pair of shoes is in the pipeline already. My second pair will definitely be better, I think. My first mistake; balsa wood does not hold nails, thus the need for lots of glue. I’m definitely going for harder wood and nails in the future.
The big question for me is: am I going to dare to actually wear my shoes? outdoors? like, for a full day? well today I almost did since I was meeting my same friend J for lunch, and I thought they went really nicely with my outfit… but then I chickened out! Too many puddles around from the recent rain :S
Maybe I’ll just keep them exclusively for me-made May, haha! 😉
No, of course I’ll wear them, but it’s going to be hard to avoid babying them. I’m ridiculously pleased with them. Well so far, until I can make something better anyway!

Posted in: sewing, shoes, Uncategorized \ Tagged: own design, shoes, tutorial, Wardrobe Refashion

Dusting slippers

17/08/2014 4:55 am \ 45 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made something useful; slippers, that clean!
I pinned these mopping slippers a while ago, and have now got around to making my own. See, we have no carpets in our house and lots of animals; meaning furry dust-bunnies appear on a daily basis to scurry and swirl across the floor like mini tumbleweeds across the desert. Meaning I’m forever getting out my big floor dusting mop thing out from where it lives in the cupboard under the stairs and doing the sweep of the house. Which is a chore. Well, now I can do the same job just by performing graceful balletic sweeps with my dainty pointed toes into the corners of the room, as I glide about the house, doing whatever I’m already doing, without having to go and fetch the duster. Hands-free.
Which is not a chore, but fun!
Well, that’s the theory, anyhow 🙂
Making them is a very simple procedure…

I bought a couple of dusting pad refills; and also used some extra odds and sods from around the place; a thick cleaning sponge for padding so they are comfortable to walk around in on our hard floors, and an old towel for the straps and lining. I also used a bit of an old bedsheet to “interface”, if you will; effectively it’s there to stabilise and hold all the lining and padding bits together. The sponge I used for padding is actually a bit smaller than my feet but it still does provide a nice soft comfy padding when I’m walking around on them. I already had these in my cleaning cupboard, which was lucky! The sponge is very thick, so I cut it into three layers like you would a sponge cake.
I drew a template of my foot and cut out two generously sized versions out of the towelling and bedsheet lining, sandwiched a piece of the sponge between them and sewed the three layers together around the edge of the sponge.

Then cut the foot straps from the edges of the towelling, making use of the existing selvedge on one side and hemming the other edge. Fitted it to my foot dimensions, making them nice and snug so they stay on my feet ok; but not so tight that I can’t slip my foot in easily in one go.

Finally cut the micro fibre dusting pad with a big fold over allowance all around the edges, and simply folded the edges over as I went along, top-stitching it down around the edge.