The Quest For A Holiday Top

Happy Holidays, fellow refashioners! Now, I detest ugly holiday sweaters along with a lot of other folks, and am also not big on wearing typical holiday colors (red and green for the celebrators of Christmas). I like the idea of glitter and sparkle and shine as a way of glamming it up holiday style. It all started when I found this pale gold paisley patterned pencil skirt (say that 10 X fast!) at my local thrift store. I immediately thought holiday and bought it without even trying it on. It looked like it would fit...and it did! Well, mostly ;) There's some extra space in the tummy area (makes me feel awesome!) so I'll add a couple of darts to go along with the two already there.

Should I keep the extra space for the impending food baby that comes with holiday eating? ;)

Don't you love the texture and shine?!?!?!?

Then, I thought, "I need a top to go with this lovely little number." In comes a jersey knit shift dress that I'd thrifted. It has an amazing beaded yoke, but the bottom had been hacked off to make it unwearable as a dress and simply too voluminous as a tunic length top. There were two layers of fabric, the underlayer being more fitted to the body, the outer layer being much more flowy and well, as I said, voluminous. I don't have a before on it, but hopefully you get the idea...

Now, I took the underlayer and  folded it under creating a wide band as a hem (about 5-6 inches). I took the top layer and ran it through my machine on an extra long straight stitch so that I could gather it by pulling one of the threads. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can look it up! I'm not great at tutorials, but there are some good ones out there) I did so about 5-6 inches from the bottom of the outer layer. Once I'd gathered the fabric enough so that it was the same circumference as the underlayer of fabric, I cut off the excess under the gather. Now, both layers of fabric were the same length. This was so that when I sew down the outer layer, it creates the blousing effect that I'm going for. Finally, I simply lined up the gathered line (outer layer) with the hemline (under layer) and sewed it down with a zigzag stitch, leaving the 6 inch hem visible under the gather. Here are a couple of photos, one with the wide band tucked in, one with it out.

Now, you'll notice that I am not wearing the newly created top with the amazing holiday skirt...I decided the top was just a bit too dark once I'd tried it on together. Still on the search for that top, but wait! I may have just the thing...we'll see if it works out in my next post :)

Peace,

Andrea
LittleDidYouKnow