New Year's dress

This year, weather forecast for the New Year's Eve sounds somewhat scary. We are expected to have temperatures as low as -20 Celsius (-4 F). And these are temperatures we did not have for past two years, so yeah. Very cold New Year's Eve.

So, instead of going shopping for a fun dress (as if that was likely), I decided to repurpose couple of old (and rather holey) wool sweaters (one dolcevita and one cowl) and spruce them up with some animal print.

So these are mine before(s):

... and the final product:

As I managed to trace my steps in making this dress, please check out the tutorial at the Curvy Girl's Refashions.

Wishing you all a truly Happy New Year!

Dee

Tie bleached jeans

When I came across photos of tie bleached jeans, I immediately knew I was going to try to make a pair myself. I found a number of tutorials online, and all of them were consisted of the same instructions.
All they entailed was rubber-band 'estrangulation' of jeans and some patience towards bleaching them. As far as I am concerned, I felt like every tutorial I came across was fine, so all it takes is to google the term 'tie bleach jeans tutorial' and you will have some decent instructions to get a unique pair of jeans.

I had a pair of dark grey jeans which were pretty worn out and I made some effort to make the necessary fixes before I proceeded with tie-bleach routine.

If you liked this project and would like to attempt it yourself, check out the Curvy Girl's Refashions post for some tips on getting the best out of your old jeans and this method!

A different sweater skirt

Some time ago I have confiscated my husband's striped sweater. The sweater was really nice, made of 95 per cent wool, overall a very nice knit. However, it had its share of problems. It was very stretched out, and it had several holes on the sleeves and shoulders. Not only there were enough holes, but they were sloppily stitched in a way the holes were beyond repair.

 

So, after an intricate planning and scrap-matching process I ended up with a shirt I am quite thrilled to wear.

 

 

Should you want to do something similar, please proceed to Curvy Girl's Refashions for more details on the process itself. Do not forget to include two magical ingredients - adhesive iron-on fabric and a piece of elastic. Hope you enjoy it!

Love, Dee

Another cardigan - third life of a dull sweater

For a while now I have liked open front sweaters, and I thought they are really fun and cool, but I just didn't have that one that would work perfectly for the open front sweater refashion. Once I stumbled upon this tutorial I knew I was going to make it - the open front sweater from men's sweater!

I have tweaked the tutorial and tried a wild pinterest idea to use strips of paper napkins to make sewing knits easier. As I work an old sewing machine which is great for heavy fabrics, but less then great for sewing knits this tip came to me like a gift from the sky. Sewing knits with paper napkins is totally manageable. Unlike sewing them without it.

I hope you like this refashion and should you care for some details on the tweaks I made, please check out the Curvy Girl.

With love,

Dee!

Time management and my new shiny cardi

I feel like I have finally started catching up with my 'to be refashioned' stash. There are all sorts of things in it - from those I have no idea what to do with, those I have an exact plan with and finally those that need to be fixed. The latter type is the most boring one, it just needs to be dealt with and they are not really 'refashions' but rather 'fixations'.

However, I feel like I am getting better at this, and it usually takes me a day to finish a project, but with a full time job, a load of other things on my plate I just seem like I cannot afford a whole day to finish a project. Hence, my projects take days to be finished. Nevertheless, I really like what I am doing and therefore persist in finishing a project at a time. Blogging, however comes a little later. And writing step-by-step tutorials is a thing I still have to master.

Nevertheless, my poor time management hasn't deprived me of the desire to spread the word about importance of refashioning as a part of a larger 'reuse, repurpose and recycle' movement to help the planet survive us.

Here is my latest shiny cardigan refashion, which I really hope you'll like. The sweater or blouse (not sure what was it made as) I refashioned dates back from mid-nineties when my mother purchased it. She used to wear it with black outfits to formal occasions, and stopped using it at least a decade ago. For the past ten years it was mostly sitting in the closet pretty much forgotten. And as I feel compelled to first deal with the piles of clothes my family collected and kept for years - my refashions are (and judging to the amount of stuff we have, will be for a long time) the go-to material for my projects.

So, please, meet my new shiny cardigan - perfect for chilly Mondays and lack of inspiration days:

If you have a similar piece you would do the same with, please proceed to Curvy Girl for a few tips and the process.

Love,

Dee!

Making pants smaller

I have been undergoing a body transformation of a sort lately. As a result, I have a lot of clothes that do not fit me, as they have become rather large. Take these as an example:

As I am hoping to drop a few more sizes, I am not too keen to spend money on clothes that could (and hopefully would) become too big for me in the coming months, deciding for a reasonable solution - downsize the pants you have! Resulting pants were nothing to really brag about - but downsized and slightly skinnified pants.

For more info on the process, please check out the curvy girl's post on this par.

Love, Dee!

Suit refashion (practically no-sew)

In addition to being plus size, I often have problems with changing the size - whether I am going up or down on the scale. And this means that I have to keep different sizes of clothes - especially pants and jackets (blazers). Stretchy blouses and sweaters fit better of worse, depending on which side I am, but  in most cases they fit. Trousers and jackets are a whole different story.

I had a tailored black cotton blend suit that was made to fit me perfectly, but it was on a small side for a while now. As I was recently scouring my closet for wearable office clothes for this fall/winter I have tried on the suit to find out it fit me again - but it was worn-out, with faded colour areas and too boring to wear.

So I made refreshed it, refashioned it and made it a whole new thing I can wear to work no problemo!

Here is my before & after and the whole process you can find at this location!

Love,

Dee!

LBD and two way-scarf

Although I made these two pieces as separate projects, they are actually bade from two pieces of clothing. So, here it is. I started out with a top which I really loved as it had a very flattering neckline and the dress which was quite strange.

The problem with the top was that its back has completely frayed, while the dress was shapeless and too short for me. To make the dress, the first step was to fix the top by placing the lace instead of worn-out fabric - creating a lace back, and the second step was to add the length by cutting the dress below the collar and above the ombre ruffles. Then, this part of the dress was sewn with the top, creating the dress. You can find more details of the procedure here.

The remainder of the dress consisted of two ruby red and hot pink ruffles, was turned in an infinity scarf, that can also be worn as a shrug.

I hope you enjoyed this one!

Love, Dee!

A blouse and a skirt from a circus dress

When refashioning I like to use every single remaining piece of the clothing for the fashion purposes. Smaller scraps I use to make office chair pillows. So, the policy use everything to the last scrap applies in every case of my refashioning adventures.

This summer I cheaply scored a dress I simply loved for two reasons - its top and its bottom:

This dress looks ridiculous enough worn by skinny ladies and I would have certainly looked like a circus runaway in it.

So I proceeded with separating this dress into two independent and lovely pieces:

Check out here for more details on how I got it done.

Love, Dee

An introduction and a refashion of choice

Hello everyone, my name is Dejana and I live in capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo. I am so happy I to become a Refashion Co-Op contributor!

Sometime last year, I have discovered refashioning, which I did not realise was a thing, and a cool thing to do, for that matter.
When I was little, my grandma used to tell me that both she and my mother used to wear refashioned dresses, only refashioning was not a choice, it was more of a necessity, which made it sound quite unappealing. Nevertheless, some of my favourite childhood dresses were made from scraps of fabric and reused fabric and I much preferred them over the store-bought ones, especially from those that were bought together for my sister and me. I really hated those matching dresses.
So today, refashioning – clothes, shoes and other objects became quite an enjoyment for me. I might not have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to it, but when I do, I really have fun and enjoy transforming inspiration through craftsmanship. And after I have been wearing something for a month I see something similar in the store, so I guess I am doing it right.

And why I started blogging about it? After I have decided to forsake dark baggy clothes ant to dress in a more fashionable way. Applying refashioning principles and ideas that work well for regular size and slim girls can not be applied in refashioning for the curvy girl! You simply can't apply the rule - take a big thing and make it smaller, but you have to go for re-shaping large pieces, merging multiple pieces in a single one. Anyways, I found refashioning for big girls to be quite different and not so straight forward. So I decided to start writing about what I do, when I refashion for myself or my sister.
As my very first refashion to share here, I have chosen my favourite one - loud and ugly denim shirt made feminine and hip!

To transform an ugly denim shirt in a versatile, feminine piece of clothing you will need the shirt, some scrapped lace and quite a lot of patience! For a detailed guideline on how to get it done check out the full post!