I've challenged myself to taking thrift store finds and making them fashion wearables or new home decor. Whether it turns out to be a mess, or a surprising success, it'll be here for your enjoyment (and my closet).
Happy Sunday Funday friends. Today''s project comes from a purchase last night. I had my family over to celebrate my 6th Annual 21st Birthday and brought them all to Salvation Army. Don't I know how to treat them special?
We had a good laugh, for sure, and I found myself two garments rather quickly that had potential. Today's was found for $1.50 (thank you, half off blue tag)
First thing I did was remove the dreadful shoulder pads.
This fabric was a nice sweatshirt like material, so my initial though was to cut it off at the waist and have a short sleeve, overly large sweatshirt. I got out my rotary cutter and went at it.
Soon after it was cut, I put it on and realized I made a crop top. This, folks, would not work - mama doesn't do crop tops. Crop anything, really.
I looked around for fabric that I could use to make it longer. I found tons of fabric that wouldn't work, such as tulle, patterned, silk, lace... all of which would have just looked off. Finally, I found a scrap from my denim dress refashion when I made my own chamois shirt. This would work perfectly.
I took the two ends and put them together to create a loop. Then, I sewed up the seam to take care of the edges from the skirt and take out the part with the button holes. Voila.
Next, I took my loop "skirt" and bubblegum pink top and put them together. I pinned it up, and sewed it down. See what's happening now?
Once it was sewn up, I pushed the dress down and had my own dress. It is more of something that I would put over leggings, but as all of mine are currently in the wash (laundry day should probably stop being the same day as blog day) ya'll get to see a bit o' leg. You're welcome.
By the way, I'm sure you've noticed that I am now taking pictures in the mirror again. Hopefully this will be the first in a long time and the last forever. My camera is on the fritz so I am now on the market for new. Any suggestions?
(As always, had to throw a belt on it and jack it up!) The more I look at it, the more I know I need to do something else with the top. I'll probably continue playing with this one. It's not the most stylish thing I've ever made (far, far from) but it is pretty comfy. BONUS: I still have the entire skirt to play with.
Let me know your camera suggestions in the comments or, as always, feel free to e-mail your boo's, hisses and praises to thriftysew@gmail.com
Happy Sunday Funday all! I am certainly feeling more cheerful now that the weather is looking up and is above 0 degrees farenheit- always a plus!
Today, I decided to do something to my craft room that I've been meaning to do for quite a while now - an inspiration board. I've seen this on Pinterest many times and it always seemed to me like a good idea. So I got to it.
Now, here's the before:
Yup, it's a wall. A very boring, very plain wall. I thought it needed some spicing up.
I got together my supplies, which includes fabric remnants from Joann's (about a dollar a piece) and some cork board. I found this set of four at Joann's for about $3.
Next, as these fabric remnants spent the last 4 months in a bag on my craft room floor, I had to iron out the wrinkles.
Once ironed, I laid out the fabric on the floor wrong side up and set the cork board on top of it. I then cut around it, about an inch on each side.
Next, I folded up the edges and, making sure it was tight, stapled down the four corners. Make sure when you staple that the edges don't go all the way through to the other side. Mine went through all of the cork, but did not go through the front fabric, so that worked fine.
Next, I took my hot glue gun and glued all the way around the edges to make sure that baby stayed tight and didn't pucker in front.
From there, it was just a matter of using the sticky hangers that came with the cork board to affix the board to the wall. You can do this in whatever pattern you would like - I went for a plus sign to get a little positivity to the place that I often find myself swearing like a sailor. Now, I can hang any sewing ideas, instructions, inspiration pics, etc. right there in front of my face. I figure this may be an easy way to remind myself of my New Years resolutions as well. Bonus.
I was super excited for this New Year to start - not because 2013 wasn't good, but because I'm over this snow thing already. Bring on March and April, when the sun comes out and flowers start poking up, if not in the ground then definitely in stores. Yes - I am writing this as we are receiving a sweet snowstorm. Awesome.
There's no refashion today because, well, I'm at work (shh don't tell!) but I wanted to revisit last years resolutions and see how I did. Additionally... let's make some more!
Here's last years:
1) Work off all the post-holiday extra poundage.
RESULT: ehhhh not so much. However, I did get much healthier and can run a lot longer and harder than I did at the beginning of last year, so I'm going to call this a win.
2) Experience Syracuse.
RESULT: Win. I definitely got out a bit more - not as much as I could or should have, but definitely did more than I used to (which wasn't hard to do more than nothing, really). I also got out and experienced a lot more places - Rochester, Boston, Cape Vincent, Limerick... "gotta catch 'em all!" (No, I didn't watch Pokemon but yes, that sure is a reference to it.)
3) Find more thrift stores!
RESULT: I did super well at this... in the beginning. Then it was back to my trusty ol' Salvation Army. Half of this reasoning is that I don't want to explore Syracuse and end up in the "bad" part and get shot at... which coincidentally is about 80% of this place. So, there's that.
4) I want to post projects on a more regular schedule.
RESULT: I've certainly set a schedule (hey there, Sunday Funday) but I wasn't all that fantastic at regularly posting on it. You may see a repeat in the New Year's list.
And last but not least... here's this years list!
1) Continue the path to being healthy. I've certainly realized that losing weight does not necessarily mean getting healthier - so I'd like to continue my running and lifting routines. If I happen to lose weight, that's great, but my goal is to just continue to have excellent physicals and not breathing embarrassingly hard on walks up the stairs.
2) Take better care of my skin. I admit - I go to bed with makeup on, rarely wash my face in the mornings, led alone at night, and I am seen sorely infrequently putting on sunscreen of any sort. It's not that I didn't know all of this was bad for my skin, I just didn't care because I am young and bulletproof (obviously). Only recently have I begun a routine of washing my face in the mornings and at night and using moisturizer, and it's pretty scary how my skin has improved in just the few weeks I've started. I would love to see what I would look like had I been doing this all along, but now will only see improvements from now on. Take note, children.
3) Post more frequently. I would love to do more than Sundays, but I'll start out by getting on a permanent schedule of Sundays and then work to adding some throughout the week. I don't like letting ya'll down.
So, that is it for now. I don't like to go all crazy making promises to myself because you and I both know that promises to yourself are the hardest to keep. I also think that improving yourself and creating habits can happen any time throughout the year - New Years Resolutions be damned - so feel free to see this as a jumping off point. I encourage you to do the same!
Enjoy your New Year, make it the best and baddest, be crazy, make your own happiness and all that jazz. Meanwhile, while you're doing all that, feel free to take a break and check out my "Before And After" page. I've updated all the pictures, and in the next week or so will make all the pictures a link to the post that it coincides with. That way, God forbid you miss a post, you can always go back to the Before and After page and be able to easily find it. How's that for a how-do-you-do?
I will close with this: Hi Aunt Cheryl! :) Thanks again for reading all religiously and such - I very much appreciate it.
Unfortunately, my Christmas plans for the weekend fell through when Mother Nature decided to drop an ice storm on the in-laws. The roads were a complete mess and they lost power for more than 24 hours. In result, we did not go home and were not able to have the family Christmas this weekend. Luckily, we are all getting together on Wednesday (Christmas day) and spending time together. I'm certainly glad we didn't skip it, and even more glad that the ice storm is over and the power to my in-laws is restored.
Meanwhile in my house, I am having the worst luck with everything electronic. I finally got my sewing machine cleaned up and greased so it is no longer making any clunking noises. So, I prepared for today's project and got my thrift store garments all set. I turned on my camera... and nothing. It turned on, but as soon as I pushed the button to take a picture, it turned off. Even with a change of batteries, nothing was working. Then when I sat down to write this very blog, my computeres "r" key decided to stop working. When you're doing a post aboutt a "shirt" it happens to be a pretty necessary letter and keeps it from being comparable to poo. Luckily, I improvised with a wireless keyboard and my iPad. If I lose my iPad though - I'm giving up forever.
So, since my camera wasn't working properly, I had one choice - video. So here you are - a video of me walking you through creating a shirt from scratch. And it actually worked this time, so that's always a bonus.
Enjoy :)
As always, feel free to comment below and e-mails are always welcome at thriftysew@gmail.com.
Happy Holidays, and may all your electronics work better than mine.
I've had quite the pleasant weekend, actually. As you may or may not have heard, the Northeast US got slammed with quite a bit of snow, and we certainly were not missed. Luckily, it was the weekend so we didn't have to go anywhere. We took the opportunity to hang around the house and get some relaxing in before the holiday rush. It wasn't all too bad - we snowblowed the driveway twice and all together got about a foot of snow. I've had worse.
Because of our nice, quiet weekend, I had plenty of time to work on projects. I went thrift shopping and also got my project done. That's where the stress-free weekend ended.
I started with this fishy masterpiece:
It was a size 3X, and it may or may not have supposed to have been a long shirt. I'm still out on that one. I was inspired to buy this from all the popular printed sweatshirts/sweaters being sold lately. I know it's a fad, so I don't want to spend money on it, but I enjoy the look so this $3 dollar sensation was calling my name. Bonus: it was made of a black sweatshirt material.
First thing I did on this one was cut off the bottom panel, right under the sewn-in pockets.
At first, I thought the pockets were going to be a mess, since they were sewn in, but the large size of the dress made it simple to just pin up the middle, right inside the ends of the pockets, and cut them out altogether while bringing in the dress as well. And that's how I rock the two-for-one deal while sewing.
I used my ruler as a guide for my copious amount of pins, and followed it right up from bottom to top and also took a few inches off of the sleeves as well so they weren't quite as baggy.
That was as simple as that. I now had myself a patterned sweater to wear that I could fall into the trend AND be fiscally responsible. (I don't get to say that very often, so you just go ahead and read that last sentence over again for good measure. Go ahead - I'll wait.)
And now, for my no-snow friends: here's a bit of snowy glory for you. The snow covered trees are, and always will be, my favorite sight of all.
Don't tell me that doesn't blow your mind.
No crockpot meal this weekend folks. My apologies - I've started in on the Christmas cookie baking, so I had to have my counters clear.
However, you may have caught up on the fact that I said after my project was finished the stressful weekend ended. That is because my sewing machine is up to it's horrible game of "I don't want to work". It explodes thread. And, although funny at first, it's not becoming a fun game. It may become out of commission for a bit while I get it cleaned and tuned up. Stay tuned.
Last week, I posted a video of my 4 year old self dancing to "All Dressed Up in Grown Up Clothes" like a champ.
Let me tell you this now - it wasn't always this way. I certainly messed up. Below is a video of myself at age 11 or 12. To this day, I cringe when I hear any of these songs. I've done many a dances, and this one is still, by far, the most embarrassing in my mind.
To preface, this was a medley song that lasted 7 excruciating long minutes.
Apologies for the crappy quality- as this was a time long before iPad's and iPhones, I had to video tape this from the TV while playing the VHS it was taped on.
Anyway, getting back to it - why on earth would I post this, showing possibly the worst recital I've ever done?
Because I finished it.
Perseverance. It's a difficult thing sometimes. As you can tell from my random comments, my face got pissier and pissier to the point where you know that I just wanted to give up and walk off stage. Alas, I did not. I kept on going, from song to endless song, and managed to keep up with the other dancers while not completely breaking down.
I get e-mails from ladies who want to start refashioning but don't want to start for fear that they will mess up or turn out something that they are not proud of. Most of all my responses are: just go for it. Hang in there and go for it. The only way that you are going to know is if you try and just go for it. You may look like a fool, you may not do something you're proud of, but finishing will be a success in itself.
And, as you may have heard from my other comments in the video - I rocked it out the second night. I went right back out there on Saturday, donned in my mom-shorts and white t-shirt with lipstick stains, and rocked it.
Moral of the story: it takes practice. At this point in my dancing career I had been dancing for at least 8 years, but I still messed up. Just because I was experienced, does not mean that I was perfect.
And that, my friends, is why I post my refashions that don't work out so well right along with the (good?) ones that worked out. It's not an easy thing to do, taking god-awful garments and making them look okay, and it won't always work out the way it will in my mind - and certainly hasn't.
But - I will always get back out there (rather, in there - as in, my craft room) and go at it again. I encourage all of you that e-mail *and have the same thoughts* to do the same, whether your refashion turns out to be a masterpiece or a master fail.
My apologies for the touchy-feely-ness of this, but I believe that every now and then everyone needs a pick up or two.
This is a doozy of a post, let me tell you. This took me a computer, an iPad, an iPhone and a camera to complete and I'm still not entirely sure if I've structured it the way I wanted to. You're welcome.
So I was shopping at the Salvation Army not too long ago, and I came upon a dress that made me completely and utterly miss my childhood. First, watch this video. (Yes, it's 2 minutes long, and yes, it has the commentary of my family and I because I couldn't get it in iMovie to edit it. Fail. I get that.)
This was one of my dance recitals when I was 4 years old. I can still sing every word, and still know most of the steps in the correct order. I was "All Dressed Up in Grown-Up Clothes" and got to don my mother's dress and jewelry for this recital. I danced from ages 3 until 19/20 (college) and miss every second of it.
So, imagine my surprise when I came upon this gorgeousness in the thrift store:
I put the old school filter on this one to channel my 4 year old self. Note - don't pay any attention to the striped tank top underneath. This dress is super see through.
This dress was the same color and had the same feel as mom's dress that I used for the dance above. It wasn't exact, but it was enough for me to spend a bit more than usual on it - 4 dollars! First thing was first - remove all unnecessary shoulder pads as well as the weird flap on the chest (what is that, anyway?)
Next, I had to do something with the skirt. It was super long and as super see-through as the top, so it was quite the challenge to figure out what to do with it. Finally, I decided on a bubble skirt (channeling the tutu here). To do this bubble skirt, I folded the bottom hem up inside the dress and sewed it down on the elastic. This poof'd it out enough to be bubbly, but not overly annoying.
I admit, it does not look pretty, but this is the inside. On the outside, it looks like a regular ol' cinched waist. Win-win!
Next, I removed the sleeves. I did this for 2 reasons: 1) sleeveless is way more dancer-like and 2) they were cutting off my circulation. I don't have rather large forearms, so I thought, but these things cinched right onto them like I was hulking it up. Not pretty, nor comfortable. This is where I messed up, because I cut off the first sleeve the wrong way, so the cut was on the right side of the fabric. This made it necessary for me to hem the sleeve (when done right, this shouldn't be needed, for short-term use). Then I couldn't really go and do the other arm correctly, so I intentionally cut it wrong again and did the same type of hem on the other side. It was quite the time waster, but at least both arms look equally messed up. Score?
Paired with my leggings and a black tank top, I had a dancers dress that my 3 year old dancer self would have been super jealous of (and also my 4 year old to 19 year old dancer self - these were a hot commodity!)
Bring on the let warmers and the tap shoes!
Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and that you didn't get trampled on Black Friday if you were ballsy enough to go out.
And, if you find yourself celebrating Christmas (as we do) - do you have your tree up yet? We put ours up today and I couldn't be more in love with it.
I am super excited for the holiday season - I am quite the little child at this time of year, so it's only appropriate I share a bit of my childhood with ya'll today.
For today's crock pot meal: Southwest Chicken
- one bag frozen corn
- 2 chicken breasts (frozen is fine, I did it and I'm not dead) skinless, boneless and all that jazz
- 1 can black beans (drained and rinsed. if you don't it's gross)
- 18oz salsa (I used mild, but medium may give a bit more pop)
*Note* I ended up using a half bag of frozen peas, and a can of kernel corn because I was lacking the frozen corn aspect. It worked fine.
Throw the chicken, corn, black beans and salsa in the crock pot. I then put it on low for 4 hours. Once it was done, I shredded the chicken and stirred up the pot. I served it over jasmine rice with a bit of shredded Mexican cheese on top, but it is also quite tasty over tortilla chips with cheese and sour cream. Do your thing - it's kind of hard to screw up.
I even got the "pretty delicious" comment from my husband so, there's that. (That comment doesn't happen. Ever.)
So tasty, in fact, I didn't take any pictures. Sorry :*(
Sorry folks. Failed you again, as there is no project this weekend.
I don't say this because I didn't have anything planned (I did) or because I'm lazy (I sure haven't been) or because I had a fun weekend and didn't get around to sewing (literally the least fun weekend ever).
It's because if this -
And this -
Apologies for crappy iPhone photos.
Is this spring cleaning? You may ask. Nope, that's more fun. This is my craft room, post flood. That's right - we had the most random flipping leak from somewhere, still don't know where, that caused over 40 percent of our basement to flood with water - most damage being my craft room.
Here's the picture: my husband and I, hanging out watching Shark Tank. Suddenly, the power goes off. I say "I'll get the candles from the basement". And off to the basement I stumble (no power, remember? No lights = a Colette who appears to have never stepped in this house in her life. It happens, but that's not the story).
So I head downstairs to my craft room with the intent of finding candles and the one lighter that we own but can never find. I get to the bottom step and hear a squish - but I'm walking with purpose now so the squish is on the back of my mind. I get into my craft room and my feet get soaked and there's tons more squishing. Through the back of the basement, I see inches of water (past the tops of my feet). I scream "honey!" with the fear of god in my voice. In reply - a loud "what?!" Mind you, I use that same fear of god voice when I see a mouse, see a shadow or hear a loud noise, so he wasn't all that concerned. Once I said flood though, man, did he come running.
Mind you, this whole time we're in the dark. Once we finally got to assess the situation and get out a few "oh shit"s, it came back on.
We finally got the unfinished part of the basement drained (thanks for too little too late Mr Sump Pump) and all of our (soaked) stuff out of our storage space, and got out our wet/dry vac to attempt to save the carpet. Which pretty much immediately began to smoke and became utterly useless. So the hubby and I spent the majority of the night stepping on towels to soak up water, and rotating new ones out of the washer/dryer.
To make a long story... well, still long, but coming to an end: we rented a carpet cleaner from Home Depot and strictly used the extractor to get the water out. As you see in the above picture, we are pretty much putting all our faith into a dehumidifier and a bunch of fans. Together, we decided to go with the least intrusive (and cheaper) options before we go into calling everything a loss and throwing out all the carpet. Fingers crossed that that is an option we don't have to turn to.
In summation - bear with me. I'm tired (enough so that I don't even care about googling which "bear/bare" I should have used in that last sentence), and grumpy, and missed out on shopping this weekend.
However! Silver lining: it's the holiday season, a three day work week is in front of me and Black Friday fun is quickly approaching. I can stick this out. And I'm hoping my basement can too.
As for crock pot meal - remember the tired and grumpy part? Yeah, well, it shows in my "cooking".
That, my friends, is the most simple meal in the world. $10 meal a la Wegmans - pulled pork in a bag. Cook in the bag, open bag, eat meat. Boom.
Happy Sunday Funday! I spent a fantastic long weekend with the family - eating good food and having good fun with good people. In the midst of all the fun, I didn't get a project done. But I thought it might be nice to show ya'll the other side of thrifting - finding things that don't need to be changed at all.
I didn't get to take pictures of all my thrift scores, as they are scattered throughout my house and some are in the washer from a recent wearing, but I found 3 examples from a recent shopping trip that will make my point.
First, there was this find from Merona, a Target brand, for $3.
The belt was my own addition - I could certainly swap it out for a thin black one to make it a bit more work friendly.
The next one got my Syracuse-brain piqued, and I couldn't help but pick up this American Eagle find for $1.50.
The last one I could find is a New York and Company printed skirt find for $1.
I'm not a huge fan of printed skirts, but this one was so bouncy and flowy that I had to pick it up. It doesn't look too bad with my homemade chamois shirt, but I think I would be safer with just a plain white or black shirt - or maybe go crazy with a bold color.
And so I'm not completely letting everyone down - here's a sneak peek of what I'm working on, but was unable to finish by the time I wanted to go to bed. (Fail.)
This one may or may not include a video too.... surprise!
Additionally, I did not get to cooking a crock pot meal either...
... but my mom did!
Here's her recipe:
- a big chunk o' beef
- one packet of onion soup/dip mix (less if you're sensitive to salt)
- one can of cream of mushroom soup.
Throw the chunk o' beef in the crock pot, and throw the onion mix on top, followed by the soup. Then, cook on high for 5 hours ("fall-apart tender", mom says) or somewhere around 8-10 hours on low. Mom served it cut up into portions and slathered in gravy, but you can have your way with it when you it is good and done.
Grab some beef, grab some wine, watch some football and enjoy your Sunday night!!
As always, comment away or catch me at thriftysew@gmail.com.
Now, all you Boston baseball fans can go ahead and click off - this has nothing to do with the famous baseball field and everything to do with this monstrosity:
Please try not to judge the sweatpants. It's that time of year that it is really, really cold in my craft room, so sweatpants and long sleeves are quite necessary.
Anyway - this dress was a mess. I picked it up because I'm a big fan of green lately, and it was priced at $1. It was one of those situations that you just don't say no to. I didn't have too high of expectations here. I was quite excited, however, to find pockets. The super dropped waist and the tutu like skirt, though... I could go without it.
First thing I did was disconnect the top from the bottom by unstitching the dropped waist. We were going to pull that waist up.
Next (and I failed miserably on pictures here), I put the bottom over the top and sewed it together with a waist that actually falls at my natural waist. This also solved the long length problem and brought it up to an appropriate knee-length.
Before you get to thinking I'm actually getting good at what I do, let me tell you how erroneous that actually is.
Proof:
This is the top of the dress, which is inside out, and the skirt bottom, which is right side out, and the visible seam in mint green. Also known as... my first mess-up.
I had to rip all that out and go at it again. The second time, I made sure to cut the excess top, and line up my seams correctly. Also, because the bottom was a lot bigger than the bottom of the shirt, I ended up making two pleats in the front and two pleats in the back. This was my first time adding pleats to anything, and I only made one inside out. I'm going to go ahead and call that a "win".
Close up of my pleats in the front.
I wanted to change the neckline, but as you may have noticed from my mess-up photo, I was using mint green thread. Unfortunately, I am finding that my thread collection is severely lacking, as every time I look for a certain color... it is not in my collection. This particular green was not in my collection, so I was unable to do any seams that were going to be visible to the general public.
So, for now, this is the end result until I can own a green thread that matches:
Although it is a bit big, I didn't want to make it smaller and lose the pockets. I did take off most of the sleeve and created a cap sleeve so it wouldn't look so large. Also, to cinch it in a bit, I brought out my trusty belt.
I'm actually quite a fan of this dress. Once I change the neckline up a bit (I'm thinking a good ol' V-neck would do fine), it will be within a normal rotation to my work clothes.
Now, for the new addition of my crock-pot meal. It was another chicken pot today - Pulled Mexican Chicken. I'm not a huge fan of red meat so it's only about a once a week thing in our house. Chicken, however, plays a main role in many of our dishes. Wegman's makes it super easy when they individually wrap it up for us...
This recipe is super easy. There's no link, because it's basically a recipe I made up with the combined use of other recipes of it's like. All you need is:
- 4 chicken breasts
- taco seasoning
- chicken broth
First, throw the chicken in the bottom of the crock pot. Then toss in the full packet of taco seasoning (at the end, I added another packet, so feel free to throw two packets in there if you like it well-seasoned). Then, add some chicken broth. I'd love to tell you how much to use, but I didn't have a clean measuring cup so I eye-balled it. I was aiming for 1 cup of broth, but it was probably only 3/4 cup. I tend to go light-handed when I estimate. Then, cook it on low for 4 hours. After 4 hours, shred up the chicken with two forks, and then put the top back on the crock pot and let the shredded chicken hang out in the juice for a while, but turn off the crock-pot so it doesn't continue cooking.
Enjoy! This is especially good when thrown into a tortilla with some tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream and salsa, but I'm not here to tell you how to eat it, just how to make it :)
