Shirt Refashion

Back from Reno. I'll post pictures soon. Hopefully a lot quicker than the last road trip pictures were posted. ;-)

The night before leaving, I took this man's shirt:


and made it into this cutey:


Very comfy and Very cool! AND....very easy! The hardest part was getting the straps to be the right length (and I'm still not sure I've got it right, but it's good enough for me).

Adventures in Tie Dye

Yesterday, DD and I tried our hands at tie dying.

Oh What Fun It Was!

Really!

We gathered a couple of old whitish shirts.

We mixed up three colors of dye (yellow, red, and blue) and we went to town.

We dunked,
we stirred,
we even syphoned with a straw.
See....look here....




Here's what DD's shirt looks like now:



And, here's mine (I didn't do the multi-color thing):



It's a very pretty blue. I love it! Only one problem. I accidently got a little tiny bit of red dye on it. DARN! I have to figure out how to hide it. Maybe a little bit of embroidery magic will do the trick....

Wordless Month????.......and Shirt Refashion

HA!HA!HA! Didn't mean for Wordless Wednesday to turn into Wordless MONTH! LOL

The beginning of the school year (what we call "launch") is super hectic with 10-12 hour work days, 7 days a week. It's been crazy!

But, today I said to heck with work and finished refashioning this shirt for DD.

I started with this:


It was an old man's shirt (not like an "old man with a cane", but an "old" shirt that a man would wear - LOL).

I first took off the collar which left me with a stand up band-collar (sorry I don't know what those are called - maybe a mandarian collar?).

I took the breast pocket off, added a stripe of solid turqouise to the top of the pocket for accent and repositioned it on the lower right front of the shirt.

I cut a couple inches off each side seam to make it a little more fitted and curvey. Can't make it TOO fitted though as DD is still growing.

Then, I took off the sleeves. I shortened those and added the solid turquoise band at the bottom to make them more girly. (There is a thin turqouise stripe which runs through the plaid on the shirt.) When I reattached them, I did a little gathering at the shoulders.

Finally, I added a slightly gathered stripe of the turqouise on each side of the button placket to give it more color. (Well, actually it's main purpose was to cover up a spot that I couldn't get out.) I wanted it to be more ruffled and puckered, but after I had attached it, I wasn't about to take it back off.

I would have liked to cut the bottom to make it straight, but DD wanted me to leave it curved.

Here is the final refashion:

Wardrobe Refashion

I've taken the pledge. The 2 month Wardrobe Refashion pledge that is.

What is "Wardrobe Refashion"?

Wardrobe Refashion was started by Nichola Prested after deciding to quit buying new manufactured clothing in a bid to do her part for the planet, save money and improve her sewing skills.

Those who take the pledge promise to not purchase new, manufactured clothing for the period of 2, 4, 6 months OR LIFE. They pledge to refashion, renovate, and recycle preloved items with their own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium or make their own from scratch.

Since I'm already doing this anyway because of my current financial situation due to the California budget crisis, I figured I'd take it one step further and take the pledge for 2 months to start. I can't afford to buy anything new anyway.

This round of the Wardrobe Refashion doesn't officially begin until September 1st, but I've already got my first project completed (I hope that's OK).

Remember my Thrifty Thursday post about the old white sheets? Click HERE.



You know I have zero money right now so when DD announced to me that she only had one shirt that still fit, I wasn't quite sure what we were going to do.

One white sheet, a little scrap fabric, a pattern from my collection, a few hours on the sewing machine and this is what we came up with.







I had to adapt the pattern a bit because the front was TOO low for Miss Modesty (aka DD) so I added the additional pink fabric at the top. I think it actually makes this top better by matching the band and ties. Oh, and I didn't have the right width elastic so I took apart a fitted sheet and used the elastic from that. Talk about a recycled and refashioned project!

DD loves it! I love it! It looks SO cute on her! I'd say this pattern is a keeper for us. It's adaptable with different types of sleeves from sleeveless to long sleeve and we can always do different lengths as well.