Llama Rama

Around the middle of last winter, I was overcome by a desire to have more casual winter tops—you know, something comfy enough to laze about the house in, but cute enough to answer the door in and possibly even take out on some errands.

 

Fortunately, I had just the shirt to start me off: a plain grey long-sleeved T-shirt handed down to me by a friend.

I spent lots of time trying to come up with decorations for this shirt. For a long time, I thought I was going with a dinosaur theme, but several of those ideas proved impractical, so I switched my trajectory to fuzzy mammals. The fake fur that I used for my Mothra costume was just the ticket. By this time, I had removed the black fabric front and replaced the fur in my stash, so it was ready to use.

 

My initial idea was to do an alpaca, an adorable animal I fell in love with on a trip to New Zealand. However, I found that alpacas don't have a really recognizable silhouette, so again the theme changed, to the larger and more distinctive llama.

I found a llama photo I liked on the internet, and converted it to a black silhouette in Photoshop. Then I enlarged the graphic to the size I wanted it on my shirt and printed it out.

 

I (temporarily) glued the printout to the fabric, and cut around outside it.

 

Next, I folded the edges under to achieve the final llama shape.

 

I ripped off the paper so I could work better with the fabric, then hand-stitched the fuzzy applique to my T-shirt.

 

A long time passed. My llama needed a face, but I wasn't sure how to achieve it. First, I tried buttons for eyes, but they looked positively ludicrous. So did the eyes I had salvaged from my now-totally-destroyed unicorn slippers. 

 

I decided to illustrate the eyes and attach them somehow.

 

Here's the design I came up with, drawn with marker and cut out of paper. Now how to convert them to a material that would work on a T-shirt?

 

I don't know how to embroider (and thought that would be too difficult over the shaggy fur in any case). I thought about getting custom-made embroidery patches, but that would send the cost of this cheap DIY into an astronomical range.

Custom-printed fabric swatches? I thought about it, but they might pucker and/or fray.

 

Felt was the way to go. For a long time, "felt" sat on my shopping list, as I envisioned that I would make detailed cutouts with every color of the facial features represented by a corresponding color of felt.

Then one day, I realized there was no need for that; I could just use a sheet of brown felt I already had and paint on the contrasting colors. So that's what I did!

 

I carefully cut out the felt pieces and hand-stitched them onto the llama, then the llama onto the shirt. It was a year ago now, but I know I was concerned that the felt wouldn't hold up in the wash, so I'm pretty sure I decided to make those pieces easily removable. When I do the laundry, I'll just have to detach and reattach them. That's a lot of maintenance for a loafing-around-the-house shirt, so I made it worth my while by wearing the llama shirt out for dinner!

 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of that outfit, so allow me to console you with a few other llamas that have graced my life in recent months.

 

First, some llama lloafers, that I picked up at the thrift store last spring for just $5.49 (probably 20% off?). I've already worn them once, but again, that was an outfit unworthy of a blog post.

And, in a rare non-fashion-related purchase, I also acquired a "Fa la la la llama" decoration early last year, which I made the centerpiece of a holiday-themed table in my house when I decorated for Christmas this month.

 

 

Though I've been saying it for decades, I finally get to say it in my blog: I llove llamas!

Reupholstered boots

Those white chunky-heeled boots, how I loved them! I loved them from 2013 through early 2019, and I wanted to love them even longer, but, like all synthetic leathers, they began to lose their thin outer layer of plastic in a manner most flaky. But still, they were my most flattering pair of boots, and I couldn't bear to give up on them.

Resfashion to the rescue! Like the equally beloved pair of white pumps before them, I thought to disguise their scruffy exteriors with a fresh coating of fabric. 

I planned to use some sheer floral chiffon from my stash—the remains of my tiered sundress-turned-coverup (which, I have to say for the record, turned out to be too unbreathable to really work for the beach).

I noticed the original boots were basically constructed of two halves joined at the front and back, so I decided to use the same model for my fabric covering. I traced the front line of one boot onto the chiffon, cut it out, and repeated three times. I even remembered to reverse the direction for the opposite half of each boot, but I don't think it mattered because the front of this fabric looks the same as the back.

I joined the two halves and sewed a seam down the front line of each. The material was so sheer, that I had to temporarily glue the two halves together and  support them with a piece of paper while sewing.

Once the paper was ripped off and the glue washed out, I started work with a different kind of glue, to attach the fabric to the boots. Having had decent success with Mod Podge outdoor glue on the last shoe project, I used it again. I started by painting a thin layer of the glue onto the left forefoot of the boot.

Starting at the toe, I began fitting the fabric to the boot. I lined up the center line of my fabric cover to the center line of the original boot, then pressed the material down into the glue. I did not go very far, because the chiffon was too thin to really grip the glue, and it kept sliding around as I tried to stretch it to fit. So, once again, I found myself gluing very small areas, then waiting an hour or so for them to dry before moving on.

I found this was much easier to do with the shoe actually on my foot, to lend some support from the inside. On the first boot, I glued down a significant portion of the left half of the foot before moving on to the right. But on the second boot, I did the left and right halves at the same time, which seemed to result in a smoother finish.

After several days of this piecemeal gluing process, I had worked my way completely up the boots' shafts. At this point, I decided to work on the bottom edges. I chose to make these shoes as "authentic" as possible, and tuck the fabric in between the uppers and soles. I pried the sole from the uppers, just around the edges, with a screwdriver. 

I used the same screwdriver to press the fabric into the gap, once I had filled it with E-6000, my most heavy-duty glue.

Now came a challenge: Finishing the edge along the back zipper. To accomplish this, I folded the fabric to the underside and pressed a crease into it with a flat iron.

Then, I glued it down along the length of the zipper. This required the use of copious numbers of binder clips to hold it all in place while it dried.

While on the subject of clipping things, let's talk about the top edges! I flat-ironed another crease into the very top half-inch of the fabric, and then folded them over the boot tops to the inside, so that the raw edges were safely enclosed. 

I discovered that the binder clips were causing indentations in the soft material, so I switched to clothespins  halfway through.

When I had cut out the fabric, I'd left enough for the heels to be in one piece with the uppers. But due to the way the fabric had conformed to the shoes, the remaining material wasn't quite long enough. Since the original idea for the heels wouldn't work, I cut the fabric just below the line where the bottoms of the uppers meet the top of the heels.

Normally, the fabric for the uppers and heels are tucked into the gap between them, but since I couldn't actually remove the heels to create a space, I did the next best thing: sew a seam into the fabric. Because the uppers were already firmly glued on, there was no way I could machine-sew this seam, so I did it by hand.

Then I wrapped the material around the heels and glued it down just as before, doubling it over on the inside of the heel where it can't be seen.

At the very bottom of the heel, there was a nice big cavity where I tucked the remaining fabric. The taps popped right back in over this. And that was it!

Am I happy with the results? Mostly.

The fabric really didn't want to stick down firmly, and sometimes it puckered around folds and curves, so the texture is less smooth than I would have hoped. However, the busy pattern mostly disguises these flaws.

For their first appearance in the real world, I really wanted to wear the boots with something that made them stand out, but I couldn't seem to find any dresses that didn't completely clash. So in the end, I paired the boots with a color-coordinated outfit of green and blue.