07. Ayo, I Got A Poncho.

A club I occasionally frequent was having a Mexican themed night which lead me to seeking out my poncho. It was made by my great grandmother and was worn by my mother and later me when I was little.

Sadly I never ended up attending the Mexican night, however, I did develop an outfit for my poncho which has lead me to desiring more. At the moment my plan is to purchase pieces of fabric (or large scarves etc) and cut out a neckhole design to fashion a poncho. The idea sounds fairly simple, and I hope it will turn out alright. I also intend to hem the neck hole (either rounded or v-neck shaped) and possibly add a fringe (maybe with some wooden beads in it?) and a nice button on either side (or press studs on the inside) so I can join the back and front together to make it into sleeves.

03. See My Vest, See My Vest, Made From Real Gorilla's Chest!

I'm one of those people who loves to make lists of things to do... I'm also one of those people who never complete their lists of things to do. While I'm on holidays I've gone pretty craft crazy, collecting ideas and what not. Today I went into a St Vincent de Paul's thrift shop and brought a few things, below is my haul. I think it all added up to around $7 or $8, but when I organised it all neatly on the counter so the price tags were clear the lady just started piling them into the bags and told me just to give her $3 for all of it.

I found this pattern below (originally on $0.50) for vests. I had a quick look inside and seemed to be pretty full of patterns but I'm not entirely that everything is in there (if not, it's not a huge loss + there should be enough to pull it off anyway. I'm mostly interested in 4 & 5 (directly under the green vest and the middle vest in the top row).

I also brought three pieces of fabric, a plain red one (3/4m x 1 & 1/4m), a plain blue one (not hugely attractive but thinking maybe using it for lining, 1 & 1/4m x 1 & 1/4m) and a white one with a blue floral pattern (biggest of the lot, but no size). Originally I was going to make some small bags / clutch thing out of them, however, I think I want to use the floral one as the outside of a vest and the blue as lining.

Yeah, for some reason I thought it was a good idea to take a photo of it on my head...

The red is much richer in real life, and the blue is a bit deeper, it's just the webcam quality that makes them look not as nice. The best thing is that the floral fabric was $3 alone and thus essentially all I paid for.

When I get around to making the vest I'll be posting results / somewhat of the process on here. I'll also shortly be posting a tutorial for a pair of shorts I made.

p.s Yes, the title is from The Simpsons. I promise I don't have any Gorilla chest vests floating around!