Pants = Hat & Skirt

This weekend was probably one of the last nice weekends this summer, so it's time to whip out the sun hat diy. The newest issue of the german diy magazine Handmade Kultur had a tutorial on how to make a reversible sun hat and since the sun is getting more and more aggressive to the skin I thought it would be time to wear a hat in the sun.
I chose to use an old pair and broken pair of purple jeans and a flowery cloth I got at the turkish market a while back and never got around to use it.
First I cut off the legs of the jeans, which made me realize that except for the holes in the middle the jeans was in great condition, so I chose to make the top part into a skirt before making the legs into the sun hat.

I just cut off the legs and seam ripped the parts that were connected in between the legs.
Then I sewed together the front and the back and cut away the excess cloth on the bottom. I didn't hem the bottom and just left it "rough", mostly cause I'm lazy, but also because the skirt would be even shorter if I had hemmed it.
 
Super cute new skirt, as I think, but I only feel comfortable wearing it with some thick leggings.

A couple of weeks later I continued making the hat, seam ripping the inside of the legs.

And then cutting out the parts I needed to make a hat. I had to cut out every shape 3 times. Once in purple, once in the flower cloth and once in lining for stability.

I could then sew it all together following the instructions in the magazine and partly from this video, because some instructions out of the magazine were too confusing.

Here you get a glimpse of the chaos that is my craft room at the moment and me channeling the 11th Doctor ;)

I even learned something new making the hat: because it is a reversible hat I couldn't close all the hems with the sewing machine I had to use the ladder stitch, which is an invisible stitch.
Again, youtube was of help.

 
 
And there I go, with my new sun hat, at the end of summer. I had a little photo shoot with my colleague on top of my work building, so you can see the whole greatness that is my new hat.

This post will be part of Nina's Upcycling Tuesday and the Creadienstag.

Picturesque Month ~ 05'14

Yes, I know it's September, but I don't want to skip any months, I just have to catch up real quick.

May was full of healthy foods in preparation for the wedding. Then there was wedding cake, which is not healthy. And then there was a healthy cake for Mother's Day. It was a vegan, sugar-free and low carb jogurt tangerine tarte and my mom said it was eatible...

There was even more wedding decoration crafting and we received our very first Loot Chest. Also my brother's neighbours have baby ducks as pets, so cute!

We prepared some more for the Zombie Run and then we ran in the Zombie Run! We ran away from Zombies and over some obstacles for 5km. We made it, but we didn't survive it. Want to know more about the Zombie Run? I might write a blog post about it eventually.

In preparation for the wedding my mom, one of my bridesmaids and I attended a Dawanda workshop to make flower crowns for me and all the bridesmaids. They turned out quite beautifully I might say.

Crafting makes hungry. So when my girls came round to make wedding decorations with me we prepared a lovely brunch and then another.
Relly loving the balcony in the warmer weather. And Ryan the Raspberry grew and grew.

Gigs in May:
- Bill Bailey at the Quatsch Comedy Club, loved him in Black Books, QI, Nevermind the Buzzcocks and he's a brilliant stand up comedian as well. 5/5 bazooka points for hilariousness
- Sheppard acoustic gig at the office, their song Geronimo is pretty awesome! 4/5 bazooka points for Australians paying respects to 11 ;)
- LORDE at Columbiahalle, just... no words... she's pretty great. 5/5 bazooka points for being herself.

Chili Con Thread

Just a little (late) update in the home and food department. Our chili tree from last year produced a bunch of little chili peppers and I was looking for a good way to hang them up to dry, but also make the look pretty and add to our kitchen interior design.
So I harvested all the chili peppers and used needle and thread to make them into a silly little chili garland, which I then taped to our kitchen shelves.

They're just looking too cute all hanging in a row up there. But don't be fooled! They're feisty little beasts full of spicyness. I like to put them in various dishes, like carrot or pumpkin soup or my favorite hummus recipe from Atilla Hildmann's Vegan For Fit.
Spice up you life and craft on!

Our Open Dresser for the Hallway

This project got finished in march actually, but I never got around to show you the finished product. For images during the making of check my Picturesque March.
I don't think I even have a before picture, because it was just so not pretty to look at. We just had an old shoerack in the space and our jackets were up on three tiny hooks on the side wall. My brother actually helped with the design of this dresser. We got all the wooden pieces for this at the hardware store, they even cut it the right sizes there for no extra charge. The wood for all of it cost us about 60€, plus the hours we put into the making.

I wanted to have the coat hangers match the colours of the dresser, so I sanded all of these down... 

...and painted the in the same purple I painted the vertical pieces and splashed the sides with. 

Painting the dresser was the funnest bit. The putting together and drilling a bunch of holes in the sides was no fun at all. We even got a complaint from our downstairs neighbour that if we wouldn't stop with the drilling they'd call the police. To be fair it was a sunday.. but still, what the hell? We'd only been drilling for like 15 minutes.

 

This is the coat and miscellaneous part with two shelves one above and one under the coat rack. The coats are colour coordinated of course, how else would you line up your coats?

 

And here's the shoe rack. Made up by 21 wooden poles which are connecting the middle and the outer right dresser wall. I handpainted the poles individually only to find out that with the paint they wouldn't fit in the drilled holes anymore. So I had to take off the paint with sandpaper on all 42 pole ends and then paint them again after they were put in the right place. Fun!
But it was totally worth it in the end. I love our open dresser! And it's much easier to put away your shoes and coat right after coming into the apartment when there's such a pretty dresser waiting for you.

This post will be part of the Creadienstag.