Made Up Initiative: shirt dress refashion

I'm sure that by now most of you will have heard of the Made Up Initiative launched by Karen of Did You Make That, and that your blog readers and social media feeds are filling up with completed challenges. Are you taking part? Here's my contribution!

I'm always happy to get behind a good cause like the National Literacy Trust, even more so if supporting it also involves some sewing community fun. As I was going to be away for part of the fundraising month, I didn't want to set myself too big a challenge and instead pledged to tackle a project that I knew I wanted to do, but otherwise might have been pushed aside - refashioning a denim shirt dress that I picked up in a charity shop. Here are the before and after photos...

I feel slightly like I've done what magazines always do when they're doing makeovers - the before shot was taken in a rush on a gloomy day, whereas the after were taken in lovely sun and with pretty accessories. This wasn't intentional though, and was more due to the fact that I needed to take the before photos so I could get on with the actual refashioning so didn't have the luxury of waiting for better lighting.

As I said, the dress came from a charity shop and cost me the princely sum of £3. I knew when I bought it that it would need some alteration because it was 3 sizes too big for me, but the denim was so gorgeously soft that I thought it would be worth the work.

It seemed like a good candidate for my Made Up pledge because I always have good intentions when it comes to refashioning, but tend to get distracted by new patterns or fabric and the refashioning gets neglected and forgotten about. This would give me the incentive to actually get it done!

Here's a brief summary of the changes I made:

- Added 1 inch tucks at each of the 4 waist darts
- Removed the arms
- Took in the side seams of the bodice
- Trimmed away excess fabric from the shoulder, tapering to nothing towards the underarm
- Finished the armholes with bias binding
- Chopped 3 inches off the bottom and re-hemmed the dress
- Replaced the dark metal buttons with rainbow beauties (these ones!)
- Added backwards buttons at the waist to prevent gaping

I'll admit that this was largely done based on guesswork! The tucks at the waist were inspired by the ones on the Sew Over It Vintage Shirt Dress; I really like the shape that they give (my version's here), and I thought that doing something similar would be a good and, more importantly, easy way of taking the excess width out of the waist. I basted them first just to check I wasn't being completely insane, and thankfully for me it worked brilliantly.

The sleeves/shoulders definitely needed work, and I decided that the easiest thing would be just to get rid of the sleeves entirely. Plus that gives me the option of wearing it on its own in the summer or layering it with t-shirts pinafore-style when it's colder.

I judged how much to take out of the side seam by putting the dress on inside out and pinning where I wanted the stitching to be on one side and then mirroring that over on the other side. Possibly not the most scientific way of doing it but it worked!

Sewing all the new buttons on was probably the most time-consuming part of the whole process but I'm glad that I did it. There wasn't anything wrong with the original buttons, but with them and the denim both being quite dark it wasn't exactly an exciting combination. The rainbow buttons are much more fun! They're refusing to be photographed close-up, but hopefully you can see them a bit in the photo above.

All in all, I'm glad I chose this as my Made Up pledge so that I had the incentive to actually get on and sort out the dress. It feels lovely to wear, and I have a sneaky suspicion that it'll become a real favourite in my wardrobe. Maybe I should take that as encouragement to get some more refashioning done!

Sew Over It cowl neck top & simple skirt refashion

Today's post brings you the excitement of two finished projects for the price of one - a Sew Over It cowl neck top and a simple refashioned skirt, which go quite nicely together even if I do say so myself.

This outfit has been brewing in my head since I found this skirt in a local charity shop a couple of months ago...

I loved the butterfly print and the fabric is beautifully silky soft (it's 100% cupro), but it was too small for me. The skirt had generous pleats though, and was pretty long, so I knew there was enough fabric there to make it work for me and that it was worth the £5 price tag.

It came home with me, where I hung it on one of the hooks on my living room wall so I could ponder what exactly to do with it. Unfortunately it looked quite pretty and colourful hung on the wall so I started subconsciously treating it as some odd form of art instead of a project that needed attention. Really, that was a waste though so I decided to make a top to wear with it, that I wasn't allowed to wear until I could wear it with the skirt. I like these strange little self-imposed challenges!

So this is the top that motivated me to attack the skirt...

I actually bought the fabric (it's a viscose jersey from Guthrie & Ghani) with the intention of making an Agnes top, but when it arrived it was so lovely and drapey that I thought it might be better suited to the Sew Over It cowl neck top instead - I'd bought the pattern on offer when it was released but hadn't got round to making it, so this seemed like a good opportunity to do that.

It was a nice simple project, and sewed up pretty quickly. I did ignore the instructions a bit though - they have you sew the shoulder and side seams of the top and then set in the sleeves, but I sewed the sleeves in flat and then sewed the sleeve and side seams in one, which just seemed easier to me.

If you're making this top, it's worth bearing in mind that it's a more loose fitting style than lots of knit tops. I made a size 12, which matches my measurements if I'm trying to flatter myself slightly rather than being completely honest, and there's still plenty of ease. I'm happy with the looser fit, but I think I could have gone down a size and still ended up with a top that fit me fine.

If I'm being picky, the PDF could be a bit better - it would be good if there were instructions about which pages you don't need to print if you're only making the top instead of the dress, and there are 6 blank pages that you don't need to print off at all. I can see why they're included in the PDF to make it easier to draft, but again there could be instructions about not printing them. Those are minor niggles though and don't affect the actual pattern at all.

They didn't really cloud my experience of making the top either, and I can definitely see myself making other versions at some point.

So, I had the top and now I needed to refashion the skirt!

I unpicked the waistband, and with all the pleats released there was masses of fabric to work with (I ended up chopping about 10 inches off the front and back at one side). I then washed the skirt fabric, left it quite wet and hung it up to dry by one of the side seams to encourage the pleats to fall out. Magically they did, and the fabric didn't really even need ironing before I got to work.

I decided to keep it simple and make a gathered, elastic waist skirt, and used this tutorial from Handmade Jane. As a bonus, I've also got side seam pockets in mine, mainly because the original skirt had pockets so I thought I might as well use them! The only other thing I needed to do was shorten the skirt - it was that horribly frumpy length favoured by older ladies, and I think the hem had been altered before because it was a bit uneven - so I took about 6 inches off, rehemmed it and that was it!

I'm glad I finally got round to cutting the skirt up and doing something with it - it's definitely better as something to wear than just something hanging on the wall to look at! It may have only been a simple project, but I really enjoyed hacking apart the skirt and making something new. It's inspired me to think of various possible projects for taking part in The Refashioners - is anyone else going to play along?

Upcycling a jumper into a skirt

For my birthday just before Christmas, a group of lovely friends, who know me and my crafty ways very well, clubbed together and got me a subscription to Mollie Makes. The first issue that they got me (issue 48) included lots of pretty projects, but one thing that really caught my eye was an upcycling project from Rethink Remake Relove to refashion a jumper into a skirt. I was feeling in need of a simple project and the skirt looked great so I had to give it a go!

All you needed was basic sewing supplies, 5cm elastic (which I had left over from making belts) and an old jumper. Now, I quite like all of my jumpers and I wasn't sure that many women's jumpers would give me a skirt with enough room for my hips, so I hit the men's jumper sections of the local charity shops and, after a bit of hunting, found this...

I liked the colour, I thought the cables would provide an interesting detail, it definitely gave me enough material to work with, it looked like it had never been worn and it was only £3.50 - decision made!

The project was really simple - you just remove the jumper arms, cut out your skirt shape from the front and back body pieces, sew the side seams and attach the elastic at the waist, and the ribbing round the bottom of the jumper means there's no need for hemming. I did deviate slightly from the instructions in the magazine by folding the top of the skirt over to make a casing for the elastic instead of just stitching it on. Even with the extra time it took to thread the elastic through the casing it was still a really quick project - the longest part of the process was probably the time I took dithering about precisely how long I wanted the skirt! If you want more details and don't have a copy of Mollie Makes, there are plenty of tutorials online for similar skirts (such as this one from My Poppet and this one from Pearls & Scissors).

I really love how the skirt turned out. Having a more fitted skirt is a bit of a departure from my usual style, but it's good to be different every now and then, and this has to be one of the comfiest skirts ever! It's the kind of thing that feels like you're wearing pyjamas it's that comfy. Plus as it's made from a jumper it's obviously nice and warm for the colder weather.

I'm not sure whether it'll be my most hard-wearing creation (unlike my Malu jacket which I'm wearing here - I've worn it so much this winter!) because I think the ribbing around the hem might stretch out a bit with the amount of walking I tend to do, but hopefully I'll be proved wrong. Even if it doesn't last that long, I'd still definitely use this idea again and I'll be keeping an eye out for more jumpers as possible skirt candidates.

Are you inspired to cut up your old jumpers now? Personally, I'm on the look out for creative uses for the arms that I cut off the jumper - any suggestions?

Sewaholic Belcarra - refashioning a dress into a blouse

Has everyone seen the new Sewaholic Belcarra blouse? I was instantly drawn to the pattern when it was released; not only is it meant to go with the Gabriola skirt, which I love, but it's also a very similar shape to an old favourite RTW top of mine. I snapped it up as soon as it was released, and here's my first version....

This is essentially view A of the blouse, with the one difference that you may have noticed that I split the front and back sections in two to use two different materials. This was entirely down to an old dress that I'd bought second hand and then never worn, and which I'd decided needed to be refashioned into something else. I stupidly forgot to take a photo of it before I hacked it to pieces, but it was a pretty short, strapless, white cotton eyelet lace empire line dress - there aren't many days a year when it's hot enough here in the UK to wear something like that and to be honest, it didn't do much for me! I think I only bought it because the material was so pretty....

This is a close-up of the material - something like that really shouldn't be left unloved in a wardrobe should it? Then the Belcarra came along, and I thought it would be a perfect match given that the pattern doesn't have any darts or anything to break up the material. The only problem? It turned out the skirt of the dress was a good few inches shorter than the Belcarra pattern pieces (this possibly gives you an idea of quite how short the dress was!). I considered shortening the Belcarra, but when I measured my RTW top it was exactly the same length as the finished measurements for the Belcarra, and I knew I didn't want it shorter. By now though, I had my heart set on using this material, so I came up with the idea of making the arms and top of the front/back pieces from some plain white cotton and using the eyelet material for the rest of the front and back. Problem solved!

I made a quick muslin and measured where I wanted the join between the two materials to be (in my case 17 inches up from the bottom), marked a line across the front and back sections at that point (the red line on the front section shown on the right above), then used that to cut two new pieces for both the front and back with an extra 5/8" added to each piece for the seam allowance - hopefully you can see where my two new front pieces cross over on the photo above.

Once I'd cut out all my pieces, I underlined the eyelet material using the lining of the original dress (a very lightweight cotton), basting the two materials together within the seam allowance and then treating them as one piece of material. I then joined the top and bottom sections of the front together, and did the same for the back, and from then on I followed the original instructions for view A (the plainest version; view B has tucks on the sleeves, and view C has different cuffs and a patch pocket).

Don't worry, I don't make a habit of hanging my clothes in random trees (especially not after the odd looks I got from a passerby when I was taking this photo! The things we do in the name of blogging!), but it seemed like a good way of making the pattern stand out more - getting detail to show up properly in the photos when I was wearing the top wasn't easy!

So, onto the Belcarra itself! This is a really great, simple pattern and doesn't eat up too much fabric. As I mentioned above, it doesn't have any darts which means it's a super speedy project if you've got a bit of experience - I had mine finished in an evening, including the time messing about with cutting my different sections. Obviously it would also be great for beginners, or for trying out new materials. I haven't sewed using silk yet so maybe I'll have to try that and make myself a more fancy Belcarra.

The fact that there's no darts does mean that you need a light weight material with a nice drape to avoid it looking too boxy. My white cotton I used for the sleeves/yoke is leaning more towards medium weight, but the eyelet is still pretty light weight even when underlined so I think I just about get away with it!

I cut a straight size 12 and didn't need to make any alterations to the fit - after all I am definitely pear-shaped so pretty much Sewaholic's target audience! It's quite a relaxed style though, so I think in general it's not going to cause as many fitting issues as more structured or closely fitting garments.

It's really comfy and easy to wear, but I think it looks a bit more dressed up and put together than an ordinary t-shirt. It also looks great either tucked into a skirt or untucked with trousers - I'm wearing mine here with my denim Hollyburn skirt and the only pair of trousers I own that can be worn outside of the house (I pretty much don't wear trousers, but it's nice to know I now have a new top for the odd occasions when I do!).

All in all, another successful creation as far as I'm concerned. Like the other Sewaholic patterns I've used, this came together really easily and the instructions were great. Version 2 is already cut out and waiting to be sewn up, and I'll definitely wear this top much more that I would have worn it as a dress! What does everyone else think of the Belcarra? And has anyone else had any refashioning successes lately?