clothing Archives - Try Handmade

Hoboe Jane

November 14, 2019 by Chelsey Mona 1 Comment

Are you a hat person? Me, I LOVE hats. I wish people wore them more often. And you wont find more interestingly designed berets then Hoboe Jane‘s! These quirky hats are a simple way to add a sens of fun to your look. Hoboe Jane’s creator Kristy has a background in sculpture and art and some of the hats have hand painted elements. Kristy picked up her love of arts, crafts, sewing and design from her mother, a Kindergarten teacher and has been exploring creative venues from a young age.

Kristy is influenced by lines and patterns in nature and also draws heavily from the fantasy movies she watched growing up like “Labyrinth” and “The Princess Bride”.

Kristy’s favorite item in her shop is the Spider Swirl Beret Hat. It’s a good representation of her style as it includes both hand painted elements and design with felt.

When I make my items, I think of a story that goes along with each piece. Like with the Spider Swirl Beret Hat I’ve made, she is a wandering tarantula from the northern regions of Chile and has made her new home on this very hat and wants to live with you now.

Kristy started making her own clothing and accessories in high school and to help with the family budge she started redesigning her old things and turning them into brand new objects! While she’s always loved making skirts and bags within the last year, she found a new love for making hats.

I love the work I create and I hope my love for it shows through, in my products. I try to give my work a sense of fun and joy, so whoever purchases an item will have their very own one of a kind piece.

Larger retail organizations may sometimes have better prices, but you are getting what you paid for. Retail stores sell numerous multiples of items, making them not as unique, quirky, and creative. I try to make my items as affordable as possible, for the everyday customer.

Hand made goods are much more personal and unique. Much more passion and care goes into everything we create ourselves than if it is made by a machine in some obscure factory.

You can find out more about Kristy Albury at her art website or at her experimental music site Retro Juju.

Hold me just a little bit tighter

November 5, 2019 by Erika Jurney 2 Comments

About De Novo Coats: I absolutely love coats! I can think of nothing I’d rather do than design a new coat, make the pattern, and fit it. I have 10 years of experience, working in San Francisco as a pattern maker and designer. A few years ago, after making a clothing collection for a few seasons I became pregnant with our first child. I then decided to focus my time on coats and jackets, where my heart is anyway.

Each piece is an original design. I work hard to find the best fabrics, and most are in very limited quantity. If you see a style you like but not the ideal fabric/color, please email me with requests. I have others fabrics in my studio and will be happy to send swatches!

The Devil Made Me Do It Clothing

November 2, 2019 by Valerie Williams 3 Comments

Tamara Embrey has been making up-cycled, recycled, and refashioned clothing since she was a teenager, long before it was the latest and the coolest to do so. At sixteen, she would create her own interesting and unique items to wear, having been inspired by both a trip to Goodwill and the latest issue of Vogue.

Tamara was not interested in anything that could be found at the mall, and was happy to apply her sewing skills (courtesy of her mother and her aunt) to update and personalize her thrift store finds.

She loved making clothes so much, she even contemplated attending fashion school. The male-dominated industry and the emphasis on boundless consumerism did not appeal to her, however. Still, all throughout her schooling she never gave up making things, and never stopped making new, fantastic clothes out of old, forgotten ones.

Tamara’s creativity has never been just about making clothes – she is also a writer and a painter, but she never put down her sewing, even while pursuing advanced degrees in other subjects. Upon finishing her MFA in writing, a friend of hers encouraged her to sell her upcycled clothing at a local market in the small town where she attended graduate school.

With a ten dollar table fee, it was hard to say no…and The Devil Made Me Do It clothing was born!

She found she really enjoyed both the creative and business side of making and selling her clothes, and the thrill of seeing her creations on other stylish people never got old. By the time Tamara moved to the DC area in 2008 and planned to apply to the Torpedo Factory as a resident artist, The Devil Made Me Do It was well established and already enjoying success!

All of Tamara’s clothes are made from high quality, upcycled wool and cashmere sweaters. Her creative process begins by looking through her considerable stash of thrifted sweaters for inspiration. An unusual color or pattern might catch her eye, and call out to her to be made into a ruffle hem or a collar detail, and soon a garment is under construction in her head.

She uses her own sense of style, her “jagged-edge sensibilities,” and her considerable skill with a serger (gained from a little instruction plus years of experience) to piece together sweater remnants into new, fabulous clothes.

Each item in the Devil Made Me Do It collection is therefore one-of-a-kind. Although Tamara will sometimes repeat a certain style, the nature of her found-object materials means that no two garments will ever be exactly alike, even those that started life as parts of the same sweater!

You can find The Devil Made Me Do It clothing in Tamara’s Etsy shop, and in the Fiberworks Studio at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA, as well as at the occasional local arts and crafts market. Tamara is always looking for gorgeous sweaters to cut up, so if you have any that need a new life, let her know!

Clothing to dye for

October 26, 2019 by Helen Hobden 1 Comment

Tie dye is classic hippy style, but I don’t actually always like it. I think it works best when you’ve got subtle shades of the same colour happening, rather than as many different bright colours you can throw onto a t-shirt at once. Shades of pink from bright to pale to white looks girly and pretty and can be quite fairy-like. Ocean blue greens look lovely together and remind me of summer holidays and mermaids.

When I was pregnant with my first child, we were kindly given lots of hand-me-down baby clothes, including several baby-grows and vests that were once white, but were now stained and looked a bit grubby. Apart from that, they had plenty of life left in them, so we bought a couple of packets of dylon and set to work making various patterns. Not yet knowing the sex of the baby, we went for purples. We got so many compliments on those baby grows – I wish I had set up a hand-dyed baby grow business there and then. Oh well! Never mind, other people thought of it too and you can now buy some fabulously dyed outfits for babies.

A dark colour and black always looks good too; especially purple or red. This often has a pagan or witchy feel about it and is great on long dresses.

You’ve also got to be careful of the pattern. My preference is when the fabric has been scrunched and dyed for an all-over random effect. Lines across the item of clothing usually look good, but be warned of circles – the technique where you put a marble or something into the material and tie up the area around it so that afterwards you’re left with circles spreading from a central point. For some reason on men’s t-shirts, the point is right in the middle, highlighting even a slightly over-weight stomach. On women’s tops, two circles seem to always highlight the nipples – fine if you’ve got the confidence for this eye-catching look, but not so good when one of the tie-dyed circles is a bit wonky!

Sources: Mountain Girl Clothing, Singin’ a Sweet Song and ilovewaterlily.

Liza Rietz

October 4, 2019 by Erika Jurney Leave a Comment

Previously featured in 2008, I recently caught up with Liza Rietz again, and wow!

Liza Rietz began designing and sewing custom and retail pieces in 2001. She has been a part of Portland’s artistic clothing community from the beginning of her career, participating in multiple group and independent fashion shows. Her designs have been available nationally in high-end boutiques in Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

Rietz’s modern designs are structured yet feminine, detailed yet wearable, and are created individually, not mass-produced. Rietz designs two small lines annually, producing small batches of each design. Though her collections adhere to the seasons, her lines are not season-specific. Instead, Rietz focuses on designing clothes that are versatile and that easily translate to any time of year. Rietz’s designs are made out of all natural fabrics including cottons, linens, silks, and bamboos. With a small production run of each line, the individuality of each piece exemplifies how clothing can be artisitc and expressionistic.