Tag: refashioning

Making Do and Mending

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Well, isn’t this irritating? One freshly-dyed white t-shirt (Dylon Rosewood Red, not as lurid as it appears in these photos!) complete with stain that, annoyingly, wasn’t visible when the t-shirt was white. Now that the t-shirt’s dyed I can’t use a stain-removal product or scrub at the fabric, as that will most likely take off the dye as well as the stain. My only option now is to cover it up with something.

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That’s better! A bit out of focus, but these are floral motifs carefully snipped from a small piece of Lancaster & Cornish organic cotton lace. I’m hoping there might be just enough loose dye still in the fabric that a little bit of it leaches out into the lace the next time it’s washed, just to soften the cream colour a little bit. But if that doesn’t happen, no worries, because the cream lace makes the white stitching on the t-shirt look as bit more as though it’s supposed to be white on purpose.

Knowing that the stitching wouldn’t take the dye was the main reason I chose the colours I did for dyeing my trousers – beige to dark brown, and pale blue to dark grey. With the contrast stitching they just look like smart, lightweight jeans. I also have plans for mending all of my funny-coloured trousers in the future. I’m on the look-out for small pieces of Liberty print fabrics that I can use for patching, and maybe for adding a hint-of-a-print on the turn-ups. Hopefully that will be a long way off yet though!

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While I was mending things, I made the decision to take two of my most beloved t-shirts out of my wardrobe. This Suzanne Vega t-shirt is from the very first gig I ever went to – at the Wulfrun Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, on April 8th 1993. (We were sitting three rows from the back, and Suzanne Vega had a cough.) Having been worn pretty often over the past 22 years, although recently relegated to hospital wear or pyjamas only, it’s safe to say that this t-shirt is very much past its best! But there was no way on earth I was going to throw it out, and it’s really not fit to give to a charity shop, so it was the work of about five minutes to turn it into a cushion. The tour dates are on the back.

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The same fate befell my other favourite t-shirt, also purchased in 1993, this time from Forbidden Plant in Hanley. I didn’t own any other green clothes, and it was far too big for me (being a men’s size XL), but I just had to have it. It saw me through art college and University, but again, it’s not even really fit to wear as pyjamas any more. But, because it was still in my wardrobe, it kept mysteriously finding its way out and onto my body. Drastic measures clearly had to be taken. So, cushion it is.

(No, I don’t iron my bedding. Sorry, Mum!)

Making these two cushions from my favourite t-shirts has made me wonder though – are there any items in my current wardrobe that I can imagine myself still wanting to keep in 22 years’ time?!

Slow progress

Whiteley hat - after

I was hoping to show you three finished hats today – but apparently that was a vast under-estimation of how long it would take me to do all the hand sewing! Admittely there were interruptions (doing the laundry, finding a mouse in the kitchen, rearranging all the furniture in the sewing room, stroking the rabbit…), but hand sewing is still very slow – especially around the inside of a hat.

The one above is finished, and it’s actually one I’ve had for ages. It’s a Whiteley hat that I fell in love with, but didn’t wear very often.

Whiteley hat - before

It used to look like this. I took off all the trimmings, soaked the felt, and re-blocked it into the cloche shape above. Fundamentally the same hat, but now in a shape that I’m much more likely to wear!

Red & black cloche - in progress

This is as far as I’ve got with the black cloche which was one of the first onto the new blocks. I’ve sewn the band inside, which took ages, as I was trying to discover which would be the best needle to use. (I’m still not sure.) I’ve sewn brim wire all the way around the edge of the brim with a stitch that’s like a blanket stitch, but with a french knot thrown in for extra security. I’ve also sewn the black grosgrain edging to the inside of the brim, and you can see that it’s just pinned into place on the outside. I’m not entirely sure that this was the best type of grosgrain to use, as it’s 100% polyester, and I’m not convinced I’m going to be able to steam the fullness out of it so that it sits smoothly in place.

The red grosgrain, which is just pinned in place to give you an idea, is a vintage one that came to me in a donated pile of ribbons, and it looks to be a much better quality. The button I just happened to have in my stash, along with a matching purple one that’s going to look lovely on the purple hat that’s blocking on my table now.

I think my next hat day is going to be Monday (unless I manage to sneak in a few stitches at the weekend), so this is definitely going to be a very slow process!

Doll Dresses & Dad’s Shirt

Doll dresses and Dad's shirt

A bit of nice easy sewing today – or so I thought! Well, okay, the doll dresses weren’t exactly difficult, but good grief they’re fiddly! I know I say this every time I make one, you’d think I’d be used to it by now. The first couple of doll dresses I made for Milly were fastened with velcro. These two fasten with poppers, which I’m hoping she should be able to get the hang of herself. I’d like to make future dresses with buttons, but that depends on whether I can convince myself to work hand-sewn buttonholes on doll’s clothes. (I’m not fighting my sewing machine for it, it’s not worth the swearing.)

The shirt, on the other hand, really was easy. My Dad picked it up in a charity shop, and it wasn’t until he got it home and tried it on that he discovered the sleeves were far too long! There’s no easy way to shorten shirt sleeves (you can do it, but involves taking the cuff off and re-working the placket, which is a pain in the proverbials), so the really easy thing to do is simply to chop the sleeves off at the elbow, hem them neatly, and call it a short sleeved shirt. Much better.

Even though it was only a small refashioning job, the quality of the fabric was very noticeable. The labels are very faded so this shirt’s obviously been washed a lot, and the cotton is densely woven and incredibly soft. It’s an Yves Saint Laurent shirt, so I guess it must have been quite expensive originally. Another reason why I often haunt charity shops – if you can get past all the Primark items being sold for more than they cost new, you can quite often find a piece that might be old, but is of a much higher quality than you might ordinarily be able to afford. Thanks to a very simple alteration, my Dad should get plenty of wear out of this – once the weather warms up enough for summer shirts, that is!

The right tools for the job.

Upholstery & Lampshade Needles

No, I haven’t been sewing upholstery or lampshades. But I did find myself in need of a curved sewing needle today, and I knew I had a packet somewhere. I hadn’t realised that they’d be older than I am! They’re in perfect condition, and they were just what I needed to sew through multiple layers of fabric that couldn’t be done by machine.

Pleats & Pins

I’m in the process of making a costume, which is going to be an extremely sumptuous ball gown. The starting point was my (first) wedding dress, which has been sitting in my loft for almost fifteen years. Thanks to an extremely generous seam allowance, I was able to let it out enough to make it fit again! I’m replacing the ivory skirt with a matching burgundy one, but  rather than dismantling the original dress I’m simply adding an extra layer of fabric. So this is five metres of satin, draped and pleated into place.

Clearly there was no way I could have even considered doing this kind of alteration using the sewing machine, but working by hand directly on the dressform (to maintain the shape of the draping as I worked) was rather awkward. Thankfully the curved needles were strong enough to push through all those layers as I sewed down the pleats, and the perfect tool for this kind of fiddly work.

Time permitting, I’m intending to make a matching hat. I have a feeling that these curved needles are going to come in handy again!

New Old Cardigan

New Old Cardigan

This morning I rediscovered the gathering foot for my sewing machine, and combined it with Pretty Jane’s continuous bias tape tutorial.

Half a metre of fabric turned into around twelve metres of tape, which I then ran through the gathering foot. This resulted in about four and a half metres of pretty ruffled trim! It’s about 4cm wide, and I ran both long edges through the overlocker. This gives it a nice finish, and also a little extra wiggle as the bias edges stretch a bit.

New Old Cardigan

I wanted to use my lovely new ruffle straight away, so I decided to re-vamp a very old cardigan. My Mum knitted this for me many years ago (I might even have worn it to school!), and the cuffs had become very threadbare.

Once I’d chopped off the worst of the unravelling cuffs and run them through the overlocker, I simply zig-zagged a length of ruffle into place. That looked a bit silly on its own, so I added some matching buttons. Good, but still nowhere near ruffly enough, so I decided to go a bit mad and stitch the ruffled trim all the way around the neck. Much better!

I was looking at the bias tape tutorial because I have quite a lot of small pieces of fabric lying around in the Shed, and I wanted to find a use for them. Now I’ve got the hang of it I’m planning to make some lengths of bias tape in different prints and patterns, and see about resurrecting my old Etsy shop. I have lots of vintage buttons that I’m never going to use, so I was thinking about listing them, along with some covered buttons and bias tape, and having a little haberdashery clear-out. Chances of this happening soon are minimal, but I’m thinking about it, and that’s a start!