The Pineneedle Collective

Saturday 26 October 2013

Apple Orchards & The Largest Living Thing

Dress - Bonne Chance (similar) | shoes - Asos | bag - Thrifted | brooch - gift from my friend Katie

I'm obsessed with the dresses from Bonne Chance collections. I've started checking the site every few days, which basically is just a really bad idea because it's made me buy all of these dresses from them. Well, I've only bought 3 (so far) but ohhhh boy, I want them all. If someone could design a store just for me then this would be it. Cute/kitsch prints, vintage fits, flared skirts and pretty collars are a feature of all of their dresses. This particular one that I'm wearing was called the "Apple Orchard" dress, so I thought that this brooch of a cute little apple-picker in red gumboots went perfectly with it!

Now a note about these shoes. I was dumb and ordered something off Asos *sigh* because my last pair of black flats were worn out, and I couldn't find anything else that was just simple, cute and comfy and didn't have a heel. And they were on sale. Well, guess what happened - they broke basically as soon as I wore them. They zip up at the back (so that you don't have to undo and redo all those buckles each time you wear them), and on the left shoe the zip keeps coming apart. It happens about 5 minutes into wearing them, and although it can be fixed... it breaks again and again, making them very frustrating to wear. I'm trying to think of a way to fix them - maybe I'll just have to sew the zip up to keep it closed! But it just goes to show that these things aren't made to last.

Even though I'm not a superstitious person in the slightest, I'm putting this all down to karma. I strayed from my decision to make more ethical shopping choices, and I was taught a lesson. Fair point, universe, fair point.

Have you ever thought that the largest living thing on Earth was the Blue Whale? This video might just make you change your mind, as well as changing your ideas about what a "living thing" actually means.

Video is by Henry from Minute Earth (who I met in August, woo!)

I hope you've all had a great day so far!

Monday 21 October 2013

DIY Dress - The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Dress - DIY | glasses - Clear It | shoes - Asos.

Who else had this book as a child? From a fabric store in Marrickville, this Hungry Caterpillar fabric was only $2 per metre, so I bought myself 5 whole metres! As I've only used about 2 metres making this dress, I'm planning on making a hungry caterpillar skirt and pinafore as well. Yay!

Remember this page from the book? Yummm. (Image source)

This is the first properly fitted dress I've made - I followed similar steps to my DIY dress tutorial, but made it fit properly to my waist using a waistband, made the zipper go down through the skirt (which also makes it much easier to put on), and I didn't use a pattern for the top part, either. When I'm done with uni for the semester, I'll make some brand-new instructions!

UPDATE: If you're looking for how to make this exact dress, then go here to my youtube tutorial!

I hope that you all had a great weekend,

Friday 18 October 2013

The Hamburglar (DIY Skirt)

Photos by Joshua Spolc

Shirt - DIY | skirt - DIY | socks - thrifted | shoes - Chicory (Japan)

After taking these photos, one of my housemates made the observation that I looked like The Hamburglar with my hamburger necklace and stripey shirt (and cheesy orange socks?), and I was inclined to agree. The outfit was something I put on in a rush after making this skirt; the skirt being the whole point of this post! I think that this skirt needs to be paired with a tight black shirt rather than this one (or if anyone wants to suggest a type of shirt they think should be paired with it, please, fire away!) Anyway, I did just want to show off the skirt because it worked out so well. I have just bought a bunch of fabric from my favourite fabric place, Marrickville road (any aspiring Sydney sewers need to go there!), and I've been filling this Pinterest board with clothing-making inspiration, so I'm excited to start sewing again after these successes! Ah, the joys of procrastination... I'm only sewing so much lately because I have about 1 billion assignment deadlines looming. But they can wait. I want to make some pretty clothes.

Sunday 13 October 2013

Mickey Mouse Club & Virtual Clothes

Badge - thrifted | dress - c/o Chicwish | shirt - c/o OASAP | shoes - Asos.

A large, obnoxious and entirely irrelevant badge is sometimes what is needed to put the finishing touches on an otherwise casual, 90s-inspired outfit. Mickey Mouse is looking pretty badass next to that graffitied wall...

I want to jump right into some science today. Aside from 3D Printing, one technology that I am pretty excited about is augmented reality. Making computers "see" has been an insanely difficult task for computer scientists, nearly as difficult as making computers talk. The human visual system is incredibly complex - think about it, how does your brain recognize all those jumbles of lines, colours and shades as distinct objects, also taking into account your movement around those objects and the object's movement around you? You do it without even having to think about it, but as much as 30% of the brain is devoted to vision processing.

Image source and article.

But recently, computers have been learning to see a lot better. A group of scientists at the CSIRO have been working on technology that can accurately work out "landmarks" on people's faces in three-dimensions from a 2D video. This means a computer can recognise that a particular bunch of lines means lips, and that lips are separate from eyes, for example, from multiple angles. An application of this is placing virtual makeup, hats or glasses on people's faces.

Has anyone tried on virtual glasses? Heaps of sunglasses stores use virtual try-on rooms for glasses now, though the only time that I've tried it out the glasses went all glitchy and buzzed somewhat frighteningly around my head. A very disappointing introduction to augmented reality. But now the technology is improving, these researchers envision that soon we will have virtual changing rooms (there have already been pretty decent attempts), where with a webcam or phone, you can try on clothing from online retailers in your own house to make sure they fit. Which is pretty damn cool. (Also, you can already do things like put virtual furniture into your house, which you can see demonstrated by an incredibly odd IKEA family.)

Can't wait to do my first virtual reality outfit post... ;)

Friday 11 October 2013

Little Bo Peep DIY Dress

So it has come to that time of the year where I really need to start studying my butt off. Naturally, that means I start becoming extremely creative and productive in anything other than university work. Freckles and Ginger was last night's bad influence (whose instagram feed you need to follow if you're not already), who made me remember just how easy making dresses is. I free-handed this dress (meaning no pattern, I just made it up as I went along, woo hoo!) last night, and I'm so extremely happy with it! I think it's the best dress I've made, which is pretty good seeing as I haven't made one for over a year!

Also, I know this outfit totally goes against what I said in my last post about dressing more maturely, but I reserve the right the contradict myself. Anyway, I've changed my mind about that. I'm going to dress like a little kid if I want to - I'm never going to stop loving cutesy collars and prints, so why banish them from my everyday attire for fear of people judging me on them? That's just silly.

dress is handmade by me, socks are c/o Sock Dreams, blouse is thrifted, shoes are from Rubi Shoes and I forget where I got my necklace from.

I hope that you're all having a wonderful day,

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Norman Rockwell

This dress made me feel like I was really going for the whole "I'm dressing up as a little kid look". I think the whole outfit ended up a little too cutsey even for my tastes, haha. Though I can probably still just get away with it at 21, and the whole deal of my blog is "dress however the heck you want to dress and don't let nobody tell you otherwise", I'd like to think that my style has matured just a little bit since I was 15. Or 5. Next time I style this dress, I think I'll ditch the knee-high socks, mary janes and headband, in any case, and add some chunky black boots and a light blue headscarf.

Here's some gratuitous photos of me acting like a little kid, anyway.

dress is c/o Choies (artwork by Norman Rockwell), socks and necklace are from Clear It, shoes are from Yeswalker.

Photos are by Ana Andrés.

This dress is the last sponsored item sent to me after making the decision to forgo my possibly more unethical sponsors (which also shows you how long things take to ship to Australia!) that I have been obligated to blog about. And in case there was any confusion over why you might still see c/o's from those companies in my outfit lists, I'm hardly going to throw away all the clothes that I currently own (that would be more than wasteful and worse than buying them in the first place), and I believe that the readers of this blog are able to make their own decisions about whether or not to make purchases from such stores. So I will continue to provide a link where the item is still available (this dress is out of stock now anyway, so that's why there's no link up there!)

Today I wanted to share an awesome quote from Tim Minchin. (If you don't know who Tim Minchin is, go and educate yourself - he is absolutely hilarious and offensive, but he also makes you think. My favourite ever song/act of his is Storm).

p.s. I posted a giveaway earlier today. You should check it out.