Meat and potatoes

I bought this blouse for £3 in a charity shop

I had read some advice from a fashion expert which was 70% of your wardrobe should be 'meat and potatoes'.  I realised most of my wardrobe was puddings and gravy so that's why I bought this blouse, to start to redress the balance, but also with a refashion in mind.

Here is the other element of the refashion

The plan was to use the doily as a lace insert to the back of the blouse, this would also add a bit of give and improve the fit.

I deliberated exactly where to add the doily to minimise the bra strap and flesh on view.

Doilies are so beautifully old fashioned and often languish unloved in charity shops.

I cut a hole in the back of the blouse using a side plate as a template and added the doily to fill the gap

I used one layer of hand sewing and one layer of machine sewing for the attachment.

I also added a pop of colour in the sleeves

Here is the finished blouse

More info, photos and words here

Patriotic Kimono

Here in the US, we celebrated Memorial Day this weekend. It's a day of remembrance for all the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom. I decided to whip up a little something red, white, and blue for the occasion using this old skirt, which I brought home from a clothes swap two years ago when no one else wanted it at the end of the night. Apart from the... interesting print on that pure polyester fabric, the elastic waistband was also completely shot (hence the pinned loop to keep it on my dress form).

I removed the worn-out waistband, pressed out all the pleats, and used the abundance of fabric I was left with to make a simple little kimono. In fact, I spent more time pressing out all those pleats than I actually spent sewing!

For more details and photos, feel free to visit me at CarissaKnits!

From White Blah to Tie Dye Blue!

I was in search for the perfect fun beach cover up when I came across this white cotton dress.

I cut a portion off the bottom and using Rit Dye, tie dyed it and wala! New beach cover up perfect for a day at the ocean!

My full tutorial can be found here! 

Happy Sewing!
Katie

Little Plaid Dress Refashion

I used my niece as a model for this one. :) 

Here's the original ↴

What I did:

1. Cut the sleeves off and hemmed them to the edge using this method.

2. Took off about 18 inches from the bottom and hemmed it.

3. Tapered in both of the sides to fit.

4. Added some triangle panels on each side of the skirt to give it more of a fit and flare shape (sorry I didn't get a great photo of them!).

5. Unstitched the pocket and moved it higher up.

6. Added a button and buttonhole at the very top of the neck.

7. Changed the buttons (to heart buttons!).

8. Made a little belt out of the excess fabric.

New dress! ↴

Side by side:

More refashions on my blog and instagram !

XO

Mom Jeans to 2 pouch cross-body bag

My mom gave me this pair of mom jeans that didn't fit her anymore:

So I used it and salvaged straps to make this new 2 pouch cross-body bag:

 You can see more about this bag on my blog.

Blue Top

Just a quick refashion today - I found this top during a thrifting spree and liked the color and print but the tie / collar was a bit thick and it was a bit big / long on me. I shortened the length and chopped off the sleeves. I then cut the tie in half and hand stitched the edges.  

                       

        

From dress to top

Hello everyone! 

It's Magda from House of Estrela again. 

I don't often sew for myself, that's a fact. Since I had kids I focus on sewing for them. 

I want to change that, I really do. So, last month I jumped in at the chance of turning a XXL dress I bought just because I liked the fabric, and tossed it right away into my refashion pile, into a new top for myself. 

You can read all the details about in in my blog, HERE if you're interested. 

BEFORE & AFTER

I wear it all the time, it's comfortable and the subtle golden in it, allows me to dress it up a bit if needed. 

Aren't you so happy when you find XXL clothes to refashion too? 

Increased boob size #3 - Refashion FBA - Bodice side gussets

I continue to refashion former refashions, that have become to narrow in the chest area.
Before, when it still fit:

On his dress I opened the side seams all the way doen to the waist. It wasn't nessasary size-wise, but since the lace elastic was contrasting the fabric of the dress, I decided to make the lace a design element, rather than just use a little snip of it below the armpit. I also used my trusty lace elastic on this one.

After, from the front:

I love when redhaired people wear green clothes. The contrast is so beautiful. This cardigan have that "redhaired colour".

I also recently refashioned the cardigan. I forgot a before picture, but it was a short sleeve sweater with a large cowl/turtleneck. It simply cut it open down the middle and hemmed the edges. The sweater has slits with buttons at the sides. I removed the buttons and added them to the new cardigan front. And made buttonholes.

Blog post: http://saga-i-farver.blogspot.dk/2016/05/strre-overvidde-3-grnternet-kjole.html

Of Neon and Flamenco

Hello Co-Op!

I hope the folks here in the USA are having a great memorial day weekend. I've been glad for the opportunity to slow down and relax a little. And do some sewing of course!

Dress! Pros: My favorite color, neon green! And I love the ruffle at the bottom. Con: Strapless, and since it's one solid color that's highly unusual, I couldn't add straps without it having that "I literally just sewed some straps on this" look

I decided to add some fabric to the ruffle, thus giving me a place to coordinate some straps off of. Enter this shirt from high school, because at one point I thought wearing things 5x my size looked good (???)

I cut several bands of fabric from the shirt

Making sure to carefully match the pattern so it would look right

Pin and hem the new pieces to all look the same

Sew them together into one looonnngg ribbon

Pin this new ruffle to the old ruffle. Drag this project out to a week because you keep avoiding it because pinning is tedious.

Sew on ruffle. Look at the luck! I had JUST enough  thread on my bobbin to sew on the whole thing

I used the tiniest zig-zag my machine could muster. Yes I know the thread is teal. That toned in the best since I don't have neon thread :(

Ruffle complete! Very flamenco-y

That very bottom bit was another, separate, shorter ruffle from the main one. There was juuussstt enough fabric on that shirt to line the whole edge of the dress. Few!

NOW I can add straps! I decided to use the ones that were already part of the shirt

That white ribbing on the edges was way too much and too floppy, so I folded it in half and sewed it down

Finished result

Now for the inside out and pin on straps part

Back

Sew it all down and voila! 

Back. The straps aren't as lumpy as they look, I swear.

And there you have it! It needs to be worn with a strapless bra, but that's OK with me. It looks good and the pink helps to give it a little more interest.

On to the next project!

~Illy

Fixing A New Dress

I bought this new dress from Shein.com. It looked super cute online. Of course the model is probably a lot taller than my 5'4" height. I knew it may be too long but it was more than too long. It was also too big in the sleeves and just wasn't fitting right. Let me show you a comparison:

Modeling wearing dress on Shein.com

Me in the same dress :(

I couldn't return it because shipping it back to NJ was going to cost as much as the dress! Next time I will know to order smaller.

So I got to measuring and then pinning. I put the dress on my dress form and pulled the hem up and pinned it. I planned to cut off the extra after sewing it, that way I could make sure it was the length I wanted it in case I needed to redo it. I would later regret this decision.

This will turn out to be a bad idea.

Then I hemmed it. I tried it on and its all good so I cut the excess length off.

So next up was the sleeves. Im not going to try to make them tighter but I did make them smaller. I thought about removing the cuffs and resewing them on but when I tried to pick out the thread it would snag the material so I abandoned that idea and just did a normal hem.

Not too difficult of a refashion. Actually this may be more of an alteration than a refashion. So its not exactly my dream dress but it is a lot better than before. Im still thinking about taking it in on the sides but I haven't decided yet. It IS still a bit too big in the waist and on top.

Check out my my blog post to see why I regretted the way I hemmed this dress!