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.

I Got It!!

Happy Sunday!! I had a weekend in my hometown celebrating my moms birthday. Upon arrival home, I got to crack open this little box of awesomeness.

You knew it happened... But did you know it was purple? And that it came with a lot of crap I didn't recognize?!

Four feet, four bobbins, two spool holders, five needles, a button putter onner (technical term, obviously), spool caps (and some felt spool washer looking things), a seam ripper (all too familiar with that!), a brush to clean it with (apparently it comes with chores), a button holer (I'm surprised myself to learn that is the technical term - that's my kind of English), a dust cover and a screw driver to get the plate off. Singer could have saved money on their design because a quarter works just as well. Anyway - it's a lot of stuff. Not to mention this machine takes up a lot more space. My desk never looked so small. 

So, a project did not happen today as I familiarized myself with all the new buttons and moving parts. Beside that fact, I'm one of those people that have to read the user manual and watch the instructional video before I do anything. I got to reading all of it today, and will get through the video tomorrow. 

Until that time, I'm going to occupy myself by watching my nails. My sister and I took my mom to the salon and they got pedicures while I decided to try my hand (get it?!) at a gel manicure. I chose orange. And brown. How did I do that?! It changes with my moods (or temperature if you don't give in to your inner teenager). I think it tells my mood pretty accurately actually. Here's an example - can you tell my mood here?

Honestly though - this cracks me up. 

Enjoy the weekend friends, and expect something fun next Sunday once I know how to use my new machine. 

Ready for Spring Shorts

Happy Sunday all! I took to my craft room and attacked my stacks of fabric again. Not sure what got into me, but I got it into my head to make some shorts. It was probably while I was staring out my window, looking at my three inches of snow. I just want spring to come. I'm done with winter. Thanks, Mother Nature, it's been fun, but please haul out any day now.

The only problem with my whole idea was that I have no idea how to make shorts. After a few quick google searches and youtube video watching, I decided to just get on with it.

I grabbed a pair of shorts from my drawer - a pair of Old Navy shorts that I was quite partial to this summer. I folded the shorts in half and also folded the fabric in half. I put the straight edge of the shorts on the folded part of the fabric and traced around it.

Then I did that same thing a second time to end up with two pieces of fabric in the same shape. Then I put one piece on top of the other, right sides together. Keep in mind, although I left room for seam allowances, I did not measure (true to form, I suppose). Should I repeat this process, I would certainly measure and make a deaper curve.

Next, I sewed the two curved sides together. Only the curved sides. This is important. Believe me... I learned that.

Next, I hemmed the bottom so the legs would be properly hemmed. I wasn't going to do this (lazy), but the edges kept rolling anyway, so the thread in the hem weighed it down just enough to stop rolling

Once the hem was sewn, I folded the entire shorts from the middle  to put the two side seams together. I know that comes out confusing so maybe these pictures would help.

Find middle:

Put the seams together. See what's happening here?

The next step is to sew up the crotch. You should see it form at the bottom so you'll know exactly where to sew. This was my second mistake - the crotch was rather flat, when it should hae been a distinctive V. Although I knew this, I didn't want to cut into it and totally ruin it, so I let it be. Next time, I'm cutting that crotch into a V. (P.S. Read in the wrong context, this post may become PG-13, My late apologies.)

Next, I worked on the waist. For this, I needed an old friend... non roll elastic.

I sewed the elastic onto the inside of the shorts (keep the shorts inside out and sew the elastic around the band). I then folded down the elastic to completely cover the elastic in fabric, and sewed it down again. Once finished..

And voila. Girl's got herself a pair of shorts. They are certainly not perfect - the crotch area, for most of the reasons listed above, turned out not quite right. It had a bit more fabric bunching than a girl needs, but they are certainly comfortable. I've got myself a new pair of pj shorts. The fact that I made them out of a fancy beach-towel material also played to the fact that they would never see public. Next shorts I make will be an attempt at beach shorts, but maybe I'll wait for better weather to go about doing that. For right now, I'm back in my sweatpants and sweatshirt, cuddled under a blanket and sitting in front of a space heater. 

In other news....

I bought myself a sewing machine.

Yes, it was the one that I was eyeing and I ended up getting it for a pretty great deal. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and opinions on the subject - especially all of the super helpful e-mails. In the end, I made the decision on the reputation of the Singer brand and, most importantly, my budget. The fact that I had gift cards to Joann's certainly played a good role as well. 

Enjoy your Sunday, friends. I hope it is as relaxed as mine has been. Hopefully next week will be a nice shiny new project on a nice shiny new machine. 

Bye Bye LBD

Happy Sunday all! Things are starting to look up - it's actually above 0* and I have had a great Friday at work (just Friday... the rest sucked). I spent a congratulatory Saturday wine touring at some of the best wineries... it was a fantastic weekend.

So this weeks project was pretty fun to do. I even got Sophie involved. Here's what I started with.

Pretty gorgeous, right? This had little black dress potential, but felt more like a jacked up mermaid dress. Something had to happen here and frankly, I was sick of dresses. So, I pulled out Sophie and decided to make myself a shirt of a different kind. I literally had no idea what I was doing - so I just winged it.

I knew I wanted to keep the little skirt at the bottom, but was unsure where I wanted to put it. Once it was on Sophie, I decided to bring the skirt up to an empire waist. No one hates an empire waist. I turned the dress up and took an inappropriate picture of Sophie. This is all for you guys.

I pinnned the seam from the skirt to the area where I wanted my new waist to be.  Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures other than the above one of the process so... get out your imaginations.

I sewed a new seam where the pins are in the above picture and then cut off all the excess below the pins. Then I turned eerything right side out and had myself a peplum style empire waisted shirt. The skirt made the peplum super puffy, so I brought the sides of the lower part of the shirt in about 4 inches on each side so it wasn't quite so "bubbly" around my middle. I have 4 gym sessions a week that call to the fact that I don't want anything extraneous hanging out around my middle.

In the end, I didn't hate the result. I wasn't in love with it, but I adore the fact that I did it correctly that it didn't look like a dress that was half sewed upside down..... because it was.

I've decided to bring back a trend that I started at the end of last year but didn't quite continue because my weekends were hectic: slow cooker meals. I decided to bring it back to my homestead this weekend. I bought a packet of slow cooker sauce at Target. For those interested, they were having a special for $1.50 each and, when buying 10 you got a free $5 gift card (essentially making them $1 each). I only picked up one because I had no idea how they would taste. It was pretty easy to throw together. It was literally the packet of slow cooker sauce and a 2-pound pork shoulder.

VERDICT: It had good taste, but was super salty. Although it was super easy to put together and pretty inexpensive for the amount of meat it produced, I probably would not repurchase because of the salt.

Hope ya'll enjoyed this week's post. As alway, feel free to leave comments or click on the "Contact Me" page to sned me a message.

Little Bit of Blogger Help

So I've had my eye on something lately... and it's not the TV for the big bad Superbowl today. Although that is on in my vicinity as well, so, I guess I have my eye on two things.

I figure the people that typically search for or read this blog are sewists. (Again - not sewers. Never sewers.) So, I figure who's better at giving me some good opinions? You guys :)

So here's my problem. I love my sewing machine. It was a Christmas gift from my sister and has brought me through a whole 16 months of blogging. However, I'm soon realizing that although it's super easy to use... it doesn't do much. It has two types of stitches, zig zag and straight, and I have the option to make them long or short. I've found myself doing a lot by hand (blind stitches, for example). So I've dabbled. I've stalked Joann and her fabrics. I've met website after website of sales and teased plenty of my sewing machine salesladies with my questions and disappointed them when I didn't purchase. I think I've narrowed it down to one.

It's pretty, it's purple, and the picture is a link to Joann's website so I don't get sued. Oh yeah... and it's currently on sale for more than half off.

 

So, I haven't pulled the trigger yet, because it's not often that I go out and spend more than $100 on something that I have at home and isn't broken. I don't really "upgrade" unless I don't like the original or have broken it completely. So I need some motivation... or other options.

 

That's where ya'll come in... I need your advice! Thanks in advance, friends.

 



To Buy or Not To Buy
	Yes - just buy it
	Wait for Christmas
	Don't get greedy, yours is fine
	No! Not this one!
	I will e-mail you a better one!
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Totes Mcgotes

Happy Sunday Funday, all!

This week there is no clever "Before" picture. In all honesty, I'm having quite the lazy Sunday and didn't want to spend time showering, getting dressed, putting on my pretty face... it was just all too much for today. So I turned my attention to the piles and piles of scrap fabric I got a bit ago from a lady cleaning out her craft room.

I couldn't help but be drawn to a rainbow fabric. She gave me a ton of it, and I had no other thoughts as to what to do with it other than to test out a few ideas. What girl couldn't use another tote?

I cut a large rectangular piece of fabric, and two strips about 3 inches wide for the straps.

I paid attention to the straps first. I folded them in half first, and ironed that down. Then I opened it up and took the left half and folded it in half again, and repeated the motion on the right side, essentially making my own bias tape. I made sure to iron down all my folds. There was a quite a lot of ironing in this project. I wasn't excited about that part.

I then folded it on top of itself and sewed it down to create two straps. I only sewed down the one side, but in my professional opinion (ha ha), those of you that choose to follow these steps should probably sew down both sides. It would definitely look better.

Next, I folded down the top of the bag and ironed it down. I then folded it down again and ironed it down again (see a pattern yet?). I tucked the straps under the fold and sewed it down.

Next, I folded the strap back up and sewed it down again. I should have ironed this down first too, but in all honesty I was over the ironing thing. I had already had the iron on longer at this point than it has ever been on before.

Next, I kept the right sides of the bag on the outside and sewed down the sides. That's right - right sides out! *GASP* I'm sure all you real sewists are freaking out right now and yelling "That's not the way you do it!". But... hold that thought friends - I have a plan. (And since this is finished now, I can actually say with confidence that my plan panned out and worked. It's not something I can say very often.)

Only then did I turn the bag inside out. I ironed out the seam to be flat and then sewed down the sides again. I made sure to sew down the inside of the edges of the seam (that was now on the inside of the bag).

This resulted on a French seam, so the outside of the bag was nice and clean and the inside seam had no raw or rough edges. Boom.

I was quite amazed that this turned out how I pictured in my mind. And now that I have it, I'm actually quite excited about my bag and how good it looks. I also adore the rainbow pattern - it is nice and bright, something that is well needed in this world of white that is January in New York.

I now have a great tote to carry around books, folders, groceries, whatever I feel the need to carry. And, because this has no lining or inter-facing, it is not stiff or bulky so I can roll it up and use the straps to secure it.

I plan on making a lot more. It was a quick and easy project to get my scrap fabric out of my craft room and turn it into something useful. Maybe I'll put fabric in it...

 

Enjoy your Sunday, friends. I have found myself a new book series and have been wrapped up in it all weekend, so that and a glass of wine is my near future. I encourage you all to do the same!