Kid's Kitty Hat Refashion

Even though winter is nearing an end here in Minnesota, it still gets chilly out. We love our stocking caps and wearing them any time of year is often seen in Minnesota fashion.

After a quick trip to the dollar store and coming across a cute little striped stocking cap, I knew I needed to refashion it to have kitty ears and give to my niece. Full details here.

Simply cut out cat ear shapes from scrap fabric, open the seams on the stocking cap, resew with the cat ears in place. Easy as that!

Get the full details and see more Refashion Inspiration at Scratch and Stitch.

Recycled jean jacket made from old jeans

I made this recycled jacket, for my tween, out of old jeans from my teen. I love how I could breathe new life into jeans that were sitting in my "refashion pile" (doesn't everyone have one of those?!).

I used a pattern I have for a button down shirt and made some changes.

The back was made by sewing scraps of fabric (using water soluble fabric to hold it all together). 

For more details, hop on over to my blog: Falafel and the Bee.

T-shirt to Girl's Solar Dress

Sorry I don't have a before picture on this cute little girls dress dress as I made it before joining this site.   It is made out of a thrifted 50 cent T-shirt, some fabric scraps, elastic and bias tape.

If you are just getting your feet wet on refashioning, using simple patterns can help get you more comfortable. This dress was made using a free pattern found online for a "Solar" dress.   For more detail, please visit my blog here.

Happy crafting!

American Girl Doll Dress Refashion Tutorial

Jen here from the Diary of a MadMama blog.

I wanted to show you a quick and super simple refashion I did recently for my daughter's American Girl Doll.

I started out with a 49-cent infant's vest that I found at my local thrift shop.
After taking it in at the shoulders and side-seams, it made the perfect little sweater dress for an 18" doll.

If you'd like to see the full tutorial, check out the full post at Diary of a MadMama.

Have a great day!
~Jen

Re-using adult clothes into kid's clothes

Hello, Magda E. from House of Estrela here today. 

I still have a couple of refashions to share from last month. Refashioning adult clothes into kids clothes is what I do most. Not because it is easy, but because it is the most pratical thing to do. I have a lot of clothes, and kids grow out of their pretty soon. 

This time, I have something to share that I have refashioned for my niece. 

I took a cardigan (or try on doing one many years ago, that failed and kept there waiting for a use) of mine and resized it to fit my niece. 

I also grabbed a pair of women's shorts, totally deconstructed it to get use of the fabric and sewn her a new pair of skinny jeans (shorts actually).

read all about it HERE.

#RockYourScar T-Shirt Refashion

This week, February 7th - 14th, is Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness week.  It is special to me because my daughter was born with 2 serious CHD's called Tetralogy of the Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia.  She has survived two heart surgeries and faces more throughout her future.  Each year, those with special hearts celebrate and rally for awareness during this week.  An amazing CHD organization, called Mended Little Heart, is having a #RockYourScar photo contest.

Of course, the crazy crafter wheels in my brain started turning as soon as I read about this photo contest.  I wanted to make my daughter a shirt that would show off her scar, but not be provocative in anyway.  I also didn't want to buy anything new.  It was a perfect opportunity for a refashion.  I found this almost too small heart shirt that had a rip in the collar.  I thought it might be cool to just simply sew a zipper into the center where her scar is, so she could show it off in the picture. 

I put some interfacing on inside of the shirt, then cut down a slit for the zipper.  Pinned it all into place and top stitched over it.  I fixed the hole in the collar, too.

Here is how the shirt came out:

Here's how the photo came out!

I would love it if you would vote for Aubrey!!!

You can vote while you are logged into Facebook here: http://bit.ly/1ggzY3a)

I, of course, couldn't stop at the shirt and I had to make the CHD Awareness Ribbon you see in the background, too.  

CHD.

I use to know nothing about what those three letters stood for, but now I know all to well.

Congenital Heart Defect.

CHD.

What they have come to mean to me is …

Courage.  Hope.  Destiny.

This week we get to celebrate the courage of these heart warriors.

We get to spread hope to those just meeting theirs.

We get to help shape the destiny of these special hearts by spreading awareness, to find a cure.

Thank you for reading!

<3

Sew an animal hat and scarf from a hooded towel set

My kids were each given a fuzzy hooded towel with adorable animal faces, ears, paws and tails. Such cuteness! The towels were 100% polyester. Wha...?! Since when does polyester absorb moisture? Isn't that the point of a towel?

Luckily these towels were perfect candidates for making toddler hats with faces and ears and matching scarves with paws!

These things just crack me up! They'll be gifts for other little ones we know which is why the white one is small for my guy.

I give full instructions in this post on my blog, but in a nutshell I used a hat that fits to cut out and sew the flattened hood into the right shape and size.

Then I cut off the paws, cut the towel into two strips, and sewed them together with the paws at the end.

There you have cute little hat and scarf sets, a sort of animal (and kid!) friendly callback to fur caps and stoles.

And your kid will feel like he's dressing up for Halloween every day! What fun!

Like I said before, for more details and a complete photo tutorial, take a peek here!

Boy's Shorts

Hey! Magda E. from House of Estrela here. Still showing you my refashions for the Refashion Month Series last month, today I will bring you a pair of shorts I did for my nephew. 

I used a pair of adult jeans for the main shorts and used a piece from a skull printed bag of mine I was wearing for years, but felt terrible hard to part with. 

The bonus? My nephew, who's 8 and generally doesn't like much what I make him anymore, loved this ones. 

read all about it HERE. 

Repurpose girl peplum top & cardigan

Hello all!

Do you like tee shirt? It's a favorite item of mine to do a refashion project. Since I can not easily found the source of good knit to sew for my little girl. The good tee is a best canvas for me.
In this top, I've start with a simple white tee in size XL. Using a Pippa peplum top pattern and personalize it with tulle skirt part, gold trim and sequin bow. Here is what I got for my girl.

Upcycled pippa peplum top

Tulle skirt part gives it a good spin

Fit for play time

Another top is made from my good old cardigan. Using V-neck cardigan pattern, I added lace trim and collar for girly sense.

Up-cycled the V-neck cardigan

More detail at my blog http://anapprenticehousewife.blogspot.com/2014/01/pr-sew-along-week-3-refashion-challenge.html.
Happy refashion for you!

Red Velvet Jacket

Hey! Magda E. from House of Estrela here. This past month I have hosted a refashioning series in my blog, but not only I had lots of guests sharing their inspirational works with us, I have also achieved my goal of at least 4 refashion items done during the month. I could have done more if I didn't get a huge flu and been in bed for days. 

The first things I did was turning this pair of red velvet pants...

... into a new jacket for my daughter.

And oh boy, do I love it? Read more about it HERE.

Girl outfit from old dresses

I recently purchased a kwik sew pattern with a view to making a few things for my niece.





I started off with  a few daggy floral dresses given to me for fabric, like this one.

Here is the finished product, a cute pants and top outfit.

 Here is my son James having fun with the top.....

The zip up sweater

My toddler is in love with a PBS show were the children wear a red sweater with a trolly. I need to make this for him.

1. Found the red sweater that I could alter.

2. I found a zipper that was just an inch shorter than the sweater.

3. I cut the sweater down the front.

4. I sewed the zipper on to the sweater.

5. Sewed the patch onto the sweater.

TaDa a perfect sweater!

Saving toddler pants II and onesies

Just like I did for my little cousin's jeans, I had a costumer asked me to same his little girl's pants. They weren't fitting in lenght, but they were perfectly fitting in the waist and hips. So, again, like I've shared in my latest post, I turned them into shorts and everyone's happy. all I had to do was cut off the legs, and hem. 

Also, my little girl isn't using diapers anymore, so onesies aren't practical for her to take off on her own. In the other hand, the weather's been cold and she didn't have many undershirts to wear. One of these days, I was just putting those onesies aside to keep them for the next baby, when I suddently thought that maybe I could cut them. I mean, she has so many, her sibling wouldn't be out of them anyway. 

I only used the white part of the adult's shirt for two onesies. one is not in the photo because she was actually wearing it. I just wanted to share the idea. the two other onesies on top are still waiting for the same treatment. 

So, I cut 4 of them, the idea was to attach a piece of knit from other shirts to make them longer... so they aren't always out of her pants/shorts/skirts... It worked just fine and again, everyone is happy. 

I know these aren't very interesting refashions, but I promise there are a few good ones on the way. meanwhile, if you allow me, I'd like to invite you all to follow and if you'd like, to sew along the series I am hosting in my blog all through the month. January Refashion Month, where a lot of guests are sharing their best refashions, tips and tutorials. 

Toddler Boy Vest to Toddler Girl Vest

Happy New Year everyone! I'm more determined than ever to not waste any self-made garments that my kids had outgrown. I have been refashioning many items that my boy has outgrown to items for my toddler girl. It just took a little scrap of ribbed knit and some regular sewing thread to transform the vest from this boring boy fleece vest:

To this girly vest:

Yay for the 3 R's: Reuse, Recycle and Refashion!!

http://lovenicky-froufrou.blogspot.ca/

From Tablecloth to Christmas Outfits

Just before Christmas, I found a wonderful green small tablecloth with a pattern of green foliage and orange flowers for $3 at St Vinnies. I thought it would make a great playsuit for my daughter, Mae-Mae and started making it based on the pattern I made for the playsuit below.

Only problem was, I had made the pattern back I'm April for a jersey fabric so using a cotton fabric 7 months later was not going to work. Unfortunately, I only thought of this after I had cut the bodice and the pants pieces and I had wasted quite a bit as I used part of the fabric as a faux border. A refashion was required, the bodice was way too short, even for a crop, so I added a peplum and turned it into a peplum crop top and I added a waistband to the pants (flat at the front, elastic for fit at the back). I kept it sleeveless and did not add the neck piece to make it almost a boat neckline. I was lucky that although I didn't have any green or orange bias binding on hand, I did have some hot pink bias and it really went well with the fabric. In the end the outfit turned out really lovely and perfect for our hot Christmas.

I had another tablecloth on hand which I had planned to make myself a skirt but on close inspection there were quite a lot of marks which did not come out in the wash, so there was not a lot of usable length. Perfect though for another cropped peplum outfit for Mae-Mae's slightly older sister, Daf. I didn't want to grade, so I took the pattern I had made for Daf for her Taronga Zoo Curtain Refashion, used the cullotees as is and adjusted the base bodice. I think it turned out really nice and I had just enough to get some really nice placements of the floral designs.

The girls loved their Christmas outfits and wore them to most of their Christmas events, although I'm not sure what I prefer, the covert outfits of this year or the overt outfits of the year before (Merry Refashioned Christmas 2012). 

This one is not strictly a refashion but it's the same pattern and the fabric came from the same thrift store. It is an Ikea print (although not one I have seen in our local store) and a bit of a brave one, with Lobsters, prawns, fruit and flowers on the design, so maybe the original buyer couldn't work out what to do with it.

This one is definitely not a refashion but its so cute I couldn't resist including it, not sure why the reindeers don't have mouths though!

Girl's Christmas Dress Recon

Hello all !

Can't believe this is 2014 !!!  Hope everyone has had wonderful holidays.  Mine was very busy but productive.  I had time to sew a lot but mostly accessories.  But I managed to whip up a reconstruction for my niece.

I started with red jersey tops:

And made this simple cute red dress for my darling 7 year old niece:

Isn't she precious ?

She loved it !

More information on my blog Sewliltime.

Peace

Claudia

"Better Late Than Never Jacket"

 A year ago I promised my co-worker Tom, that I would create a denim jacket refashion for his 4 year old daughter Amber. It has taken a year to find the right thrifted child's jacket. The butterfly painting I have had for approx six months and again this was a thrift store find. Tomorrow I return to work after a two week break and I will be delighted that I have finally fulfilled my promise to Tom.

So here is the pretty painting that I found in a thrift store. This I will carefully cut away from the picture frame. Then I cut the painting to fit the centre back panel of the denim jacket.

The jacket cost $3.25 from Bayswater Salvos.

Here is the back before it is transformed.

To the front I sew a couple of ornate hearts on the pocket flaps. This is to create a bit of interest and detail.

Close up of the hearts which I sew from underneath.

Here is the completed back panel. To protect and hide the edges of the canvas, I sew bias binding with a zig zag stitch. The jacket is now complete and ready for young Amber.

For more fun ideas please come and visit me at Penelope Hanger Refashions.