Tag Archives: DIY clothing labels

October 6, 2010 · 8:38 pm

Quick and simple

Bambi and Madeleine

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions on where to go next :). All the ideas were good. Since I’m about to be off to a conference for most of next week, I figured quick and simple was the way to go for now—I’ll tackle some new skillz and stuff when I get back.

So today I printed out and pieced together the Colette free pattern Madeleine bloomers, of which there are many cute versions inhabiting the internet (The Sew Convert’s being particularly recent and cute). I was hoping to make them out of the last of the black cotton, to go with my Bambi nightie—they seem like they’d make a nice bottom for that piece. However, there was even less fabric left than I had thought—not even enough for the teensiest pair of bloomers ever. So I had to search around a bit. I haven’t got the world’s largest stash, and not much of it is lightweight fabrics for summery sleepwear. Well, there is the chiffon, but I have about as much desire to sleep in that as I do to sew it. 😛

But, there was the remains of the crinkle cotton voile. The four metres of this fabric I bought back in July (?) have already successfully produced my husband’s shirt and the 70s sundress, but there was just enough left to squeeze out another Bambi and a Madeleine. Although I’m a little worried my straps may not end up long enough. Seriously, there isn’t a piece left as big as a washcloth :). Anyway, I shan’t have time to stitch them tonight, but maybe tomorrow. I widened the back of the Bambi by a couple of inches, we shall see if that makes it a little easier to wriggle into, or if it just ends up being floppy.

Bookemon & Ebichu label on the yellow sundress

And, I spent a little more time playing with labels. The kids were distinctly unimpressed by my labels—they wanted ones that had their names on. I thought about it, and eventually came up with these. I went through and picked every cute and cool-looking font on the computer (I have a lot of fonts), in a variety of colours. They say “Bookemon & Ebichu”, which are (two of) my husband’s nicknames for the girls. We’re not overly into Pokemon, so I’m not sure why, but there they are. I’ve already attached two, and need to stitch on some more.

Speaking of which, I guess I could finish putting labels

Bookemon & Ebichu label on the Little A-Line

into the other stuff I’ve made. I only have my labels on two or three things so far 🙂

And, just for fun, here’s the whole page:

Aren't they cute?

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September 21, 2010 · 8:47 pm

Bleeeuuuuuaauauagh…

Yeah, that about sums it up. Sorry for the no-post yesterday… I have about enough stamina to run downstairs and heat up some tea before collapsing back into bed right now. Probably I’d be doing better if I could actually sleep, but the general malaise and sinus-balloons aren’t helping there, either. So, anyway, enough whining.

Yesterday, I did manage to take in the white Lydia and hem the sleeves, but not the bottom as I like to iron in some wash-away stabilizer for that, and I’m not up for that much running-up-and-down of stairs. I also spent some time working on The Coat—finishing the hem and making chain tacks between lining hem and shell hem out of some silver embroidery floss I happened to have handy. I have a small

Chain-tack to keep lining and coat hems from shifting too much.

stash of embroidery floss, mostly dating from high-school, when I enjoyed cross stitch, before I realized that if you do cross-stitch, what you end up with at the end of the day is a piece of cross-stitch.

Man, I’m a pack-rat.

Anyway, the exertion of sitting upright for a whole three hours or so was enough to send me back to bed for the evening too wiped to even write, much less photograph my accomplishments.

Today, by contrast, I lay in bed. I did bestir myself enough to open up my Lady Grey pattern, unfold the tissue, separate the pieces, and mark out the size 2 in a felt marker so I can trace them off more easily later. I napped, or tried to. In a fit of boredom, I took another stab at designing labels, this time using Inkscape (since I have it on my laptop, whereas my elderly copy of

Labels made in Inkscape. Also a cooler font.

Illustrator only runs on the old XP desktop). Inkscape is another vector graphics program, rather like Illustrator’s awkward, ungainly cousin. It has one huge advantage over Illustrator—it’s free—and one smaller one, which is that although its user-interface is fairly clunky, I actually find it more intuitive than Illustrator’s, which has to be the least-intuitive graphics program I’ve ever messed with*.

Anyway, you can see the outcome. The illustration actually printed out quite nicely… I was a little worried about

Label, v. 2.0

that. And here is the label in place in my coat:

So that’s where I’m at.

Oh, Self-stitched September.

Self-Stitched September, day 20

Yesterday

Lydia v. 4

Today.

All right. Off to bed.

*I’ve never actually had any formal training in graphic arts. All of my photoshop prowess, which is passable, and my Illustrator and Inkscape and GIMP fu, which are rather less, come from messing around. A lot of messing around. If you have actual training in any of these programs, my hat is off to you and you can undoubtedly make them dance circles around what little I can do.

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September 12, 2010 · 6:36 pm

Little to report, Cap’n

I got da stuff.

Despite my best intentions, the day was unproductive, sewing-wise. I spent a lot of time running errands. I watched Ninja Assassin with the hubby. I gave in and bought Tyo a bunch of jeans (and a cool pair of high-tops) from Value Village for school, since she’s outgrown everything from last year and the hand-me-downs from her 13-year-old cousin are still too big.

What the labels were SUPPOSED to look like

I did finally take the opportunity while out and about to spend a little more of the money I shouldn’t be spending on a package of T-shirt transfer sheets. An hour or so of wrangling with Adobe Illustrator, and I had produced this (Click to see it full sized):

At this point the file decided to corrupt and refuse to print or save. Some cut-and-paste and swearing later, I had a new version, but for some reason most every time I tried to print the lettering would print out white. Even after saving it as a .pdf, which usually clears up most printing problems. Anyway, out of my entire first page of transfer paper I managed to get about a dozen usable labels. Compared to all this, ironing them on to the twill-tape was nothing.

So, without further adieu, here is my first branded piece of clothing: (yup, it’s the cardi-wrap, it was too much work to take off my pants to put the label on them 😉

“Strange Aeon” is a name I’ve wanted for my “brand” (of anything) ever since I first read the phrase. I’m sure someone else has used it already, but not, as far as I can tell, for clothes, so myeh. And since anyone who gets clothes from me is more likely to know my real name than my screen name, I put my real name on them.

I’m pretty sure I’ll change it up a bit next time—make the text a tiny bit larger, replace the cloudy background (that for some reason printed out green) with some kind of a border… anyway. They’re still fun. 🙂

Now to see how they hold up to the laundry…

What they actually look like.

In Self Stitched September news, here’s today’s outfit.

Self-Stitched September, Day 12

Day 12 outfit

You may be seeing more of this cardi-wrap than you want to. Since this is only one piece different than yesterday’s outfit, I figured I’d give you a different part of my backyard to see. Hmm, I think the other fence is definitely more photogenic, though.

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