Almost Done

Hey friends!

I am working on a project, but unfortunately it is not quite finished. Feeling a bit slow-moving today. It's possibly because the weather finally cracked over 40 and it feels amazing, so I've been a bit distracted...

Anyway, please check back soon - it'll be up, just maybe not today. 

Fixing for Family - Part One

This week was a bit different than others - because I am not in these pictures! This week, I was asked to fix two dresses for my gorgeous sister-in-law, Mandy. As we spent all weekend away in a vacation rental with the family watching March Madness mayhem, I happily obliged. A weekend of vacation and then a Sunday blog post where I didn't have to think of a project? Sold.

 

Here she is with the first dress. Certainly taking a better "Before" picture than I take...

So the problems she had with this dress was that it was a good foot taller than she was, and she was not partial to the strapless idea. I went to work as soon as I got home. After shopping. And a nap. And a beer. (It was a vacation - don't judge.)

 

While at the vacation house, Mandy put on the dress and I pinned the bottom to a length where she wouldn't fall over herself. Keeping the pins in, Mandy then turned over the dress to me and wished it the best of luck.

 

When I got home, I measured from the pins how much I had to take off - it was 8 inches. I don't know who this dress was made for, but "giant" must have been in the description. I'm not going to lie... cutting into someone else's dress is a bit nerve-racking. This was the face I had pretty much the entire time.

I cut off the appropriate length and then folded up the hem. Then, because I don't want Mandy to think I do shoddy work (because that only happens on my own clothing) I folded it again to make a proper hem and ironed it down. Once it was nice and flat, I sewed it down.

 

Next, I dealt with the strap(less) issue. The scraps I had from the bottom was plenty enough to make some straps. I had two strips from the bottom - one from the front and one from the back of the dress. I took one of the bottom scraps and cut the original hem off so I would have a flat surface, then folded it in half, wrong side out and pinned it down. Next, I sewed down the opening, trimmed the excess close to my stitches and pushed the tube right side out. (In the picture below, to the left is the finished tube, and the right is the scrap I made it from)

 



In the end, I had a brand new dress that was long enough for a normal person and had straps to ensure it was comfortable any and all the time. I only tacked on the straps for now; because the top is super stretchy I want to ensure I have proper placement so they are long enough and in the right spot when Mandy is actually wearing the dress. For now, only Sophie can do the dress justice but I will post an "After" once Mandy tries it on.

As you can plainly see, this is only one dress and Mandy gave me two. Therefore, the second dress (Part 2) will be coming up this week when I get it done. It'll be a bit more complicated, so I want to be able to dedicate a night to it. Here's a sneak peek:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

This weekend was St. Patrick's Day weekend, so as you may have noticed - there was no post on Sunday. My apologies. By the time I got motivation to move, I used it to clean the house and then had a quiet night at home reading my books. So instead, I thought I'd offer up a question : what did everyone do for the holiday? What did you wear?

My holiday started here...

Then it continued to here...

Then this happened...

So, you know. There's that. 

It was a blast, and I couldn't have asked for a better night than hanging out with friends and family at a house party. Beats out waiting at a bar for an hour for one drink any day. 

So that's what I did! And what did I wear? Check out this blog post from the past - I wore the jacket. And an obnoxious hat. 

http://thriftysew.blogspot.com/2013/10/pretty-plaid.html?m=1

So leave a comment below or send me an email (pictures are loved and appreciated). What did you do? What did you wear?

I Accept Challenges

Happy Sunday, all! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. I had a great weekend of cleaning out my closet, wandering around Target and just generally enjoying the nice weather. It's been mid-30's here lately, which I will take any day over the negative degree weather we've been having the past few weeks.

I get sent quite a bit of pictures from you guys with a random "can you do this?!" or "check this out!". I recently received one from my sister-in-law that got my gears grinding. It was cute, and something that I was pretty sure I could handle. This is what she sent me:

Seems easy enough. Take a few shirts, spin 'em into awesomeness. Got it.

Off I went to Salvation Army. After I donated 4 large bags of giveaway items from my and my husbands' closets, I popped into the store part to see if I could find any shirts that would look ombre-esque. As I wasn't a huge fan of the above colors - I improvised.

Close enough. 

Each shirt was $2 or under (the light purple was $1) so altogether this dress cost me $7. That's comparable to some scores that I've found on Target 75% clearance rack, so I will take it.

Now, I'm short, but I was skeptical about this project. I wasn't entirely sure if these shirts would hit the ground. Especially since I, unlike the inspiration picture, am more partial to empire waists than drop waists. So, I got out my pins and before doing any sewing, I thought it out. 

As you can tell from my ecstatis thumbs up - this plan will work. I think.

First, I cut all of the purple shirts off at the armpits. Then, since all of them were quite obviously different sizes, I cut them all to the same size.

Learning from my many past mistakes, I did make the bigger shirts a tad larger than my goal, to leave room for seam allowance. How's that for thinkin' ahead? There may have been a happy dance involved at my noticing that I remembered this. Post-dance, I sewed up the seams so I had three equal sized tubes.

Next - a lot of sewing ensued. I sewed each tube to each other, making sure that all right sides were where they were supposed to be. I also made sure to made the darkest shirt, the bottom, so that the bottom of the t-shirt was the bottom of the dress. This was for no other reason than I hate hemming. Hate it.

Go fancy sewing machine go!

Once I had all the purple sewed together, I cut the black shirt a bit lower than my natural waist, and sewed my large purple ombre to it on the light purple section.

When all is said and done... I can't walk in it and will be sewing a slit in it VERY soon. It's super pencil skirty.

With that said though - it didn't come out all that shabby! Challenge accepted and sort of mastered.

Hope you all enjoyed this weeks project. It was a pretty easy going one. Like I told my husband - I'm not sure if this was a super easy project or if I'm getting better, but the whole project took me an hour. And that does not subtract the time I spent watching random YouTube video's (there were a few). 

Have a challenge? See something on Pinterest that you want me to mess up? Send it my way to thriftysew@blogspot.com. I'll see what I can do with it. As always, whether I mess it up or master it, you know I will show you.

See Ya Skirt

Finally got to play around with my sewing machine and it is all sorts of awesome. It's like I don't even need to know how to sew - I just put things under the needle and it happens. Here's a little insight into my random practicing. It includes a button hole and a bunch of lines of different stitches.

I mean - how cool is that?!

So here's what I had to work with this week:

This is a Talbots skirt that I scored for $1. When I got it home, I realized why it was only a dollar - the under skirt was a mess and the closure to the dress was nonexistent. I wasn't sure if someone ripped off the zipper or what, but nothing was there - including a button hole for any would-be button closures. I was lost.

So I did what any self respecting sewer would do when faced with something completely confusing - I made stuff up.

I started with making a 10 inch slit on the inside of the skirt on the side seam. I then cut the outer skirt in the same slit and then sewed it all down. See where this is going? I only had a vague idea too.

This would be an arm hole - surprise!

 

I then put on my new garment, sewed out a neckline and chopped off a few inches on the bottom of the underskirt. What was the result? A somewhat unflattering tunic that was perfect with leggings.

I only had made one armhole because I was super uncomfortable making it and was unsure what I was doing. Now that I see the result of it, I should have made two - I enjoyed the look of the shoulder and it wasn't all that hard to create. Next skirt, I suppose. 

 

Hope you all are enjoying your Sunday - the hubster and I are enjoying a quiet night at home doing homework (him) and watching Netflix and Pinterest-ing (me). Big night for us.