Zipper leggings

The other day on my way home, I decided to get off the bus in Dalston to check out the legendarily wholesale haberdashery shop next to the awesome Oxfam (which name now I forget, and have no time to google). I've been meaning to go there for ages, but with their slightly abandoned look and shop-windows protected by iron grids, I always think they're shut. Turns out they are open on a daily basis until about 4pm, and they do have a nice (but pricey) selection of trimmings and buttons, and some fabric (which I didn't look very closely).

I came away with these pair of long yellow zippers.


I already have a thing for zippers, and since I spotted these AA leggings, I've been fantasizing about inserting zippers in all the bland leggings lying around in the studio. It's just the right amount of va-va-voom for a snip of the price of the AA ones (£39 and going up - god, hate what the recession is doing to the pound) and for someone's as unskilled as I am when it comes to *inserting things*, shouldn't be that difficult, ra-eeght?
Wrong!
It turns out inserting long zippers in stretchy fabrics requires - there's no other way to say this - practice. So mine turned out like this:

The zipper undulated in a strange but even way, making this little bumps that look like ... an alligator's tail?


Amusingly, it also resembled a lot the Ikea mirror I found on the street last year, which always did my head in for being too thin and wavy to fit my entire person in it.

Anyway, haven't formed my opinion yet on whether these wavy/bumpy leggings will see the light of day anytime soon...

Make do and mend

So. Recession, right? Back to the roots, make do and mend, etc etc. I'm rather ghastly at sewing and DYI-ing, but lately I've been feeling extremely guilty for spending a single penny on STUFF, when I already have too many STUFF in the studio that could work brilliantly with a bit of improvement. So last night, after someone bunked off on me last minute (not cool, man, not cool), I decided to cure my hangover sitting by the sewing machine.

Started with this extra-large 80's acid-wash baggy jeans, which arrived many months ago from one of the suppliers. I have a little obsession with acid-wash denim (more on that later), and those trousers were begging to be worn - but they were SO ill-fitting and unflattering, that no one did, and the poor thing have been sitting abandoned in limbo since.


I really wanted some baggy cut-off denim shorts (a la California-beach-stick-thin-babes), so, after a whole hip-readjustment-job, that's what it became:

Dress worn as a top Urban Outfitters, Belt Rokit, Leggings Major Tom Vintage, Ballet pumps Vivienne Westwood for Melissa, glasses NHS

Ah, feels good. All I need now is the Californian sun.