A little bit of Christmas magic.

Today I'm sharing an unusual refashion of a dog tutu costume that was always way too big for my Maltese cross dog. I decided to 'cross' it with a Christmas onesie and it came out looking pretty cute.

Modelled here by my son.

Before.

After

More can be found over here.

A little too much plaid

A bomb of plaid went off on this one. 

I loved the shape of the dress but the plaid was a little too much. So I divided it creating a top for myself and a pleated skirt for my daughter. See more on my blog. 

Fingerless Mittens

Brrrrrrrr..... The temperature is dropping quickly. 

I just built a fire in my woodstove and decided it was the perfect time to make these fingerless mittens from this old wool sweater. 

Lucky for me, someone donated it to my local thrift store after washing it. They must have thought it was ruined. But I've got big plans for this sweater.

Grab a cup of hot cocoa and come on over to The Renegade Seamstress for a full photo tutorial.

I promise it will warm you right up!

Beth

Men's Shirt to Shirtdress

Hi everyone,

I'm Marisa, and I'm new! I've been looking at the posts at Re-Fashion Co-op for a while and finally got the guts to join up with you lovely ladies. I'm an art student who likes to to have new clothes on the cheap. Refashioning is a new hobby that I love.

Here's my favorite refashion from the summer.

More pics and info here: http://artnerdy.blogspot.com/2012/08/refashion-mens-shirt-to-shirtdress.html

Mad Men Inspired Dress

I was inspired by Peggy's black dress with white stripes, even though I know she's not the style icon of the show. I liked the stripe down the front, which ironically is the part I left out of mine.

I was lucky enough to find this black quadruple extra large men's polo shirt at the thrift store, and it was a tall to boot!  I picked a gray print that I think of as businessy/officey for the trim.

And here is the final product.  I made a few changes - I decided I liked the sleeves longer, and had to add a piece to the bottom to make the dress long enough, so I omitted the stripe down the front because I thought it would be too much.  Do you agree?

Here are a couple intermediate pictures, since I don't blog.  The first step was to remove the collar and rip out the bottom hem.  Then I turned it inside out, pinned the sides, and basted them.  You can see the yellow stitching there.  I used another skirt that was sort of a 3/4 circle skirt to chalk in where the waistline would be, so I could use that to measure down to mark the hemline.  The bottom edge needed to be cut on a curve so that it would hang evenly all around. I wanted the skirt to be as full as possible, so I deliberately let the side chalk lines run off the edge of the shirt and filled in the gaps with triangle-shaped pieces I cut off the sides.  Then I just made new narrow sleeves out of the original ones and added all the trim. 

The picture above shows the triangles sewn onto the side edge of the skirt. It ended being pretty full. (I have to work on the kitchen floor so that explains all the dog hair.)  Anyway, it's super-comfortable and I'm looking forward to wearing it to work.  Thanks for looking!