fishie’s aquarium

I love Craftster Challenges. It seems like they’re the only thing that can really motivate me to get something done, these days. I’ve been itching to sew something lately, and I’ve been wanting to try my hands at making a corset without a pattern. So when the March challenge theme was announced, I knew it’s what I had to do. What is the challenge? Spend $10 or less at a dollar store, and make something awesome.

I’m incredibly pleased with how my corset turned out. I managed to find silk brocade pillowcases at my dollar store, I grabbed a package of zip-ties for boning, and bought a kid’s scarf to unravel and crochet into lacing. I also got an eyelet setter (note to self: you get what you pay for), and a bunch of snaps that I ended up not using.

With my cunning and feminine wiles, I managed to turn this:

into this:

More details (and pictures) are available in my entry on Craftster: Silk Brocade Corset… for $8!

The official Craftster Challenge Page (with the voting poll). Voting is open until Saturday, April 12! There are some pretty awesome entries on there. You should vote ;)

As of the first day of voting at 2 pm PST, I’m tied for 4th place. Not bad, especially considering how many entries there are!

Apparently all I needed was company. Today was Chris’ first day where he was CONSCIOUS and not working. He sat in the craft room on the computer all day, while I made shit. It was great!

1) I finished another pants bag for the August Craftster Challenge. I know it’s not the best and that I won’t win (I had better ideas in my head, but it’s not something I’d really want to put energy into. ANYWAY, I figure I get extra points for recycling ;)

That’s an old button from like, the 70’s that I stole from my mom’s sewing kit when I was 8 and put it into mine

2) Chris, not having been conscious and at home since I knit with his drumsticks, looked at the heart thing on his bass drum, and was like, “I thought you were going to make that into a pillow.” So I was like, “ok.” And I did. First I sewed the knit thing onto a white napkin from a restaurant I REALLY didn’t want to go to when I was a teenager, then I sewed the knit/napkin hybrid onto one of the only white fabrics I had, and it matched the theme of the knitting so I figured why not.

Chris was less than pleased with the… uh… design of the back, but WTF THERE’S A BIG PINK HEART IN THE FRONT!!! So there. >:P I stuffed it with a small portion of one of the three giant bags filled with stuffing from some free couch Chris tore apart for the wood and saved the stuffing from way back before I met him. Very pillowy. Yay!

3) I FINALLY put the placket on that corset I made somewhere around 4 or 5 years ago. I broke the needle I’ve had in my sewing machine for however long I’ve had it (note: more than ten years) on one of the metal eyes, but it’s okay, it wasn’t going to last forever.

4) I said fuck it, ripped out the waistband from the drawstring thong, and did MATH to find out how many stitches to ACTUALLY cast on to make it work with my yarn. And YAY IT FITS NOW.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with new cream pie flavors. Until now, I’ve only done the double chocolate and mint chocolate pie… while I have altered the recipe to make the pudding into banana pudding, I never made pie from that. I want to try a chocolate-peanut butter cream pie and a coconut cream pie. Oh man coconut cream pie.

And I want to make an ice cream cake. Mmmm. And eat it with pie.