Wednesday 20 November 2013

My newest little sewing treasure...

Hi guys, no crafting updates today, but look what the Mr bought me!!




How stunning is this?!


It's a little pin box (I think), and it's all enameled with little gems stuck on in places. The machine is a deep purple colour and the base is a pale baby pink. It even has a little cotton reel on the top!

I love this. I love my Mr for buying it for me. I'm so very lucky.

Sunday 10 November 2013

Granny dress refashion...

Hello all!

I picked up a rather large granny dress in the summer with the intentions of making it fit me. I really liked the pattern and the light fabric. (Plus, it was only £1!)

(It was a size 20 and someone had hand-sewn up the buttons for modesty. How sweet!)


I usually take ages to plan what I'm going to do with a refashion. But this time I decided to just dive in and chop bits off!


(I chopped off about 10 inches from the bottom)


(I took the sides in and here's what I was left with.)


Now normally, I would have stopped there. But in all honesty, am I really going to wear a summer dress in the freezing cold, windy Plymouth winter? No. Also, I just didn't love it. I'm trying to make things i'm actually going to wear, not things to live at the back of the wardrobe waiting for good weather, or waiting until I have the confidence to wear. So I carried on chopping.

Here's what I finished with....


(A cute little blouse!)

I'm quite pleased with this. I left the sleeves as long as this because it's cold, and I think it's a more mature length. I unpicked the hand-stitching down the buttons so that it would open up again. This allowed me to take the sides in a bit more to make it more fitted. You can't see it too well, but where the buttons finish, is where the bottom of the dress started to fan out. It now forms a little bit of a peplum, which is quite flattering on my hips.


I'll be trying to make some handmade Christmas gifts over the next few weeks. I won't be blogging about them until after Christmas though, some of my readers are some of the people who will be receiving those gifts!! 

I'll try and update soon!!


Friday 1 November 2013

Halloween refashion!

Good afternoon everyone!

(That would have said good morning had I not been so fragile earlier today. Great night out :) )

Ok, so as you probably know, I study architecture. It pretty much takes up all of my time. So when I was invited out with the other half, one of his friends and his girlfriend for halloween, I was sure it was just going to be a calm evening. No dress up involved. Then I found out I had a few days off and we could actually have a proper night out!!

I only found this out on Wednesday. Halloween was Thursday. I haven't gone out for halloween in years, and I didn't have an outfit!

Enter...this 4 sizes too big, flappy sleeves, ankle length red little number that I bought for 50p and one of our charity shops! (it was 2 for £1 day, so I got another new top as well :D )



(I forgot to take a photo of me wearing this, sorry!)

So the dress was a lovely heavy jersey fabric, and barely even needed proper hemming to be perfectly honest. All I did was cut off about 35cm from the bottom and cut off the flappy sleeves - luckily the way it was sewn in meant that if I pulled the sleeve tight enough when I was cutting it, it pulled all the little loose threads out too, so it was literally just a case of cutting them off! Oh, I did tighten the sides of the sleeve a bit when I added darts to the side. Nothing wrong with them, I just didn't want people to see the sides of my bra. The best thing about this project is it took less than half an hour!

Here's what I ended up with...

(Nice eh? Not bad for a simple refashion)

And just because it was for a halloween outfit, here it is with me all done up...




Oooh, also...look at all the extra fabric I've got! I don't know what to do with it really, red isn't something that's normally in my colour palette. Any ideas?





It's ok though, we were all safe that night. There was a doctor present at all times :)