Malotke Sews

Vida Tool for Designing Goods Just a quick update on life: I have used Vida before to work on pattern utilization and just for fun. If you are interested in using Vida you can check them out here . If you're interested in seeing some of my work, you can check it out here .  I love working on patterns and coming up with new colorful creations. I like using Vida because it's something where I can upload a design, choose the garment (shirt, bag, scarf, pillow, etc) and just forget about it. If something sells, amazing! If not, no worries because it's not made unless it's sold. Which means I don't have a ton of product just sitting around. It's nice to just have a small chance my designs could be selling without worrying about production. I am considering going around to a few boutiques and seeing how they do their purchasing and what they're looking for to carry in their store. It'd be a great way to brew up some brand awareness for myself before I l...

I love creating photo books online with websites like Shutterfly as a way to show others fun trips. However, I also love to do collages and mood boards the good old fashioned way- by hand. While I enjoy doing things digitally, it's always been more fun to physically cut things out, place them, move them around, and create something really cool. At the moment I just have an album, white paper to use for the scrap booking, 100 prints from vacation, and a few clusters of stickers. I think I need a few more stickers and some fancy pens or something to help take it to the next level. Once I have more pages finished I will post a few. 

Tunnel under the Neuschwanstein Castle Happy Halloween Everyone! I am a huge fan of Halloween and the whole fall season. I love supernatural related stories, movies, the leaves changing colors, spooky decorations, black cats, giving out candy, costumes (of course), and more! Spooky inspiration is all around us. Every year I want to create my own costume but then it's October and I never have enough time to make one from scratch. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Hopefully next year I will get my act together for 2019 and actually make my own Halloween costume. I would love to do something that looks easy but has a ton of details like one of the Sanderson sisters looks .  I currently have a few projects I want to start working on, however I also want to snag some on sale Halloween printed fabric for some basic vintage inspired silhouette dresses. So not entirely sure what my next project will be!

Here are a few pictures from the show's dress rehearsals. I'm not sure who the photographer is, but they were shared on Parkland Theatre's Facebook page without details. Interested in reading a review of the show? Check this one out from the News Gazette here in Champaign. I'm still waiting on the professional shots, so once I have those I'll post them with details on costumes.

For Dinah's apron I purchased a purple full front apron, cut the top off, serged the extra and then stitched it down. I then added a little touch to the apron by choosing a heart stitch on my sewing machine and stitched along the waistband. On the inside of Dino's jacket he needed a pocket to hold his silverware. Instead of choosing any old brown fabric I chose this fun patterned duck cloth for the inside pocket. I wanted a pattern in case the audience was able to catch a glimpse of it while the actor was using the pocket. Since the jacket is vintage I finished the edges of the pocket and then hand stitched the pocket to the inside of the jacket. While I was in the zone hand sewing I fixed a few minor holes in the jacket and lining.

I have been away for a while and apologize for the lack of posts. I was not prepared enough to make a bunch of posts to automatically upload while I was gone on vacation. I am currently not working on a show but have chosen to focus on some personal sewing projects. In the next few days I will wrap up my progress posts from my work on "Servant of Two Masters." I have yet to receive professional pictures so my online portfolio has yet to be updated. Once that's taken care of I will consider myself officially done with the show. Stay tuned for some really cool & colorful projects coming soon. I want to do a few more detail oriented posts, not quite step by step, but something along those lines for a few small projects.

Before Buttons Sorry for the delayed posting, it has been a crazy busy couple of weeks. The weekend before the Costume Parade I was finishing up a green men's short sleeve, button down collared shirt. I am in love with this avocado green and it looked really great on the actor.  I followed the directions for the pattern but I thought it was a very odd way of sewing a men's shirt, especially how they had you sew the collar. It turned out okay, it was actually about 4" too big for my actor. The sleeves are kind of weird but once I took it in and hand stitched the sleeve hem it didn't look as odd. Stay tuned for actual show images to see the shirt in action!