My Favorite Refashion so Far!

I literally ran to this kaftan when I saw it at my favorite $1 thrift store. I don't know why I thought someone else would beat me to it, but I snatched it off the rack and kept it close...not unlike a gollum. :)

I loved the print, and the pretty mirrored neckline and cuffs! Unfortunately, I have no use for a kaftan. I cut of the arms and the length, as it's quite warm here in SC right now. I took the whole thing in on both sides. I was able to make it nice and fitted, thanks to the sturdy metal zipper in the back. I hemmed all the raw edges, and ended up with my faaaaaavorite refashion I've ever done!

I have a serious crush on this dress. We're talking true love here, and I never want to take it off!

You can see the full tutorial on how I transformed this sweet sweet dress here. I'm soooo happy Spring weather has arrived! Warm weather refashions are so much fun, don't you think? :)

Midwest Refashioneer

My name is Michelle Ross, and I'm a passionate amateur at refashioning. My favorite childhood memories are of raiding our 'craft stash' of folded fabric, old butter and sour cream tubs and egg cartons. My dad would often come home with fat heavy stacks of used printer paper- you know, the kind with the tear-off sides? And I would feel as rich as a Commodore 64 King.

I'm a wedding photographer by weekend and a mom by week. My home is the Under Grace Photoblog. I have two fantastic kiddos- Sydney, 4, and Henry, 1.5- and a marriage to a smoking hot geek that will be six this July. The marriage, not the guy. He's thirty-something.




We live in Saint Peters, Missouri, where we experience all four seasons- sometimes two or three in the space of twenty four hours, depending on Mother Nature's mood that day. We've designated 2011 to less wedding work and will be focusing on living slowly and deliberately- gardening, upcycling, sewing, loving. I'm excited to learn from everyone here as well as share my own journey this next year.

Lurve, Michelle

Sylviee's re-fashioned vintage inspired pillow cases.

Just stopping by to update you on my latest re-fashion project! I was given this fabric kindly from my boyfriend mum and knew I would make proper use of it! I'm trying to make my bed area as girly and vintage inspired as possible, and I think these new pillowcases fit nice and snug in with my bedroom(:

I measured both white and floral fabric against a regular pillowcase I had and cut the sizes out leaving about 1-2cm's of space to sew. Next I pinned the fabric back to back (so the floral print was on the inside) and used a straight stitch on my sewing machine to stitch up the sides leaving an open space to pop the pillows in! I hemmed the edges after ward and turned it inside-out and viola!

You can come see my full post here (:
Happy Monday! XOXO

Sylvie's Refashion project numero uno (:

Hey there(:

I'm Sylvie from Sylviepops blog of the Arty+Crafty, I've been making my own clothes from scratch and altering+making everything/anything since I was about 11 or so. Instead of seeing something I want I always think to myself if I can make it instead of buying it, and usually the answer is yes, unless I really want it!

I was kindly invited along to join this blog by Erica not so long ago and thought it was a super fun site and easy to find what your looking for, plus its just awesome from every direction. We need more refashionistas in the world :)

Anyway enough ramblings, I want to show you one of my recent most favourite skirts I have made for Summer. It was originally made from a single bed sheet that was 'dated' looking and over 30 years old anyway. When I saw this I instantly saw an opportunity to make a cute and easy high waisted skirt from the frilled hemming along the edge of the bed sheet. The entire project took me slightly over an hour due to careful planning. It was worth it though, I'm head over heels for my new raspberry skirt!

Making it wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated, I'm usually getting frustrated over certain things going wrong and such but with this I was so determined to make a pretty skirt that I got everything done in my own time! It has a cream little zip at the back and a hidden small belt in the top band which can be pulled in from behind to cinch in the waist. Also it's my first skirt with successful deep oval pockets. I just think this little skirt is super cute for Summer! :)

I also added this skirt to Project Restyle and you can see it's before and after photos here.

Hope you enjoyed my first post here at Refashion co-op.
See you soon! XOXO

Bonjour!

I'm excited to be joining this community and just wanted to introduce myself. I’m an American in Paris (for a decade and counting) and a novice refashionista who has returned to sewing after a 22-year hiatus. I’m blogging about it all as Mommy en France over at Two little cabbages & cie.

Until Christmas 2010, the last time I had sewed was in my junior high school home economics class. I never managed to complete my class project, but I did pick up some sewing basics, which I promptly ignored for years. What brought me back to sewing? I think it’s pretty much refashioning/repurposing and the ethos behind it. With two children who seem to outgrow their clothes overnight, I was looking for ways to extend the life of their garments. And I dreamed of making creative costumes for them (my small stand against the commodification of dress up play and the Disney-ification of fairy tales).

So Santa left a sewing machine under the tree for me and I’ve been having a great time ever since. My best projects so far have been (re)making things for my daughter, of which my favorites have been:

A pair of too-short trousers made into a patchwork skirt

An adult floor-length, silk skirt transformed into a kid's skirt with matching stole (full story here)

I’m more nervous about tackling things for me, but I’m game to try. Part of the issue for me is that, after two children and several years in a demanding job, I’m just not the lithe young thing I used to be, far from it. About 35 lbs from it, in fact. Now I’m a US size 14/16 living in a very svelte, chic city. Oh, and I’m 5’10 with size 10 feet, which doesn’t help here either. Anyway, I’m so frustrated to have a closet full of currently unusable but really nice clothes from before or between having my children. I can't bear to give the clothes away, I can't fit in most of them and I definitely don’t want to go out and buy many more at my current size, even if I could find any that I liked. So this weekend I went closet shopping and picked out eight garments that I think I can refashion in some way so that they work for my current shape (full story here).

The first one is this men’s Liberty print shirt. I will be trying to take it in a little in the bust and arms, change the cuffs and generally make it more feminine. I’ll post back here as I progress.

A close up shot, so that you can see the details of the gorgeous fabric!

Restyle # 8 - Pashmina to dress to tunic....phew!

A girl's allowed to change her mind right?? I blogged about this pashmina restyle a few days ago and hadn't made my mind up then EXACTLY what I was going to do with it. Then, after I had created the neck hole, tried it on and saw how much fabric and length I had to play with, I decided it just HAD to be a dress. Oh, and that it would look really cool with a wide black band at the bottom. So away I went. Chalking, pinning, basting, french curving, binding, facing..but aargh! The dress was a wee bit wrong..so my old pashmina went from scarf (to dress inbetween), and finally to tunic like so...

I won't take up too much space here as there are more photos and ramblings an interesting evaluation (ahem) over on my blog. If there's interest in a "how to" on any aspect of this refashion, I'll happily oblige with a quick post here or on my blog.
Have a lovely weekend. ;)
Pxxx


http://portialawrie.blogspot.com/

It's Big! It's Blue! It's Coming After You!

My most recent refashion started out looking like this. It's not just the messy hair and the lack of makeup that's making this dress look miserable. :) As you can see, it's quite largish on me.



I hacked off the sleeves, as well as some of the bottom length. I ripped out the shoulder pads. I took both sides in about 2". I decided to use a portion of the cut off bottom as a sash. Viola! I was done!

As it was a bit chilly, I paired it with one of my favorite cardis that I scored for a buck at the same thrift store as the dress. :)

It's not quite as fun without the cardigan, but it is super comfy, and I'll definitely wear it again. :)

You can see the full tutorial on how I refashioned this dress here.

Pants Refashion from MILCH by way of GAARN

I am all sort of cutting, dyeing and thinking and have nothing to show for it, but I just saw this refashion in a German DYI magazine called GAARN and I thought you might be interested. They pointed me to this site MILCH who apparently do refashion (but if there wasn't any pictures I wouldn't know as I don't speak German) and I can totally see a pair of jeans getting the same treatment. GAARN's blog is chock full o' really cool ideas and fiber art.

Wool Pencil Skirt Refashion: Simple yet Eminently Wearable (S.E.W.)

(I keep forgetting to take "before" photos!) So this started out as a thrifted back vent pencil skirt that was 6" too long and 6" too wide. But I loved the mini chevron pattern and the classic black and white palette. It was a nice heavy wool and had a fun little detailing in the back:


As with so many refashions, this involved a bit of improvisation. At first I just chopped off the skirt right above the back vent, so as to preserve the back detailing (the other option was to recut the skirt from the bottom to preserve the hem), and then took in the sides, but that made a skirt so short that I would be embarrassed to wear it to work. Granted, I've seen plenty of women walking around in skirts that short, but it's just not me. So I chopped a couple inches off the remaining bottom portion and turned it around so that the vent overlapped to one side, then used narrow bias binding to cover the raw edge (and as decorative trim). Tada! As often happens with refashions, Version 2.0 is infinitely better than what I originally had in mind!


Usually when I refashion pencil skirts into smaller pencil skirts, I recut the skirt and lining separately ... but this time I thought I'd try treating them as one piece of fabric (to save myself time, hehehe). You can see that I used narrow bias binding to finish the raw edges, and then hem tape to cover the raw edge where the two skirt portions overlapped. I love being able to pick out a complementary color for interior detailing if I so choose. Ah handmade, you are so good!


It's a simple looking refashion, but it actually took me awhile to complete! I like that the result is one-of-a-kind, but "simple" enough that it could be worn weekly and you wouldn't reeeeeeally notice. Simple, yet Eminently Wearable. I'll be applying the S.E.W. criteria to future refashions to see how they stack up!

Playing dress-ups with two scraps of fabric!

Hey! I got round to uploading some pics so you can check out how I wear this as a bikini top:

                                                                            here!

Hello everyone!

My name is Stephanie and I blog about my sewing efforts over at The Naked Seamstress. I think I was already into refashioning as a little kid, when I made myself a two-story doll's house out of shoe boxes, scraps of wood, left-over fabric, empty toilet rolls and all sorts of other bits and bobs I could get my hands on in our house. So I think this community here is just the right thing for me. Today I often scour thrift stores or other people's wardrobes for unwanted items that I can re-use in my sewing. My favourite thing to do is to refashion knitwear. I'm not much into sewing knitwear but wear it a lot, so refashioning is a good alternative to knitting or sewing your own.

This was an ill-fitting, v-necked wool sweater before I cut it up and resewed it again. I added a peter-pan collar and cuffs in contrast fabric to make it more fun.

And this sweater....

....turned into this one with some pearl-white strips of fabric added to the neckline and sleeves:

After my latest refashion I wrote a tutorial on how I refashion a knit sweater. You can find the tutorial here if you are interested. In the future I'd like to try to refashion some non-knitwear items as well and plan to document my efforts here with you on the Refashion Co-op. So see you soon and happy refashioning!

Tunic Refashion - Need some advice

I have done another refashioning project. It's an off white cotton eyelet kameez that I thrifted a few weeks ago. It is calf length and has some cheap ribbon and rainbow coloured beads sewned on it and some of them have fallen off. The 'embellishment' is not really my cup of tea but I do like the eyelet fabric.
1. The first thing I did was to take out the ribbon and the remaining beads. Now I could see that it has a pretty neckline and the edge of the sleeves are scalloped.

2. Next I looked into my trims stash to see what I have that would go with it. I don't have much. Nothing looked right until I saw a bit of remnant X'mas trim I bought 6 years ago. I sewed it onto the centre of the tunic. I tried adding other trims to the rest of the neckline but had to rip them out because they distracted the eye too much from the pretty neckline.

3. I thought this looked fine - a nice and simple trim for a pretty eyelet fabric. My hubby thought that it looked like a tie.

So I would like some advice from you Refashionistas: What do you think? Does this kameez need more embellishment? If so, what would be your suggestion? I look forward to your comments!!

It's my party and I'll wear refashioned clothes if I want to.

I finished a dress-to-shirt reconstruction last night--needed something new for dinner on Saturday night. (My birthday, one of those milestone ones, so I need to look good!) So I had this oversized thrifted slinky polyester dress with a great print:

And I turned it into a better-fitting tunic top by taking in the sides (harder than it looks, due to a mock wrap front that I had to rip out and resew later) and chopping about 8" off the hem. 

It also had this ridiculously long tie, which I chopped off enough of to make a skinny headband by just tying the ends together. Now I just need to figure out if there's anything I can do with 8" wide slinky polyester...

More in-progress pics and such on my blog.

Progress...

I may have bit off more than I can chew, and discovered why skirt-to-tunic refashions are not more popular!
:)  Here is my in-progress project. It's not pressed yet, and you can tell. Let me saw it looks FAR better on the mannequin than on me. Sigh. At the moment, it is looking a bit like a dental assistant is going sailing!

Here's what I did so far:

• opened up the pocket to make the armholes. This I thought was brilliant. We shall see. 
• sewed up the shoulder seam, from top of pocket to about 4" from center. (across what used to be the waist)
• the V neck is where the zipper used to be
• took a side seam from just below pocket, into waist at an angle and then back out to hem. (A big triangle cut out of what was formerly the side of the skirt.)
• I wanted the handerchief points. We shall see
• I do LOVE the mix of prints. Just might not be right yet. 

So far, that is all. The waist band here is pinned. So is the black material around the neckline. The bow is actually the collar from the shirt the black fabric came from. The collar shape as bow has potential for someone. Perhaps not me. We shall see...

I was aiming for something Anthropologie-like. There is still WAY too much volume in the peplum. I was considering an exposed zipper in the back, but was trying to keep it loose enough that I didn't need to go there. Might HAVE to go there! As I said, there is still a lot of volume!! 

I may lose the bat wing sleeves. (I'm sleeping on it!)  But wanted to share my progress. You all are so accomplished with this king of thing, I wanted to document my fits and starts on this, my first real refashion!

Suggestions welcome. As we've noted though, I may not take them! hehehehehe

Thanks anyway!

Jenni

glam.spoon intro

Hello everyone!

Thank you to Erica for the invitation to join Refashion Co-op! I'm so glad to have found this site and look forward to becoming a part of the world wide refashioning community...

I consider myself a textile designer and my main focus for the past 5 years has been my handmade women's clothing business called glam.spoon. It began in my closet as a project to rework the items hanging there that never quite worked. I really enjoyed the challenge of using recycled materials, so I started shopping for more projects at thrift stores. My process is backwards from fashion design, letting the materials inspire the new garment, rather than sketching and sourcing. I now sell my designs in local boutiques and at trunk sales around Seattle.

Although I started out with a plan to deconstruct used clothing completely and create a new garment from scratch, after a while I became obsessed with refashioning. Last fall I created an entire couture holiday dress collection using recycled and hand dyed cotton.

More images here.

I've also enjoyed refashioning jewelry and old junk, and love to mix metals and stones, fabric and leather - you name it. I sell my refashioned jewelry at Tasty in Greenwood.

I branched into home products last fall and created a collection of recycled cotton/linen hand pleated and dyed pillows for our home (below). I also sell recycled cashmere throws at a local Seattle boutique called Nube Green dedicated to all things recycled.

My latest project was a leather shoulder bag refashion, which I blogged about here. Not a dramatic transformation, but I think it has a lot more personality!

I look forward to sharing more projects

and reading about all your creative endeavors.

-glamspoon

A no-sew refashion to dye for!

Hello refashion lovers! It is Thursday again in my part of the world, which means I'm on editor duty.

Yesterday I did my first dye refashion experiment. I found an awesome tutorial on fabric dyeing clothes in a jar on BurdaStyle, an alternative to tie dyeing, and had to try it.

Here is the before and after, using a beautiful, but alas stained, Portman's shirt given to me by a friend.




You could go full-on hippie with dye, and wear with flowing skirts and Jesus sandals, or you could choose to dress it up ....


I have written my own step-by-step tutorial over on my blog. Go on readers, release your inner hippie and give jar dyeing a try!

Convertible dress

Hey! I decided to make a couple of convertible items of clothing...I love garments that can be worn many ways.

I knew I had to have this fabric when I found it at one of my local op-shops :

$1.99 for 2m ^ _^ I love bargins!

I also knew I wanted to make a dress from it but it wasn't till this morning I decided to make a convertible dress...this is a very simple dress to make with only 4 pieces: circle skirt, waist band and two straps...there is an easy to follow tutorial here. Heres mine:

I love it! I'm definately going to make another in this style when I can find myself some suitable fabric. I've made a couple other convertible dresses using a different pattern and they always get alot of compliments and are very fun to wear :)

I would have taken more pics if my rechargable camera batteries would actually stay charged long enough...grrr. So I will post more pics on my FB page sometime this week aswell as the convertible bikini top I made but didn't get a chance to photograph!

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!