Cassie Stephens: cat lover

Sunday, November 6, 2016

DIY: IKEA Curtain Cat Print Dress

Yeah, yeah so pumpkins and black cats are so, like, a week ago (I've already busted out the Christmas decor, you don't have to tell me!) but, to my credit, I did finish this black cat dress a coupla weeks ago. It's just taken me until now to share it with y'all here!

I scooped up the fabric for this dress from IKEA and I'm in love. It's actually curtain fabric which means I'm like the Scarlett O'Hara of the sewing world. They did have this same print in orange with smaller cats but I really liked theses big bold babies and the black and white motif. So I picked up the last package of curtains and, when I was heading to the checkout (which took me 35 minutes because, you know, IKEA is about three miles long), I noticed that there was a hole in the curtains. The hole wasn't going to affect my sewing but, if it's anything I've learned from my mama-in-law, it never hurts to ask for a discount. And am I ever glad I did as the $25 price was dropped to $5! I only used one curtain panel for the dress which means, if you are super groovy at simple math like me, this dress only cost me $2.50. Sweet!

I warned y'all last time that I'd learned to create gifs. And I already apologized for it. So suck it up, buttercup.

Now if you've seen one dress from me, you've pretty much seen them all as I FREAKIN' LOVE this style: large band at the waist, fit and flair. I have found this to be the most flattering for my body type and I have a hard time straying from sewing anything else.

I often do a lotta gathered skirts but lately I'm kind of tired of them. Of course, gathering a fabric as stiff as curtain fabric wasn't gonna work in this sitch. Also, with a gathered skirt, I just can't get the fullness I dig. So circle skirts have become my new fave. In fact, the last dress I made, this Vincent van Gogh number, is almost identical to this one, sans bow.

So, lately, life has been rather busy, to say the least. I've been so stinkin' fortunate to be asked to travel to the Wisconsin art conference as well as the one in Illinois (details on that this week, it was A BLAST!) to be their keynote speaker and present fiber arts workshops. I've loved every minute of it. And I'm getting ready to head to Texas for theirs in a matter of days. However, that means I've had to take a wee hiatus from sewing. I've missed it! I'm looking forward to getting back into my sewing room and making more messes soon.

OHHHH, yeah. I forgot to tell ya, those cats were a bit of a pain to work with as their faces are not exactly symmetrical. That means trying to match and align them was a total headache. The bodice I'm wearing is actually the second one I created as the first had cock-eyed cats...which is totally going to be the name of my first band: CASSIE AND THE COCK-EYED CATS!...but not a great look for a dress.

When el hubbo and I recently traveled to Disneyland, I snapped photos in Cars Land. I flippin' love Cars Land and if only for the ambience. It has a whole Route 66/1950's vibe that I totally adore, especially at night.

They have these fabulous neon lights that I love. Cars Land was my inspiration for the 1950's Diner Art Show we had last year!

I mean, how cute are these signs?! Total inspo for this project.

One of my favorite shows growing up was Alice. I loved Flo and her "kiss my grits!" attitude.

The food at the diner is very good and they have a great vegetarian Shepard's Pie option that we love. Must better than your usual lukewarm pizza park food.

Because of how graphic this dress is, it gets a lotta comments when I wear it. I scooped up a lot of big and bold print from IKEA on my last trip. I'm looking forward to time in my sewing room to create more of these wacky and wild dresses.

And just because it's catty doesn't mean it's limited to Halloween, does it? I mean, shoot, I'm catty all year 'round!

I really love it with these ska-wannabe kicks I recently picked up.

It's super fun to wear. I just need to get better at that whole twirling thing...

Obviously. Pretty sure the neighbors know I'm crazy!

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

DIY: Black, White and (Now) Red All Over

Emkay, this may sound strange coming from the crazy art teacher who wears sparkly fishnets to school, but I actually have a vague idea of what is inappropriate work attire. In fact, according to excelle.monster.com's 25 Things a Professional Woman Should Never Wear, I'm 74% professional. Ahem. Their list was pretty lame though. For starters, they are obviously early 21st century haters. I mean, what did Paris Hilton ever do to get this list-creator to diss the following:

Juicy Couture track suits and uggs. Seriously? Nobody is still wearing that except Pam Anderson. Hey, Pam Anderson, Bay Watch called. Oh no, wait, no they didn't. Because 2001 is over.

Crocs and fanny packs. Wear this and not only will you no longer have a job but suddenly birth control is no longer necessary. Two birds, one stone.

Wallet chain, torn jeans and clothes worn yesterday. Oh, I see. Now we're pickin' on the grunge era. Next you'll tell me flannel is out.

Flannel. What?!

Face Tats. Seriously? Who has a face tat that isn't Mike Tyson? Although I was asked just the other day if my cat eyeliner was tattooed on. It isn't. Right now.

One thing on the list that I do agree with was not showing too much skin. So when I slipped on this dress I purchased from Modcloth not too long ago, I knew it didn't pass the tasteful test. Hello, pale mid-thigh! And I was super bummed because did you see that fabric? It features cats! In the news! Doing human stuff!

Being tallish, I've dealt with this too-short-attire problem before (junior high flashback: "Hey, Stephens, where's the flood?!"). My solution with dresses is adding a band of fabric on the bottom. My wingin' it way of doing this is to measure the width of one side of the bottom of the skirt, cut two pieces of fabric that width, sew those two pieces together thus creating a circle. That circle of fabric is then pinned to the hem of the dress, right sides together and sewn. I then hem the skirt. You can see more examples of that with my Hot Air Balloon dress and my Eiffel Tower dress.

Me, circa 2011. Back when I was still watching Baywatch reruns.

After adding the tomato red fabric to the bottom of the dress, I decided I needed more red to balance it out. That's when I had a flashback of this thrifted Target dress redo from a couple years ago. Here's what it looked like in it's original thrifted state:

Kinda nice because of the sweet bird fabric but mostly boring. After taking up the hem on this dress. I decided to add the bow and the little coral detailing at the shoulders. Recalling this redo, I decided to put a bow on Modcloth cat dress as well. Wanna put bows on things? Here's how it's done:

You begin by creating...what looks like a pair of little boys briefs. Ew, scroll down.

Ah, that's better. So, begin by deciding how wide you'd like your bow to be. Then double that. And add an inch. Decide the height of your bow and add an inch for hemming. Fold under 1/4" top and bottom and hem. Then create a circle by sewing right sides together.

Using needle and thread, create a hand basted stitch. Don't know what that is? It's a very wide stitch as seen above. That kind of stitch is good for gathering. The wrinkles in my fabric show how I've been practicing my gathering skillz. Once fabric is gathered to your liking, knot thread.

As you can see above, once that was complete, I added a folded in band of fabric for the loop around the middle of the bow. This was hand stitched (ugh, I hate hand stitching. What is this, 2001? Pam, gimme a hand here, would ya?!) and attached to the belt.

Oh, shoot, the belt. I forgot to take photos of how that was created. Sorry. Here's the beginning stage. After pressing these folds down, I added a fusible stabilizer to give the belt some beef, folded it in half and stitched all the way around. Once the bow was hand stitched into place, I added a snap button closer.