An Experiment: The Re-fashion

For those of you who have known me for awhile, you know I like to sew. It's a bit of a lost art passed down from my grandmother and mother to me that I didn't appreciate for a long time, but now that I'm out on my own, it's become a fun and useful skill. I'm not awesome, but I still enjoy playing around with fabric and making things. I've run into a bump, though. If you've been in a fabric store recently, you know how expensive fabric is. Between fabric, patterns, and time involved, sewing can definitely seem like a waste of time and money.

Until I found this blog.... http://refashionista.net

The girl's a genius! Inspirations galore. On the cheap. Oh, momma!

This shirt especially caught my eye. http://refashionista.net/2013/02/27/wannabe-wednesday-2/

Hey, I could do that. Looks simple enough.

So it begins...

On my annual spring break pilgrimage down to Florida, I dragged my doubtful mother and boyfriend to Marianna's fine collection of thrift stores to see what sort of treasures we could find. I found several, but first up.......THIS:

Classy, I know. Straight out of Great-Aunt Ethel's Sunday-best closet from 1991. But for $1, there is hope! I have a shirt to make.

First things to go were that lovely collar, everyone's favorite invention of the 1970s--SHOULDAAAR PAAAADSS!!--and the majority of the skirt. The elastic made turning this into a peplum top pretty straight-forward, so I saved about 6 inches of skirt to create the peplum.

I did end up trimming the collar down a little more, but a little facing work with the help of my still slightly dubious mother fixed that right up. All that was left was to hem and press my creation.

A little wine and homemade chocolate pudding goes along way to help
with the sewing. Especially when you've sewn the facing on backwards. Twice. 

Despite being my first re-fasion, I thought it turned out pretty well! It made my mom a believer, at any rate! I still have more thrift-shop treasures to save, so I'll keep you posted!