The Pineneedle Collective

Monday, 13 January 2014

DIY Circle Skirt Dress (Video Tutorial)

I actually did it! I sat myself down for an entire day and forced myself to make this video - but I actually enjoyed making it in the end, and I am also very happy with how it turned out. If you want to learn how to make a dress like my teacup skater dress and candy cupcake dress, then watch this video. You should give making a circle skirt/simple top a go before you tackle this project, if you're not at all experienced at sewing, but once you're able to do those you'll be more than ready to give making your own dress a go. Enjoy! And please do let me know if you liked the video or found it useful, or a least subscribe to my new youtube channel - I am planning on making many more if it seems like the interest is there.

p.s. If you're not a fan of the 8-bit soundtrack I've used then feel free to mute the video - all the instructions are in text, so you won't miss anything except the bleep-bloopy adventure time-style toons ;)

Friday, 10 January 2014

From Bedsheets to a Dress (DIY) | 52 Factorial

Dress is DIY | socks, shoes and bolero are thrifted | necklace c/o Merrin & Gussy

OKAY, so I know that I said in my last blog post that I was wearing my favourite dress ever... I think we might have a dress to contest that. Partly, I think this one is now my favourite because I made it out of $5 second-hand bedsheets and I kinda can't get over the thriftyness of that. I also LOVE the print and the colours! And guess what - I did indeed film the entire process, so I might even have a youtube video up in the very near future (UPDATE: If you're looking for how to make this exact dress, then go here to the video I made)! By the way, I have a new youtube channel - the username of my last one which I chose when I was 15 was irritating me to no end, so I decided to simply start fresh.

Other parts that I love about this outfit are the velvet bolero/shrug, which I got from the same op-shop as these bedsheets and is also handmade, as it didn't have a tag and none of the seams have been serged with an overlocker. I'm so happy to give it a welcome home. If my handmade stuff ever ends up in an op-shop, I hope it'll go to someone who really appreciates it! Also, you probably can't see it in the photos, but my socks are sparkly!

Yesterday, while QI was playing in the background, I kinda had my mind blown. I did have to fact-check this first, of course (as I recommend everyone do when watching this show - though most of the stuff is accurate they do like to exaggerate...). But it's true!

Basically, whenever playing cards have been shuffled they are, in all (near) mathematical-certainty, put into an order which has never existed before since the beginning of time. The order of cards is defined as 52 factorial (8.07^67), which, as Stephen Fry says, is a number so large that if each star in the Milky Way had a trillion planets, each with a trillion people who had been shuffling a trillion packs of cards non-stop 1,000 times per second since the Big Bang, they would only be repeating shuffles right about now.

And that's why maths is cool.

Tuesday, 7 January 2014

DIY Candy Cupcake Dress

Dress is DIY | shoes are no longer for sale | socks are from markets | bag is old and no longer for sale

I know I say this a lot. But this dress is now my most favourite dress, firstly because I made it and I'm bloody proud of it (it even has top-stitching!), and secondly, because of the fabric! Not only does it feature pretzels, cupcakes and ice-cream (food clothes are probably my favourite kind of clothes at the moment), but I also got the fabric when I was in Japan so it's very, very special! I'm relieved that I didn't stuff it up and waste the fabric, because it was rather irreplaceable.

Buying fabric in Japan was such a... process. I very nearly got too confused and gave up, but Luci and I struggled on with our Japanese and just hoped that we hadn't accidentally ordered 20 metres of the most expensive fabric. The "shop" section of Japanese fabric stores just display small swatches of all the available fabrics (and ohhh boy, they are the prettiest fabrics that you ever did see). You choose one, point it out to a shop attendant, and they cut off a small square of it for you. You then give this small square to the counter, tell them how much you want, and they give you a number. You wait around for 5 minutes and... *SHOOMP!* Your fabric arrives via this complex system of tubes from somewhere way way above or below (we couldn't figure it out) the shop, where all the fabric must be stored. So futuristic.

In case you're wondering how I constructed this dress, it's really similar to how I made the smock dress, except that I made the bodice smaller and more fitted, and attached the bodice to a circle skirt instead of a gathered skirt. Then, I simply used a dress zipper which goes all the way through the bodice and the circle skirt. Easy! (I am planning on doing a youtube tutorial on this exact dress very very soon - hopefully - if that was just confusing, and you want to wait for that!)
UPDATE: If you're looking for how to make this exact dress, then go here to my youtube tutorial!

I hope that you're all having a great day. I'm about to meet up with my friends for a very late-Christmas dinner, which means, of course, pavlova! Yuuuum yum!

Sunday, 5 January 2014

I Woke Up Like This / Shepard Tones

Skirt is DIY | tights from Clear It | shoes c/o Yeswalker | necklace c/o I Love Crafty

This is what my DIY suspender skirt that I made the other day looks like without its suspenders! I'm glad I made them removable, because it also looks great as a simple skater skirt. I'm having such a great time sewing and creating things now that I've decided to make most of my own clothes - I've gotten so much better (and faster!) at making dresses and skirts from all the practice! For example, I managed to whip this dress up in a leisurely 4 hours today. For anyone who is scared of sewing or doesn't think they're any good at it - just know that all it takes is practice, practice, practice, rather than any particular smarts or skills!

Let's learn about another spooky audio illusion today!

In the illusion we talked about on Thursday, a tone which sounded like it was constantly descending was in fact getting higher and higher. Shepard tones are similar, being "constantly descending tones" which actually don't change in pitch at all. The starting tone is the same as the finishing tone - in this way, it can be likened to the "penrose stairs" optical illusion:

In a "shepard tone", multiple tones are actually played together, each of which do descend, but when the lowest tone reaches a particular threshold it ends and a new, higher descending tone begins. However, your brain does not perceive the disappearance and appearance of these tones, so instead perceives the entire set as constantly descending.

You could listen to this forever and the tones would never actually get any lower. Have a listen to a Shepard tone and see if your brain is fooled:

Friday, 3 January 2014

Reflection

In the end, I decided that I did want to do one of these. I got all reflective about the year that's gone by way too late, probably because I refused to believe that another year had passed by so quickly and was in denial about it truly being 2014. I blame this on the large amount of science fiction I've read with stories set around 2014, where things like mind-control implants, artificial computer intelligence or, at the very least, hovering cars, are just everyday conveniences. And we couldn't really be living in 2014 already, because those things don't exist yet. But apparently a whole year has gone by, as I actually came to realise when organising my 2013 outfits page this morning.

So here is 2013, represented by my favourite outfits of the year.

May

Thursday, 2 January 2014

Red Gingham & 2014 / Audio Paradox

Dress is from Bonne Chance | belt, bag and hat are thrifted | shoes no longer for sale | socks from markets

2014. I love living in such a futuristic-sounding year! Looking back, 2013 was a great year for this lady, the highlights being moving out of home, being lucky enough to visit both Japan AND Italy within the space of 6 months and working in a real-life laboratory! I also managed to attain my ridiculous 2012 new year's resolution, which was to be in a magazine - and not only did I do this, but I was on the cover of one, which was probably the coolest moment of 2013 for me!

However, I'm also really super looking forward to 2014. This year, I want to learn how to program like a pro, get over my fear of mathematics and bike ride every morning, as well as some other silly new-years resolutions not unlike the magazine one which I'm not going to share until a year from now, if I actually manage to achieve them ;)

I'm also going to start off the new year with a psychological illusion that'll make you question everything you hear from now on.

Click here for the audio illusion (mp3 file, 41 seconds).

image source

So the idea of this illusion is that the tones sound like they are constantly getting lower. However, in actual fact, they are constantly going up and up.

Don't believe me? Listen to a bit at the beginning, then skip straight to the end, and you'll notice how much higher the tones are at the end of the clip!

Why is this happening? While each individual tone gets lower, the tone that comes next is actually pitched higher than the one before it. Yet somehow our brains are tricked into thinking that all the sounds are getting lower and lower.

And as I've mentioned many times before, your brain is so easy to fool.

I hope you've all had a wonderful end to 2013, and have an even more wonderful start to 2014!