Old Lady Curtains to Party Dress

When I first saw this dress I was looking for lace I could steal for another project. Initially I was going to pass this by, but then I realized that the waist "belt" was the same as on a dress I own and adore. So this came home with me.

And voila! A cute party dress with lots of swingy skirt. The entire time I felt like I was carving away all the bad stuff to find the cute dress underneath. It's given me so much confidence to be able to pull this off. If I can refashion this I can refashion anything.

Read more about this dress adventure on my blog.

Polkadot Jumper...thing? to Dress

When I first saw this piece on the rack at Goodwill I thought it was a dress. It was not.

Is it clear from my facial expression how excited I was to turn this thing into a dress? Lots of ripped seams, new hems, new neckline, belt painting, and new cuffs later, I had this:

Yay pockets!  To follow the whole process between these two photos, and see more of my new sweetheart neckline, visit my blog.

Raspberry Sorbet Skirt

When I found this dress at Goodwill I was much more interested in the skirt than the top. Which is good, because the skirt fit and the top did not. I'm looking super grumpy in an effort not flash you all. Too small and see-through is not a good look for a shirt on me!

After removing the top, creating a new elastic waist, and then giving the bottom an assymmetric chop I have a new high-low skirt with pockets. It's not a big difference in hem height - the front hits the top of my knees and the back hits the bottom, but it's plenty fine for me!

For more info on how I spiffed up this skirt, see my blog.

Renegade Seamstress Inspired Shirt

One of my friends is an amazing knitter and made me a fabulous pair of mittens with DNA helixes on them for the cabling. So cute and nerdy! To repay her, I wanted to refashion her a shirt. She picked a medium tan basic cotton tee that I forgot to take a before picture of. :(

Here are the afters.  I was inspired by the use of pintucks in this piece.

See more on my blog here!

A Skirt on the Wild Side

This is just a quick shortening of a floor length broomstick skirt to a knee length one, but there are awesome giraffe patterns involved and a new waistline!

For the intermediate steps, more pictures, and a confession of non-perfect hem cutting, see my blog.

Hawaiian Dress to Work Blouse

Hello all!  This is my first post on Refashion Co-op, and I will be showing you my first refashion as well.  I have a lot of other pieces I've made since then, so I should have more things to put up soon!  I'm really enjoying refashioning - my mother use to make us clothes when I was a kid and made things for herself when she was younger.  I've never been great with patterns, but have definitely used the sewing skills she taught me to repair and extend the life of my clothes.  Now that I've discovered refashioning, I feel like I'm really following in mom's sewing footsteps!

Amazing print and fabric, but way too huge and shapeless.  I am not actually a gigantic pear with a human head on top, but this dress (muu muu?) would like you to think so.  I chopped off a good amount of length, took it in a little right under the bust, and swapped it back to front so that the V at my spine was now over my bust.  The excess from the skirt got folded in half and turned into a great sash:

There's not a lot on there right now, but feel free to stop by my new refashion blog for a tiny bit more on this piece and other future ones!