As You May Have Noticed...

... there was no post yesterday.

My bad.

There was no post because the best sewing I've done all week (or the closest to) was putting a button onto my  husbands pants. Whoop-de-freakin'-do. You would think that since it's been so hot (pushing 105 today) that I would relish the fact of going into my basement craft room and getting lost for a while. Not so much.

In actuality, my stupid ass thought it necessary to have some "me" time this week that did not include crafts, but instead, running. I ran another 5k on the treadmill the other day and plan to do it again today. Beyond that, it's the boring stuff: work, work work and - Surprise! - work.

I will have a project for you all next week, I promise. And, because I've been a failed blogger this week, I'm hoping to even sneak in an extra post/project this week.

Stick with me - stay tuned, and most importantly...

Stay cool.

Flower Frenzy

Happy Thriftysew Thursday! (How have I not thought of that sooner?)

Here's the gorgeousness that I started with this week:

Obviously it's the most flattering dress anyone could own! (Sarcasm.) This has actually been sitting in the craft room for a pretty long time. I just had no idea what to do with it. Finally, I got it out this week and just played around with it in all different ways to see what might work. I liked the fabric and print, but I wasn't too fond of the neckline as well as the obvious sizing issues. My first thought was just to cinch it in, a la this:

I did like the cinched look and it seemed a bit kimono inspiration-esque, but I had no idea what to do with the neckline in this case. So I continued to fool around with it and finally decided on what to do.

I unzipped the back zipper, then jacked the whole thing down. This made the V-neck in the front into a nice sweetheart neckline, and the cinched "waist"(that ended up mid-breast in the before) at the actual waist. I liked it, so I rolled with it.

 

First thing to get chopped was the zipper.

Then, I kept the dress pulled down to the armpits and held the arm straight out. I then pinned a straight line down to create the sides of the dress.

Now, just so you guys don't start to think I'm actually getting good at this sewing thing... this is what happened when sewing the sides up.

Go home, sewing machine, you're drunk.

 

That is my needle stuck in the down position, with the fabric shoved through the feed dog and down into the machine (where the bobbin is). Do I know how this happened? Not a flippin' clue. What did I have to do about it? Well... tear it apart.

After tearing it all apart I decided to just go ahead and clean it with a few q-tips. I hadn't done this since I bought the machine and I have a cover on it when not in use so I figured it wasn't all that dirty. Holy hell, was I wrong. Check this nastiness out. (Warning: clean freaks beware)

So, lesson learned: machine will be cleaned much MUCH more often.

 

Eventually, machine was cleaned, jam was fixed and the sides were sewn up. I then sewed the back up about an inch or so to make up for the loss of the zipper, and then I folded down the sides from the armpit to the back to create a slight v in the back and to clean it up a bit.

 

Final product? I'm pretty happy with it. Now I have a flowy, summery maxi dress to have some lazy days in these hot hot summers.

And the back looks a little something like this:

I'm excited to wear it! Thanks for reading - as always, leave your comments below or give me your critiques, hoorays and whatever else have you at thriftysew@gmail.com (please!).

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Thursday all and, more importantly, happy Independence Day!!! This is by no means a political blog or anything like that - but damn do I love this country, our rights to even have a blog that I can say this on, and the military men and women that fight for those rights.

In saying all that, I have to preface this project with this: this was done earlier in the week and I had totally forgot about this "red white and blue" thing. Hopefully, that will be coming and I can show you pictures of a fantastic outfit fit for 4th of July festivities to be celebrated Saturday.

Also - the before picture is a straight up photo fail. I did not realize a stack of projects was covering the bottom corner of the screen, I should have probably put some effort into makeup (or at least thrown contacts in) and the face is atrocious. But... so be it. Here's the beauty I was working with:

This had a gorgeous circle skirt and the waist elastic was in pretty new shape. The downfalls was the in-your-face pattern (is that newsprint?!), the high neckline and the less-than-fantabulous elastic in the arms. Someone with a small waist and unfortunately large arms previously owned this dress, I think. 

First task at hand was to take out the shoulder pads. Not sure if these half-moons even considered themselves shoulder pads or just wannabe's, but they were outed nonetheless.

Next, since the dress fit pretty well in the sides thanks to the waist elastic, I took off a few inches of length from the circle skirt to bring it roaring into the 21st century.

Next, of course, the arms had to go.


... just kidding! I know that is what is expected so I definitely kept the arms. I cut off the stretched out and deformed arm elastic and chopped off a few more inches for good measure. Considering it has been super humid and in the high 80's in here (I know it doesn't sound hot to, say, Iraq or California, but add the humidity we've been having and it feels high 1000's and sweat happens in -1 seconds) short sleeves were a must.

The next thing that I did, that unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of, was open up the neckline. The neck was wayyy up there and it was screaming for a way out. I found the middle and cut down about 4 inches, then folded over the edges, sewed it down and cut off the excess. The final result I'm pretty in love with and it, despite not being white, red or blue for the holiday, is super comfy and a smash hit in the Thompson household.

Also, I'm not going to brag or anything, and I certainly didn't see this coming until I was feeding my Pintrest addition, but I pinned this dress a few days ago and didn't realize until I saw a picture of my project but I totally remade this dress:

which can be found at this site for $168. Alternatively, I made mine for a whopping $3.50. Boom.

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the festivities, and to those outside of the US on this date... feel free to consider yourself American on this day and have yourself a cook out and blow shit up. We kinda do the same thing on St. Patrick's Day.