Making Circle Scarves

Being on winter break makes me really lazy and unobservant of the passing of days. It’s December 30th already and I did like, NOTHING with my life this break. I have a circle scarf run-through to share from many days ago and if I knew I was gonna procrastinate, I would’ve sewn on a sunnier day for better pictures. Although my picture-taking skills are next to nonexistent.

CIRCLE SCARF

To sew a circle scarf similar to American Apparel, I went out and bought some cotton jersey. I actually bought cotton-bamboo jersey at $8/yrd from a guy I refer to as the Italian Fabric Mafia. Story in another post maybe. Anyways, go and pick some nice soft fabric that you wouldn’t mind having wrapped around your neck all day. AA uses some kind of really thick stretchy cotton thinger that I don’t know the name of but you can really use anything you want. You might not end up with a winter scarf if you use holey fabrics though. Buy one yard of THE CHOSEN fabric. Buy more if you want a really really really long scarf, or a really thick scarf, instructions at the end.

Lay it on the floor with the RIGHT side facing up like so:

STOP. If you’re super lazy like me, you can just scrunch the fabric along the long sides and wrap it around your neck. That’s how I wear my scarf. ;D

Now fold the fabric in half so the right side gets hidden by the wrong side. Match the selvages:

Hilariously, sew along the selvages to make a tube:

Hem your scarf if you need to. Or actually, maybe you should’ve hemmed it before you did the selvage-sewing and tube-making. I skipped it because jersey does not fray and as you probably have noticed by now, I’m rather lazy.

In the final step I like to scrunch because it’s easy but you can fold as well. But really, just turn it over and fold/scrunch/command the ends inward until you have something that ACTUALLY looks like a circle scarf instead of a mysterious tube:

Now circle it around your neck and there it is, your circle scarf:

If you need it loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonger, I’d buy maybe 1 1/2yrd to 2yrd of fabric and cut that in half length-wise and then connect the selvages together. If you need a thicker scarf, buy more and sew it as usual. Combine the two to make a longer and thicker scarf.

No ‘poo day 3

Today I woke up with my hair matted down and tufts of it in all sorts of weird directions. Makes me think I was doing headstands all night while sleeping to have my hair end up like this all around. Well, matted, shaggy dog, hair is better than the grease ball, well ‘oiled’ hair look my hair tends to go for. You really have to wonder how do commercial shampoos strip so much oils from my hair that my body’s going into over drive to produce more, especially compared with BAKING SODA, my favourite pot scrubber.

But yeah, hair today is no different than yesterday. It’s neither improving or deteriorating. I suppose that should count as a success because I transitioned from shampoo to baking soda no problem.

One thing I’d like to point out though, is how slippery my hair and fingers feel after I’ve rubbed the baking soda goo in. I thought it wasn’t working because it kinda felt like oil when I rubbed the strands of my hair or my fingers together. But when I rinsed it out, it was pretty clean. I’d say it was similar to having a non-foaming soap on your hands, really slippery but washes out clean, not dry.

And remember the scalpy smell I mentioned earlier? It’s gone, replaced by wet hair and vinegar. Nice. Especially since wet hair dries and the vinegar smell fades really fast. I’m happy.

EDIT: I stand corrected. My hair is drying fluffier than it did yesterday. I didn’t blow dry it and it looks like I did. I’m VERY happy. I hate it when my hair just wilts against my head. I now look like a fluffy palm tree. Hurray!

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I’d also like to say, I bought some fabric yesterday and will make some circle scarves like the ones from American Apparel. While I did bring my camera back, I forgot the upload connector thinger thing. So I’ll post about it when I get back to rez. I’ll actually have to post about a lot of stuff when I get back to rez…

The basic gist of it is to buy at most 1yrd of some kind of soft material you’d like to use for your scarf, then sewing the salvages together to make a tube. Either fold the ends of the tube in or just gather it and then stick your head through. Et Voila! A scarf.

Even easier is to not do anything at all and just fold or gather the scarf (along the long side) and wrap it around to end up with an even easier-to-make scarf. C’est magnifique n’est ce pas?

I bought bamboo jersey so mine doesn’t even require hemming. While doesn’t require hemming does not mean don’t hem it, but I won’t because I’m atrociously lazy. It’s great.

American Apparel is all Rectangles!

Yesterday I went out with a friend who came back to visit from Trinidad to the American Apparel store downtown. As always, he bought clothes like nobody’s business and was complaining that AA wasn’t shiny or bright enough… Only he would say that. Anyways, I got caught up in the mood and bought a piece of their overpriced fabric myself, the one called Le Sac Dress. It was the cheapest thing I could find in the dress category and I was worried about the upcoming semi-formal on Friday so I bought whatever dresses that caught my eye. When I came home with it and carefully inspected it however, I was both amused and mad at myself that I bought something so simply made that I could make it with under $10 of material AND I got a formal dress for $10 more and 2 minutes of walking.

Now, I normally have no interest in American Apparel unless it’s customized clothing like hoodies for my (residence) floor so I don’t pay much attention to them. But at the store yesterday I had quite a bit of time to wander so I pick at the stuff hanging around. Taking into account of the type of materials AA use and the styles or effects they like to go for, I believe that quite a number of items can be easily replicated using… rectangles. Yup, that’s right, rectangles. Aaaand maybe some other basic shapes we learned in our baby’s first books of shapes if we want to go fancy. Also, those said items can be made at costs that are at LEAST half the price tag, maybe more like a quarter.

I think I’ll doodle out how to make a few AA stuff in the next couple of posts. Although google can usually provide for that.

 

Nap times I go!