Goodbye yellow stain. May I never see you again.

It's so upsetting when you get a stain on one of your favourite dresses, and not just any stain; a stain that is so prominently visible that you wish you could kick yourself for managing to get the stain there in the first place. Well, I managed to get one such stain on a dress.

Such are the perils of soaking your clothes too long before a wash, because they were too precious to be machine washed. Nobody warned me that a zipper can get all rusty and leave stains all over unwanted areas if you're not careful. So let me take this time to warn you all about them darn rusty zippers. They are not to be trusted.

Beads, on the other hand, can be trusted.

That is something I can vouch for.

Because we all need to believe in the mending power of tiny beads

I hatched a plan to stitch these tiny little friends of mine all over the piping along the neck and pretend it was a design. The plan worked. The stains aren't visible anymore. (Boo-yah rusty zipper chain!)

  

Save the brollies for a rainy day. Summers are for hats.

When you live in a tropical country, it is imperative that an umbrella follows you around wherever you go. Under the scorching sun you can feel yourself getting roasted alive. It's cruel. You can't even risk getting a nice tan. It's the dehydrating, exhausting, energy draining kind of heat. So you HAVE to protect your head.

If you happen to be the kind of person that keeps losing umbrellas or misplacing them ( It was just yesterday that I left behind mine at a friend's place), a nice hat would be a good alternative. You don't want a felt or a velvet one. Nope. Not for a humid place. A nice lightweight wide brimmed sun hat with a simple design would do.

Well, mine was a little too simple, but a roll of leftover velvet ribbon was just around the corner.

The operative word being 'simple' here, I didn't want something that seemed to imply that I was off to the Royal Ascot Race. Hence, a single round of black ribbon with  bow to top it off was all that was done.

Of course fabric glue was created to make our lives easier but it couldn't be used here because I was dealing with plastic. Yep, the hat was made of plastic. And it's not that simple trying to run something like this under the sewing machine. So once again some good old hand stitching was done. I didn't intend to add the bow but since there was still some material left, thought I'd make good use of it.

Take a bow, Miss Hattie 

Now all I need is a lace trimmed basket and I'm ready to go pluck some berries from the garden....

  

Old wine in new bottle

A raid through mom's old suitcase to look for once-outdated-but-back-in-style clothes is a regular activity for me. These raids aren't just restricted to my mom's closet, my aunt isn't spared either. Thankfully for me, she is more than willing to part with her clothes.

While mom chose to stick to feminine, lady-like silhouettes, her sister had the wackiest, most unpredictable sense of style, from dragon-print jeans to floral chiffon dresses.

One such precious find was a military green high waist skirt gifted to her by some distant relative. It had such a beautiful classy cut and fortunately for me, she had it when she wasn't at her thinnest, which means I could manage to squeeze into it, and that was about it.
Definitely not one to be worn to an all-you-can-eat-buffet.
I can't imagine how tiny people were back then, with their 22 inch waist bands.

Now one of the hazards of buying embellishments in bulk is that you start getting the urge to add them everywhere. I have been over utilising these gold trinkets but they just seem to go with everything.

The culprit 

I guess it's okay as long as I don't go overboard. 

To avoid making it look over the top, just a slight hint of gold was added at the waistband; tiny circular gold trinkets alternating with leaf shaped ones.

The barley is turning out out to be a really handy prop

And there it is. I'm still yet to show my aunt what I've done to her skirt. I think she'll like it.

Safety pins on a tee shirt? why not?

Colourful safety pins. These were leftovers that i picked up after handling props backstage in a play. When our Director called up his dad, requesting him to pick up a packet of safety pins on his way to the venue, this is what he arrived with, and I was thrilled because up until then safety pins to me were simply of two kinds - big silver ones and tiny gold ones.

We are often distracted with the notion that safety pins are solely used for holding clothes together, hidden under hemlines; as obscure as possible. And then a certain Gianni Versace came along and created 'That Dress' that not just went down in Oscar history as the most celebrated red carpet gown, but is also credited for catapulting a certain starlet to certain stardom.

The safety pins traveled with me as I moved cities, half in jewellery boxes and half on a denim shirt till I got bored and removed them and off they went back into the jewellery cases again.

I tried re-using them again but somehow couldn't find ways to design them on my clothes. Until recently.
I hadn't realised that tees make a good template. Why hadn't that hit me earlier I wonder.

Look ma! no thread!

It was refreshing not having to sew. Moreover, these tee shirts had grown old and loose. I was about to get rid of the green one till this happened. Yeah. blame it on the safety pins. We women love making up excuses for not getting rid of old clothes.

Pinned at the sides

As I was writing this, I realised that a safety pin necklace wouldn't look that bad either. It could turn out horrible too, but you never know if you never try.

Right then. Off to the market tomorrow to get a packet of safety pins.

On an embellishment spree

A denim shirt is a denim shirt, is a denim shirt. Ah denim. No wonder Yves Saint Laurent rued over not being the man who invented blue denims.

My friend brought over another shirt. A denim shirt. To be honest, it didn't really need a makeover. The interesting collar and cut made it a classy piece on its own. Not to mention the lovely colour (I have to admit I was secretly jealous of the shirt when I first saw it). So even if I wanted to do something to it, it had to be subtle and complement the shirt and not take attention away from it.

A pre-production selfie of sorts

Hence these tiny rectangular brass beads, which were used in moderation so that it wouldn't look as if my friend was choking to death as a result of all the embellishments going around her neck. 

To achieve this, these miniature storey poles were stitched in a haphazard manner around the collar and cuffs. Its great when you don't have to stitch following a rigid definite pattern; makes things so much more simpler.

Have to put in a good word for the invisible thread. It can do wonders! You don't have to worry about coordinating the colour of the thread with your clothes because, well, as the name suggests, its pretty much invisible. It's usually used for shoes and coats but I have been happily using it up on cotton clothes. 

A big shout out to the guy who invented them.

About half an hour later...

Denim shirt gets a makeover. Big thanks to the barley stems in the background for being such amazing background extras. 

Bling Fling- Because some posts need to have a cheezy title

My friend was kind enough to lend me her shirt for me to work on. Hats off to her for bravely sacrificing her shirt without having any idea what I would end up doing to it.

Poor little hapless shirt was brought before scissor wielding, needle swinging amateur seamstress armed with big makeover visions. (figuratively speaking?)

The victim, 2 year old black cotton shirt with no history of alteration. 

I did the most predictable thing- mix black with gold. In my defense, black and gold is a combination that will never go out of style. Not my words. Some famous designer said that but I can't remember his name right now.

Famous anonymous designer wasn't wrong-

Bling, but not in-your-face bling bling that can almost blind you. The subtle kind of everyday wear bling. 

(Random Fact: The word 'bling bling was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in April,2003.)

The best thing for me though, was that my friend liked it. And she agreed to lend me some more shirts to work on :)

All that glitters can pretend to be gold

Sometimes, a little bit of bling in the right dose is all that an old run-off-the-mill shirt needs.

Olive green is a colour that would fall in the 'subtle' range in the colour pyramid; subtle, but definitely not boring.  However, some shades of the colour are best left to overalls worn by construction workers.

The shirt- durable, comfortable, easy-wash; the kind you can easily grab on your way out to run errands. It had a beautiful cut, but after a few washes, started to fade and looked like it could do with a little bit of revamping.

the 'before' files

The weapon of choice? These tiny little gold embellishments to add a little pop to the dull background. The aim is to get is to get blingy, without getting over-the-top jewellery shop on display blingy, and that's where the whole 'in small doses' concept comes in.

never underestimate the power of macro photography

I was madly in love with the trinkets so it took a lot of self- restraint not to go overboard.

Add some painstaking hand stitching using an invisible thread.

Drum rolls please....

and...

voila! a much needed dose of gold

What do you do when you get bored of a lace shrug? snip it up!

Honest confession: I love lace, whatever the colour or design or fabric type. If I had it my way, I'd have schools make their uniforms out of lace. That is why we have sane, sensible people running schools and not the likes of me.

I wish I had taken 'before' pictures of this one, would have made the post a little more interesting. Let me just go about it despite the limited resources. I had this shrug made of beautiful pale blue lace. I loved the colour; but the style was slightly outdated, and the shape didn't flatter me that well. But I just loved loved loved the lace and didn't want to get rid of it. I had to find a way to restyle it so I could wear it regularly.

And thus the snipping began.

The shrug was measured and cut vertically to fit the ends of a scarf. I had always seen those scarves on mannequins in stores, contemplated buying them and then stopped myself thinking 'Naaaah! I could probably stitch myself one at home.'  Well the time to do that had come.

The result?

el scarf-o de lace-o (couldn't resist the urge to squeeze in a lame joke)

I still had quite a bit of material left, in bits and pieces though, but did not have the heart to throw it away. A raid through my closet ensured that the little bit of lace would not got to vain.

Enter the regular denim shirt. Yawn. Bought it at a flea market. Now I see everyone wearing it. But add a bit of lace here and a little bit more there and...

lace-o shirt-o?

Regular denim shirt just became a little bit more interesting. It took me ages to make this. The lace had to be stitched in some pretty inconvenient places, so everything had to be hand stitched. Not that I mind. The average usage of this shirt on a weekly basis has gone up by about 4o% now (not that I keep tabs or make flow charts or apply permutation-combination formulae to my wardrobe.This is only a slight assumption.) and I am happy happy happy.

PS- By the end of this experiment, there was nothing left of the lace shrug. Talk about economic usage!

Snip and stitch. snip and stitch

I had just finished school and was all geared up for college. Or so I thought.
One look at my wardrobe and I realised that the only look I could pull off was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Sure I had clothes. But there's a difference between having clothes and actually wearing them.

Mum had always bought me my clothes, and they were mostly frocks. You know, the kind you wear to Church every Sunday. Pretty, flouncy dresses with laces and ribbons that you wear with stockings and shoes with bows and buckles. Okay I exaggerated a bit but they were not the ideal kind to wear to college.

I was just a student. It wasn't like I could run out on a shopping spree. And I had no clue about shopping.

Anyway, sort of veering off topic but this incident is pretty pivotal to the story I'm trying to string together here. So one day, while shuffling through my clothes, I decided to chop off a pair of trousers that were just too long for me and it was such a hassle always having to wear them with heels ( I looked ridiculous at my age, in trousers and heels. Sheesh.). A trip to my seamstress aunt just a few hundred metres away was all I needed.

My aunt used to sew as a hobby. She wasn't a seamstress by profession at all. As I entered her house, I noticed she was pretty occupied, so I was wondering whether or not I should ask her to sew my pants for me, but she knew instantly why I was there. And she did something for which I will always be grateful to her. She measured the length, snipped off the required amount and then handed me a needle and a thread and told me to do the rest. I was a little taken aback, and felt guilty for barging in when she was busy. She was stern, and yet sweet, instructing me how to exactly go about it. By the time I was halfway through, I realised I actually enjoyed it.

This got me so excited. I could sew! I mean, yes, they taught us how to sew in school during one of those S.U.P.W. classes but I had always thought that making hemlines was for curtains. For the next few days sewing and cutting became my ultimate purpose. All long trousers that needed work- snipped! ( yes I had a lot of them long trousers). snip, stitch. snip, stitch. That seemed about it.

Then I progressed to refitting clothes. All old clothes I could find, I started restitching; customising them so they would fit me. I was grabbing everything that caught my fancy - Mum's old skirts, Grandma's blouses, my father's pajamas(!). Most of them were badly done - uneven stitches, funny fit, but I was on a roll. Papa felt bad that I was reusing old clothes that had been kept aside to be eventually used as rag cloths and even offered to take me shopping.

The transition to sewing machines came swiftly and I couldn't have been happier. Couldn't say the same about Mum though. I kept jamming the machine and she was not at all amused, taking it apart to repair it every time I did something wrong. I didn't even spare shoes. Goodness, I still remember that ghastly design I made on a pair of boots. That wasn't the only thing that was ghastly. A dress made by combining a top and a skirt, a skirt made into a dress, a long sweater made into a bolero shrug. Some pretty awful stuff, but it was a starting point. And I used to wear them with such pride. How embarrassing when I think of it now!

That was almost a decade ago. Do I still enjoy stitching? Oh yes! Friends bring over clothes for mending as if I were the local tailor living down the street. Once I get tired of a dress, it's most likely that I'll snip it up, do something to it; what exactly i don't know. But something or the other comes out of it. Usually it's nice, but sometimes its just downright ugly and after a momentary bout of frustration, I laugh it off and use it as a dusting cloth or make it into a shoe bag or something. Yes, something or the other. The operating word being 'Something' here.

I am not a trained seamstress. I'm not a designer.

But yes, snipping is fun. So is stitching. Snip and stitch. snip and stitch.