It must have been the floral print on the brown black background that got me. As well as the shirt front neckline and the buttonholes down the front with self-fabric covered buttons, all nicely worked and hard for me to have sewn myself (as if I could be bothered!). I snagged this dress at a
Salvation Army store and, inspired by other sewing queens on
Pinterest, I felt compelled to buy this dress -- a Size 12 -- which is way too big for me, for $3.99 and challenged myself to see if I can do the Tim Gunn "make it work"
refashionista thing and to turn it into something I would actually wear out of the house, that is, into a Size 4 summer dress. Basically it was a massive hack-down: I slashed 2 inches out of each side seam and cut off 6
inches off the bottom and hemmed it. I also took in every one of the
four vertical darts another inch or so to get the volume of the dress down even smaller and give it
more curves! The piece that got cut off the bottom became a self tie belt. I ripped out the lumpo shoulder pads and snipped out the sleeves completely, then shortened the two shoulder seam widths by about half an inch and hemmed the arm hole openings. After a jolly good ironing, I tried it on and hey presto chango, had meself a new dress. I've gotten a few compliments wearing this out as it has a dressy look but is very comfortable, machine washable, and cool to wear!
I'm not sure I wrote about this sewing project already but since it's summer and I've put this back on the bed it's worth explaining. When we cleared out my mother's house when she died, I came across a stack of handkerchiefs that were very pretty and embroidered. It turns out a lot of these handkerchiefs and small table mats that had been embroidered by my father's sister, my Aunt Margaret, so I decided to keep them with the idea of using them in a crafts project. Some of the handkerchiefs in the stash also had manufactured embroidery on them but also were very pretty, so I kept them too. I googled some Pinterest projects involving old vintage handkerchiefs and decided to lay them all out on the ground to see if they suggested anything. So I realized I had quite a few pieces and that I could use them as decoration on a bed coverlet. I had a fine linen sheet from my mother-in-law that was a one-of and so it was perfect for this project.
It took me a long time to actually piece and lay out all the handkerchiefs. I pinned them out and then steadily worked my way through stitching them down. This took quite a while as it was hard to manage a big sheet on my sewing machine which is not one really designed for large projects like this. But I finally finished it and felt quite proud of myself for recycling, and reusing these items. And it's a very practical and light summer bed cover as well!
