Transformation de jupe

A l'occasion d'un petit duo recyclage j'ai transformé une jupe que je ne mettais plus depuis un certain temps...........

Et voici la jupe ....après !

Et me voici avec une petite jupe pour le printemps. 

N'hésitez pas à venir en voir plus Ici 

A très bientôt, Elisa Elisa 

Bedskirt into House & Town skirt

Some Bedskirts are made of wonderful fabric.   Like this one from Westpoint Stevens- it was all denim, and only cost a few dollars at our thrift store!  This project was fun, and a bit challenging, as there were several seams to work around.   The color was perfect, and the skirt lasted my Mom a good long time. =)

Two for One Refashion: Recycling a $10 Prom Dress into a Pleated Skirt and Cocktail Dress

I scored this $10 Jessica McClintock prom dress at the thrift store.  I liked the mermaid tail, but I didn't like it attached to the dress.  I chopped it off and made a pleated skirt with it.

I made 6 pleats and spaced them 5" apart.  I hid an invisible zipper in one of the pleats.

For the rest of the dress, I simply finished the hem.  For a step by step tutorial on how to refashion a $10 prom dress into a pleated skirt, visit my blog Trevor Loves Mommy.

Tuxedo Skirt Refashion

Hello Refashion Co-op. This is Chickie from I Can Work With That. I love refashioning clothes. I have been a fan of Refashion Co-op for quite a while and I am so happy to submit an recent post.

 I put this refashion project together with two identical straight skirts that were both too tight. I just had baby #3 and my clothes don't fit after having my little guy. (Can anyone relate?)

I used the black skirt to fill in and enlarge the blue skirt. I cut the blue skirt right down the sides. I just cut a 2 strips of black and fit them in the blue skirt's side seam.  I sewed them in, lining and all.

After some final checks on the dress form, I was ready to go.

Here we are. This is one of my favorite projects, so far anyway.

For more details and pictures you can go here to see this project and others. Thanks for reading, now go make something fabulous for yourself.

Ooh those denim skirts!

What could be more fun or comfortable for Spring (I'm in TX so spring comes early), than worn in denim combined with a breezy skirt. I see so many cute skirts in the thrift stores & my closet that just don't work by themselves anymore because they are either too small in the waist, or too short. What I have found is that some old denim jeans on top fix those skirts right up! Now they're the perfect size & length for cowboy or moccasin fringe boots!

Pick our your jeans and pick out a skirt & let's begin. I found a beautiful linen Ralph Lauren printed paisley skirt at a thrift store. I think I paid about $4. I knew it would be perfect for this project.

Marking

Start by making all your markings. You need to try on your jeans & mark where you want to cut them. Then measure around your hips at that mark so you can determine the diameter across the jeans & skirt pieces you need to make cutting lines. Ok - now take your pants off & get to work :-)! To get an even cutting line, you need to measure from the waistline down to your cut mark - then use that to create cutting marks around the circumference of your jeans (you'll use the same technique on the skirt)

To mark your skirt - use the diameter of your hip measurement and add 1 " for ease. The diameter is 1/2 of the total hip measurement, so if you have 44" hips, your diameter is 22", plus 1" for ease = 23". figure out where you can get a 23" diameter on your skirt & make a small mark/tick at the side seams. Use the same measure down technique to mark the cutting line all the way around the skirt.

Cutting

Cut your jeans (image #2) without cutting any of the pockets. Pull the front pockets inside out & pin them up & out of your way. Then pick the back pockets with a seam ripper & fold them up out of the way to cut. PS - use some really good sharp shears here - large sewing shears are best. Your hand muscles will thank you!

Sewing

FIRST... put a new, sharp, heavy duty sewing needle in your machine -- I promise you will not regret this step. I stitched mine with regular weight, good quality thread (avoid the $.50 cheapo spools for this project). I also bought heavy weight denim thread to do my top stitching.

Decide if you want a rough denim edge, or a clean stitch line. Line up and pin your skirt to your jeans matching the side seams, center front & center back. I use a 1/2" seam allowance.  Be sure to pin your pockets out of the way for sewing (safety pins work best for this). Straight stitch all around. I like to flip my garment right side out & top-stitch the seam allowance down for added seam strength.

Cuteness

Dress this skirt up with some super cute tops, jewelry & boots. Don't forget to accessorize with belts or scarfs too!

I've made 3 of these so far & each one has it's own personality & lessons learned. The fancy green one decorated with doilies is my last creation. I LOVE that one!

Happy sewing! -- Jill

Quick refashions

A floorlength petticoat (though I actually thnk it was meant as a skirt, think grunge).

Turned a kneelenght one. I sewed the bottom part to the waist.

I didn't know what to do with this skirt. The right idea just kept evading me. Until it dawned on me, that I could just do the simplest of all skirt refashions: Shortening. 

5 minutes later.
(I am sorry for the selfie and the dirty mirror, my camera was acting up, so I had to use the camera in my mobile phone).

Maternity Sweater Skirt Refashion

What does a pregnant woman do when she only has 6 weeks of pregnancy left?  Sew up a storm, of course!  (Remember, good logic leaves her brain when the baby enters the womb!)  So I rationalized that I’d better do something with those maternity skirts that I never wore for one reason or another.  Enter the maternity sweater skirt refashion!  

 I started with this long black skirt from Motherhood Maternity.  The problem?  Well, there were many!  It wasn’t made for a 6 foot tall woman...no maternity clothes are, thus it was yuck length!  The second problem was that the material was so lightweight that it was almost immodest to wear (read: see-through) not to mention terribly cold!  Which lead to a third problem; the slit was ripped, fixed, ripped again, fixed again, etc.  Yeah, so basically not wearable! 

Then there was this sweater.  Yep!  For real!  But the person who gifted it to us intended for us to refashion it, not wear it.  Too big for anyone in this house, too scratchy to wear without anything underneath, too thin to be refashioned into a sweater skirt without a layer underneath.  (If you are a regular refashion-er, you immediately see where to go with these two things!) 

Well, do you think that’s an improvement?  Those items are definitely more wearable now!

To read all the step by step information and for more skirt fun, visit our blog, Skirt Fixation!

Denim Skirt Collage

I purchased a plain denim maxi skirt for a few dollars at a thrift store. It fit well, but I found it kind of boring. I tend to wear a lot of solid colored separates and since I’m no whiz at accessorizing, my “look” can be pretty dull. So I decided to try to add some pizzazz to this plain denim skirt. Using a stained vintage tablecloth from my stash and leftover fabric scraps from other projects, I used the denim skirt as my "canvas" to create a fabric flower collage. More details are available on my Blog post.

***Update: Tartan Refashion

***Update: so, I did end up adding that zipper :) Hop on over here to check it out!

Soooo, who goes into the thrift store and comes out with some crazy plaid/tartan pants?

Well, for $2 on half-off day, I do! Don't they suit me?

Maybe a little big, but that simply means there is a lot of extra fabric to work with! So, after chopping off the legs, unpicking the crotch and waistband, pinning it to my shape/size and sewing everything thing (minus the legs and a few scraps) back together, I have myself a new skirt!

Those legs (minus 8-9 inches) got sewed together and along with a couple of brassy buttons and a piece from some thrifted suspenders, were transformed into a crazy cool cowl scarf that I can slip on over my head (well, it does muss my hair a bit but I'm not fussy).

AND there are still all those scraps left over...but I'll leave them for another day :). If you'd like to check out the tutorials for both, hop on over here.

Here's the final before and afters:

Hope you like these two!

Peace,
Andrea

Comfort and Lace

Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy…..and lace.
If I’m not comfortable, I’m not gonna wear it.  Stockings? nope.  High heels?  No way.  Jean skirts that ride up my belly and dig into my skin?  That’s one that I can work some magic on.   This was a Land’s End jean skirt from a thrift store.  I was happy that it fit me in the store, but every time I wore it was not fun.  Not comfortable.  Around my hips, the metal closure dug into my skin and around my waist it was too loose and bumpy.
I took off the denim waistband with my seam ripper, admiring Land’s End’s nice sewing job.  Then I grabbed one of my worn out but favorite camis with a deep lace edge and arranged that to become the new waistband.  I ignored the zipper, sewing the stretchy fabric right over it.  It’s like a pull on maternity skirt now with a built in “belly band”.  The band is sewn on at the top and the bottom of the lace so it will stay put.  It looks like I’m layering shirts, but it’s really the skirt!   I’ll get a lot more (comfortable) wear out of it now  EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT PREGNANT.

Looking at the waistband piece, I realized it would be really easy to sew that baby back up and snap it around my waist.  It’s the right size, after all!   I added a flower hair clip to cover up the metal snap closure.  I won’t wear it with the denim skirt, but I think it would be cute with a dress and a cardigan.

What do you think?  Have you ever removed a waistband and then reused it?   I was surprised at how easy it was to remove from the skirt and how easy it was to sew it back up!

Love,
Amy Jo at The Little Moments

Refashioning a Smelly, Outdated, Thrift Store Skirt!

We started with an Ann Taylor wool skirt we found at Goodwill for $2.50.  Now this piece was is great condition structurally, but boy, oh boy, did it smell!  Being a dry clean only skirt made the pre-care before we started refashioning it a little bit trickier.

But we learned a trick when we found a leather skirt on time for $5 that we simply could not pass up!  (You can see how we refashioned it into a jacket for a 5 year old here.)  What you do is simply hang it up outside for a few days!  Mother Nature takes care of the rest.  So after a good hang, we updated this skirt by adding a few layers of lace at the bottom!  

This was a very fast, very easy update for this skirt, and we just love the results!  If you want to read all the step by step instructions, hop on over to Skirt Fixation, where we blog all our refashion and skirt adventures!

Until next time,

Audrey & Allegra & 

The Skirt Fixation Team

Skirting the Subject...

Hello Again! 

I'm in the middle of finishing a very simple evening dress refashioning, but in the meantime I thought I'd share one of my past favourites (to make and wear) to date... 

Last Spring I bought a lightweight poly-cotton skirt from a charity shop, I was drawn to the lovely drape of the material, and the fact Summer was just around the corner... I was desperate to experiment in moving away from dressmaking and pattern cutting, so I challenged myself to make something completely different, and wearable, from the skirt!

The main steps were removing the zip from the back of the skirt - and creating the dress neckline from the 'v' shape that was left behind... the material for the halter neck was taken from the length of the skirt...

As I'm still very new to this, please feel free to let me know what you might have done differently - or even share the decision-making process you go through when looking at a 'potential refashioning item'... Thank-you in advance! Here's the Before and After shot, head to my blog, Sequins and Slippers for the whole story :)

Before and After

Dye job

My mom recently observed that none of my refashions involve bright colors. Most are gray, black, or blue. I guess she has a point. Even when my clothes don't start out with one of those colors, I tend to dye them one of those colors. Oh well, at least I know what works for me! In this case, I took two pieces that weren't working and dyed them with RIT Denim Blue, with mixed results.

The boring khaki skirt turned a lovely sort of faded violet with the dye. A quick hem job was the only other thing it needed to be ready for spring, should spring ever arrive.

The pink-and-white plaid shirt didn't turn out quite as lovely. I was hoping for a blue background with purple stripes. Instead, I got a purple background with reddish stripes. I still think it is an improvement, though. 

Since it is still snowing very steadily, I think I will try to sneak in one more winter refashion. Then, I promise, I will try to get in more colors for spring, Mom.

Thanks for reading!

-Amy

The T-Shirt Project #2 [T-shirt to skirt]

Yellow! Very yellow. A colour that will never flatter my paler-than-pale Scandinavian skin. So my mission was to get this thing as far away from my face as possible.

I decided on a skirt to shirt refashion.

I cut of the sleves and neckline and pinned and sewed the tube to fit my hips and waist. 

I made a casing and inserted a 3 cm elastic. 

Et voila. Something yellow that will actually get some wear by me :).

Tutorial on my blog here: http://saga-i-farver.blogspot.dk/2014/02/omsy-en-t-shirt-2-ndr-til-nederdel.html

my son's t-shirts put to good use

I haven't had a chance to refashion much lately because of some of the other things I have been doing. Then I got the reminder   this week. So it was time for jumping into a project and not second guessing myself like I usually do.

A Certain Young Man left a bag full of clothes he didn't want, but couldn't bear to throw out himself. Some of the things were mostly okay, but with the odd tear or stain.

These 2 looked like they would make a comfy skirt for just throwing on in the summer to wear round the house. or even to the shop and not be embarrassed.

So I cut them out using my gored flared skirt. I used the T-shirt hems for the skirt hems. I also cut the pattern adding extra on the sides because I wanted it a bit more flowing.

Then when I pinned the bits together, I adjusted the pinning to lay nicely so the seam didn't pucker or bag.

I tried it on and took in the different seams at the top a bit more because the t-shirt jersey is stretchy and my pattern is for woven. I could have cut it smaller to start with. But I didn't know how much stretch I would be dealing with.

Once I got it fitting nicely at the waist to hip area, but leaving room to get it on and off, I stitched it to a wide elastic. I had already cut the elastic to a length that was comfortable but would hold the skirt in place.

When I was working with it, I forgot there was a stain on the inside hem area of the piece I had cut for the back panel. You couldn't see it from the outside of the skirt, but I didn't want it to inadvertently show. So, I just added a bit of the contrast shirt in a similar way to some of what I have seen in ready to wear - often on sleeve hems.

and voila.
front

side

back

and it is comfy!

I doubt it will be worn with a pink top but that's what I had on under all my keeping warm layers.