Some late holiday wear!

This post is a 3 for 1! First up, my Thanksgiving sweater:

So, last Spring my family suffered a devastating loss when my we lost my cousin Jesse at the age of 17 in a car accident. It's still very painful; that kid was my pride and joy. I mentioned his passing in a post on here and I'm now remembering that someone in the comments suggested that I could possibly do a refashion to honor him. (Thank you!) I took on that challenge.
I wasn't sure what I would make, but I started collecting scraps of old clothing from the thrifts that made me think of him. It took a while but I eventually found a shirt with red sneakers. I knew I wanted sneakers (preferably red) to be my focal point. I basically just added "patches" to a comfortable, long cardigan sweater. I didn't want to go overboard, so I didn't use that much. I finished just in time for Thanksgiving.

The pictures are lousy because I took them at night after my aunt texted me a request for some pics to put on Facebook. It's still a work in progress, but I'm so glad that I wore it. His parents and sister were absolutely thrilled with it! Do drop in and read the full post here.
Next is my ugly Christmas sweater that was neither a sweater, nor ugly. It's a sweater dress; and it's got too much '80s charm for it to be considered ugly. Maybe just a little tacky. Not much to tell you, it's a pretty basic re-do. Here's the before:

Here's the after:

Finally, here's the New Year's dress. I wanted it to be more of a Christmas-y dress but to be honest, it doesn't matter what I call it because I didn't end up wearing it any where! It kept snowing. Also, I had no fancy parties. Here's the only "before" picture I could find:

A silky '80s dress for when Grandma was fancying up. I'm sure it looked lovely on her. I did my usual paring down of a "too much" dress like this one. After taking it in, the pleats were sticking out, and I actually took the time to sew them down.
I needed to hem the length when I just didn't feel like it. Maybe a slit would work? Nope, not really. So I put it on and stood in front of the mirror with a few pins. I came up with this:

It's a weird, side bustle sort of thing! I gathered up a little material and safety pinned it up. Then I used another safety pin to pin that bow over the first one and keep it a little more secure.
I know it's a little odd-ball, maybe a bit too much going on with it, but I was so pleased with my slash-and-pin job that I slapped on some makeup and took some pictures, before I even ironed down the seams. I kept my boots on, too.

See the full post on my blog Craft, Thrift, or Die!