Upcycle Living

The year of the snake. What else would you do for a company new year dinner? The snake theme obviously! The cheapskate that I am, there's no way I will go out and buy anything new just for the glory of one evening. I found this old baby blue Ikea fleece blanket that I couldn't part with and an old, rather flattened pillow which I have no idea what to do with; and I decided to make a stuffed snake with it. The process was really simple: mark two identical shapes of a snake on it with a 2B pencil, cut around them with 1-cm space allowance.  Stack the 2 shapes together, place a red ribbon of 4" length on where the mouth is (as the tongue) and stitch along the marked line, leaving about 4" of opening.  Fill it up with the old pillow stuffing, bit by bit. Then stitch up the opening.  As for the patterns on the snake, they were some lace trimming from my craft box. The eyes were buttons from my sister's dress (buttons that she hated and removed so I saved ...

I hate parting with old clothes, especially designs that don't come easy. This long dress has been with me since the late 90s, but lately the stretchiness of the material is gone and it is not tight-fitting any more. I can hear it calling out to me: "Please don't throw me away, please, no!" So here comes the scissors and the needle and threads. I cut the dress across the waist and sewed the hem and made it into a top. Then I dug out a pair of Chinese buttons I savaged from another old top which I had to bin (because the material was falling apart), and voila, I got myself a new Chinese Cheong-sum-like top! As for the bottom part of the dress? I've yet to decide what to do with it, but rest assured, it will be something useful :-)

The previous tenant left behind some very illogical blinds in our bedroom: one side shorter than the other. This left an uncovered corner which allows strong sunlight coming in at 7am which makes the room really hot. We can't even have a lie in on weekends and waking up to bright light gives me migraine for days. The flat came as it is and we're not allowed to incur any unnecessary cost to the landlord and we really don't feel like spending money on replacing some blinds that are still good. So I thought of putting some curtains over it to screen off the sunlight whilst softening the mood of the bedroom.I tried looking for some simple, plain coloured ready made curtains to go with the window size. Unfortunately, the simple-looking home decor market in Malaysia seems to be catered for very rich people only. So I gave up and went to look for fabric in a fabric store instead. Lucky for me, I found some a plain off-white thick material and a chiffon-like material with pretty fl...