Reincarnated Denim for Your House! Donate for Insulation

This is a great way to reincarnate denim! I remember traveling to a cotton/denim mill in Lubbock as part of my textiles degree. The dye baths were just incredibly toxic - you couldn't breath. Although I'm all for refashioning your denim to wear so you can avoid buying new jeans, sometimes that's just not possible. So instead - think about donating them to make home insulation. Blue Jeans Go Green donates insulation to Habitat for Humanity (click the logo for more info) Bonded Logic offers multiple green insulation products, including denim insulation.

One day when we build our tiny house on our property - I will have denim insulation! I may even leave some of it exposed as decor :-)

 

 

Contributing to Refashion Co-op with Denim Skirts

I'm officially a contributor to the Refashion Co-op! Whoo hoo! Check out my first post called "Ooh those denim skirts!"
http://refashionco-op.blogspot.com/2015/01/ooh-those-denim-skirts.html

Zombies wear Chicos

I'm posting a bag refashion. I made a Chicos bag into a fabulous zombie birthday gift bag. Love this.
Take 1 Chicos bag with a red ribbon (optional)
Print some zombie pictures from Mr Google (personal use only)
Bust out your ModgePodge or equivalent white glue
Get a red candle ready

STEP 1: glue your pictures to the bag (covering the logo)
STEP 2: drip red wax on the bag for blood

Too glamorous for words!

SoulMakes The Blog: Decorating with Feathers

SoulMakes The Blog: Decorating with Feathers: As we gear up for fall, there I said it, we prepare ourselves to go back indoors and do a bit of hibernation. If you're like me, th...

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