T-shirt to baby tights refashion

Its been a while since I have had fun with refashions but when I saw the suggestion in the tights tutorial by Made by Rae to use old t-shirts as material for baby tights (the ones I made a pair of yesterday) I was hooked. My mom donated some of her old good quality t-shirts a while back and I picked out two to experiment with. The pictures speak for themselves and I really like the result.

Xx Eddie
(roued.com)

Easy nursing top from 2 t-shirts

I will admit that as refashions go this isn't the best as the start product is two new t-shirts. But i am happy with the result and I am going to be using this idea again for sure.

Xx Eddie (who is back and blogging again at Eddie's room

From cushion covers to baby trousers

This is a refashion that started life as cushion covers which I sewed for myself years ago. I didn't want to use them anymore so I decided to refashion them into baby clothes while my sister and I were having a baby clothes making weekend.

Have a look at my blog for more pictures of the refashion and also the other clothes we sewed from scratch.

Maternity trousers

I am now 5 months pregnant and have reached the point where even my most generous trousers do not fit me anymore.
With the help of a couple of tutorials on the Internet I have had a go at refashioning some of my old trousers into maternity trousers. It hasn't been a complete success so far. i need to redo both pairs so that the knit fabric covers more of my tummy and they don't fall down all the time. Maybe even add some elastic.

Have a look at my post and pictures on Eddie's room. I have also added a list of the tutorials at the bottom of the post that have inspired me over there.

Eddie xxx

Dyeing cotton for a shawl

The cotton after it is dyed with a sample of undyed to show the contrast

I found a really soft cotton blouse in a charity shop a while back and decided to buy it to unravel and knit myself a summer shawl with. When I can home and had gone through all the work of unraveling it I decided that the colour was not at all for me. So when I did natural dyeing experiments with my friend Cecile in April I decided to throw it into the yellow onion dye (which we had loads of).
If you want details on how we did it have a look at Cecile's post.
If you want to see the full story and more pictures have a look at my blog.

take care,
Eddie



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Twitter: @EddieDuckling
Blogs:
Eddie's blog : crafts, photography, family history and cooking
Grey Duckling : lace and illustrations
Historic Crafts : a historic perspective on crafts

Turquoise vintage dress refashion

This is a dress I refashioned from a vintage silk dress I found in a refashioning bin a couple of years ago. I love the colour and the fabric and actually I liked the style too except for the lovely sweat patches under the sleeves and in the neck. So that had to go. It is now a bit of a party dress.
Over on my blog you can also see the Jane Austen dress refashion I made (with tutorial) out of a skirt and a blouse.



If you want to check out a couple more pictures they are now on my own blog.
I used to have the refashions on Grey Duckling but this blog is now exclusively for lace, yarn and my husbands illustrations, which of course you are very welcome to visit too!

Take care,
Eddie

Colourwheels and dyeing

Hi All,

I have been a bit quiet lately, going around doing my editors duties, commenting on your lovely posts, but really not much else. Sorry about that!

I have been working on one refashion in particular but more will be revealed at a later point. Other than that I haven't been very active online as there have been some major things going on offline (all good I promise).

One thing was that I went to France with a friend to visit her family. While we were their we did some serious experimenting with natural dyes. We made a flickr group to show off the photos. I was so amazed at the variety of colour and the intensity of some of the colours.

So why am I telling you all this you might ask - what has it got to do with refashioning. Well for me dyeing is refashioning. You have an item you love the fabric and the shape of, but not the colour. A bit of dyeing can fix that. And this is my bid to try and convince you that there is no need to buy synthetic dyes to get the colours you want. It can be done just as easily and with a lovely result too by using plant material.

And is this then a refashion in itself? Of course it is. You see I have been buying this 100% natural/white wool in charity shops but they were all a grubby and discolored. So I decided to split them into mini skeins and use them as samples for these dyeing experiments. Now I have a colourwheel of colours (see photo above) and I am going to use them to make a granny square blanket/shawl. So from unwanted grubby wool to colourful granny square shawl.

The best bit of this is that now I also know what colours I can expect from variety of plants and I have used this to dye some bunny yellow cotton into a more attractive (to me at least) burnt orange colour for another shawl. I think I am becoming a bit of a shawl lady. I will show you this project later when I start making the shawl.

My friend Cecile took some wonderful notes on all our experiments and she is writing them up as very informative posts on her blog, Ways of the Whorl. Below I will show you some of the dyes we did and direct you to her post on it and more pictures for you to see.

Black Beans (blues)
'Natural Dyeing Take 3: Black Beans' Post by Cecile.
My flickr set of photos of black bean dyeing.

Red and Yellow onion skin (oranges, yellows, brown and green)
Natural Dyeing Take 2: Onion skins Post by Cecile.
My flickr set of photos of red onion skin and yellow onion skin dyeing.

The onion skin dyeing photo above is borrowed from Cecile from Ways of the Whorl (copyright Cecile)

What else have I been doing lately. Well I decided to move the Historic Crafts blog to a blogger platform too! It is now http://historic-crafts.blogspot.com. I have already met some lovely people on Ravelry who have signed up as authors to help me show of historic related crafts to the world. If you are interested in this - get in tough (eddie at roued dot com).

I have also made a decision to revive and focus a bit more on my own crafty and other activities on my own blog www.roued.com . My only problem here is that I am struggling to find a better name for this blog. At the moment I've just named it "Eddie's". PLease, please help! Any suggestions will be very welcome.

I can't wait to see all your dyeing projects and your shawls for that matter!

Take care,

Eddie

My sister’s sewing

Does this constitute cheating – well I don’t really care if it does. Today I want to share with you something that I am so proud of even though I haven’t really had any hand in it. My sister recently took out her sewing machine and began to sew a lot of children’s and baby clothes and look what she has come up with.
I just think it’s amazing and I got her permission to share it all with you.
The way she is using these different smaller bits of patterned fabric for details make these ideas perfect for using up smaller bits of fabric from your stash or leftover from other refashions. I can't wait to have a go myself over on Grey Duckling.

Sweater to yarn to shawl refashion

I am so excited to share this refashion with you all. It has been a first in many ways. It's my first refashion to share on the Refashion Co-op. It's the first item I have knitted using my own recycled yarn. The yarn was from the first sweater I tried recycling. Finally, it was the first time I tried knitting a lace shawl, or any shawl really.

I have added more photos and links to a post on Grey Duckling.

If you are interested in recycling your own yarn let me point you to this introduction I wrote. If you would like to join a knit-along or are interested in the shawl pattern let me point you to this post on Historic Crafts about the Echo Flower Shawl knit along (KAL).



Do you want to see more photos?

I would love to hear what you think and whether you have done something similar!

Refashion editor: Eddie

So today is the Wednesday shift and my turn as editor. I am so excited! I will be tweeting all day fro @refashioncoop and my own @eddieduckling so come on over and chat!

How did you get into refashioning?
I only began refashioning last year when I once again found myself with a pair of linen trousers full of holes. I decided to have a go at refashioning them into a skirt. After having thought about it for a while I came up with an idea for incorporating this dotted skirt, which had a defect zip. It was the first time in years I had sewn anything for myself to wear and I am still rather proud of it. Shortly after I made the skirt I discovered the Wardrobe Refashion blog and took at 6 months pledge not to buy new clothes.

What is your motivation for refashioning?
I don't like the idea of wasting and I love most of the clothes I have accumulated, but sometimes I just want to try something new. So the solution for me is to refashion them. There is also something about the refashioning/recycling process that I think adds meaning to the things I wear. Another thing that motivated me is when people I meet out and about comment on the stuff I created and want to know more about it.


Where do you get your inspiration?
I get a lot of my inspiration by seeing what others have done to an object. Another thing I do is write 'how would you refashion this?' posts where people can comment their ideas. I then add the ideas to the post and usually that helps me figure out what I want to do with the item myself. This is how I came up with the Jane Austin Dress, refashioned from a rather big purple skirt from Halloween. This is something I hope to continue here on Refashion Co-op as a way of collecting ideas for certain refashions to inspire myself and hopefully everyone else too.

How do you do your refashions?
I am not a big one for planning ahead - I usually just get stuck in and then see how it goes. I would like to start using patterns, but at the moment it's more hit and miss. As to technique I do most of my sewing by hand. If it's seams that can't be seen I will use my Singer, but the result is not always very neat and it can't do zig-zag stitches or go backwards. But then it is from 1911 so that's fair enough and when things go wrong with it I can fix it with a screwdriver. When it comes to stitching that can be seen I love to do it by hand using thread in contrasting colours. I usually try to make a feature out of the stitching like the french knots on the hem of the black skirt.



Where do you find things to refashion?
I would say charity shops but I must admit that I haven't gotten that far yet. I have begun instead to see my own clothes as a stash and this stash is so big that I can't really justify buying more to add to it. Inspired by Zoe's Stash Bustin' challenge I emptied out all the clothes in my closet that hasn't been worn in a long time and added that to my stash.

What is your favorite refashion?
My favorite refashion (if you can really call it that) is my elderberry skirt. The reason I am unsure whether it is technically a refashion is that the skirt it made from a piece of fabric I had lying around. The original piece of raw silk was a pink colour that I didn't fancy that much. But last year I was experimenting with dyeing with natural dyes and left it in some elderflower dye I had made (you can see how that went here on Historic Crafts). It came out a beautiful purple and I had to make something out of it at once. However, it is actually a refashion of a pair of trousers where I used the legs for another project. The top of the skirt and the zip is the top of the trousers re-purposed.
I wanted the skirt to have a bubbly effect at the bottom so I made the lining shorter than the skirt and sewed them together at an angle.



Do you recycled anything other than fashion?
Oh yes! I love using recycled material and refashioning things for the home. One way I do this particularly is using the technique of decoupage. One of my favorite items recently is the Big Island Dish. It's a glass disk I found in a charity shop, I then decoupaged the bottom so that it's seen through the top and painted over the decoupaged bits.
I also recycle old knitted sweaters by ripping them and using the yarn. I guess in a way this the ultimate refashion. From knitted sweater to knitted scarf. hmm!


Where can I read more about you and refashioning?
I mostly post my refashions on my own blog, Grey Duckling, under the header 'Refashions'. I also do refashion interviews over there. Even though I have a big clothes stash I still thrift items once in a while. I blog on the Thrift Collective about the stuff I find. This February (2011) I joined the 5th edition of Thing a Day with the theme 'recycling', where I do a thing a day in relation to this. Oh and if you have an interest in the traditional aspect of crafts you are welcome to join me over on Historic Crafts.