progress on pull tab maille

China had made a little progress on her project back in November but I had never shown it.  She adjusted one of my dress forms to her size and worked on the piece on the dress form.  Some mods happened afterward as she had made the armscye too small for her arm to fit through.  Thus causing her to drop the area under the arm a little lower to accommodate this flaw.

She still has some work to do on the hem line of the piece.  This is only for coz play this technique but you can get fun patterns and designs with the so many colors of pull tabs available.  They are hooked together with regular links used in making chainmaille.

The funny part was on the back she was mirroring the pieces she had left to right and didn't realize she had made a face.  When her sisters and I told her there was a face she saw it and went back and reworked some sections purposely emphasis it more

Pull tab scale maile

My oldest daughter  China, is working on a found art project for school.  It is to be scale maile made from different pull tabs...she has been collecting them all over the UVU campus to make this project.... You can see from these photos it keeps changing and being reworked as she finds more and more tabs.

She is using pull tabs and jumper rings to make this

first set of progress photos

second set

third set

I will post more updates as she gets further into this.

Chainmaille and shop update

This is a gift my youngest daughter made last night and this morning for one of her friends for their birthday.   Necklace bracelet set. She gets to go tot the friends tonight for a surprise party for that friends 15th birthday.  I hope the young lady likes this gift.  My daughter went raiding through my supplies last night trying to figure out what she could make.  I told her I had a ton of chain links for making maille that I never got around to making so this is what she came up with.  The joys for a teen living in a house with a mom who loves to make things there are always supplies for random project.  The friend doesn't know me or that I have a blog so I doubt this post will spoil the surprise.

I have made it so that people can special order Romanian Point Lace cord in size 20 and size 10 in my shop Vintage Threads Inc on Etsy see side bar for direct link or click on the hyper links in previous sentence.  These are made to order in any color thread DMC currently makes.  Because they are made to order there will be the time needed to make them these are made by me and my children.

I also have some pre-made cord in the shop now as well.  This is cord I had in my stash in a myriad of different colors that i used when doing the tutorials and other projects.  Thought some might like to try using color.

Knight in shining Armor

My middle daughter during the summer made this Knight in shining armor for a friend of hers.  We forgot to take photos before she gave it away.  Recently she was given access to this item again.  She was excited that we would now be able to take photos of the item as it had a lot of work involved with making this fairy.  This was probably the most elaborate fairy she and I have made together with over 100's of hours in the making of it.   May not look that way to people looking at.  Usually this would be posted on my daughters blog but she is debating on getting rid of her blog and just joining my blog as a guest blogger.  With school and such and health issues she figures this would be better in the long run.

The box that that was used to house the fairy was found thrift shopping.  The little jar that is tied to the top of the box was purchased at Hobby Lobby.  Originally it had the recipients name in it.  But we did not want to show the name on my blog for privacy reasons.   It is now a very cherished family item.  The inside of the box is set up with grass and fall leaves.

The fairy has some accessories with him.  A sword a shield and a jar of coins and jewels.  The jar was purchased at hobby lobby as was the weapons.  But the weapons originally were necklace charms that we modified for our own ideas.  The jar of gems and coins was made out of and old bracelet that we took the gems out of and added to the jar.  The coins in the jar are actually made out of a dime and a penny that we took a hole punch too to make coins the correct size for a fairy.  Took many hours to make those coins.


The armor was hand made mostly by me and my daughter.  The shoulder armor pieces are two pennies that I hammered into the desired shape on a small metal rod that I used like an anvil.  When I had them to the desired shape I used the same hole punch that i used to make the coins to make the holes to attach it to the chainmaile.  Then added those four coins to the jar of coins too.

The knights hair is a small piece of rabbit fur left over from the costume of Puck from A Mid Summer Nights Dream.

The little bits of fabric used on this Fairy is also scraps from other characters from mid summer night dream.  The cape is from mustard seed and the shinny loin cloth is from moth. There is a little strip of leather she placed over the loin cloth.  She also made a little black bag that was to carry little fairy items what ever they might be.   There is little pieces of twine wrapped around his legs and one has a bone button on one leg as if the fairy had found it and liked it so much added it to his clothing.  The wings are made out of a butterfly that is supposed to be used as a hair clip.  My daughter dismantled it ( removing the clip, antenna, and butterfly body) and reconstructed it to be in the shape she wanted for the fairy.

 

 The helmet I made for the knight.  It is made out of a Jarritos bottle cap.  It was the soda that we had at my daughters 15th birthday party the cap was left over from that party.  I did the same thing to this hat as I did to the pennies.  In that I took a hammer to the cap till it was flat then I made a make shift anvil and shaped the piece to the knights head.  It took about 8 hours to get the shape I wanted.  I sat on the front porch working on this it was fun to do as random people walked past in the middle of the summer they would come over and see what I was making.  The wings are some pieces we found at hobby lobby that are meant to be used for scrape booking but we thought it would be fun to have a Mercury look to the hat especially since the fairy already had wings.  There are little pieces of leather (scrapes from the rabbit fur) tied to threw the  holes I punched into the hat as I did the pennies ( adding the punches to the the jewel jar).

 

My oldest daughter still needs votes for her song if you are interested in voting we would greatly appreciate it please go to this link and vote for her song.  She is ranked 18 and is in risk of not being able to reach her goal of helping raise money for cancer research.  This is very poignant to me today as I found out today that my sister in laws mother in law passed today from cancer.  This nice lady baby sat my children when they were little.  It is scary how many times my family has been touched by cancer and I am sure it will happen many more time s before it is my time to go back to heaven.  Thank you http://songsforlife.org/girl-wanna-china-khoral/

Night at the Movies

This last weekend my daughters had a school dance to go to.  with the theme of "Night at the Movies".  They were supposed to go as their favorite either actor/actress or their favorite character.

My Middle daughter went as the Mad hatter's Daughter Madeline Hatter.  The oldest went as Arwin and her date as Aragorn.

Yes I made both of the girls costumes.  The Mad Hatter one I made the day of the dance.  I started at 2 am and kept sewing till 4pm  with a 1 hour break to eat and run an errand in the middle of the day.

My oldest daughters costume I made last year for a school celebration they had when they finished reading the Lord of the Rings they had a Hobbit Feast.  I have actually made 7 costumes from scratch on Thursday and Friday of last week.  Three Pride and Prejudice style ones for a school celebration one blue one, one red, and one golden yellow.  Three black Greek ones for another daughters Olympic celebration at school  (those only took one hour all together as I have made that pattern so much I have it memorized I used that same pattern when I did the play " Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat) and this Mad Hatter one for a school dance.  I made another one a week earlier for a David Copperfield celebration but I did not get too many photos of that one.   My kids school loves to have celebrations when they have finished reading a book.  Costumes usually = extra credit in the class so lots of kids have lots of costumes at this school.

At the dance my middle daughter got second place for her costume.  At the end of the dance she found out she actually got first but they gave the prize to the wrong girl.  My daughter is a good sport so she said let the girl keep the movie tickets.  She was just excited to tell me that the costume I made had won a first prize even if she did not get it.  Then she asked if I could take her to the movies to see Frozen (yes we have not seen it yet) just her and me so she could still get her prize.  I said sure as we have a pass that gets us into a movie a day for free for an entire year thus the reason she did not care about the tickets.  For us it is more of trying to find the time to go to the movie that is the issue.

I do plan on posting the other costumes I made this last week just have to get them uploaded to flicker so I can.

This is my middle daughter and a group of her friends.

 

This is my oldest daughter and the other Lord of the Rings characters that were at the dance and a photo bomb from another friend.

pull tab corset/vest

So since my daughter wanted to learn a little about making chainmaille from pop tabs.  I made this to show her the way she was going about it was a weak way of construction and it messed with the integrity of the piece.  I am making something (a tunic) using that technique that she was using but yeah not my favorite item.  She has since undone what she had made and is now using a weaving technique from the pattern I said I liked last time.  She can still use the tabs she cut but they will be stronger even though they have been cut.

My brother-in-law years ago as a teen made two sample pieces of maille.  He used wire hangers to make his.  He placed a metal rod in a vice and bent the hangers around it and then sawed the coil open to make his rings.  Then he hand sanded them and assembled them.  Because I remember him doing all this and discussing how to make maille with him I wanted the pieces when he no longer did.   He had two different colors of metal ring in the same size. So I and my children were excited when he gave them to my girls  the girls wanted to be able to use it but could not because of the size of the pieces.

Because they were not usable in the size and shape he left them in we dismantled them and added the pull tabs so that my girls could wear this piece of costuming that is half made by him and half made by me with a little help from my girls.

They (my girls) got hurt hands from trying to open the 10 rings.  My hands are bruised too as it is hard work but I persevered much more till done.  I can still do more but in time my hands would get use to it again.  They just are not there currently.

 

We plan on making 5 at least items one for each family member to wear but this vest can be worn by 3 out of 4 females in the house.  My youngest does not quiet fill out the top yet give her 1 to 2 years and all the females in the family will be able to wear it.  The skull shoes laces in the pictures are a temp thing it is what I had on hand.  I plan on leather laces or cording.

I do not drink beer or energy drinks which are where the colored tabs come from.  But you can buy them on line if you look around which is what I did.  If you look closely at the photos you will notice the blue row is where I changed from one color of metal rings to the other.  The bottom half is shinny metal rings where as the top is the dull metal rings.  I used the blue to make it look more purposeful.  But truly it is just wear the colors changed on their own and I added the blue to make it a purposeful design element.

I did do some shaping on the breast areas and center back and around the side to make it fit nicer than just a straight tunic style would have.  Yes this is heavy because of the rings.  As pop tabs are light in general but the added metal rings adds lots of weight to the piece.  When trying this on my girls all commented on the coldness of the metal it is winter here with snow on the grown.  Now think about wearing this in summer at a RenFair in the middle of the heat yes I expect the metal to heat up and be screaming hot.  But the girls said they did not mind.  There is oxidation that comes off of both the aluminum pull tabs and the rings so spraying with clear acrylic is a good thing to seal the metal or you will end up with a gray dusk permeated probably permanently into your shirt that you wear with this.

flip top chain-maille

My oldest daughter has started a project with flip top tabs making a type of chain-maille.  I have made chain-maille in the past and I am familiar with this type of  thing so I posted on face book that she was wanting tabs.  She has 108 tabs so far but it will probably take her a few thousand to make what she wants to make.
She has three styles of tabs at the moment but hopes to get more and more colors too.  Her goal is to make  a corset and skirt a female version of costume chain-maille.  There is this cool website all about this type of stuff check it out it is fun to see what can be made out of through away stuff.

For fun I may make some as I really like this pattern for a corset that the blog above has for sale.

There are several ways of doing this type of maille.  My daughter is doing a cut in the tabs.  But there is also like the blog above where you weave them together and I have also seen where you use chain-maille links to hold the tabs together and i have seen them crocheted together too.  Not sure which way I like the most but I lean towards  links and weaving.  I believe they are stronger but my daughter wants instant gratification so she is doing it the quicker easier way but I believe it is the weaker way as well.  Here is a video for the way my daughter is doing hers but she did not learn from this video.  Warning this girl annoys me by saying so all the time you are warned.  But the general idea is there for basic maille but you could make a 1 by 4 maille as well with pop tabs

Chainmaille bracelets

Remember a while back I went to visit my sister in law and she and I played with chain mail.  While visiting I made a belt for her husband.  She was making some other chainmaille bracelets at that time for her mother-in- law and another sister-in- law.  She said I could post these so I am I think she did a great job and she took pretty good photos too.  She did such a good job I wanted to post these here.  Hard to believe a bunch of jump rings and some crystals can make those but so cool.

Helm chainmaille earrings with beads

 

Another item I made while visiting my sister-in-law was this pair of earrings.  When I got home I added the beads to the maille.  I really miss having this sister-in-law live near by I have so much fun with her.  I have dragged her to...

4 in 1 English chainmaille belt

Long ago when I was in high school I made a chainmaille skirt (from when I use to go to Ren-Fairs a lot) I have no idea where it is now.  Over the last eight days I have been visiting with relatives and one of them had some links...