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.

 

Improve (and Improv)

As you all know, I had a run that I stupidly signed up for on June 17th. Although I didn't run the whole 3.5 miles, I'm pretty darn proud that I finished it. Also - not only did I finish it, but I didn't come in last! Here I am, all sweaty post-race (for your viewing pleasure, of course)

Although I'm not proud of my time (slow) and not proud of my performance (walked too much), I've certainly inspired myself to be better. Using our Fitness Initiative incentive at work, I'm going to buy myself some nice work out gear and a few health-inducing habits (smoothies!) that should help me improve myself and my well being.

In the spirit of my newfound improvement motivation, this week I went back to a few projects that I left at "eh, good enough" and made "oh hey, it's not that bad!".

The first project I took on was this one:

This one was left in it's "good enough" stage when I left that left side all jacked up. The thread pulled the fabric, which made it bunch and uneven on the bottom. It was also a bit short, making the uneven hem even more apparent. So... under the machine it went!

 

I chopping off a few inches on the bottom, right above where all the mess-ups were, and made a real hem. I also went around the bottom twice. As I learned from the first time around, the fabric was pretty fussy and stretchy, so I made sure to zig-zag stitch both times around.

 

In the end, I have a cute blouse that can be worn with leggings during the weekends, or some dress pants and a sweater for work. I love that I refashioned my refashion.

 

The next project I decided to improve was one that I did very recently:

This project I'm pretty fond of... except I never did anything to the straps. The straps were huge and they had buttons on the back to attach to. The problem? The buttons were on the wrong side! First thing I did was rip off the buttons, then I seam ripped the straps out. My plan was just to make the straps shorter, but then I realized the large straps could be my benefit. I tied them together in a halter (this is the improve part) and "voila!" I ended up solving two problems. The first solved problem was obviously fixing the strap problem so they weren't falling off my shoulders. The second solved problem was the length - instead of making the straps shorter, thus making the short dress even shorter, the halter top enabled me to actually shift the dress down a bit so it wasn't AS short. A+ for problem solving.

 

The last project I improved on was this one. Although - I have no pictures because my camera apparently only "pretended" to take pictures. The flash went off and everything went fine... except when I went to view them at the end of the project and nothing was there. Real funny, camera, real funny.

 

I said at the end of my video that I'd probably keep the dress as big as it was because it was super comfy. Super comfy - yes. Super flattering? Not in anyone's world. I decided to take it in a few inches. The hard part on this dress was that there was the lining of the dress and the shear overlay of the dress and both were separate pieces. This wasn't a project I could just flip inside out and sew up the sides and call it a day (damn). First I worked on the lining. I made sure it was completely separate from the overlay and pinned about (read: improv) an inch on each side. I sewed up those sides and cut off the excess. Then I did the same thing with the overlay - made sure it was completely separate, pinned it about an inch on each side, sewed it up and cut off that excess. Luckily, the two paired up nicely and they ended up being even on the bottom. Next time, I probably wouldn't improv as much on this - after I sewed I was pretty nervous I'd have a dress with half the lining hanging out. Taking the sides in also shortened it (the one time I remember the golden rule...) so I didn't take anything off the bottom. Gotta keep it appropriate, now.

 

So that was the improving that I did. I've certainly learned that I can improve things that are just "alright" and turn it into something livable (you know, the whole idea of this blog) and I can even improve on things that I've already done, no matter if I despised the ending result or loved it.

 

There you have it! Have a fantastic Thursday (and Friday, and every day). As always, feel free to leave comments, suggestions, likes or hates either here on the blog or at thriftysew@gmail.com

 

Hawaiian Breeze

Happy Thursday, all! I'm coming down from an 11 hour workday, so today's project had to be a quick and easy one in order for me to go to bed at a reasonable hour (and, ya know, not by a big ol' grumpy face.)

So I started off with something that wasn't so bad.

This one definitely had potential, with only a few issues. The print is definitely what drew me towards this. It's been raining like crazy here in New York lately so it is far from feeling like summer. This dress picked my mood right up. The few issues were easily fixable ones - it was way too big, to begin with, the skirt was tiered which was super unflattering and the bottom fell right on top of my ankle - not a flattering look for my 5 foot frame.

 

First thing that I did was seam-rip the dress off at the top tier. This left the bodice and about half of the skirt. I do admit I cut a few corners here and there. Such as - I never actually pulled out the seam ripped threads, so all along the bottom are small pieces of severed red thread. I also may have gotten frustrated with the seam ripping and just straight up tore it. Whoops.

 

Next, I tackled the sizing. I turned the dress inside out and took in the sides about 1 inch each. I then reshaped the waist a bit more to cut in at the smallest part of my waist and then go back out, thus creating a "bubble skirt". The inside red line in the picture is mine, and then I cut out the excess.

 

And believe it or not - that was it! Now, I did forget the golden rule - bring in at the sides and then chop off the bottom, so it did turn out a smidgeon lot short. I am actually quite in love with how it turned out... when I stand still. Unfortunately, as a human, I need to move and such and when I do that in this dress I'm not confident that I'm keeping my wardrobe at a "G" rated level. Because I love the shape so much, I will probably add on some fabric from the original bottom to the new bottom to lengthen it to a more appropriate level as well as bring in the bodice an inch or two more, but otherwise, this is right up there with some of my other favorite projects!

 

 

As always, leave comments below with suggestions/critiques/wow's or just e-mail me at my shiny new e-mail address: thriftysew@gmail.com.

 

Until next Thursday - good night!

Blogging from Bed

Happy Thursday, all. I'm currently in bed due to one heck of a cold that has knocked me right on my butt. I did start a project yesterday, so hopefully I'll get to finish it this weekend and get it posted as a nice weekday bonus post.

For now, I thought I'd hold you over with a new feature! As you may have noticed, google has now changed my comment section to combine with google+. I don't know what issues you are all having on your end with it, but I am having issues with commenting on your comments (to tell you how awesome you are for commenting, of course). In result, you now have the option to email me! Check out the new page link on top!

Now, if you want to send me a private message or if you're having issues posting comments, shoot me an email! I am not joking when I say I will respond to each and every one!

So here it is: thriftysew@gmail.com

That's handy, right?!

I'll get to work on feeling better, and I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! Check back soon for a belated post, and make sure to check my video in the last post to learn how to dye stuff (it's high skill and stuff!)

Sunday Bonus (Tutorial Video)

Hey all! Thought I'd try something new ... I made a video! As you'll hear, one of my more popular blogs was from the "Dying Dresses" blog, so I thought I'd take it a step further and do a tutorial video so you guys can dye your own dresses! Let me know what you think! (Please be nice - I'm a first time video editor, creator and poster. It's not perfect, and I'm aware of that fact.)

 

 

Of course I had to add bloopers at the end - they're only the best part of every movie!

As promised, here are the 'after' shots as well. I really like this blue :) And after I made the video, I decided that I definitely will make the dress smaller one of these days. As comfy as it is, it doesn't exactly fall in the most flattering of ways.

Really Red Refashion

This one is going to be a "quick and dirty" refashion. I've been a busy busy lady this week, and found myself this morning without a project in mind and definitely not one started. I found myself coming home at 6:00 this afternoon, getting dinner on the table at 7, and finally able to get to sewing around 8:30. With my hopes of getting to bed by 9:30... I needed something quick. (The dirty part is because I grabbed it from a Salvation Army bag that I have yet to throw in the washer... whoops.) Why is my bedtime earlier than most middle schoolers, you may ask? Well, as you may remember I signed myself up for a 3.5 mile run in June, so I've been attempting (yeah, sometimes I fail at it) to get up at 5:30am and go running. So far, I'm up to walk/running 1.5 miles which... is no where near 3.5. Hopefully by mid-June I'll be somewhere around the vicinity of 3.5. We will see.

Onto the project. Here is my Salvation Army smelling project:

Don't mind the pants underneath - as mentioned, this hadn't been washed.

 

This dress was priced at $2.99 and was half off. Plus, it reminded me of a dress that I currently owned and am in love with (that I did not buy for anywhere near $1.50.) Why not have two of them? So, I grabbed my dress that I really liked and made it into my "pattern".

As you can see, the red dress is quite a bit larger than my dress that I already owned. I actually did not mind the few inches of room that I had in the dress - it made it a bit more comfortable for errands and general around-town roaming. The arms were not ideal, and as much as I love the dress I owned, I've never been a huge fan of turtlenecks, so I wanted to nix the turtleneck on the new dress. First thing I did was chopped up the red dress:

Chop chop!

 

As you can see, I shortened the red dress, made the sleeves into short sleeves, and took off the turtle neck. I then pinned everything up and sewed it on up. I went around each seam twice because it was a really stretchy fabric. I also didn't end up with what one would call "straight" lines, but I made myself feel better because I had thread that matched the fabric exactly so... no one would notice, right?

 

All in all, it didn't turn out so bad. In hindsight, I may go back and make the dress smaller. The extra few inches of fabric in the dress isn't the most flattering thing on earth - BUT - it is really comfortable. It also goes really well with my new thrifted belt ($3!!), a style that I'm increasingly in love with. I think my bridal gown started the belt trend and I couldn't help but continue it from there.

 

Here she is:

 

See you all next Thursday! With any luck I'll be a running fool by then!



Happy Updates!

It's fixed, it's fixed! To be honest, not even sure what happened to it in the first place, but the sewing machine is fixed!

My husband took my machine apart and basically gave everything a good cleaning, pulling out the goop, thread and grease that had made its way into my machine. Nothing was actually found to be wrong - apparently the banging and all the other weird stuff that was going on was only caused by a dirty machine. Which doesn't make me feel like a sewing scumbag at all (sarcasm.)

 

So now that that was taken care of, I could finish up some of the projects that I've left half finished. One of these projects was my school marm dress. (See a refresher here.) As you may remember, I left this dress on Sophie all pinned together but not sewed up because I was missing a piece of elastic for the back to hold it up. Well, when I was searching around for the feet that I bought from ebay mentioned in the last post, I pawed through the back of one of my craft drawers and found a piece of elastic about 4 inches long that was perfect! So I went ahead and sewed everything up.

I'm pretty ecstatic about how it came out - the arms ended up coming out a bit weird, but I'm a layerer (that's a word now, deal with it) so it's not often I'd wear a dress like this without a cardigan of some sort. Therefore - the arms shouldn't be too noticable when I actually wear this somewhere.

Here we are:

I will end up making the length shorter, but that is the end of this project :) So stoked that the project that had the most construction turned out to be one of my biggest (and best!) project.

Also, because my husband and I are pretty in love with it, I wanted to show you one of our anniversary gifts. Thomas, one of our groomsman, gave this to us last week for our 1st anniversary and we were so stoked to put it on our wall! It looks fantastic and is just  what we needed, not just to make our home feel like a home, but also a personal touch to really commemorate the best day in our lives. Not only is it a fantastic picture, but we also love it because it is a picture that was taken by Thomas himself on our wedding day when we were walking on the golf course. It's the personal touch and story that makes this so much more perfect. (I know - I got all sappy there. My apologies.) The artsists name is Brooke Elizabeth Ann - once I get contact info (website, etc) I will make sure to post it. From this picture, I can safely say that she. is. amazing.

For those celebrating - Happy Memorial Day! I have lots of family members and friends, past and present, that have served or are currently serving in one of our wonderful branches of the United States military. I love and respect you all, and there are no words that can express how much I truly appreciate you all fighting and putting your lives on the line for our personal freedom. A few honorable mentions: my grandfather, my uncles, both of my brothers and more than a handful of my high school friends, all have whom have served in some sort of war. Superman be damned - you are my heroes.

Mayday! Mayday!

Sad day, guys, sad day. As I finished the below activities (read on after I get this tragedy out of the way) I went to change the color of my thread and I happened to notice a ball of something inside my machine.That's right - INSIDE. In a place that I could not get to. Upon closer inspection I figured out what it was.

 

A ball of thread. Mangled and tying together a few of the gears in my machine.

 

Panic ensued. I have no idea if this is normal, or if this is my machine doing something terribly wrong, but I decided to stop what I was doing right away and freak out. Afterwards, I did the only logical thing and complained like a 5 year old to my husband. If you've been a reader for a bit, you'll know my husband likes to tinker and tear things apart. Despite some recent trips to urgent care (2 visits in the same amount of weeks, actually) he is very handy and usually can take things apart and put it all back together like nothing happened. He offered numerous times to rip my machine apart and get out the ball of thread and un-mess it up. This idea made me panic again - what if he can't put it back together? What if it's messed up forever? What if he can't do it by the time I have to post next Thursday? I'm usually very confident in his engineering abilities, but this one was so close to home it scared me.

 

Grudgingly, I agreed - but not without a bit of a bet. He bet that he could fix it, I bet that he could not. If I "win", he will buy me a new machine. If he "wins"... well, we haven't decided on that quite yet. Either way though, I think I legitimately win. (Honestly, I think that's why there's no prize on his end. He's being "betting supportive" and just wants me to get back to doing the thing I enjoy.)

 

Plus, he kind of hates when I have my lady-panic fits.

In other news, I've been a shopping fiend lately! Now, don't get too excited - my "fiend" is equivalent of a hundred bucks or so, but I did go out and get myself some new fancy digs. This is where I break readers hearts though - it wasn't anything from a thrift store, and nothing is an intended project. Sad day. I know a few people get upset that I broke my trend - I was supposed to be buying everything second-hand! Here's what I have to say to those folks: I know the value of a dollar. I know I can buy really, really nice fabrics and items at a thrift store for a dollar so if I'm going to  spend 20 of those dollars on one shirt I know it better be a good. gosh. darn. shirt.

In high school, I admit, I used to buy brands, not clothes. It didn't quite matter the fabric or the quality. If it said "AE" or "Aero" it was meant to be in my closet. I noticed when I was shopping recently I totally surpassed brands and paid attention to the garment itself - were they well constructed? Was the fabric durable? Did it fit well? Long story short - I found a new way to appreciate thrift stores and making my own clothes. I know that I don't have to settle for odd fitting clothes or see-through, thin cottons. If I'm going to spend my hard earned money, it is going to be on quality and durability.

What else was included in my haul, you may ask? I finally broke down and bought myself a zipper foot and a hemmer foot. I know, I know - they aren't huge purchases, especially since they were ebay buys for less than 20 dollars and free shipping, but it's more an exciting purchase. I was ready to move on to all the fancy stuff that real sewists (again, not sewers, never sewers) do!

First thing I tried was the hemmer foot. I do admit - I bought the feet from a seller that was advertising that these feet fit Brothers, Singers, etc. A "one foot fits all", if you will. The first success was that it did, in fact, fit my Brother sewing machine.

Hot off this first success, I decided to try my hand at actually using it. I took a swatch of fabric from the last project and tried it out.

Nailed it.

 

So that didn't quite, what one would say, "work". Was it all my fault? Probably. What am I going to blame it on? Having the wrong bobbin. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

So I couldn't get one flippin' hem to come out right. I had wanted to hem the dress from this post. I wasn't sure if the cotton/spandex blend was too thick or too stretchy, but it was not feeling like going through the hemmer foot. Eventually, I gave up and just did a hem with the good ol' fashioned straight stitch.

 

And I have to say... it's kind of the best I've ever done. I even rolled it twice all official and stuff! Check this win out!



 

I will be back next week. If I don't have a sewing machine, it may not be the most impressive project but I'll do some hand-sewing to get something done. Meanwhile, I'll keep you updated on the bet with my husband. It's pretty unusual to say - but I'm really hoping he wins this one.

 

P.S. The ring in the above picture is my new favorite! It's a handmade aluminum right (thank you, Etsy) that wraps around my thumb and says "Hakuna Matata" on it. I love love love it. Not only is it a fantastic saying and theory, the Lion King was by far one of the best Disney movies. Win.