Argyle, head to toe

It's finished! Here's the refashion I hinted about the other day...



It was time for yet another pair of longies. So a while ago, I'd pulled out a pile of felted sweaters whose arms seemed about the right width and length for Lucy right now. Among them was this one. Naturally, I forgot to take a "before" shot, but you can picture it: a grey, pink, and white argyle sweater; 1990s style, with big shoulder pads. Ick. But when I spotted it at the thrift store, I knew it had potential for a baby.

So I chopped off the legs and did the usual thing. When I was finished, I was left with the body of the sweater, and the pattern was too cute to chop up into shorties. I wondered if I could make a dress.

And I did!

I took a favorite knit dress of Lucy's and laid it on the sweater to see if it might work. I'd originally thought "jumper," but realized there was enough fabric for a short-sleeved dress. I also decided to turn the sweater upside down so I could use some of the waistband as a finished neckline. As I positioned my model dress on top of the sweater, I realized the waistband could make a turtleneck. How cozy!

I wasn't sure if it would be too tight going over her head, so I left one side of the turtle open, and used a scrap to make a flap for a buttonhole. I decided to finish the other edges (sleeves, hem) with embroidery floss, using a blanket stitch, because I am still not satisfied with my results when I finish felted wool on my machine. I added a little pocket to break up the big expanse of grey on the lower part of the dress.

The resulting dress has a strangely grown-up style, but with its matching longies is so comfy and cozy like pjs, it's perfect for a baby. Good for a baby's work...like dusting under the couch:



(I tried and tried to get a shot of the turtleneck with its cute pink button, but my model is very active!)

Onesie Refashion

We are blessed with an attic full of hand-me-downs for Lucy, so moving to the next size of clothing means opening the next box. But because of her big cloth-diapered bottom and homemade longies, Lucy sometimes needs different clothes than we've got. In the 6-9 month box, I've been wishing I had a few more dresses. So it was time for another onesie refashion.

I pulled out a few long-sleeved onesies that seemed like they'd make nice dresses. One of them was patterned, and I didn't have fabric that I thought went nicely with it. But then at Goodwill one night, I spotted an adult t-shirt I thought would look great with it:



I love the combo, and thought it would be so easy: cut off the bottom of the shirt, gather the top, sew it onto the onesie, and it's done! It would already be hemmed! But then I took a good look and realized there wasn't enough width to gather it. So I cut the shirt into two pieces, split them up the side, sewed them together into a bigger tube, and gathered that. But now the front of the skirt was hemmed, and the back not. And there was glittery serged stitching on the front, not on the back. So I dug through my vintage trims and found white bias tape with a pink scalloped edge, to cover the mess and tie the top of the dress visually to the bottom. And laboriously picked out all the original stitching. But now, I'm really pleased with how it looks:

Muumuu to Skirt

Before:


At one of the first tag sales I went to this season, I spotted this muumuu peeking out from a box of ugly old clothes. I've been reading a lot of wardrobe refashions lately, and have been inspired to look at fabrics, rather than whole garments. I knew this could be cute, and for 50 cents, I couldn't pass it up!

At home, I studied it a bit closer, and discovered that it was handmade. Perhaps it was already a refashion--a sheet remade as a dress, maybe? I also discovered that it had pockets; bonus! I cut off the top, added an elastic waistband, and voila! New skirt. I love it. Easy, comfy, cute, big pockets...the perfect preschool-teacher garment.

After:

T-shirt refashion

I've been having a rough time with sewing lately...I haven't had time to do much, I've been too tired when I do have time, and then when I finally get to it--like this morning--the results are disappointing. Last summer, the parents in my early childhood program designed and had printed beautiful t-shirts with all our names in balloons held by chickens (way more cool than they sound). I'm too big for the cute girly tees all the skinny moms wear, so I got the shapeless men's version. So, inspired by all the refashion-your-t-shirt books out there, I took scissors to it and tried to reshape it in a more flattering way. But it's a lovely soft stretchy material--not all cotton--and it turned out to be very hard to sew. It kept curling up and refusing to stay held in place by pins or stitches. In frustration, I stuffed it into the back of the closet. But it's been causing me so much guilt. I'm sure the parents would like to see me wearing my gift. And tomorrow, we're going on a group trip to the circus, and I thought it would be cool to wear my shirt; I know many of the kids and parents will wear theirs. So I finally pulled it back out again today and finished it. The sewing went much more smoothly, and I incorporated a new skill I've learned since starting it--sewing with elastic thread. But in the end, I don't like it: the shoulders aren't symmetrical; the arm elastic isn't comfortable; I don't like the neck. I was so disappointed.

So I abandoned the project and read a few blogs for inspiration. That's when I came across Amy Karol's brilliantly simple refashion. Just exactly what I needed to get out of my funk: an instantly-gratifying, super-simple project. Sure enough, I'm sitting here now in my new t-shirt cardigan, thinking I might just be able to face the sewing machine another day.

Waiting for the sun

It hasn't been feeling much like summer around here (not that I'm complaining; I like spring!), but if it ever does get hot, I've got just the thing for Lucy to wear. I made another pair of "Ruby's Bloomers" from Weekend Sewing (boy, do I love that pattern!) to go with the Little Brown Bird Smock, and what a cute outfit it made! I'd made the smock from a pink polka-dot skirt. There wasn't enough fabric left for the bloomers, so I used the plain-pink lining fabric from the same skirt, and to tie it all together as an outfit, I edged the legs with the brown bias tape I'd used on the top. I love how it looks, and imagine I'll be using bias tape on many more pairs of these bloomers. In fact, I imagine I'll be making more of this very same outfit--the two patterns work beautifully together, and each is simple enough to finish in an evening.

Refashioning for a cloth-diapered bottom

Our newborn baby, Lucy, has an amazing wardrobe full of tons of wonderful hand-me-downs and gifts.  At first, I thought it was far more clothes than one baby could ever use.  But then I discovered something--cloth diapering requires a completely different type of clothing than disposables.  We're using cloth diapers and wool diaper covers.  From the beginning, we struggled with wet clothing.  It seemed like every time we changed her diaper, we had to change her whole outfit.  It was exhausting, for us and for her.

Over time, we've figured some things out.  For example, if the clothing is tight against the diaper cover, it's more likely to get wet.  This--plus the fact that we wanted to use the wool longies I've been making as diaper covers--made her drawers-full of onesies nearly useless.  We found that we were always digging through the drawers trying to find long-sleeved shirts that didn't snap, so we could pair them with her longies or another wool cover and not have it get wet.  We also found that many of the snap- or zipper-legged outfits we'd been given just didn't fit over that big cloth-diapered bottom.   We wanted long tops or wide dresses.

As nice as her clothing was, it was going to be wasted sitting in the drawer.  I finally decided that I'd try to refashion some of them to suit her diaper needs.  It was scary cutting into perfectly good clothing!  But I worked up the nerve, said a silent apology to the person who'd given her this lovely outfit, pulled out my rotary cutter, and sliced away.  I added some rick-rac to finish it off, and voila!  A long top to cover her belly without interfering with her diaper cover!  Can't wait to try the next one...