Safety pins galore

The coloured safety pin obsession.

The moment I realised that safety pins are a nice way to tweak up an outfit, I got carried away. Fortunately for me, my obsessions last about a week and then I move on to something else, or rather, get distracted by something else.

So to feed this obsession, I started digging through my closet, looking for 'meh' outfits that are a guaranteed yawn. 

What is a 'meh' outfit? You may refer below for the answer.

 The tee? Such a bore.

The shorts? Seen it everywhere.

But the shorts and tee +safety pins?

You never know if you never try...

Caution- may cause slight discomfort while sitting

To be honest, I was actually planning on making a safety pin necklace with these, but they ended up here and I don't mind, really; I did manage to sort of get the effect I wanted. The nice thing about this design is that it would look good on a plain vest as well. Suddenly my tee doesn't look so old anymore.

So let me end on a cheezy note and add that I plan to "Pin this" on Pinterest.

  

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Skirting the issue

So you're back from your Goa trip, still in vacation mode, dreading the thought of dragging yourself back to work, wondering if by some weird twist of fate your company would relocate you to Goa so that you could waltz into work ever morning in a pair of flip flops.

You've brought back the hippie pants that you used to cover up that tummy bulge, because, lets face it, you didn't really think your body was in 'bikini condition'.

Those hippie pants that made you feel so cool and made you feel like you were a part of the expat community there.

Those hippie pants that you can't really wear now without looking like an extra from a Forrest Gump montage scene.

But they're so comfortable that you don't want to let go of them just as yet.

Till you have this weird idea that converting them into a skirt might not be a bad idea. Better this way, you can add a lining easily because those trousers were too transparent to begin with.

Hippie no mo

The skirt could have been shorter, perhaps, but I am in a calf skimming mood and if I ever get bored, there's always a pair of scissors within my reach.

"Click them thrice and think of home"

Any pair of red shoes remind me of the ruby ones whose heels Dorothy clicked and thought of home. I remember watching the film as a kid, in total awe of those shoes. They aired it at 9pm on one of those days when Cartoon Network would give way to TNT for its regular evening-night time slot.

TNT usually stuck with its black-and-white movies but one day decided to air The Wizard Of Oz. My Grandpa told me I would love it and we watched it together, and Dorothy's slippers never left my mind after that. Any shoe with a slight hint of red=Dorothy's shoes.

And by any pair, I mean any pair, as long as they are red in colour.

Dorothy's shoes didn't need any retouches (In my six year old mind, they were the most beautiful pair that ever existed) but I felt these ones could do with a little bit of work. To be honest, I loved them as they were, but I wanted to take things a little further and experiment with shoes as well.

Olympic rings much?

The first round of stitching went well.  And then I thought, 'Why not stitch some more?' It was a risk, because these were not even my shoes and ruining them would mean inviting my friend's wrath. But she had okayed me for the change so there I was, confident that the assurance of her blessings would cloud over any experimental disasters. 

And here is a photo of her feet happily posing for the camera before rushing off to work. The pink nail paint was unintentional, but it fits right in. Just like jigsaw puzzle pieces coming together.

Another happy day.

Dressed to the Tee

There are some T shirts that you wear and wear till they can't be worn anymore, and there are some that you just wish you could snip up because you see a better alternative future for them. The former usually lands up eventually in you dad's car and is used as a wiper for the windshield. The latter, well, you take it out of your closet and look at it, wondering why you ever bought it and whether you could barter it with your best friend in exchange of that lovely one off piece she bought form a flea market that you have been begging her for the past four months.

Or something like that.

I guess you get the drift.

Off with the arms!

First up, those arms needed to go. In fact, I believe my disdain for the tee began with the arms. The arms could have been better but they weren't so off they went; I got a little carried away and chopped off more than I could sew (lame joke alert). Off went the scissors and the sides were cut up. It looked like a poncho. No wait, a tent - a tiny tent pitched on a curve-less girl.

But all hope wasn't lost. Jersey is a flexible material to work with so all I had to do was tug on it and tie it at the sides. 

The knots ended up looking messy. Atleast for me. I was not happy at all so a few of my tiny friends were summoned. 

  

My tiny friends gave me the finishing touch I wanted. Looks like this one is also going to be worn till it can't be worn anymore and eventually land up in our car's dashboard.

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....