Eclectic Upcycled Brooch

Myself and my daughter refashioned a lot of redundant items today, in a Recycled Jewellery Workshop.


Above is my brooch, more detail can be found on the blog post I wrote: http://inexpertcrafter.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/recycled-jewellery-workshop/

I hope it inspires some customising/upcycling with all of the broken or disused bits and pieces you all collect. I know I am not alone!

Two Friendly Reminders Later ...

I broke the rules!
I'm not much of a rule breaker really, in fact, I quite like being told what to do.

I got a reminder from the lovely Eddie to see if I was able to post a refashion, and somehow, between grief, work, raising a family, life, you know ... I didn't have one. Well, I did, but I never got around to posting it until today when I got a second gentle reminder (and felt very much like a naughty school girl) from Portia.

So here, as promised, and somewhat late, is my little Cardigan Salvage Refashion.

Take one lovely little cardigan:



Stain the shoulder in an Acrylic Paint and Prosecco related incident (painting corks, and drinking; blogged about here):




Buy a copy of Mollie Makes, Issue 2 ... BRILLIANT British craft magazine, also available overseas!
Make the cover kit, a beautiful felt flower:




Then use said flower to cover the stain, corsage style:




Not rocket science. Not brain surgery either. But it served to give purpose to the magazine cover kit, and saved my cute cardi from certain death. Teamed with my turquoise killer heeled slingbacks, it looks F A B. Shame I don't have a pic of that for you.

My *new* Vintage Maxi

I don't know if this one will count towards the challenge, a bit audacious really.
The full story of this dress and its redemption are over on my blog, but here are the before and after shots.
I am AMAZED and thrilled to say that it needed no alteration size wise, even with my tiny height of only 5'4".

A shirt-to-dress refashion

Oh me oh my, I am SO very excited peeps.
I am THE Inexpert Crafter and yet ... I refashioned this:
















Through this:




















To this:




















I love love love it. And I posted a semi-tutorial over on my own blog. I say a semi-tutorial because I didn't take step-by-step shots since this is my first EVER dress. Actually, it is my first EVER garment for ME to wear!

Not a MAJOR Refashion

My DD inherited these lovely GAP jeans a couple of years ago and has worn them non-stop. She lived in them on our camping trips last summer and now, whilst they're a great fit over her cute bottom, they are simply too short.

She wore a hole in the knee so I folded the jeans in half, drew a line above the hole and cut straight across both legs (thus making sure they were the same length right?).
I then folded each leg twice over into a cute turn-up and put a couple of stitched through the side seams to hold, and this neat trick I just learned with turn-ups ... you put a little cross stitch through all but the very front layer which holds the turn up in place but is invisible from the outside. I wish I had thought of this or known about it a looooooonnnng time ago.

For more of what goes on in the life of the Inexpert Crafter, head over to my blog.

The Inexpert Crafter

Allow me to briefly introduce myself ... I'm Dee, I live in the UK, I'm a graphic designer, wife, mother of two and a very new and inexpert crafter. I co-founded a crafting group called A Crafty Coffee where about 20 people meet to chat and craft over a coffee (see what we did there?) every Friday morning.
In the past 12 months I have learned to knit, hand-appliqué, thread a sewing machine, write a blog and now to crochet.
I am passionate about reducing waste, reusing as far as humanly possible and recycling where ever I can.

My first proper refashion has been blogged about here, but Eddie over at Grey Duckling was so taken with is when she saw it in the flesh that she said I must submit something to the Refashion Co-op.

Both the blouse and the dress are original, home-made garments (carrying the embroidered initial S) from the late 1960s-early 1970s and, whilst some would describe this as sacrilege because of the rarity of children's vintage clothing, I took something that was hard to wear, and made it into an everyday garment.

All I did was to remove the frill that you see at the bottom of the dress, shorten it from ankle length, replace the frill and then embellish (my new favourite word) the empire line with the ribbon and button bow.