DIY Fashion Week

Me watching New York Fashion Week a few years ago: "Who would wear that?"

Me watching New York Fashion Week as an aspirational frugal DIY design blogger: "I could make that."

Get a full rundown on all the DIY possibilities for Spring 2011 at this article on examiner.com.

Image: Getty Images. Necklace and dress: Lela Rose

My DIY: Felt flowers

A quick and easy DIY for a busy week.

These flowers were so fast to make I forgot to take much in the way of photos. But the principle is the same as for my dahlia from an old shirt. These are easier though since there is no issue with fraying or general limpness.

Cut a strip of felt about two inches wide. For the dahlia, make tapered cuts. For the mum, make straight cuts. Roll the strip and glue as you go. Add a pin back to the back.

Two or three of these on a sweater or knit hat looks mighty cute if I do say so myself. Vintage insect pin optional.

Ultimate DIY Competition

I'm making something crazy right now.

Sign up at Cut Out + Keep.

My DIY: Make a dahlia brooch

My August inspiration was lush florals, and finally one of my inspirations has come to fruition in an actual wearable product. (Don't forget to add your inspirations, projects and pretty rooms to Inspired in August.)

Easy no-sew dahlia pin. Cut a strip (or strips) totaling 24 inches long and about two inches wide. Fold in half. Cut skinny V shapes. Roll the strips, gluing as you go. Add a pin to the back.

Or, if you can't be bothered, buy a huge one from EmersonMade for $68.

Sometimes I knock off Anthro, sometimes Anthro knocks off me

Above, Anthropologie's Billowed Bow Tank, brought to my attention by Christine at Down and Out Chic.

Below, my first no-sew ruffled collar, made about a year ago.

Make a fabric rose necklace with Used and Abused Vintage

A few weeks ago I posted a how-to for making fabric roses. Corinne over at Used and Abused Vintage whipped up this necklace while my roses were still rolling around on my closet floor.

Check out her fantastic results at Used and Abused Vintage along with many other DIY fashion projects.

My DIY: Anthro inspired rose tank

Last week I showed you how to make fabric roses.

This week I'll show you a few ways to use them.

One is to knock off this Anthropologie tank, shown below. It was $78 and is no longer available.

Alert readers may note that my tank does not look exactly like the Anthro tank. Funny thing. I had more roses going all the way up the straps but thought it looked like too much. I took roses off.

Then I found this image of the tank as worn by a real person at The Chloe Conspiracy and realized that "too much" is exactly the right look.

The first step is to make between 7 and 22 fabric roses in shades of one color following my fabric rose tutorial or something similar.

Pin them on to the shirt and try it on. Reposition roses as needed. Remove roses if conservative.

Sew the roses on, stitching along the outside of the center of the rose. This will help it to lay flat.

That's it. Hand wash, I'd say.

DIY Wednesday: Make fabric roses

I was hoping for a juicy home decor DIY this week, but, sorry, you're getting yet another fabric flower tutorial. I'm on a roll.

There are lots of fabric rose tutorials out there. What makes this one slightly unique is that you'll get some tips for dealing with upcycled fabric, which is to say stuff that frays all over the place or is too thick and is thus not cooperative with standard sewing machine ruffling techniques.

The shiny roses came from the remnants of a thrift store blouse. The darker ones are from a piece of thrift store fabric.

First you'll see how to machine sew a rose from fraying fabric. To start, cut strips of fabric about 12 inches long (vary the length to vary the size of your finished rose) and about 2-3 inches wide.

Fold the end of the strip under and then fold the strip in half. Put a little fold every inch or so and pin. Machine stitch a seam along the raw edge. You'll have a ruffle without fraying problems.

Trim off the seam allowance. Start rolling the strip, putting a dab of fabric glue every inch or so. When you're done, pin to hold until dry.

Your rose will look like this from the front.

Here is a variation for the problem of thicker fabric. I tried machine sewing the "pleats" but they looked too stiff. So, here is how to hand-sew. Knot your thread and run a stitch using long stitches. Pull the fabric down the thread until it is about half its original length. Knot the thread at the end. Proceed as with the first flower.

Next week hopefully we'll have some cool uses for these flowers.

DIY Wednesday: Make no-sew ruffled flower necklines and jewelry

As promised, here is part 2 of last week's DIY. Here are a few ways to make the most of your no-sew extremely easy flowers.

On the back side of your flower, glue a pin back or velcro. Or both.

For the velcro, cut out a small piece of both the hook and loop side of the velcro. Glue one side to the flower and keep the other side attached to it until needed.

If you are making several flowers for pom-poms (which I'll show you in a sec) alternate which side of the velcro you glue down. In other words half should have loops glued to the flower and half should have hooks glued to the flower. This - ta da - allows you - this is complicated - to velcro two flowers to each other.

First up, pin the flowers along the neckline of a plain cardigan. I used 10 flowers.

Next up, use the velcro option to attach your flower to necklace chains. Here I bunched three up close to the end of a short chain.

Which looked better than I expected.

Recently I came across the work of Kathryn Blackmore via This is Glamorous. She is the the jewelry design behind the Etsy shop The Vamoose.

Her jewelry involves hand-dyed fabric and real gold chains. But I was gratified that on my own I came up with a self-designed necklace that wasn't too far off from what a real artist created. (If you stand really really far back.)

And our last option. Velcro two of the flowers to each other with a necklace chain running between them and you have a 3-D pom-pom necklace. (I think this would look better if the flowers were a little smaller in diameter.)

And last, if you were lazy and made only one flower, you can velcro it to a medium chain and call it a day.

Other options: Pin a few flowers onto a top. Or attach a set of flowers to shoe clips to embellish a pair of shoes.

DIY Wednesday: Make no-sew fabric carnations

We've got an easy little not-too-original DIY for today.

I've seen tutorials for making these puffy ruffled round flowers all over the Internet. (Mrs. Priss has a very cute one, for example.) The only advantage to mine is that it doesn't require any sewing and it will be followed by some handy pointers for reusing your work four or five or maybe even six different ways.

You will like these little flowers. They are easy and versatile.

You will need some fabric (I used a ripped dress shirt), a little bit of felt, a glue gun and scissors.

Start off by cutting lots of circles. Mine are three inches in diameter, but you could go smaller. You will need seven or eight circles per flower. You will also need one small felt circle per flower. (I traced mine from the lid of a cheap bottle of tonic. A water bottle lid would also work.) If you don't care for fraying, you may want to treat the edges of your circles with Fray Check (a step I neglected) or use a non-fraying fabric like jersey.

Fold each circle in half and place a dot of hot glue in the crease and squeeze shut. Fold in half again and place a dot in the corner crease and squeeze shut.

When you have a stack of folded circles, start gluing them to your felt.

Put a dot of hot glue on the tip of one folded piece and place it in the center of your felt. Place two more pieces on either side of the first one, alternating the direction of the folds.

Add more pieces until the entire felt circle is filled in and your flower looks full and fluffy. If you have the spray version of Fray Check, you could give your flower a spritz.

The backside of your flower will look like this.

Stop back next week when we will do a bunch of cool stuff with this basic flower.

DIY Wednesday: Make Chanel-inspired accessories

Last week we learned how to make a poppy flower pin from scratch using bits of silk or cotton.

Naturally, you can wear this as a pin. Or, you can do as Kelly Framel, aka The Glamourai, did and pin your flower to a chain.

Or you can incorporate your hard work into Chanel-inspired clogs and bags.

Below is the inspiration - Chanel's Spring/Summer 2010 collection. I'm not sure what, if anything, the model is wearing on her bottom half, but focus on the bag and shoes.

Chanel has lots of basket-y looking bags this year, including the infamous picnic basket, below.

Of course, we mustn't forget the Claudia Schiffer bag that started this whole thing.

To embellish your own a la Payless or thrift store clogs, you can simply pin the brooch right to the clog. (Clogs are back, by the way. Walk carefully.) If your clogs lack a strap, you can attach your pin to a shoe clip with a bit of velcro.

If you lack the toe-curling skills required to wear clogs, poppies will work with mules, too. All it requires is the guts to wear them.

For the bag, keep an eye out at your friendly local thrift stores for straw totes or black Chanel knock-off bags. For the black bag, look for the iconic Chanel shoulder strap - a gold chain with a strip of leather woven through it.

For the lace embellishments, cut leaf shapes from fabric and lace. You can freehand them or use this template. Make a backing by cutting the same shape from a piece of white felt and a piece of plastic from a container (such as the kind used for takeout food.)

Make the lace embellishment by hot gluing in the following order - felt on the botton, next the plastic, next some white fabric. Top it off with two or three lace leaves. Wrinkle and pucker the lace as you glue it down.

Flip the lace embellishment over and glue a pin back to the back side. Then attach to your chosen bag.

I tried a couple of different bags and combinations of lace and flowers. The first one seemed too much. The second one seemed too small. Then I came across a much cuter straw bag at a thrift store and started all over again.

Here's the cute bag with flowers sans lace.

In the end, a few flowers and a little lace seemed to work best. This is a bag I would actually wear.