Country Dress (Anthropologie/Free People Hack)

I was touched by the Taylor Swift muse in that I decided I needed a pretty country girl dress to wear with my boots. Something vintage-y and cute like you find at Anthropologie and Free People (but without the $100+ price tag).

  

I wasn't really finding anything online & didn't want to go hunting store to store - plus I knew I wanted something with a vintage feel. So I went off to my favorite thrift store to go look around. On the first try I found this little 80's number. It was marked at $6.99, but because it was damaged, I asked for a discount - they sold it to me for $2!

This dress has a great vintage floral print and good structure. But it has a terrible fit and a hole in the back that looks like some kind of varmint had its way with the dress. Oh yeah... and a signature 80's bow on the back!

When I first put it on the arm holes were too high, and the bust was way too tight (hence the gap showing my white tank). But I knew I could work with that. My original plan was to split open the side seams and use a triangle scrap of fabric to add about an inch to each side. When I began to inspect the seams - I discovered that this dress has french seams (basically that's a seam encased within itself).  Nice that this dress is of a higher quality than I originally thought - not nice to try to do an alteration on. But I decided to persist.

Step 1: Get that gawd awful bow off the back. Once it was off, it's actually a nice rectangle of fabric - good for those side seam triangle inserts I'm thinking about.
Step 2: Work around that giant hole in the back. I realized that I could go about 18" up from the hem line & clear the fabric damage, so I made that my first cutting line.
Step 3: Cut off the bottom of the dress at my 18" marked line.
Step 4: Discover the bonus points that the previous owner had taken up the shoulder seams! So I let those out & behold - armholes that fit me now! Yay. So that meant I didn't have to open up those french seamed side seams to insert extra fabric.

Once I had the dress all trimmed out - it was time to add some embellishment. I bought 2 yards of 2" black lace - not a lacey lace - more of a cotton country style lace. It was $5.99 a yard at JoAnn's & I used my 40% off coupon - so it came out to about 9 bucks with tax. I also bought a roll of skinny black crochet lace from Hobby Lobby - again using my 40% off coupon - so that was $1.50 for a 3 yard roll.

The first thing I did was serge the bottom hem to keep the fabric from coming apart (if you don't have a serger, you could just zigzag stitch it). Then I sewed the 2" lace on to the bottom with about 3/8" overlap from the serged edge. I could have left the dress like that - as a mini dress. But I'm over 40 and mini dresses are just too young for me, and have never really worked on me anyways, so I needed to add some of the dress back on.

At first I cut a 10.5" wide piece from the original dress hem (the part that was cut off when we measured 18" up). At 10.5" up from the hem, I missed the varmint hole from the bottom side. I took that & pinned it onto my black lace and went to go take a look... mmm seemed a bit long to me. So I folded it up & repinned it to about knee length - I liked that much better. That ended up being about a 6" width.

Once I cut my 6" wide piece (leaving the original dress hem), I serged the raw edge and began pinning it around the lace - matching side seams, center front and center back - then finger gathered it to fit all the way around. Once everything was in place, I stitched it down (again with about a 3/8" overlap with the lace piece)

As a finishing touch, I decided that I needed a little lace at the top to balance it out. So I took my Hobby Lobby 3/8" black lace & stitched two rows of it down each side of the button placket, and around the neckline.

The dress is still a bit tight in the bust, but I decided that I like the look of wearing a cami underneath - so no alterations there.

I really like my country dress! All in all, it took about 3 hours of pressing, cutting & sewing time and a whoppin $12.50! What a bargin! Plus it brings new life into an old dress and maintains a better carbon footprint than buying a new dress.

Rag-a-muffin Spurs Wreath

Using the strips of scraps from my Spurs t-shirt project, I made a wreath. I used a wire wreath foundation that I had on hand, but you can use anything else that allows you to tie on the scraps.

My scraps are about 1.5"x6"-7" each & I just started tying them randomly around the form by color. Even with the "finished" product... I think I will keep adding scraps as I come across fabric re-uses, just to fatten it up.

I had originally intended to stretch the banner across the wreath from side to side, but as I started making my banner flags to match the size of my stencils I just went ahead & kept them separate. Maybe later on I'll do smaller letters on for the wreath & stretch the banner some place else, but for now, I like this arrangement.

Go Spurs Go!

Go SPURS Go

I really needed to do something with all my old Spurs t-shirts that I don't wear or don't fit into anymore. So I decided I would cut them up & make a patch work maxi skirt. I also included some other t-shirts that I don't wear that I thought would go nicely with my black, white, gray and pink theme.

I decided on a 16" square for all my pieces. Some shirts proved a bit small for 16", but I made it work. Now...just cutting everything up took a while, but left me with a bunch of usable scraps. I cut the shirt bottoms into strips about 1.5"x6"-7", and will use the sleeves to make small drawstring bags.

I anticipate 3 projects from this reincarnation.

1. Patchwork Maxi Skirt
2. Rag-a-muffin Wreath
3. Cutesy Drawstring Bags

I don't know when I'll get the time to it all, but at least I have a plan