Amateur Hour at the Sewing Machine

Happy Sunday Funday, folks :)

I worked on this project all afternoon for you guys. I've been getting a lot of questions of "is this normal?" and "does this happen to you?". I'm no professional, guys, and yes - it is safe to say that if it's happened to you, it's happened to me. So I put together a little video of things that I've not only said myself, but things that I'm sure you guys say as well. But ya know what? It's totally normal, and completely a part of the joy of sewing. I'm not afraid to make fun of myself because, when it is all said and done, the end result is usually  not that bad.

Announcing Announcements

Hey all! Got a bit of news to share - not sure if it's good or bad. That's for you to decide. Unfortunately I feel like I"e been selling you guys short on Thursdays. Lately I've been late, posting half-assed projects, yadda yadda yadda. I feel like posts have been full of excuses.

So, I'm changing my regular posting day from Thursday to Sundays - Sunday's Fun Day's, if you will. This will ensure that I don't rush the projects after I get home from work at 7 or 8 at night - and, you know, get dinner and sleep. It also helps that that'll give me Saturday to shop for refashions if I'm running low... which is currently the case.

So I will see ya'll on Sunday with my next refashion!!

Thrifting "Too Small"

It seems the theme of these last few weeks has been "what the hell?" I've had quite the streak of bad luck. It started with a bad massage (I know, I didn't think there was such a thing either), continued with a pretty extreme crisis at work, went on for a memorial for a passed friend, and ended with my cat falling out the bathroom window and running away.

Luckily, things are tending to get better. My back is swinging towards better, the crisis is unresolved but I haven't heard anything too bad come from it, the memorial was nice and I saw some old friends, and the cat was found after a few 20 minutes outdoors. Just goes to show - life throws some dumbass lemons, but you can at least turn them into something that will pass for lemonade. That's how it goes, right?

I also had quite the struggle with projects. I went to Salvation Army and, more bad luck, ended up picking up everything that was too small for me. It got me down, that's for sure. It took a very frank husband of mine to say "you make stuff. make this work". He doesn't take my excuses and - never tell him - I like that he doesn't.

So, the more I thought about it, the more excited I was about working on these projects. It's a pretty common problem, I think, to find items at a thrift store that you think will fit, but when you get it home and wash it... it doesn't. So, I thought I would show you a few ways to make this problem into a wearable solution.

I started out with this:

I am pretty long-waisted, so this jumper wasn't even CLOSE to fitting me lengthwise. You also don't see the back, but the back zipper was completely open because there was not a chance in hell this was going to fit around my chest.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the process. I was taking them on my phone and, true to luck, have unfortunately lost all of the pictures I've taken today. So I'm going to try to use my words like a big girl.

First thing I did was cut up the leg seams to open up the jumper. I definitely didn't need to keep this pants or shorts, especially since its waist was way too short for mine.

Next - and I really didn't want to do this - I cut off the arms. I know, I know. But in all honesty, those little dainty armholes were certainly not fitting around my arms, so I needed all the give I could get. This helped the bodice fit perfectly, except the zipper didn't quite want to go all the way up. In fact, it started sweating only a few inches up in its travels. This wasn't going to quite work.

So I just took the zipper out. This left the back completely open and flapping in the breeze. I guess it's better to go bigger than smaller, right? I decided to use a scrap of lace that I had leftover and line the back hole with it. This left the two back flaps with something to latch on to, as well as a modesty panel so I didn't have to go bra-less. Win.

Next, I cut the legs off at the same length as the crotch and hemmed it up. In all truth - I was pretty surprised at the result. I did no measuring, I literally tore things apart in this dress, and I very haphazardly sewed everything because my back is bothering me too much to sit in front of a sewing machine for hours. This project took me about an hour overall, and that includes the time I spent drinking wine. Because, yes, wine is needed after weeks like this.

So? How did it come out? Check it for yourself:

I love that the neckline is the spotlight of the dress now, as opposed to the yards and yards of fabric all over.
Here's the back:

And, because I wasn't lying about the wine, and because I think this is a perfect weekend bbq day-drinking dress...

Hope you all have a fantastic week - get a glass of wine with me!

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.