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Sunday 28 February 2016

Stretched-out silk top to mini skirt

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been a couple of weeks since my last post, I've been both busy and ill. On top of my usual work and hobbies, I've been helping out in a local panto production (yes, I know it's February), the performances of which were the week before last. I was just prompting, but my lovely friend Grace (who is also a dancey crafty gal) and her daughters were performing and we all had a great time. The only problem was that I came down with a horrendous cold on the first day of the performances, so I ended up croaking most of my prompts whilst trying not to put the actors off with my coughing and sneezing. To the audience members who had to sit next to me on the front row, I sincerely apologise. It's taken me almost a full week to recover, so I'm very behind on my refashions!

It started with this pale pink jersey vest top/dress which had an overlay of silk and lace detailing. The lace was stretchy and worn-out, with bits of elastic poking out everywhere, and the pink shade was ever-so-slightly transparent. Not a look I generally go for, although some girls seem to like it. It was also oddly misshapen, with the left side longer than the right. I assumed when I tried it on that this was the result of the jersey fabric being accidentally stretched while it dried, and hoped it would go back to normal once I washed it.

As you can tell, I wasn't overly impressed with this top...

I decided a change of hue was in order, so I popped down to The Range and picked up some Dylon fabric dye for hand use in Pewter Grey. Pink top in, grey top out. The colour wasn't quite pewter grey, probably because the silk took less of the dye than the cotton jersey underneath, but it was a nice, slightly aubergine shade - all except for the synthetic lace, but I was going to get rid of that anyway. Unfortunately, the uneven hem did not vanish in the wash. Harrumph.

Pretty colour! Not so pretty hemlime.
The second step was to get rid of all the bits I disliked. Sorry lace. I pinned the silk overlay to the jersey underlay and chopped the neckline and arm holes off at the level of the first seam in the silk. Then I chopped the bottom off where the lace met the silk.

Poor, sad lace.
No more uneven hemline!
I was in danger of cutting so much material away that I'd be left with far too little fabric to work with, so I stopped at this point, other than to even up the length where it was (still) longer on the left. I found some wide black elastic in my stash, and made a waistband by measuring it against myself so that it was tight (but not too tight - I want to breathe) then stitching the ends together with a X-inside-a-box pattern.

Ta-dah!
Next, I folded over the top of the fabric a couple of times, stretched out the waistband and pinned the fabric into place. Then I stitched it with a straight stitch whilst stretching the elastic out (if I hadn't have stretched the elastic the stitching would have prevented it from stretching later on).

Almost there!
The final step was to hem the bottom. Cotton jersey doesn't fray, so no need to do anything with the underneath other than make sure it was straight. It's very difficult to hem silk this thin with a conventional sewing machine, and I decided it wasn't worth the bother. Instead, I just ran a line of stitches around the hem about half a centimetre from the bottom to prevent any large-scale fraying catastrophes, but which would allow a little feathering to occur.


I was having real issues getting a photo where both my face/hair and the skirt looked decent, so you'll have to put up with me gurning, sorry.
I think this looks OK. It's not a major fail because it does look allright, but I'm not sure I'll wear it. As we have previously discussed, I'm not one for short skirts. It may end up back at the charity shop I bought it from, but at least it's not completely unwearable now. Ah well!




Saturday 13 February 2016

Confused skater dress to sweet bolero

Today's refash comes from a slightly odd dress that I found in my local charity shop for £3. It's made from a nice stretchy but satiny base with a chiffon outer layer. The chiffon is textured with circular designs and is quite striking...but the style of the dress is a bit off-putting. I'm just not sure it knows what it's supposed to be. The bodice and skirt are similar to a modern skater dress, but the neckline is reminiscent of the 1950s. The sleeves...well...the sleeves are totally 70s. This dress is seriously temporally confused.

Errr...
I had originally wanted to turn this dress into a tunic that I could wear with leggings, but the shape of the skirt prevented this. I could have made a circle skirt from it by detaching the bodice, but that was a bit obvious (although I might still do that with the scraps at some point). I had a bit of an idea of what I wanted to do, so I started by removing everything I didn't want. First stop those atrocious sleeves!

Snip!

To do this I didn't unpick the seam, but instead cut the fabric of the sleeve away leaving the seam intact. This meant that I didn't have to worry about the end of the sleeve fraying before I had chance to hem it. Next I removed the big obnoxious zip from the back.

Sorry zippy, you're done.

I'll use the zip again at some point, just not now. Once this was gone I detached the skirt from the bodice. Again I snipped the fabric of the skirt leaving the seam intact - along with preventing fraying here, it also kept the layers together.

Chopped!

Next I stitched up the back seam where I had removed the zip.

This created a seam line but it looks as though it's supposed to be there so it's all good.

Next up was to cut a panel out of the front of the bodice, removing that sweetheart neckline. Don't get me wrong, I like a sweetheart neckline - my wedding dress had one. I just have an irrational hatred of it on this dress!

SO much better.

Then I hemmed those new edges so that they lined up with the remaining parts of the neckline. I continued this line of stitching all the way around the neckline for neatness.

This is actually starting to look wearable now. Finally.

Almost done! Next I hemmed the bottom edge, the one I had detached from the skirt.

My sewing machine did not like this - far too many layers over the seams! It kept giving me very unhappy jamming noises.

Finally, I hemmed the raw edges of the sleeves, where i had removed the disco-tastic sleeves.

Breathe a sigh of relief! Bell sleeves should have stayed in the 70s.
And...

Whoopee!
A cute little beige bolero! I can dress this up or down so I'm pretty happy with it. I have a tendency to fill my wardrobe with things I could never wear on a day-to-day basis, but this works as office wear or formal attire. The choice is mine!

Sunday 7 February 2016

Let there be light!

Today's post is an upcycle rather than a refashion (all refashions are upcycles, but not all upcycles are refashions...). When we lived in our last house, our bedroom was plum with teal accents. We bought a couple of nice bedside lamps from Asda (I think) and they looked great.


Pretty colour!

When we moved house though, they looked not so great. Our bedroom here is magnolia with a beachy theme, and the teal really didn't work. I kept meaning to buy new ones, but it seemed a shame to as the ones we already had still worked just fine. Light bulb moment! (Ha ha...) Why don't I just upcycle them? (I must admit the lightbulb wasn't completely mine, I got the inspiration from my lovely friend Jen who also upcycled old lamps!)

The shades had to go. I thought about covering them, but the teal would have shone through as soon as the lamp was turned on. The bases I decided to spray paint. I started by applying masking tape to the bits I didn't want to change (this is a must, it makes the whole thing look so much more professional!). Then I primed with a white spray primer, to make sure that the paint stuck to the shiny ceramic base.

Teal begone!
Next, I applied a couple of coats of Plastikote stone effect spray in Soapstone, which is a nice pale grey with bluey grey spots and a nice gritty texture (see where I'm going with this?).

Looks like a beach pebble, right?

Then, after waiting overnight so that the paint had properly hardened (very important - think nail polish) I added a couple of coats of clear matt sealer.


Ready for a hat!
I took a trip to the local B&M Home Stores (love that place - who knew you could fit so much useful tat under one roof?) and found a couple of small grey lampshades for 99p each (bargain!). Put 'em together and what have you got?


You got lovely beachy bedside lamps, that's what! Feel free to admire the campervan coaster and ignore the very uncoordinated alarm clock. There's not much colour in the photo, but rest assured there's lots of shades of blue and a few shades of red in this room too. I'm very happy with how this turned out, I was a little worried I'd mess it up and end up having to buy totally new lamps, but it turns out I'm better at upcycling than I thought! Always nice.