Infinity Scarf

This dress was given to my daughter who gave it to me to refashion. I thought that it would make a nice scarf, reminiscent of the one I had long, long ago.

 

 

I cut off the bottom ruffle and the top. I used the middle part of the dress to use as the scarf.

John Deere Dress

This dress came together bit by bit and sort of invented itself.

I had put the white sleeves on this yellow bodice and didn't know what I would add

 for the skirt. Then on one of my many trips to Goodwill, I found a pair of

John Deere pajamas. The yellow was a close match and the green went with the

 Spring-like feel of the top.

 

The pocket and hem lining are from a pillow sham with both the John Deere logo and their motto.

When you lean down and look under the bottom edge, you learn that nothing runs like a Deere

For more my most recent upcycled clothing, check my blog

RickRackUpcycled@blogspot .com

Denim jacket to satchel refashion

Fifty years ago a Levi's denim jacket was lovingly embroidered for a husband-to-be.

2012 I was asked to create a bag from it.  A memory.

So between us we chose a satchel.

I added a denim shirt and a pair of jeans.  I also wanted to use as much of the original jacket as possible.

I had to make sure I planned really well where each piece was to go before I cut into the precious jacket.

The rainbow was appliqued inside the front pocket.

I used the waistband of the jacket to make the front pocket gusset - it was the exact size I needed! 

The ram was used to make the back and top of the satchel.  Whilst the branch was appliqued onto the front.

And here is the end result - one denim satchel with lots of memories and love attached!

There are more details of how the satchel was created on my blog:

Sew Selena

Happy refashioning everyone!

Up the Fun Factor With a Peplum Skirt

It's just about New Year's Eve and this quick and easy refashion would make a nice skirt for any celebration.  

I found this skirt at my local thrift store on half price day for fifty cents. I loved the polka dots and the feel of the material. I didn't look at the tag for some reason until AFTER I'd finished my peplum but I discovered it was 100% silk. No wonder I loved it so much.

Lucky me, it also fit me in the waist so there was no resizing to be done this time. Just cutting off the extra length, putting in a new hem and making the peplum.

Be careful, though, a peplum is not simply a ruffle. There is a difference. In order to get the peplum to have a nice flounce effect it must be cut on the bias. It's quite easy and I'll show you how in the tutorial over at The Renegade Seamstress.

Happy New Year!!!

Beth

Spottie Dottie's Lacy Shoes

Turn a sweet pair of khaki canvas wedges into something very pretty with some vintage peach lace and a couple of very vintage buttons..

Those of you who have been following me on blogger will be aware that I have now moved to Facebook. It is a long story. Please feel free to see more pics of this refashion on Penelope Hanger Refashions. and scroll down to the entry made on the 3rd December.

A few tops - to - bags refashions

This is a bit of a belated post since the bags i made were for Christmas gifts, but it's been so hectic here i've only just got a few minutes to upload photos and post! First though, i hope you have all had a wonderful festive time and will have a great new year :)

The tops i started with:

and the eventual tote bags which were given as a gift:

i also made some similar bags (no pictures of the original tops i'm afraid):

I think the owl is my favourite - he's so cute! as usual, some more details on my blog. Bye for now, enjoy the rest of the festivities! xx

Strapless refashions in cold December

I guess I'm missing the warmer weather because all I want to refashion are strapless numbers.

For the black dress I removed the baby blue ribbon and strap because it just didn't seem to match. The dress is made of a thick cotton spandex blend that had a lining of the same material. I removed that too, and did a general cinching and hemming. Then threw on a belt. Voila!

And just a quick nip and tuck for this shiny number perfect for the holiday season! The previous owner had sewn the straps on with fishing line!

More info about these two dresses here: http://artnerdy.blogspot.com/2012/12/refashioning-frocks.html


Happy refashioning!
Marisa

Refashion: DIY Lacy Cardigan

Hello readers! I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas! :) This is one of my favorite holidays and this year was just perfect since I am now engaged to my best friend, Autry. We've been dating for 1 year and 4 months. And last year we had to celebrate with hundreds of miles separating us so this year was nice to be able to be together on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day.

Enough about Christmas, on to refashioning! :) I am really excited to have finally reached this refashion in the posting line! When I was added as a contributor I decided I would start by sharing my oldest refashion posts first and work my way up to the current refashions. I still haven't reached the current ones, so if you've enjoyed what I've shared so far you may be even more interested in these here since, in my opinion, the work has become a lot better and the refashions turn out really well!

AFTER
(click photo to view tutorial!)

This Weeks Refashion: I took one of my cardigans (I say one of because I have many!) and added some lace from a thrifted curtain to the edges to 'dress it up' and 'add some life' and 'make it cute'. All of which I think I succeeded at! :) What do you think?

This was a fairly long and drawn out process for me. I will say that if I come across another cardigan that just needs a little more something I will totally be adding lace since I wear this cardigan a whole lot more now than I ever did when it was just plain and purple.

Because this was a learning experience for me I had the camera tagging along taking photos of the process so there is a really good, detailed post here @ Blue Eyed Beauty Blog which you can look through and follow to create your own or even find inspiration from!

BEFORE

This is what my cardigan looked like before I refashioned it. It was a lovely purple Merona cardigan which was thrifted! Thrift stores are THE BEST place to find clothes for refashions...but I'm sure you all already knew that. ;)

Until next time,

Helen
Blue Eyed Beauty Blog (Bloglovin, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest)
Exercise Encouragement Group Blog (Bloglovin, Facebook, Pinterest)

Working towards a buy-nothing Christmas

I have long held a goal of giving gifts that are low-impact. Home made, purchased second hand, whatever, just so long as it isn't something straight from the pre-Christmas corporate madness. The Christmas season was 34 days long this year, meant not to increase our celebrations, but to ensure that you and I spent enough so that corporations could make their profit goals. I'm slowly working towards a Buy Nothing Christmas.

Alas, I was not able to make every single gift I gave this year, but I was able to make something for everyone.  I enjoyed it far more than shopping for these same items. I made a knitted bag for carrying books (in Gryffandor colors, of course), two toddler backpacks, and a superhero cape. I was up working on it all until the last minute, so I did not get before and after pictures. I did, however, get a little sample of a superhero man:

In front of him is one of the two backpacks I made, but since it was a toddler gift, it got tossed aside once a princess dress got pulled out of the gift pile. ;-) The cloth is left over from another project, the {unseen) trims came from a thrift store, and the straps and buckles on it were saved from an old back-pack style purse. I cut them off the bag 10 years ago, certain that such good straps would have a use someday. And they did!

That cape may never come off that boy's body. One of the most fun things about it is that the red material I used was the same material I used to make a cloak for his mom 20 years ago, and was itself purchased from a scrap bin. The blue ribbon was purchased from a thrift store.

I feel very happy about having given home made gifts that pleased the recipients and which were all comprised of eiher things that were purcased second hand or leftovers from prior projects.

When I have the opportunity to get pictures of everything, I will post it in my blog. Meanwhile, happy refashioning!

Have a great New Year!

Elise Too

OTT LEGGINGS INTO GREAT SLEEVES

OTT leggings into great sleeves in minutes. For this top I used a pair of leggings that a mate bought me today for Xmas, that just weren't flattering on me. And....an old skirt with great bow detail.

For the neckline I used some left over jersey from the leggings and used as ribbing. 

And .........what do you think of my top!

Some Christmas Eve Pajamas

So, I'm starting the tradition of "new" pajamas and other goodies (Christmas movie, snack, popcorn, etc.) to be opened on Christmas eve with our 4 year old son. Not wanting to buy a pair of pajamas and having a couple of t-shirts just asking to be cut up, I decided that I'd use these for the pj's. I didn't take a photo before cutting them up, but I reassembled them to show how much they were cut down to make size 5 pajamas.

This is a t-shirt I found at the thrift store with plans to size it down for my spiderman obsessed son.

 This was one of my husband's t-shirts that he simply stopped wearing, in great shape, and perfect as bottoms for my son's new pajama set.

I cut the spiderman t-shirt down using one of his looser pajama tops as a guide, leaving a margin for sewing it all up, and cutting off the sleeves and reattaching them once I was ready to assemble everything. The bottoms, similarly, I cut out using one of his pairs of bottoms that were a little loose. All you have to do is fold the pants in half, cut along the outside of the pant leg and around to the crotch(again, leaving a margin for sewing it all up), fold this over and use it as a guide to cut out the rest of the leg, then repeat on the back of the t-shirt or whatever fabric you may be using. Using currently owned clothing is a great way to make your own patterns and it helps you to see how things are constructed. This also means that you'll be more likely to get a really good fit, using something that already fits well!

I ended up using the neck of the gray t-shirt as the waist band for the pants...perfect! The rest goes to the scrap bucket ;)

Now to wrap these pj's up to await our evening activities!!! Hope your holidays are bright and a time of celebration, whatever you choose to celebrate :) Love, peace, hope, family, friends, joy, renewal, contentment...take your pick!

Peace,
Andrea
LittleDidYouKnow

An Introduction

I am a new contributer to Re-fashion Co-op, and before I start posting refashions I thought I'd give a brief summary of my background and let you know what I have to offer and hope to learn from my experiences with doing this.  For a more indepth summary about me you can go to my About page, and my blog can be found here.

My name is Rachel.  I am a Christian, wife, and step mom to three boys.  I'm primarily a sewist and most of my refashions thus far have been mending jobs.  Here is a post on my most recent garment project I finished, and here is a post on some brief mending jobs I did on some of my favorite articles of clothing just to give you all a basic idea of what I do.

I have been sewing on and off for a couple of years now, and am a lover of vintage inspiration.  I'm beginning to delve into historical clothing reproductions, and am basically passionate about anything to do with fiber: knitting, felting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, etc.  Eventually I'd love to branch into jewelry making, millinery, and shoe cobbling.  However, there are only so many hours in a day so those will have to wait...for now.

I play the piano, sing, and enjoy music history just as much as fashion history.  One day I'd love to learn how to play the cello, and I sometimes can be found tinkering with my guitar.  I love to cook, and I love to read and write and frequently books can mean more to me than clothes.  I'm a medic in the US Army, and one day would like to be a firefighter paramedic.  Basically, if you haven't figured this out yet, I'm all over the place and can't stand to be bored so I keep myself busy.  Maybe one day I'll begin to settle into a more focused career path, but until then I'm having a blast doing everything I possibly can in this life I'm living.

What I really hope to offer on this blog is more of a focus on refashioning clothes I already own instead of buying things to refashion, or replacing something I own with something that fits the need better.  While I'm not necessarily the best minimalist on this earth (my book collection kind of gives me away here), I have become more aware of a desire in myself to require less.  I've lost a lot of interest in buying new clothes, accessories, and shoes except for very specific pieces, and most of them I can make myself.  I've been really trying to not increase my clothing collection, but to decrease it to only the things I love to wear.

I really love how my wardrobe has been developing.  It's been cultivated over time, and many of the pieces are old favorites I'd like to preserve as long as possible.  Thus my desire to really try and stick to refashioning what I already have, or improve upon it.  I have a couple of resources that are my main inspiration with this, and some are books by Mary Brooks Pickens that concern mending and fabric.  There are some fantastic refashioning ideas for old garments in her books that I will be referencing frequently...along with my other library of sewing books...ahem.

Anyway!  So this is me, and I can't wait to get started with sharing my experiments with all of you!

Wrap Skirt to girls skirt

Made this sample length of paisley fabric into a wrap skirt ages ago. I didn't wear it much. It is alway difficult to work out how to sit or walk unhindered in the wind in these things!

I took the wrap skirt, cut off the waistband and ties, opened up the waist darts, sewed the wrap ends together as a seam, turned down the top about 2cm and put in elastic!

Later I had a rummage for more fabric to use for skirts. I wasn't sure if I had donated the rest of the paisley samples or not. Glad to find out they were still in the box in the cupboard. They are the same kind of sample fabric as the wrap skirt was made out of.

See? It is hand printed in Italy! I probably would have done more with it if brown was a colour that suited me.

The length in the top one is a bit short, and the other a bit long, so I think they are compatable enough to add a band of the one to the other.

Have a Happy Christmas!

denim rescue

I was running out of time to make all the christmas presents I wanted to.

I really liked the pockets on the back of some maternity jeans I was only keeping for fabric.  Somehow, they became this cute little bag for my son's girlfriend, who is a uni student.

 

This cute little change purse was cut from the same clothe, so to speak. I used an embroidery design as well as double thickness thread to get the design to stand out.

change purse from skirt off cut

Look  here to see how I turned this piece of off cut from another refashion:

Into this cute change purse for a christmas present;

Country Chic 5 Minute Refashion

If you are a devoted refashionista like me, you have craft supplies laying around everywhere. My dining table has become a permanent home to a sewing machine. The living room floor is where I lay out most of my patterns and fabrics, finding a pin or stepping on one is nothing out of the ordinary in this household.

Today’s refashion was inspired by a piece of lace trim that was on my dresser, aka make up table! I was going to use it in one of my refashions, but it turned out to be a complete fail (those happen to me too!), but I am glad it came in handy, because I think it turned out super cute! So here is what we are going to refashion today:

A Liz Claiborne Petite Large shirt. It’s so comfy, I love it! And even though it’s somewhat baggy, it’ll be staying in my closet for a long while!

And here is the stranded piece of trim, laying right there on my make up brushes case, like it belongs there:

Sewing the lace onto the pockets is easier done by hand, and it will only take you about 5 minutes! I think the result is pretty amazing!

I hope you enjoyed this easy, super chic, super girly refashion. I am sure that my obsession with lace trim is becoming more and more obvious with every refashion!

Happy Holidays!

Z of BeingZhenya.com 

Turn old leggings into a fancy pouch

Anyone else had a pair of leggings with zippers towards the end that you don't wear anymore? (I hope it's not only me.... haha) Here's sharing with you an easy way of turning them into a fancy pouch!

If your leggings don't have zippers, simply sew in your own or use an old pouch as a base.

Click here to view the full tutorial! Happy holidays everyone! :)

Spot the difference

If you want to change the look of your LBD for Christmas why don't you try this idea?
I started out with this plain velvet dress

and used a bit of sheer black fabric with silver spots on to make some ruched sleeves.  I also cut out a couple of circles of the same fabric and pinned them to the dress behind a diamante brooch.  

I only wanted a temporary change so I tacked the sleeves in for easy removal, but of course they could be properly sewn in.