Mustard Cardigan Flower refashion

Hi all! It's been awhile, thought I'd show off a creation (I admit it's from a couple months ago but somehow I forgot to post it here!)

First I refashioned a Mens L crewneck 100% merino sweater into a cardigan for myself:



Borrowed a BBW tee pattern from a friend to get the general shape, frankenpatterning that onto my favorite RTW cardigan to get a sense for the proportions I like. To make the sleeves, I cut them to be 3/4 length from the bottom of the mens sweater, so that when I attached them they would be about the right circumference and salvage the hems (does that make sense? my bicep now occupies the space where the mens elbows/forearms once did)

Then I added a ton of flowers.


Made from a wool blend. Somehow got really lucky and found a spot-on color match at Joann's. Basically I used a combination of online felt flower tutorials, made up a couple of my own, and Google Imaged "felt flower" as inspiration.

Added matching buttons. Instead of attempting buttonholes, the cardigan actually closes with snaps so the buttons are decorative. It probably took me 20 hours to make, but I wear it a lot and always get comments on it!

Prom dress to cocktail dress refashion

Before: one long-ass prom dress from the thrift shop (I'm wearing 2" heels and had to spread this out on the ground for the photo ... trust me, I'm not that tall!)



After: cocktail-esque dress. Looking at it now, I'd probably swap out the floppy velvet bow for a vintage brooch.



Side view. There's horsehair braid in the hem and the dress is made of a stiff silk, so this things has a ton of poof! Had to iron down the pleats to tame it somewhat.



Happy 2012, folks!

Seasonal Transitions Challenge: oversized skirt to kickpleat skirt

Kickpleat? I think that's what you call these things.


The other day I found this size 20W Boden skirt in the thrift shop and fell in love with the colorblocking, asymmetry, and geometric shapes. The colors are summery but the weight could pass for spring and fall in San Francisco, so I whipped it out for this challenge. As you can see, it was about 13" too big for me as well as 2.5" too long (I like my skirts to fall below the knee, but not that far below the knee).


First I hemmed both the lining and the skirt shorter, then treated both as one piece of fabric. Because I wanted to keep the pockets, I knew I had to refashion this from the center instead of bringing in the side seams. I simply folded it in by 6.5" at the middle back to create a back seam, and then created a 6.5" boxpleat down the center front.

(Back seam, edges trimmed and zigzagged)

(Front boxpleat. I stitched it down partway and then topstitched it to reinforce the pleat)

I don't think it's too noticeable that there's a new center back seam, do you?

Just as I was finishing this up, my roommate walks in and says, "Oh, those are my favorite colors!"

Sigh.

So I'm giving it to her. Which is just as well. I love it and think it's adorable, but if I'm honest with myself I probably wouldn't wear it as often as I'd like ... and I like the clothes in my closet to pull their weight! Which just means ... an excuse for another refashion!

If you're looking for more skirt refashion ideas, feel free to drop by!

Mens button down to womens button up blouse

I started out with a mens button down shirt, XL, in a cornflower blue that was too beautiful to pass up.

Added in vintage lace sent to me by a bloggy friend.

And combined with a blouse sloper pattern that I wanted to experiment on with cheap-ish fabric.


And this is what i got! A bit blousier than I usually wear, but I like it for work. As my friend says, it combines menswear with vintage, feminine bits. I was too lazy to make closures for it so I flipped the shirt around so that it buttons up the back, ala the 1940s styles. (More photos)


Couple extra details: I pleated out the sleeve cap ease with a little inverted pleat, and handstitched on the two rows of lace. All in all, I'm loving this one!

Around the World in 80 Dresses: sundress to sundress

Another dress for the challenge! So far I count 10 dresses have been refashioned and posted ... so here's #11 for our little community! A sundress into, well, a sundress.

Before:



It's just a leeeeetle bit big on me. Nice, unflattering length; sleeve holes low enough to show off my bra; plenty roomy for big dinners and then some. After:



More fitted! Shortened! And best of all ... SLEEVES!!!

So here's what I did. Step 1: Shorten straps (handy trick if you are petite like I am!)


Took up the dress by about 2.5" on each side by flipping the dress inside out and stitching 1.25" from the original seam line. This lifted the entire dress so that the empire seamline hit under my bust instead of just above my natural waistline. As a kid, my mom used to adjust some of my dresses like this until I grew into them.

Step two: add smocking in the back to pull in the waist. I threaded elastic thread into my bobbin and made rows of stitches 1/4" apart. I marked where my natural waist falls, and smocked from the empire seamline until my natural waist. You could probably just mark your natural waist and smock 1" above and 1" below the waistline to cinch in at the narrowest part of your waist.


Step 3: Hem skirt. I cut 6" off the bottom and hemed it up with a narrow hem. At first I'd planned to stop there, but when I tried the dress on and looked in a mirror, it looked a little ... underwhelming. My body type is such that, if I don't somehow emphasize my shoulders, I tend to look very rectangular (whereas if I incorporate my shoulders into the silhouette then it gives the impression of an hourglass). So I used the 6" fabric strip from the bottom fo the dress to play around with sleeve options, and this is what I settled on:

Slightly pleated cap sleeves.

Much better!

More on my blog.

Around the World in 80 Dresses: Colorblock Dress Tutorial

Our first installment in a series of projects and tutorials to kick off the week ... but Huli has already beaten me to the punch! I love her simple refashion and can't wait to see more pouring onto the site. In the meantime, here's a tutorial I put together to transform a long skirt into a colorblocked dress.

Before:


After:

The great thing abut this type of refashion is that you can use almost any oversized dress or skirt to make a colorblocked dress; just attach it at the waist and you're good to go! If you're extra clever, you can even make the top a refashion too (in my case, I was using up leftover scraps from a previous dress). I used a commercial Simplicity pattern with princess seams for the top. If you want to create coordinating embellishments, you'll need at least an ankle-length skirt (or an oversized dress).

Step 1 (not pictured): assemble dress "top." Be sure to note where zipper will be located (mine was in the back).

Step 2: Measure how long you would like your skirt to be, add 1/2" seam allowance, and chop off bottom of skirt (mine was 22" long). Check to see if there is an existing seam where the zipper will be inserted. If so, use seam ripper to remove 8" of stitching along that seam. If you are inserting a zipper where there is no seam (for example, in the back of a skirt with only 2 seams), you will need to cut the skirt straight up, zig zag the edges, and stitch the skirt back together, leaving an 8" gap at the top where the zipper will go in.

Step 3: pin skirt to top. Since my skirt was wider than my top, I decided to use pleats to take in the excess, and I decided to have the pleat align with the princess seam. First I marked the center front and center back.

Then I pinned the skirt and top, right sides together, so that the center fronts aligned, and then so that the side seams aligned. Then I pinned in a bit, before overlapping the fabric so that the pleat would "butt" up against the princess seam, as below:

Repeat for back. Stitch skirt to blouse (I added a row of staystitching to prevent the waist from stretching out too much). Press open.

Step 4: Insert zipper.

Step 5: Embellishments. If you've used an ankle-length skirt, you will have a length of fabric leftover with which to embellish. For my dress, I chose to make a series of fabric yo-yo's to attach to the front. I also cut bias strips and used them to bind the armholes, bias fabric facing out, to help tie the look together. To do this I cut a series of 1.25" wide bias strips, folded it in half wrong sides together, then stitched it to the armhole using a 3/16" seam allowance on the inside of the armholes, flipped the bias tape to the outside, and stitched in the ditch to secure.

There are a number of tutorials for yo-yo's, I tend to use this one.

As you can see, I used the entire front of the skirt to make the yo-yo's! I have 4 different sizes of yo-yo's here. Pin in place on your dress front, then try on your dress and adjust as needed. I adjusted 3-4 times before I found an arrangement that I was happy with. For reference, here's a closeup of the final configuration.

Step 7: Grab a pair of sandals and flaunt your new dress!

A bit involved, yes, but easily modified to suit your materials on hand! You don't have to use embellishments, or you could adapt this to stretchy knit materials, use fabrics with less contrast, use gathers instead of pleats, use more pleats, straight up attach an oversized skirt to a wide blouse and cinch it in with elastic, use contrasting embellishments ... the possibilities are endless!

Let me know if you have any questions or want clarifications, but otherwise - happy refashioning! I look forward to seeing more dresses pop up around here soon! And if you refashion a dress based on this tutorial, please leave a comment here or on my blog -- I'd love to see it!

Your advice please!

So I thrifted this 100% wool sweater recently:


LOVE the shape. Hate the color. It fits pretty well, although it could be accused of being 1/2 size too big.

The plan is to dye it, but I've never dyed anything before. It's this beige that just about matches my skin tone, and I'm thinking:

1) darken it ... with brown or black dye?
2) warm it up ... go for a persimmony with orange maybe? if I threw red into the pot, do we think I'd get some tomato-y fall-ish hue? magenta is an interesting dark horse "that could be interesting or really, really bad" consideration as well.
3) other: (please suggest!)

So my questions to you are,

What color should I dye it? I'm guessing that the best I can hope for is a tinting instead of a true overdye, because ...

How should I dye a 100% wool sweater that doesn't have a whole lot of room to shrink? If I mess up my roommate is one size smaller than me, and if I really mess up then we have another friend who is 2 sizes smaller than me ... but, selfishly, I've been looking for this type of sweater forever now, I'll probably never stitch one up for myself (either sewing or knitting ... DEFINITELY not knitting!) Gentle mixing? Bubble it up to a high heat and then dunk in the sweater and turn off the heat and let it sit for a couple days?

Do you have experience with this type of thing? Know of any good links you can point me to?

Ideas and suggestions greatly appreciated!!!

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!

Refashion editor: Jessica (ayenforcraft)

How did you get into refashioning?
I’ve been crafting for over 20 years now, ever since my grandma taught me to knit at the age of six. Since then I’ve expanded into crocheting and sewing, and began refashioning nearly four years ago. My first refashion was to cut down the waistband of a too-tight skirt and finish it off with bias tape. It was so simple, so fast and yet so revolutionary! I was hooked.

What is your motivation for refashioning?
Ecological, economical, creativity and sheer laziness! I love the truly one-of-a-kind aspect of refashions, and working with source materials that are cheap also frees me to take chances and make mistakes. Mistakes are unfortunate, but they make me a better seamstress.

Where do you get your inspiration?
The Internet remains my primary source for refashion inspiration, and I look forward to seeing what others have been up to! Sometimes a construction detail from a garment in a thrift shop or in a retail store will stick in my mind for weeks or months and eventually work its way into a refashion, but I’ve never made inspiration boards or saved images from magazines. Fashion magazines leave me with a strong sense of wantyness so I try to avoid them altogether.

Which techniques do you use in your refashions?
I go through phases. There are periods where I’m trying to make everything I see into a skirt … and then there are periods where I look at nothing but sweaters. I love converting old sweaters into new ones, buying skirts that are too big and too long and using pleats to make them fit me. I also like to use bias tape to finish raw edges, and often I use a contrasting bias tape and make it part of the design.

Where do you find things to refashion?
Thrift shops, mostly. If I have a favorite garment I no longer wear but cannot bear to part with, I compromise with myself by adding it to the refashion pile. Recently I put out a call to my friends to pass their old clothes my way. Every time my family takes a load of stuff too Goodwill, I make sure to paw through it first. Some of my favorite refashions have come from the family discard pile.

What is your favorite refashion?
Too many favorites! Hm … here are three favorites:

This skirt started out as two skirts: a slightly-too-small-slightly-too-long thrifted wool skirt, and an ill-fitting self-drafted corduroy skirt that waffled between an A-line and pencil skirt. Throw in some pleats, Frankenstein one skirt onto the other, and you have a one-of-a-kind creation. More details on the construction, as well as the improvisational refashion process, here.


Back when I was too scared of curves to tackle dresses or blouses, I hit on the idea of attaching an A-line skirt to a button-down blouse to create a “shirt dress.” Add in a fabric-covered belt and coordinating ruffled underskirt, and you have a dress that still makes me smile every time I pull it on.


In October 2010, I challenged myself to refashion one sweater per week for the entire month of October. This is the very first sweater I refashioned in that challenge. I converted an oversized pullover into a cardigan and crocheted a mass of oversized flowers to use as embellishments. This sweater has been perfect in the office or for a casual outing with friends.


Do you recycle anything other than fashion?
I’ve been known to use upcycled fabrics into home décor or other household-y items like quilts and draft snakes. I also dabble with collage now and again, which doesn’t use fabric (usually) but does reuse other materials!

Where can I read more about you and refashioning?
You can follow my blog here, and if you’re really just interested in the refashions, I think I tagged all of those posts with Refashion.