Jumper to Scarf

Winter time for me brings on an urge to knit. I didn't have any wool so I unravelled a jumper I didn't wear anymore. I knitted a basic scarf 80 stitches in width in the moss stitch. To give a more girlie look I attempted crochet circles. This was a bit of a learning curve as I haven't done crochet before but after a couple of tutorials I was hooked.

Another Sweater Refashion

I've been out of commission for most of this month. My mom passed away suddenly four weeks ago.
I did this refashion a while ago. I started out with this sweater/dickey combo thing.


At 1x, it was too big and I wasn't thrilled with the shiny false-shirt fabric. So I removed the dickey, took in the sides, and used scrap yarn to crochet a decorative neck edge.

I love this sweater now.

vintage dress to peter pan collars top

Inspired by the latest trend of peter pan collars, I made this:

from this vintage sundress.

Check out more details on my blog, Made by Evyline.

Collars

So showing refashion of shirts yesterday, let's move to neck ties. Because if you have plenty of shirts for refashion, for sure ties will come with it.

I'm not even sure, how I came up with these collars. I think it supposed to be obi belt, but then I changed my mind. To make them does not take science, but a loads of patience. That's because of silk (bottom part). You need to undo whole tie and then fold it, all by hand, with help of iron, and you also need to be careful, as silk is a very fine and very special material to work with. Then you add what you like - I used faux leather and satin. I also used zippers for dramatic effect.

Turn some nice music on while creating it. Long song!

I posted more pictures of these collars on my Bartinki blog and facebook page. Enjoy!

Cheating - A Doily Update

I am cheating!

I was supposed to have one more week, but my trip has been rescheduled and moved up an entire week. So, the doilies that were going to be attached by hand are being zigzagged into place. Chut! Don't tell anyone. 

This is the inspiration for the skirt. I know how to do the belt area but I still don't know if I should even out the hem or leave it as is, which, I think, is going to make me look like an old hippy who hasn't finished her crochet blanquet. 

Any of you know if I can take a crochet hook on a plane? 

Baby Headbands with Interchangeable Flowers

I made a few headbands for my upcoming new niece due in July. I crocheted the headbands with thrift store yarn and used recycled fabric for the flowers.

from an old silk dress


from a strip of vintage sheet


from an old polyester scarf


from the lining of an old coat

And that's only a few of them!!! You can see them all on my blog.

My Doilies

My doilies collection is growing and growing.

At first, I was doing it in an offhanded way as I couldn't think of an occasion to wear such a beautiful skirt, but my parents will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in August, and obviously this is a good enough reason to start the project.

Here is what I plan on doing : I will first make a muslin of the skirt, baste the doilies and tie them up together with little crocheted flowers. It's a pretty good plan I think except, I don't really know how to crochet. I took it up briefly in December to make snowflakes, but really I have a lot of learning to do.

If you know of a good crochet related resource or have a better idea on how to do this, I am all ears. In the meantime, I'll try to find a Crocheting for Dummies book or something.

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.

Refashion Co-op Valentines launch

I would like to start this launch post by saying thank you! Thank you to everyone who took an interest in this concept and especially thank you to the six women who signed up as editors.

I took the refashion pledge at Wardrobe Refashion (WR) last autumn and loved it mightily. The community spirit amongst refashioners was so warming and I was inspired by all the refashions they shared. However, it was all too soon over. In November Nikki posted that WR was going to close down. I was gutted and I didn't want to let go!

I had a long think about it, considering whether I would like to start something similar myself. But talking it over with my husband made me realise that it would just add too much work and stress to my life at the moment with all the other projects that were going on. So I started thinking about whether there was another way of recreating something like the WR community without me having to do all the work and take all the responsibility myself. One thing that came to me in all this was that if you want to share the work load with someone you also have to be willing to share the responsibility and of course the credit and I was more than willing to do both.

So I contacted fellow refashionista Erica, who I had already been chatting to on twitter, to see if she was interested in doing something together. She was very positive towards the idea but we decided at first to go together on interviewing some of the refashionistas we had met through WR. So the idea was shelved for a little bit. I did my first interview with Zoe and Erica did hers with Jillian. While interviewing Zoe we got to talking about the idea of having a refashion blog with several editors. Zoe encouraged me to go ahead with the idea and this inspired me to write the post 'Refashionista Co-operative idea" in January. This post was mainly aimed at anyone interested in being an editor in such a co-operative and Bryony, Debbie, Erica, Jenni, Jessica and Jillian contacted me saying that they were interested.

This all happened in the middle of January and now a month later we are ready to launch the blog. The time has now come for contributors to sign up to the Refashion Co-op. Over the next couple of weeks we will be signing up contributors and figuring out the rules for contributing. They won't be strict or inhibiting as we are well aware that the contributors are what is going to make this blog great. We will ask however, that everyone behaved nicely towards each other and encourages each other with comments and likes. This is where the editors come in again. As we are 7 editors at the moment, each editor will have one day a week where they are on shift. Editors will not change or do corrections to your posts. But they will read each post and comment to make sure everyone is playing nice.

The amount of editors on Refashion Co-op is the main strength of the blog. It means that each of us has the support of the other 6 and that we shouldn't be burned out by having to keep an eye on things each and every day. There may also come a day when one of the editors decide that they need to take a break from RC. If this is the case we can easily take on new editors, since no one editor owns the blog.

Finally, I would like to add a little something about the badge. You are most welcome to use it to link to the blog, whether you are a contributor or a reader/supporter. As neither of the editors are professional graphic designers we have decided to start out with one, simple but effective badge design. We are then hoping in the long run to have a competition for a makeover of the blog and the badge. But for now we hope you will make good use of this one.



All there is left to do is to introduce the editors: Bryony, Debbie, Erica, Jenni, Jessica, Jillian and myself, Eddie. Please go to the editors page and read more about us. We each have our own blogs and write about a lot of exciting things beyond refashioning. Over the coming days you will get a chance to meet each of us as refashionistas through a series of interview style posts.

Thank you and please enjoy the Refashion Co-op!

Eddie