The one with the potential jewelry or somethin

So I am making these ankara braids, this is what I have so far. I need to make 8 more so I can have a necklace and that ring that I kept on trying to make is taking shape, not exactly what I wanted but kinda close you know

Hiatus and an ankara flower

I don't know when I'll be near a sewing machine again, I'm busy and my teacher (mi madre) and I are not getting along. So if I do post on this blog, it'll be little hair baubles and jewellry. Till then.

I made this last night when sleep was proving elsuive. An ankara flower

Ze mini Boubou

Okay......it's knee length but for moi it's mini. Anyway, this is a Mama Omosi and Omosi co-production i.e. I did like 32% of the work and my mum did the other 68%. So technically it's not an Omosi dress but it's a start.

Progress

Finally an update on THE DRESS. Today I was permitted to sew on end of the dress, I fucked it up of course and my mum had to unpick it and redo it but I didn't sew my finger and I think I have kinda figured out how to sew a straight line. I'll practice sewing straight lines tomorrow, maybe I'll get enough material for my ankara ring then........

*The plate with the measurements on the machine is where my eyes should be at all times
*It's not a race, slow down.
*The machine is not evil, it isn't trying to get you
*Keep the sides together at all times.

Anywhoooo, here's the dress. We're still working on it, this was the first fitting.

*The darts need to be repositioned
*We need to take in the area around my hip
* It needs to be hemmed
*The sleeves are too small

So tomorrow or Sunday, we'll work on that and by Monday (fingers, toes and intestines crossed) I'll put up the finished product.

Rings

I know this is supposed to be my sewing blog but hey I do other shit too, I'm crafty like that, ooooo lookee I made a pun. 0_O.

Seriously though, my sewing project has come to a halt, I've cut the dress, okay my mum did the butting bit but I ironed on the inter-facing. Between epileptic power supply a.k.a NEPA wahala and mumsi monopolizing her machine to make some new church outfits, I haven't been able to actually sew the pieces of my dress together. Hopefully on Sunday I'll be able to. Here's hoping.......

While I am sewing 'hiatus' I've been thinking about making ankara rings, I have a particular design sketched out but it's more complicated than I thought it'd be, so it requires more planning and materials on my part, but I did make two rings today. They're a first attempt, so they're not great but they are sha wearable

Of course it's a bow.

And then there's the cow pentagon, hey it has five sides so it's a pentagon, no one said all the sides had to be equal.

**Work on finishing, find better quality plain rings. More sewing, less glue?

But will I have the liver to wear them....................................................................................hell yeah!!!!!!!!!

Gros noeud

Okay so I lied. You can use a running stitch and a small needle to make a bow.

It cuts down on the time, this baby took me 45 minutes to make, mistakes and all.

I used a running stitch because it's easy to take out. Seriously where am I going to wear something like this to? Might as well save the fabric, but it was fun making it.

Compared to the other two I made this morning

Hand sewn Ankara bows

I made these bows.

Using this tutorial



I used a back stitch but I guess you could do a running stitch if you wanted to, but the back stitch is the strongest stitch IMNSHO.

These were the needles I used.

You need the huge needle to sew the middle of the bow.

It took about 1.5 hours to hand sew each bow.

Not too shabby for my first attempt at bow making.

Finally

I started this blog awhile ago and finally I am putting up my first post.


A brief history of Omosi and sewing.

One of my mother's business ventures involved owning a sewing shop with a lot of veerrrryyy interesting tailors, there was Iya Yinka who forever had trouble with her husband, Uncle Ik who claimed to be a civil war vet and ate our pet tortoise, Funmi who claimed to be from Togo but didn't have a French accent, Okey who couldn't sew for shit yet my mum kept him on for years and finally Victor who sewed like a dream but used all his money on women and liquor and occasionally stole customers' fabric and took outside jobs. But the best tailor of all was and remains my mother.

The woman can sew anything she wants and she's very creative. She thinks up stuff that is like WTF but it works and turns out wonderful. Her mother could sew too and at some point owned her own shop. Then there's me, who is afraid of sewing machines. Oh, I've always sewn little things, from the age of five I used to sew waist bags and clothes for my Barbies but I was always shooed away from the machines. During the summer of my fourteenth year I decided to sew something using the sewing machine, I've forgotten what it was. All I remember was that a few seconds after I hit the pedal, I had sewed the tip of my finger, chipped the bone of said finger and was running around with blood streaming down my arm with a piece of needle stuck in my finger. My dearest mother had to use her teeth to yank out the needle and I was taken to the clinic where they removed most of the needle pieces, a term later since the wound wasn't healing I'd go back for the Dr to dig around and remove what was left of the needle.

Understandably I was scared of sewing machines but I was still fascinated by sewing and longed to make an outfit a day just because I felt like it. While I was in college I bought a used sewing machine for $40, it was veeerrryyy slow and still I was scared of it. It sat unused till my mother came to visit me one summer and then I took a year off college and had to give away/sell all my stuff, so adios my poor neglected sewing machine. I've remained fascinated but verrryyyy scared of sewing machines in spite of my mother bugging me to learn how to sew using a sewing machine. But last month or so I decided to make a satin pillow case for my gigantic square pillow and was too lazy to hand sew? stitch? the whole thing. I decided to face my old enemy -yup my mother still has those sewing machines, she has had them for almost 20+ years and they still work-, I sat at the machine and started sewing verrrryy slowly and guess what? None of Omosi was harmed, phew.....but but but the machine stopped working halfway through and since my mother wasn't around, I abandoned the project. But now I am not as scared of sewing machines as I used to be

Progress!!!!

Hopefully by the time the year is out, I'll be proud owner of at least two Omosi made dresses that will be PERFECT muahahahahaha..........sorry, I got carried away, thinking I was Dr Frankenomosi....lame I know but it 6:20am and I haven't slept so suck it.

Ehem ehem, soooo as I was saying, wait what was I saying. ANYWAY, to kick off my sewing blog, I present my hand sewn bows in the next post :D