Thrift Thursday

{My New Favorite}

Red Pencil Skirt $6

Skirt Failure

I spent my last saturday afternoon making this snazzy skirt. Bad news- I decided to make it without a pattern and I got a bit distracted. The project FAILED. HARD. I think I may be able to still save it- but I'm not promising anything.

Extend Your Skirt

So I have a favorite dress that I always feel uncomfortable wearing because its just a tad too short to me. So I decided to change it.

I decided to add lace to the bottom of my skirt but I just wanted it to poke out of the bottom. I've had a cheap slip for forever that I hardly ever wear and a peice of lace I got as part of a wedding gift.

I marked where the slip hit the bottom of my dress and cut it off.

Then I cut the portion of the lace I wanted to stick out.

Then I simply sewed the two pieces together using the widest zig-zag stitch I could, because of the lace.

What do you think?

Use your imagination! You can put lace on the bottom of your skirt/dress or make a slip like mine. Or don't use lace at all! Use tulle fabric, or just a cute cotton print. Here are some other cute examples I found on the web:

Spice Things Up!

I've been getting the itch to go shopping lately but resisted and decided to re-purpose some clothes instead. This is great for un-experienced sewers because there is no real pattern or exact way to do this- the more organic the better and its an opportunity to be creative.

What You Need

-Plain Shirt

-Strip(s) of knit fabric

-Sewing Machine

-Thread

-Pins

Take you Strip(s) and lay them on your shirt where you want them to be. Pin fabric down (spacing the pins) and leave a lot of excess fabric in between.

Advanced Sewers are not going to like very much- for me at least it was hard to digress in a sense and not be exact with my sewing. You pretty much sew slowly and push gathers under. Try to vary the size of gathers and space between them- I tried but mine ended up looking like I used a ruffler foot haha. I sewed closer to one side with my big ruffle but you can sew right in the middle if you are sewing smaller strips.

To end mine I did some random folds and gathers and some excess fabric.

Here is the opposite side of my shirt to show you where my stitching ended up.

There you go! A whole new shirt for much a lot less!

Meet Caleb

I work with Caleb's mom and he comes with her to our weekly manager's meeting. He is the best dressed boy I have seen in Rexburg! Every week I am impressed with his outfits and this week I couldn't resist taking a picture of him! Eat your heart out....

{BTW What Do You Think Of The New Blog Look?}

Don't Pass Up On A Deal

So funny story... I've been looking for a new dress for a while and this saturday I stopped into a store in town and found this awesome dress originally priced at almost $60 marked down to $15! I took it back to the dressing room and found an issue. The dress was an extra small but I new that if I tried I could make it work. But..... I couldn't even get in the dress! The band around the waist was a tight fit and wasn't stretchy AND it didn't have a zipper or buttons. Now I could start to see why this awesome dress found it's way to the clearance rack. I figured it would be a tight fit but I was totally wrong- I got STUCK IN IT! I got it over my arms, and my head but couldn't get it past my shoulders so then I tried to take it off and realized real quick I couldn't! I started hyperventilating! haha Then I started freaking out that I was going to have to call a sales person to help me. So I took a breath, pulled myself together and yanked it off! I could tell it was going to fit great if only I could get it on! So I bought it even though I couldn't get it on. Then I ran to Walmart and bought a zipper.

I picked out the seam on the side where the tight belt area was.

I sewed in a 7 in black zipper

When I was done I realized I probably should have used a grey zipper instead of black but I was still happy with the results

The best part is- I can PUT IT ON!

So moral of the story- don't pass up on a good deal even if there may be issues in the dressing room