Nothing to see here...

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. 

Thrift Scores

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.

The Green Monster

Happy Sunday Funday, friends :)

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 :)

Denim Dare Me!

So this week I've got a bit of a copycat going on. I've been playing with the idea of chambray shirts. I can't decide whether it's just a fancy denim shirt and children will laugh at the trend in a few years, or if it's a fun trend that I want to jump on. Looking at stores around me, I didn't find any prices that I was willing to pay. For instance...

You can find this Gap shirt here for $59.99. What. A. Steal. I knew I could do better and, with a little work, I could make it perfect. So, I found this and knew it was meant to be.

First thing I did was lit a candle and got some liquid courage... I'm slightly in love with the tiny little candles available at Bath and Body Works. They're cheap, they burn for hours and they smell delicious. I'm good with that.

The dress was a bit big, so I took it in about an inch or so on each side. I did a straight stitch first, and then followed it with a zig-zag stitch to really lock it in there and not have any embarrassing holes should a stitch break somewhere. This didn't have to be pretty because no one would see it. Once it was sewn, I cut off the excess.

Next, I cut the dress shorter. I cut it about waist-length and hemmed up the bottom. I saved the bottom scrap, as it was a rather large scrap and a very soft denim as I'm sure I could use it for something. I also made sure to pop off and save the buttons - never can have too many buttons!

That was that! It was a super simple fix and, in my not so humble opinion, it looks fantastic. Bonus: it's super comfortable. I rolled up the sleeves to make it look like the original and I was good to go.

This is probably going to be a normal addition to my weekend rotation. Until children start laughing at the trend.

In other news, I'm getting back into the habit of doing crock-pot meals on Sundays. These are so easy and laid back and super simple to throw together and go about your day. I've decided I'm going to make this a bonus on my posts - whenever I throw together a crock pot meal while I sew, I'll include the recipe on here as well. I hope you benefit from lazy Sunday's as well by using some of these recipes (often stolen from Pinterest).

Today's Crock Pot meal - Chicken and Stuffing.
Ingredients:
- Chicken breast (skinless, boneless and what have you)
- Stove Top stuffing (1 package)
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 1/2 cup sour cream
Here's my favorite part: throw shit in the pot. Put the chicken on bottom and cover with the stuffing mix. Mix together the sour cream, the soup and 1/4 cup of water and throw that on top of the stuffing. Then put the cover on it and stick it on low for 4 hours.
*Disclaimer: As I'm writing this during my 4 hour wait, I can't really tell you it's delicious. It could suck, but that's just the risk you take.*

Happy Sunday :)



Stay tuned...

Stay tuned, faithful readers, for a mid-week blogging. I caught myself a nifty little stomach bug that put me down for the count on blog day. Once I feel better, I'm hoping to get something together in time for Halloween, which is the best time of the year. 

Always a Bridesmaid...

... once a bride!! (Eat that, ridiculous old saying)

Last weekend's wedding festivities were so much fun that I could not resist the formal attire rack at the Salvation Army this weekend. These dresses aren't just dresses; they are symbols. Symbols of fantastic nights, best friends, close family and bringing two lives into one. Maybe the dress went through a crazy night, a stressful night, a funny night, or maybe the dress even wound up in jail and had to get bailed out (well hey there, lifetime movie). It's so much fun to imagine what types of activities these dresses went through. I couldn't resist but to pick one up, and this $7 dollar beauty fit the bill.

This was very obviously bridesmaid, including the telltale sash and everything. It was pretty well taken care of, and all in all in not too bad of shape. The worst things I could see when I was at the store was that it was sized at an 18, so it was going to be too big, and the back lace-up was missing, I figured it wasn't too big of a deal and scooped it up.

I should definitely preface this post with this: I am always awesome in my head, and my plans always work out well. Also, in my head, everything turns to be out super easy because I can break it down step by step. Keep in mind - this is all in my head. Because reality, especially for this project, is a witch. (Feel free to swap in the "b" if you are aged 18 or older.)

The first thing I noticed was that, although sized at 18, it was fitted to a much smaller size. I should have seen that coming, really, because I know the three truths that are involved in buying a bridesmaids dress: a) order a much larger size than you are b) get your fitness on because you want to look as fantastic as possible and c) get the dress fitted to you (usually at your new size if you did the fitness part well). So that was the first bonus: I didn't have to take this in.

The first thing I did was deal with that awful sash. Sashes look very pretty at weddings; however, that sash will never, ever be in that "you can totally wear this again" bride mentality. Now, I'm not sure if wedding shops are just getting nicer, or if this one (Alfred Angelo) just decided to save on thread, but this sash was connected by three whole strings.

This was simple enough to snip off and I found myself confident that this was going to go well. In hindsight... I'm silly.

Next, I put on the dress and measured down to my knee. Then, I took off the dress, made the measurements all across the front and back, and connected my dots with my seamstress wheel chalk thing. That's obviously the technical term.

Next - and here was the mentally hard part - I cut the dress up the side seam and chopped off the bottom.

This all went very well so my confidence was only a little shot when I put the hem on my lining of the dress. I really, really botched this, and had I known it would start off a terrible pattern of messing the rest of it up, I would have ripped it all out and tried it again. Alas, I could not see into that future, so my thinking at this point was "it's just the lining - no one will see".

It bunched, it pulled, it wasn't even - it wasn't good. I came to the conclusion afterward that I should have used a straight stitch (for some reason I'm mildly obsessed with the zig zag stitch. My machine often doesn't leave it...) and also should have put my stitch length much longer so it didn't pull and bunch. This will be the first lesson I follow when I decide to go back and fix this dress.

Next, I attempted the hem of the body of the dress. You know, the one people see. I knew it had to be some sort of blind stitch, but my machine does not have the capability for that. So... I had to do it by hand. Mind you, I have only blind stitched by hand a few times and it was mainly on pant legs that no one sees. Knowing this, I probably should have googled the activity further, but instead I just hopped into it. I didn't take a picture of this process, but you'll see in the end that my by-hand blind stitch leaves much to be desired.

Next, with my confidence no longer even slightly existent, I decided to create a cord from the bottom of the dress to make a new tie for the lace up back. I cut an inch wide sash off the entire bottom scrap and folded it in half, rights sides together, with the intention of sewing it up and bringing it inside out to have a nice cord with no seams. After it was all sewn, it did not want to go inside out. No matter how many pencils I attempted to stick in this tube, it was just not happening. Eventually, I just laced up the back with the wrong-side out tube full of seams so I could see if it was at least long enough to work if I were to make a cord correctly. Luckily, it was long enough.

It was at this point that I called it a day. Sometimes when you're plans aren't going as they are in your head, you just need to step back, expand your knowledge on the subject and come back to it with a fresh mind - and that is what I plan to do. Eventually I will come back to this disaster dress, seam rip all my work and re-do all the hems and the back cord to the point where I'm able to wear this in public without being totally ashamed. I mean - I guess I could wear this out in public... in bad lighting and with the assurance that everyone is too drunk to even know what a proper hem looks like. Until then, here is the visual to give you a giggle.

Maybe I can pass off the wonky hem as ruffles? Anybody? No?

 

Better luck next time. This is one dress that will not see a wedding again anytime soon.

Pretty Plaid

Happy Holiday Monday! This weekend in the US was Columbus Day Weekend. For most, that means a 3 day weekend. For me this weekend meant a wedding and travel filled weekend with a bonus day off. I had an out of town wedding this weekend that was fantastic - everything we did was a lot of fun and we had a great time hanging out with the family.

Now, I'm sitting home on my bonus day off (this isn't one of our paid holidays so I just took the day off as a vacation day) and making up for my lack of posting yesterday. Luckily, this one was super simple that I could use the rest of my day to rest up and take a relaxing few hours to myself.

I started off with this beauty:

When purchasing this, I had St. Patrick's Day in mind, but there was no way I could let it sit for that long. I could not quite figure this dress out - it had some strange layering that had me going for quite a while.

My only saving grace of knowing I had this on right was that the tags were in the back. That was literally it.

 

First thing that had to go was the shoulder pads. Snip snip!

Next thing I did was separate all the layers. This was probably the best decision I could have made because it all fell into place at that point and it was super simple to come up with updates for the rest of it. So simple, in fact, that I just jumped right into it and didn't take any pictures of the process. Whoops!

Basically - I took the weird layer off of the top, and found that there were buttons in the back that were supposed to be buttoned up once the dress was all set and on correctly. The arms were also super large. After I took this entire piece off, all I had to do was turn it around so the buttons were in front and boom - I had a cropped plaid jacket. Literally no sewing involved. Just a matter of letting it shine on its own.

This is how you know Colette is having a lazy day. I didn't even take the time to put on real pants, ya'll. (But seriously... loving leggings on lazy, rainy days like today!)

Once I had the poncho-esque layer off, I was left with a dress that was actually really pretty. The top was a lining, but was a thicker lining that wasn't see through, so all I had to do was throw on a trusty undershirt and the top was set.  Next, as the dress went down to my ankles, I took up the hem quite a few inches. This ended up being knee-length. I will probably keep it this length for Christmas, but then hike up the hem for St Patrick's Day in March to switch up the look a bit. It's nothing if not versatile, eh?

I was very happy with this dress and super pleased that, once it was all torn apart, it took very simple steps to throw this back into an updated, fashionable (maybe?!) look.

As always, comment below or shoot an e-mail to thriftysew@gmail.com. Always love hearing your comments.

Now, I will most certainly take a hint from my cats and cuddle up and enjoy the rest of the day. I suggest everyone does the same! Cheers!

Daring to Dye

Happy weekend, friends. This post is coming up a bit late, but it's only because it was a pretty fantastic weekend. First, it started with this:

That is tailgating at a college football game, my friends. My apologies for the bad iPhone photo, but I wasn't planning on this picture making the post, but I had too much fun to not say anything.

So we went to the Syracuse vs. Clemson game. And for those of you that haven't seen the Syracuse campus, it's pretty much the original Hogwarts.

I mean, it's not, but it looks pretty legit.

The stadium was absolutely packed though - a whopping 48,000+ people.

So the project for this weekend was one that was laid back and able to keep me focused on weekend football, as I was already in the mood to watch. I chose a skirt that I picked up for 50 cents.

This skirt was overly large, and in a pattern that I wasn't a huge fan of. I took the opportunity to use up some extra products that were in my craft room...

Neither bottle of dye had enough liquid in it to do much damage on a single piece of attire, but together they had enough to make something... hopefully purple. So, I threw it all in the bucket and let it sit for a few hours while I sat down to a relaxing weekend of doing... pretty much nothing.

My grade school logic turned out correctly, because when I dumped out my dye bucket, this gorgeous purple is what came out.

After a quick rinse and spin in the washer and then a dryer tumble, out came my new skirt. It was a bit more subdued of a pattern, but still had enough interest to not be a "regular" old black skirt.

Altogether, it came out pretty well. After taking in the skirt about 2 inches or so, it started to become something wearable. I don't see myself wearing it anytime soon to work, but I feel like it has some possibility of Halloween costume or comfortable weekend wear. (Who knew there was a single piece of clothing that could be in both categories!?)

 

So not the most exciting refashion in the blogosphere, but I did get my dying practice on and even got a bit of mixology (boom!) going with *gasp* accurate results.

 

As always,. comments are welcome as well as e-mails to thriftysew@gmail.com. I've gotten a few comments about my lack of updating the Before and After page - and you are correct, I have slacked big time on that page. I will be doing updates soon, and hoping to make each picture a link to the corresponding post. Stay tuned, and keep checking. I'll stop being lazy at some point.

Happy Blog-Day!!

Happy Blog-Day!!

Why do I call it that, you ask? Well - this day last year was the day that I decided to go ahead and build this blog; to put myself out there, failures and all, for all of you to see, criticize and enjoy. Today, I'm still at it and even have a following. I'd call it success, for sure.

Today's project was chosen strictly because of its color. I had gone to Joann Fabrics a while ago and bought a bunch of thread, unknowingly purchasing two teal colors that I already had at home. So... I had a lot of teal to use up. Luckily, I found this:

Pay attention to the dress now - pay no attention to my just-showered mop of hair.

This wasn't actually too bad of a dress - the color was pretty and the waist elastic was still in fantastic shape. I was not, however, a fan of the many buttons going directly down my chest. It was super unflattering, and when you add it to the mid-calf length, it wasn't a flattering dress in the least.

There was definitely potential though. My first step was to chop off the bottom to make it at least knee-length. This necessitated my using my  new favorite toy - the chalk wheel. You literally just draw on clothing. It's pretty awesome.

I then pinned up my new bottom hem, and brought a new character to the party...

 

That's right - I actually ironed my seams down before I sewed them. This is what we call: professional.

I then needed to work with the rest of the dress. After playing with the buttons quite a bit, I had a thought: these buttons would look way better on the back. So, because I do basically whatever I want, I put on the dress backward. This worked out quite nicely, save for the new neckline that was now cutting me off at the jugular. I almost put in the standard V-neck, but decided to veer off that well-beaten path and branch out a bit... to a scoop neck. (Oooooh, ahhhh, ohhhhh) As I didn't see anything else to help me out on this, I looked down and realized my tank top I was wearing had a pretty fantastic scoop neck. So... off it came and down on the table it went.

I traced the neckline, cut that half out, folded it over on the other side and used that part as a guide to make the other side even.  At that point, it was just a matter of sewing it down and throwing it on.

Final result:

It ended up being an overwhelming amount of teal when viewing from the front, so that is why I added a belt to break it up a bit. But the back I fell instantly in love with.

And what did I do with my shiny new dress, you ask? Well, I went straight to Wegman's to get Sophie and me some birthday cake. Because we deserve it.

1 year baby!

Here's to hoping it settles onto Sophie's hips and not mine.

As always, feel free to leave me some comments below, or I always enjoy your e-mails to thriftysew@gmail.com as well. I hope you all enjoy this gorgeous Sunday, and feel free to grab yourself a tasty dessert and celebrate 1 year with me :)