Urban Tree Hugging the Ziggy Way

When Olu from Needle and Ted contacted me to participate in the JUST ADD DETAIL challenge, I was equal parts excited and nervous.  The basis of the challenge is to take the Ziggy top by MADEIT and sass it up in your own style.  This is where the nerves kicked in because the sky is the limit with what can be done.  I almost didn’t sign up because my mind was a complete blank when I sat down to sketch ideas.  Nothing, nada, zilch.  A terrifying position to be in when you are amongst super talented ladies!  In the end, I finished my coffee and signed up knowing that something would come up eventually.

Before I get ahead of myself, you can get the Ziggy top for yourself at a 20% discount for this week only.  The pattern is very well written with lots of pictures and 2 different ways of sewing the front and back pieces together.  There is also a detailed tutorial on painting your Ziggy.  I  have to try that for the next time.

Back to my Ziggy 🙂  When the ideas finally came to me, they were all in a jumble.  My first plan was to sew up some color blocking at angles.  This ideas was quickly dismissed because my serger is busted and I didn’t feel like dealing with that many knit seams on my knit eating machine.  The next idea was a linen top insetting lace at the shoulders and possibly on the sleeves like epaulettes.  This idea would be perfect to use some of my coveted Liberty prints to make cute pockets.  I set out to find the right lace but unfortunately nothing caught my eye.

Then I had the brilliant idea to dig through my clothes that have been hanging out in the donate pile.  Surely there would be lace there.  No luck in the lace department, but I did spot a fun tee shirt that I “outgrew” (Read: exceeded in the horizontal direction).  In retrospect, I really wish I took photos before cutting into it.  I just got so excited.  The simple message on the shirt, “it’s a beautiful day”, always makes me smile and I was delighted to be able to give the shirt a new life.  The background of the image is an out of focus field of flowers.  I immediately thought of the amazing fat quarter of grass print that I was hoarding.  I wanted to tie in the feeling of the blades of grass.  Let me know if you think I managed it!

I reused the existing collar of the original shirt by cutting it above the seam.  The sleeves are cut from an old green tee shirt that shrunk uncomfortably around my neck.  I cut teardrop shapes out of the sleeves and used the grass print to sew crisscrossing straps.  The tricky part was sewing the straps between the sleeve and the knit binding I made from the remnants of the shirt.

With the newly up cycled shirt we were feeling pretty green.  The only thing left to do was to hunt out some green outside in the urban jungle of Century City.

The first disappointing attempt brought us to lawn furniture and plastic flowers.  We knew that there had to be more to see so the hunt continued.

On the way we met some interesting wildlife.

The turtle (or is it a tortoise?), told us the ask the elephant.

Although the elephant knew where to find ice cream, he didn’t know where to find green and sent us on a quest to ask the komodo dragon.

Mr. Dragon gave us a ride and invited us to curl our toes into the artificial turf but that wasn’t quite what we had in mind.  We took a little rest.

We stopped to ask the little poppies whispering nearby.

The poppy told us to look high . . .

and low..

The littlest among us grew weary.

We had to stop for some sustenance to continue our worthy mission.

Then lo and behold, we discovered the green was right behind us!

Thanks for coming along on our urban tree hugging hunt for green!

You can get your own copy of the Ziggy to sass up with a 20% discount for 1 week only. Thanks to Olu for inviting me for another fun ride.  And thanks to you my reader for sticking through to the end of this lengthly post.  I hope you were entertained!  Don’t forget to jump back to check out the amazingly talented contestants.  Or you can directly click onto the links below.

• kimmie sew crazy
• nearest the pin
• glitter and wit
• climbing the willow
• my cozy co
• la folie sewing booth
• huisje boompje boefjes
• made-by-sara
• fliegfederfrei
• call ajaire
• our chez nous
• creative needle and threads
• nat and gang
• sewing sober
• made by toya
• diorella-n

*The Ziggy top pattern was provided to me as part of the Just Add Detail Challenge, but all opinions and alterations are my own.