Needle felted Fururama christmas tree skirt

This project took me over a week to finish but I'm very happy with it. I'm a tiny bit burnt out on needle felting now but I've got plenty of sewing projects to get done to take my mind off of it.

Here's the photo Ryan asked me to make into a christmas tree skirt. Initially I thought I would embroider it but that would have taken a year. So even though I'm fairly new to needle felting I decided to make it that way. 

Here's the finished skirt. Maybe I should've used a different table cloth for these pictures. Blue on blue is hard to see. Oh well.

I couldn't find enough wool roving in all the colors I needed for this project so I spent a lot of time untwisting wool yarn and brushing it out with a baby hair brush to get a lot of these colors. Even so, I wish I had more shades of green and grey. 

It was hard to make the eyes even. Maybe thatgets easier with practice? 

Ever been so mad you choked a reindeer? 

I felted Zoidberg's face tentacles separately and then attached them to give it a better texture. So realistic. 

Wish I would have had more grey colors for bender. Oh well, he still came out nice I think. 

Santa's gun was my favorite part of this project. Came out perfect. 

That took way too long but I think it was worth it. Now on to the next item on my mountain of holiday sewing to complete. :-)

-Elizabeth

Needle felted portraits and more!

I love the look of needle felting but I've never really been brave enough to give it a try until recently. So here are my initial practice pieces that I finished up a few weeks ago. I've got a big piece that I'll be posting later this week that I'm sure you'll love so don't forget to follow my blog or like me on facebook, k? Here you go:

Started small. A ball. If I can make a ball then I can make more complicated shapes, right? Like I said, this is practice. 

Next I made a puppy! He's a little cartoon-ish but I still like him. Maybe someday I'll be able to make those hyper-realistic animals I see on the interwebs. 

I like the idea of mixed media felting and sequin art. Shiney and soft! Not liking the sequin eyes though. Super creepy. 

Rainbow sequin afro cat. Groovy. 

This was a request. I tried to do some slightly more complicated color blending and shading. I think it came out nice. 

My boyfriends favorite: tiny mounted elephant head. I stabbed my fingers quite a bit making this one. 

And that's all for now. Check back soon for more updates. Big holiday project in the works. It's exciting haha. 

That one time I reupholstered a couch

There's nothing like the satisfaction of a job well done. Especially when that job is really quite comfortable when it's finished.

This was garage couch. He wasn't very pretty...

So I stripped all of his clothes off to make him some new ones. 

I added a pillow backing made of batting and stuffing to make him more comfortable.

And then dressed him up in his fancy new clothes. 

For the upholstery scraps, I bought a giant bag from the Golden D'or for $10. I still have a ton left over. There are some things I'm not 100% pleased with but for my first attempt at patchwork reupholstery I'm satisfied. It only took me two days to get all the work done and I definitely thought it would take more. I'm quite happy with him and were even contemplating switching him with one of the inside couches haha.

Love love, blah blah blah,

-Elizabeth

Finished a cute fox print dress for myself!

Have I mentioned how much I love the Sisboom Angie dress pattern? The one I've finished tonight is the 4th that I've made for myself! This one is more modified than any I've made before, I drafted the sleeves and the collar myself. The collar is a bit more wide than I had imagined it in my head, but I like it anyway. For the sleeve pattern, I pleated it at the top and put elastic on the bottom.
This was a fun dress to make, and I'm happy it came out so well. Maybe for my next one I'll try and make it with a circle skirt on the bottom. We'll see, haha!

Love etc,
-Elizabeth

Streetlight Manifesto

Streetlight Manifesto just came through Dallas for what they claim will be their final tour together. I discovered streetlight during the dark days after the breakup with my high school sweetheart and ever since the band has held a special place of honor in my heart and I'm my cd collection. We've made it through a shit ton of good times, and of course many more breakups together;  (my  ex-bff even bro-dumped me at a streetlight concert because I wouldn't leave when she wanted me too, but that's a long and boring story you don't wanna hear.)
Point is, streetlight means a lot to me. And so I wanted to do something special for this farewell send off concert. What I finally came up with was this awesome dress. The pattern is the Sisboom Angie dress but I widened the sash to hold a secret pouch because I knew I wouldn't want to be carrying my purse to the pit. The sash is also stitched on in the middle to keep it from shifting. The Streetlight on the back was easy to make, I attached the pieces to heat n bond, ironed them on and then zig-zag stitched the edges.
And that was that! My brother was also wearing a Sisboom pattern  (the Marco) that I whipped up for him. The concert was amazing except it made me realize how completely out of shape I am. Where one this girl could spend an entire evening skanking in the pit, in my old age I lasted a whole three songs. Oh well! I'm gonna go do some cardio  now so I can get into shape before the reunion tour. :-P

I love all of you,
-Elizabeth

P.s. go like my fbook page at facebook.com/cravencrowclothing 

Pleather Heaven

Recently a woman came to me with a big bag of clothes that had mostly comes from thrift store shopping. Some things needed to be taken in or altered and all of them needed to be pleathered. (Yes, pleather is a verb now too.)
Anyway, here are the results of that little experiment!

Finished Vampirella

Oh wow I forgot to be a blogger. Sorry, loyal fans. Anyways, l will try and catch up with all the blogging I should have been doing over the past few months, but first I wanted to share with you the finished Vampirella cosplay that I worked so hard on

Isn't she beautiful? I really liked the finished costume, i think it looked amazing.

Ill try and be a better blogger here in the next few moths. No promises though.

Love always,
-Elizabeth

More Vampirella

Almost done! I've been working on getting the piece assembled, starting at the bust! Here's the clasp for the bust piece:

Next came the collar. I made the basic collar shape, but added a strip of bias on the bottom to attach it to the clasp. It looked like this:

 

In order to wear it, I attached a small metal clip to one side of the bias and sewed the other to the round clasp.

Here's what it looked like on the dress form:

 Last step is painting, and then jewelry. Here's where I'm at now. As you can see, it'll take a few more coats of paint.

I should have the arm band and earrings done by the end of the week so check back soon!

Vampirella Cosplay Update

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I'm not the best blogger, am I?

I've been working on a Vampirella cosplay for a very busty woman. I started by modifying this pattern to have a shape more Vampirella-ish. (Btw, that's a great website for sewing anything out of spandex, you should totes check it out.)

So to test out my pattern, I covered my lady dress form with a super tight mesh shirt that I bought at American Apparel years and years ago. I used craft stuffing to make her boobs bigger. Here's the result:

 Looks weird, but the measurements come out right and It will work for what I have in mind. Though anyone who comes over in the next few weeks will probably get the wrong idea of my intentions with this fair lady.


Anyway, here's the result:

 As you can see, my lady still has one major flaw: she has no legs. And no crotch. I'll worry about that later, though. Right now, it's just important that I have the shape of the basic outfit down so I can begin perfecting it.

I need to take a little in from the side of the boobs, but other than that I'd say it looks about right. Not bad, overall. Next I'll work on the collar and then finish up the jewelry. Updates soon to follow!

Progress update

Today the craft studio is awash with scrap fabrics and threads. I thought I'd share a little with you of what goes into our pretty ruffle skirts!

According to my calculations, it takes almost 100 tetrahedron scraps to make one knee length ruffled skirt! A lot of time is spent on the sewing machine sewing all the bits together.

In these boxes are all the scraps that will go into the next batch of ruffled skirts! Boxes and boxes of super cute fabrics :-)

Here's a skirt that's almost finished. I really like the color combinations for this one.

Stay tuned to the blog and our etsy shop to see how the finished skirts turn out. Soon we'll have more new products coming out as well, in addition to the new skirts. I hope you're as excited as I am!

Love and etc,
~Elizabeth