My Little Mistake Hat

Slouchy hats are just adorable but for the longest time I couldn't get one to turn out right. Either they would turn out too much like a beret or were too big or were just weird. I was determined to finally make a hat that's but cute and functional. 

My favorite pattern I found was this Cabled Slouchy Beanie. 

Beautiful, isn't it?

After finding the pattern I got some yarn, Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable. The colour I used was called Polo. It kind of reminded me of a mixture of fall leaves, rainbows, and sunsets. I know, silly. 

 I had started with the band and then the double crochets, but since I was working while at school, I didn't take a very good look at the pattern. Thus the result was something much different than what I had set out to make, but it still turned out really cute!

For the hat I made for myself I used a size F hook, but for this tutorial I am using worsted yarn and an I hook because they were the first things I could find.

I started out by making the band. You basically just begin by chaining 10...

...and then making rows and rows of single crochet, all in the back loops.

Crocheting in the back loops gives the band a fancy ribbed look. For the sake of time and the fact I don't plan on using the hat I'm making here, I'm making the band really short. Unless you have a really tiny head, make the band as long as you need to fit around your head.

Fold the band in half and slip stitch the sides together. 

TADA! Can you see where this is going?

And here's a pic of my cat Artemis taking a nap on my bed. She was watching me crochet but then I guess it got too boring for her. 

Anyway, back to the hat!Turn the band inside out and double crochet around the top, make you that you end with a multiple of 6. 

Now for the fun part!

Slip stitch to the top of the first double crochet then chain two. Back post double crochet in the same stitch and then back post double crochet in the next stitch. 

Skip the next two stitches and then make two front post treble crochets. 

Go back and make two front post treble crochets in the stitches you skipped. 

   

Continue with the same pattern of the 2 back post double crochets,skip two, 2 front post treble crochets, then go back and two front post treble crochets.  

When you finish the row, slip stitch on the first double crochet. This is where I messed up on my hat, I just kept going with the same pattern for the rest of the hat.

They begin to make little ridges after several rows!  

 This is how it looks on my hat, I really like the effect the self-striping yarn has on this design. 

 When the hat is as long as you want, weave a tapestry needle with yarn through the top and cinch it together until it looks like this:

 Tie a knot and now you've got a fabulous hat.

It's not only cute but also super duper warm. I wore mine to a football game. My high school's team went to state and since I'm in the Pep band I got to go and play. It was absolutely freezing and we lost by a lot (it was 19:56). So yeah, the game itself kind of sucked, but playing the piccolo in band was awesome.  

The bus ride was over four hours but it went by pretty quick since I had my flute friends with me. My bus buddy, Britney was charged with caffeine so it was a pretty interesting trip. She also had a super cute hat!

I love how weird my fellow flutes are!

Hobbit Costume

"I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And though the air, I am he that walks unseen.

I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.

I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.

I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am the Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

 If I could be any fictional creature, I would be a hobbit. They're adorable, they don't have to wear shoes, they eat seven times a day, a.k.a. they are the awesomest beings ever. So, logically I just had to be one for Halloween!

This was my original design, obviously my final costume turned out differently, but I still like them both.

I began by using an old white shirt and red vest. To make the pants, I went to the Goodwill and bought an old pair, then I hemmed them to the appropriate length.

For the cloak I mostly went off of this tutorial: http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Things/FCloak/FCloak_pattern.htm
The fabric I used was a little too green instead of grey, but I really liked the texture so I went with it. I really loved the outcome!

For these photos I just glued some hair from a wig onto my feet. I will make some hairy flip-flops for going out in public, but today I wanted to make my feet look as realistic(ish) as possible. If you look closely you can actually see the glue starting to peel but oh well!

I had a little too much fun posing for these pictures, but it's not every day that one gets to frolic in the woods as a hobbit!

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have some second breakfast!

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 2

Miss my other Lady Loki posts? Find them here:

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 1

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 3

For the skirt of my Lady Loki cosplay I started out by making a pattern for the center front panel on my good ol' roll of butcher paper. I used the pattern I made for the bodice front as a guide to know how wide it was supposed to be and to make the weird angled part. (I had to weigh down the corners of my pattern to prevent it from rolling up when taking my picture) Once the pattern was made I cut it out from my muslin.

 I then sketched out the pattern for the overlapping parts on the skirt. I cut out two of each on my muslin, sewed the middle parts together and flipped them inside out.

 Then I pinned and basted them onto the center panel of the skirt like so:

 This is the design I finally settled on for the side front panels, once again I used my other pieces as guidelines to make this one. I hope that makes sense...

 This is what it looked like when I sewed them onto the front:

Aaaaand this is the pattern for the back of the skirt.

Then the two sides were sewed on so the skirt finally looked like this!

I then carefully pinned the skirt to the bodice right sides together. As you can tell, it required a ton of pins to keep everything in place.

 The center part was probably the hardest because of the weird point.

 This is how the front turned out at first, very ugly and awkward looking. Luckily after ripping a few stitches and putting in some new ones, it could be fixed.

 This is how it finally looked when finally put together. Huzzah! The muslin is finally done!

 Here are some mistakes I made that I want to make sure not to replicate when working on the final project:

This is what happened when I tried making the overlapping parts from the bottom up. I know, yuck!

 Here I didn't get the seams lined up quite right.

 And finally there were some ugly puckers. All of these were stupid mistakes that should never have happened but oh well!

Keep a look out for my next post in my Lady Loki series where I finally make the real dress! *Excited squeals!*

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 1

Loki is one of my absolute favorite Marvel characters so I just had to cosplay as him. I have seen a lot of other Lady Loki dresses but none of them seemed like something I would wear so I decided to design my own!

I started out by sketching a design of the dress so I had a basic idea of what it would hopefully look like.

I then used a pattern for a bodice from another dress (Simplicity pattern 1415), traced it onto butcher paper, and made adjustments to it so it would look the way I wanted. I made sure to trace them in different colours so I could distinguish between the original and modified versions.

 

After cutting out the pattern, I traced it onto muslin because 1) I am relatively new at making my own patterns and 2) I don't have the fabric I want for the actual dress yet anyway. I also like muslin because I can pencil in the designs I want without worrying about it looking too bad.

 

For the front design I cut out long strips of fabric that, when folded in half, would be as wide as I want plus the seam allowance. I then basted the edges together. By the way, say hello to my green carpet of ugliness, I'm sure you'll become quite familiar with it by the end of this post.

 

This next part was pretty tricky. I cut the long strip into pieces so they were a bit larger than the lines I drew on my bodice (making sure to number them so I knew what piece went where). I sewed them on, overlapping them so that none of the seams were visible. I can't describe exactly how I did it, I just kind of followed the lines I made.

I hid the stitches underneath the strips themselves.

I had to be sure to sew from the top down because if I did it any other way, my pieces won't lay down like I would want them to. 

This is how it turned out when I was done, yeah, it may be ugly now, but it will look better soon.

I clipped off the extra fabric so it lined up with the base bodice. 

Then I stitched the sides down so they would lift up and expose their ugly undersides. You can easily seen my numbering here!

I rewarded my hard work with some Mountain Dew and You Tube videos.


It's time for the bodice side front!

I cut out the pieces from my pattern and then sketched a design for the the side collar. I'm not sure how much I like it, but it's only a muslin so I can always adjust for my final project!

I then sewed the assembled collars onto the side bodices. 

And sewed them to the front bodice. 

After that I cut out the back of the dress, made the darts and sewed them onto the front.

This was my initial template for my sleeves, but after basting them on and off about 15 times, I finally adjusted it to the exact shape I wanted.

Once again, I drew the little design in pencil and followed the same process as on the bodice. 

Then I sewed them in.

(Sorry about the really crappy pictures, they were taken on my phone and I am by no means a very good photographer.)

For the collar I sketched out a pattern like this, making sure the length was half as wide as the circumference of my neck hole.

I then cut out four of those pieces from my fabric. 

 I sewed two of them together and clipped the curves so it turned out like this:

After making two of those I sewed them along the neckline of my bodice. 

This is what it looked like when I finished: 

 And here I am looking fabulous sporting my messy hair and new bodice. As you can certainly tell I made plenty of mistakes but that's okay because this is only a muslin and now I know what adjustments I will have to make for the final project.

Here's the posts for the rest of the cosplay: 

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 2

Lady Loki Cosplay: Part 3