A deceptively complicated refashion

Recently over at Refashion Co-Op, the editors decided it would be fun to occasionally have community challenges based on a certain theme. The first one is going on this week, and the theme is lace. Now, I've said it before, but I'll repeat myself: I'm generally not a lace girl. But I did have a top on hand that fit the bill that I've been meaning to work on anyway, so it was a good time to join in on the fun!

Here's the original top, as modeled by Donna. An all-over stretch lace, kind of peasanty top that I picked up at the thrift store one day. My thought was that it would make a nice layering top, being in a rather neutral color. But it had some issues.

Namely being that the thing was rather big on me. I'm wearing it over another top here, and the only thing keeping it from falling off of my shoulders is that I'm holding my arm up to do the mirror shot thing. Which made it annoying to wear even layered over a camisole, since the straps were always showing.

My original thought was to resize and fully line it, so I could eliminate the camisole altogether. Which made this a deceptively complicated thing to refashion, since I had to almost entirely deconstruct it first!  I basically just used the original pieces as a pattern and lined it with some jersey knit. (The leftover remnant pieces from this top, to be precise, though I used the wrong side for the coloring.)

I realized partway through that I had no idea how to reattach the peasanty sleeves for it to still work, so I ended up making this into a camisole. Adding the lining was probably a waste of time due to this, since in order for the bust seam to sit right, I'd have to wear another one underneath (it's loooooow by my standards!) Though it might be ok to wear it a bit higher under another shirt.

I do like how the straps turned out, though. I basically just took a scrap of the jersey and a scrap of the lace and sandwiched it around a piece of regular old elastic, then zig-zagged it while I stretched it.

Since I used one sleeve to make the straps, I had one sleeve left over. So I squared up the ends, serged it into a tube, and sewed the ends onto another piece of elastic...

...to make a headband! The fabric is stretchy enough that I think I'll be able to avoid my usual headband issue. (They tend to squeeze behind my ears and make me end up with a headache.) And it's a neutral enough color that I'll probably get some good use out of it!

So since I did all of this (minus the deconstructing) yesterday, I guess I can say that Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday is back!

On a few random notes:

• 
  It's good to see Project Runway back! Despite my annoyance last season at Gretchen winning, and my annoyance in the first episode for cutting one of the ladies whose style I liked so far in favor of the one who was putting everyone down right from the start, I've been enjoying it so far. (I'm not-so-secretly rooting for Anya, despite her lack of sewing experience, because I actually know someone who knows her! One of my friends from church grew up in Trinidad and went to school with her!)
• I think I need this pattern. Seriously. This is the coolest knit dress pattern I've seen in awhile, and I have a piece of fabric in the stash that I think is the perfect amount to make it. Therefore, I need this pattern to bust my stash. So there.
• Several of you probably know this already, but the BurdaStyle book release date is up! As is a picture of the cover on Amazon. (It's hard to tell from the size of the picture, even when enlarging....but I'm pretty sure the jacket third from the left in the bottom row is mine!) That reminds me, I really need to get my studio page over there updated...

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #7: It's baaaack!

 Though, technically speaking, I made this one on Sunday/Tuesday. Just didn't take the pictures till today. But it's still Wednesday, so it counts!

Anywhoo..so I have this birthday thing coming up on Saturday. The big 3-0. And to be honest, I haven't really been looking forward to it. The last several years have been kind of rough on a personal level, and there's so many things that I wish had happened in my life by this point that didn't. Sometimes it's really hard not to let that bum me out. But I do have some really great friends and family who are ensuring that pretty much every moment of my weekend is filled with fun things, so I should have a good time. One of the events is that several of my closest friends are taking me out for dinner in Philadelphia (a pretty big deal, since it's about an hour away when traffic is good for some of us.) And so of course I wanted something new to wear. Or at least new to me. (Prepare to be bombarded with pictures.)

I had this slinky polyester wrap-type dress I picked up awhile back on one of my thrifting excursions. I liked the print. And the colors. But it was pretty much unwearable as is, because this thing was huuuuuge on me. You can't really tell so much in this picture, except for extreme bagginess in the armpit area...

So how's this, now that the wrap is undone? Toga party, anyone?

Plus it had this ridiculously long tie on one side--after several attempts, I still couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work with the 3-times-as-short second tie. Because wrapping it around a couple times just didn't seem to cut it.

One last before shot on my dummy, so you can get an idea of the bagginess of this thing.

I ended up taking it in several inches on both sides--the construction looked fairly simple, since it was one seam up the sleeves and down the side. I managed to work it so that I could keep the original sleeve hem intact, with perhaps just a slight bit of flaring. That's ok. I like flared sleeves. But here you can get an idea of just how much I had to take it in. Of course, it ended up being more challenging than I thought, mainly due to the mock wrap section. I ended up sewing it in wrong the first time, and the dress was hopelessly twisted when I tried to turn it right-side out! So I had to rip that part of it out and resew that side.

I also ended up chopping off a significant portion of that extra-long tie (which happens to be the perfect length for a skinny headband!), and about 8" from the hem. I don't know where dinner is going to be (they won't tell me), but my best friend said nice top and nice pants, so I wanted more of a tunic-style thing. I'd get more wear out of that than a dress anyway. So here's what I ended up with:

So there you have it--a tunic that looks not very different at all from the original dress! But I'm sure it will fit me much better. No pictures of it on me yet, of course, but hopefully I will have some after Saturday. So I can update this post with pics later if people want.

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #6: Love is all you need.

I have to admit that this is the recon I'm most excited about since I started this little weekly tradition! It's also the most ambitious Wednesday project to date, so this post will be a little picture-heavy. Consider yourself warned...

Last summer (as in 2009), I was at a downstate Goodwill with my friend Nicole, looking for materials for what would become last fall's Ren Faire costume. And I also found this shirt....dress...thing. I'm pretty sure it's a dress, but it was a bit wonky in spots.

Like, for instance, the neckline that was only semi-attached. It was supposed to hook over to the one side, but the eye was missing and it was half-ripped off the other side when I got it.

And the extreme amount of flare for what was a somewhat stiff material--it just didn't have the drapability that this sort of silhouette would require.

And, well, the hem was pretty uneven too. And though you can't see them, there were some dark stains on it that just didn't come out in the wash.

I'm thinking the original was homemade, actually...for one thing, there were no tags. And the seam finishing definitely makes me think that it was a sewing project. I didn't notice this until after I'd already bought it, because of everything that was awesome about this dress. Namely the embroidery around the sleeves and the neck. And though it's not my norm, I kind of fell in love with the spicy pumpkin-y color. Perfect for autumn. And the fabric has a really nice sheen to it that makes me think it just might be at least part silk. (I'd have to do a burn test on the scraps to know for sure.) Plus it's fully sort of lined, sort of underlined with some cotton-ish gauze stuff. So whoever made this definitely put some time and thought into it, and I can appreciate that. And it made me get later-era Beatles songs stuck in my head, so that's never a bad thing. (You know, after they started bringing Indian influences into their music. See, it's relevant!)

I didn't have to do a ton in the way of tweaking to bring its greatness from potential to reality, actually, though of course it took longer than I thought it should have. I'll blame that on the lining, since that meant I had to hem twice! So I ended up chopping over a foot of fabric off of the bottom (I'm pretty sure I got all the stains off in the process, too!), adding 3" slits to the bottom of the sleeves (which were a little too tight around my elbows for comfort), and altering the neckline a tiny bit. And the results:

Ta-da! Doesn't it look so much nicer at this shorter length? And you can see what I ended up doing with the neckline-- I detached it enough on the tearing-off side that I could chop a bit off, fold it under and stitch it, then I sewed this down permanently all around. So it's high enough that I can wear this without a camisole, but low enough that I can still get it on and off over my head without having to add a zipper or anything.

The sleeve slit--which also counteracted the embroidery not quite lining up right in the original seam! How convenient. (And much more comfortable!)

It was still a bit loose-fitting for my taste, so I took some of the fabric from the part I chopped off and made tiebacks to cinch it in. It gives it kind of a nice peplum effect, I think.

Sooooo much better-looking on me. (Just please ignore the messy room. Sure, I could have worked on cleaning it today, but then this would still be sitting in my bin of stuff to reconstruct, and we can't have that now, can we?) Besides, I like to think that whoever originally stitched this up would be happy to know that their creation was being put to good use again.

So now that the weather is supposed to be all nasty and rainy again tomorrow, I think this shirt will definitely be on the agenda once I get home from work. Along with a big, steamy cup of tea-- spiced chai would fit the vibe nicely, don't you think? And some pumpkin cookies, if I had them, but I think that's going to have to wait until Friday since I'm supposed to bring a dessert to the movie night my friends are having and I have yet to make them.

(One last note, for Scruffy Badger-- thanks for the tagging! And I'll get it up as soon as I can--still coming up with things to add to the post!!)

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #5: And all I feel is black and white...

This blouse is one that I found awhile ago at Goodwill. There's a lot of things I've loved about it--the corset-look of the waist, the contrast of the feminine styling with the kind of business-looking stripes, and the fact that it almost fits me perfectly.



Not to mention that I always feel very stylish in this-- in fact, several years ago when some of my friends had a Zoolander-themed party, in which we were supposed to dress like supermodels, this was the shirt I wore. (We had a photoshoot as part of the party, so that's where the pic is from..)

See? (Wow, I look really tall in this pic!)

Of course, you can also see what I did NOT love about the shirt in this picture--the length of the sleeves. I think they were meant to be long, but they hit in this weird spot of my arms where they were about an inch or two too short to be long, but waaaaaay too long to be 3/4. So I decided that, in order for me to continue to feel comfortable wearing this in public, something had to be done. I know I have long arms, but this is kind of ridiculous.

My original thought was to remove this extra-long cuff and sew it back on, a couple of inches shorter.

That, and there were several places where the hem had obviously come out and needed to be repaired anyway.

What actually ended up happening was I took the cuffs off, stitched the first one back on, tried it on and discovered that the sleeves still hit in a really oddball spot on me. So I ended up chopping about 5 inches more off of the cuff-less sleeves to bring it closer to my elbow. And then had to leave those cuffs off altogether because the circumference wasn't quite enough to accommodate a wider part of the sleeve.

So here's what it looks like now:

I think that's definitely going to be an improvement on me. Now hopefully the weather will get warmer again, at least long enough for me to wear it at least once this season!


**Song lyric from "Black and White" by Sarah McLachlan.

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #4: For the Price of a Cup of Tea...

A couple days late on the post, because I just did NOT have time on either Wednesday or Thursday. So this was the project of the week. I got this shirt for my mom for Christmas a couple of years ago (I'm generally in charge of the gifts to her from my dad as well, since I'm better at picking out stuff she likes. Plus then he doesn't have to shop as much.) I couldn't resist this shirt for her, because she loves tea. Unfortunately, the only size they had in the entire store was extra-large. And, well, my mom wears a small. She wore it a couple of times anyway, but then she asked me if I could take it in for her. I needed something quick, and I actually have a good color of thread in the serger, so it seemed like a good time.(Sorry it took so long, Mom!)

To give you an idea of just how much bigger this was....this is underneath one of Mom's best-fitting t-shirts. I think I probably ended up taking in at least 8 inches out of this one all the way around!

But it was just your basic t-shirt resizing. (You can see how much better it fits on Donna now!) This one's not 100% done, since I still have to fix the hems where I ripped them out near the side seams and sleeve seams. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do that, since they're that serged-looking hem and neither my serger nor my sewing machine can replicate that. So I may end up hand-stitching them down, since that'll be the best way to keep the fabric from stretching anyway. But hopefully I can finish that up soon....if nothing else, there's always WRW next week.

In other news, I think I may be jinxed when it comes to sewing outfits to wear to relatives' weddings! Now, this one isn't being nearly as problematic as the dress for my brother's wedding last year, but I'm still having issues with it. I realize this one doesn't look bad on Donna, but you can kind of see on the left side where it's pulling in at the bottom of the dummy's leg...yeah, that's what it's doing all across my hips. Not pretty. The reason for this was that I had to switch patterns from my original idea, due to one-way printing on the fabric and an extra-wide selvedge that was going to make it not work well. So I pulled out one of the Simplicity Project Runway patterns that I've had sitting around for awhile. (Hmm, apparently this one's out of print now. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign...) I figured this one would be ok, since it's one of the few knit fabric dress patterns I have that has sleeves. As it turns out, I was misled a bit by the technical drawing. I thought the bodice was going to be a lot longer than it was, but when I pulled it on, it turns out it was an empire-waisted dress instead of the bodice ending closer to the waist like I'd thought. (Maybe it's supposed to go to the waist, but it sure doesn't on me!) I've learned from experience that gathered empire-waists just make me look pregnant--not the look I want to go for. So then I added a panel and dropped the skirt down to the waist. When I got it down to there, the gathering was just not working because it was still giving me more of a belly than I have. So I tried to narrow the skirt enough to get that out, and ended up taking out too much. Rats.

So I'm giving up on this one as a dress, and trying to salvage it into a top. I'd probably get more wear out of it that way anyway. But I don't have enough time to make another dress now, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and go shopping. Maybe I'll have better luck with my next upcoming family wedding in April...either that, or maybe I need to rethink my plan of making my own wedding dress if I ever get married myself!

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #3: Too Early To Say

Funny how this themed weekday thing makes me want to put a song with every week... though it's hardly relevant to sewing or the project, I guess Innocence Mission gets it this week. Anyway. I'm a bit short on time today since I have a lesson shortly, just enough time to eat dinner before the next one, and am leaving immediately after the second to go to a friend's Lia Sophia party tonight. (You wouldn't believe how many of those things you  get invited to when one of your friends sells it...) So I have the pattern that I'm using as a starting point printing out, and this pile of fake polyester shantung that I've been ripping apart for the last two days. (That white line is from the iron-on hem tape. Which apparently would not have held anything in place, so I'm glad I actually hemmed the original dress. I've decided I'm going to make a vest. The design details are still being worked out in my head, but I'm hoping to start it shortly.

I do have something finished to show, though!

Yes, that's right, I finished the sweater from last week. Spent some time on Friday sewing on the buttons and making the thread loops, and then on Monday I took some chunks out with the serger. (About 2 inches on each side!) I'm still thinking this might look best with one of those wide elastic belts over it to keep it cinched in, but I still think it's a pretty big improvement over the original.

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday #2: Sweater Song

If you want to destroy my sweater, whoa-oh-oh... Anyway, this one has actually been in progress for some time, and isn't entirely finished yet. You may remember this sweater pic that I posted some time ago-- I picked this up at Goodwill last winter or somewhere in that vicinity, because I wanted a black cardigan I could throw over top of things for an extra layer of warmth. Well, this turned out to be completely impractical for that purpose, and I ended up finding a much more suitable one on the clearance rack at Kohl's. So this one ended up getting turned into one of my sewing experiments.

This is where it's at now. Took some time to get here, because in the midst of chopping it up and serging off all of the raw edges to keep it from really turning into the Sweater Song (if ever someone decided to pull some thread as I walked away) was the time over the summer when my serger was in the shop. (Actually, working on this was when I realized there was something wrong with it--and when I was sewing on the sleeves yesterday, I found a piece from one of the needles I broke then. Glad I noticed before I put it on!) Plus there's been handsewing. Which is basically what I worked on today.  The basic construction is done, but I'm thinking I'm going to have to take it back to the serger and take in some  at the sleeve seams and side, at least where the horizontal bands are. It's kind of oddly poofy because, even with the serger, things got a little more stretched out than I'd hoped. But if that serger trick works, all I really need to do is add some buttons and loops and this will be done. I like the concept, especially since the original sweater had these fun zig-zaggy hems and I've managed to preserve those, so hopefully I can get the execution to match! (But I'm hoping I can take said sweater and buttons to the family gathering on Saturday so this can be done before the next Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday. Mainly so I can find something else to demolish!

Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday!

Or, "How to Save A (T-shirt's) Life". (I figured The Fray would be appropriate for a sewing project.)

So, to ramble about real life for a moment, I've found myself in a bit of an in-flux work situation--my hours at the garden center have been cut (as have everyone else's), and there's a pretty good chance I'm going to have to find another job after this school year is up. Possibly before that. Possibly even along the lines of something full-time and just do what flute teaching I can on the side. And to top it off, things haven't been going well with my once-a-week band teaching job--there's already been a lot of really frustrating stuff that has happened, even before my first day this year (which was today). So I'm going into this year almost certain that it will be my last, regardless of whether I try to find part-time or full-time work. Either way, I'll be more flexible if I have my Wednesdays back. But in the meantime, I'm kind of stuck.

So I had the crazy idea in the shower last night to give myself something to look forward to about this particular day of the week, and since I have only two students in the after-school time, the idea for "Wardrobe Refashion Wednesday" was born. While cutting out is one of my least favorite parts of sewing, and I'm not a fan of seam-ripping my own work, there's something oddly therapeutic about taking implements of sewing destruction to other people's stuff. Plus then I can knock my pile of clothes to reconstruct down a bit. I probably won't do this every week, since I'll occasionally have things like band concerts and such, and I probably won't finish a project in its entirety every week, but it'll be a fun way to get me through the year and take out some stress on the poor, unsuspecting fabrics.

So without further ado, here's tonight's project!

I've had this shirt for awhile, and it was one of my favorites. But it ended up with a pen in the washing machine one day and got ink spots on the white. (Not too many on the front, but the back was pretty bad.) And then the attempts to get rid of the stain resulted in several largeish bleach stains on the black. (Which you can't see too well in this picture, but trust me, they're there.) And of course I couldn't bear to part with it, so I kept it in the refashion pile. So I decided to tackle this one tonight since I already had black thread in the serger, my mom recently handed off some black jersey knit sheets that my brother didn't take with him when he got married, and I had the realization that I was kind of lacking in casual items to wear for Self-Stitched September.

This one was pretty simple to do, though slightly more time-consuming than I anticipated....

After I ripped enough of the shirt apart, I pinned the pieces onto the sheet to use as a pattern. (Bonus-- the hem on the sheet was a decent enough width that I didn't have to actually hem anything--just rip it out enough to do the seams and then close them up!

I've made baseball-style t's before, and they're great. So much easier to construct with all of the straight lines. So I basically joined the pieces at the shoulders as laid out here, then stitched up the side seams and added a bias-ish strip cut from the sheet as a new neckline binding. Easy peasy.

And now I have a self-stitched shirt to bum around in some weekend day this month! (Even though it's pretty much identical to the old shirt, minus the back is now black instead of white.) Perhaps for this Saturday's picnic, since the weather is predicted to drop from its current highs of 90s to down in the 70s by then. After today, that'll feel chilly!