I got a sewing machine for Christmas-YAY! After learning the basics, I made a few pillow cases. I went from being scared to sew faster than 3-4 stitches every 3-4 seconds to whirrrrrring along at a respectable pace. I can even change the needle and foot now without thinking I’m going to break something or end up at the emergency room!

Alright, now it was time to get into the fun stuff- refashioning/upcycling clothes. This blog wasn’t originally planned, so in the future, I’ll more carefully consider quality of photos, taking “before” photos and “in the process” photos, and making sure I don’t have something embarrassing in the background.

Exhibit A (below): Unpressed, wrinkly “before” skirt and unmade bed in the background. It can only improve from here, right?

Exhibit A

The skirt: kind of boring, and plain. However, it was only $3.00 from Winners, and I have a soft spot in my heart for turquoise*.

Sidebar: *I didn’t just have to use spell check for “turquoise”…ummm yes I did!

So I added some lace (AHEM…old valence curtains from value village) to the bottom, under the slip. That looked like I was wearing a slip that was too long with lace- no good! In attempt to fix this dilemma, I added more lace to lower half of the skirt but only had enough for one side. After doing that and thinking it would be the last step, I put the skirt on and unfortunately, it looked more like an APRON! Was I being too hard on myself? Nah, my partner also agreed, so it had to be revised. Next, I added a funky new fabric (from this awesome store, Reena’s Fabrics) to the back bottom side, then sewed the slip-like lace part to both the front and back of the outter fabric to make it look NOT like an apron and NOT like a slip that was sticking out. And I think it looks pretty decent now. Check it out!

The finished product!

I’m doing a little kick so you can see the back and front parts

Time for your close up, funky fabric!