Getting Crafty - How to sew when broke

As I have mentioned in the bio, I live in a town without a proper fabric or craft store.  Most of the crafty people (namely quilters) go to the nearest bigger city (2 hour drive away) to buy their fabrics.  Being without a car I cannot get out of town to shop.  So I must learn to make due with the odd trip home, internet shopping and my local thrift store.

When I first arrived in Prince Rupert I was unemployed, broke and bored.  While my husband went to work I frantically searched for work and haunted the local thrift store. On one such visit I came across piles and piles of white bedsheets all from the BC Ferry overnight boat.  My mind screamed "fabric!" I bought four.

But what to do with plain white bedsheets?  Dye them!

I picked the fuchsia dye as I had not tried the colour and ended up with mixed results.  As you can see my white bedsheet is now very, very bubblegum pink.  There is something kind of cute about it though so I let it stand. I decided that I wanted to try out a cute blouse pattern which has been sitting in my pattern box for quite a while.

I am thinking of over dying the shirt purple once it is finished and it will end up a dusky rose colour.  The view I am making is view A (the one on a real person) but without the extra ruffles down the bust.


As you can see in the picture above, I had to pin my pattern pieces around the edge of the fabric.  This is for one really important reason.  The poly-cotton blend fabric had worn out in the middle of the sheet from people sleeping on them.  This meant that the finer cotton threads had been worn out and only the polyester threads we still present in the middle of the fabric.

As dye does not adhere very well to man made fibers, the dye took quite nicely on the edge of the sheet where the cotton threads still remained but the closer you got to the middle of the fabric the lighter the colour became.  Not cool.  Creating pattern placement became a must.

Now everything is cut out and ready for sewing.  Yay...except next i am supposed to make the button holes first...oh nooooooooosssss!

Button holes terrify the crap out of me.  Purposely making holes in your fabric?  Awwww.  So as of January 26, 2010 this project became abandoned out of fear.

I am now two years older (probably not much wiser) but feeling much braver.  This weekend I will attempt to make buttonholes on my blouse or kill it trying.  Either way I will learn something I hope, even if it is to only use zippers or velcro in the future. :)

Buttons will be conquered!

And now for another Random Rupert

Cow Bay is the touristy shopping district of Prince Rupert.  It is where the cruise ships come in and has lots of cute little shops which sell the usual tourist brick a brack.  What I found the most fun about Cow Bay was its dedication to its name. Can you see why?

  

Funny eh?

We also got our first Cruise ship of the season last Friday.  I will post a picture when I have time to pull it from my camera.