Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

So I have kind of this pathological hatred of wasting fabric, which is nice when I didn't buy quite enough for whatever project I'm working on, but gets kinda weird when I want to make cutoff style t-shirts, shorts, etc.

This aside, I finally made myself cut up a bunch of my old t-shirts so that I would actually wear them for workout purposes - which means I had to cut off the collars and the sleeves, because I hate the way they made the shirt ride up whenever I have to raise my arms.

I ended up cutting five shirts, but that left me with five sets of sleeves and collars! I thought to myself, "there's actually a lot of fabric in a sleeve... why don't I make a shirt from the sleeves???"

WHY NOT INDEED

(I'm not small enough to allow sleeves to go around my torso is why)

Anyway, I ended up making a glorified version of this side-tie monstrosity with a Mondrian color palette, so....

The collars became the straps on the side.

I took the sleeves and cut them into these rectangles, which I then sewed together to make two identical bigger rectangles. The collars I divided into fourths, and put two on either side of each rectangle.

This was all done the same night I cut up the shirts, and I knew that I was going to need straps to hold the whole thing up.

So today I pulled out the scraps from a much older t-shirt cut-up project!
I took two long pieces that I had cut out of the side of this shirt and cut each one into three strips and then braided them.

The blue straps come from my elementary school class of  '06 shirt.

The shirts I used are (in order from shoulders to hips)

• Blue elementary class of '06
• Red Chronicles of Narnia VBS
• Grey Aladdin Jr. (sixth grade musical)
• Light blue church youth retreat
• White from a custard shop where I worked for all of two weeks last summer
• Black band shirt from ninth grade (the show was Grand Canyon themed)

Now, I mentioned the light blue retreat shirt....

Front says "PYM 2006-07 Diocese of Virginia"
yes these are very old shirts why do you ask

It's pretty basic, with that little logo in the corner on the front there.

BUT THE BACK

FOLLOW YOUR THIRST

Every time I'm thinking about giving up my borderline-hoarding habits, some incredible discovery like this comes up and I get SO VALIDATED.

Anyway so now that's my new favorite shirt and I'm going to wear it all the time for working out, while the one I actually made... Well, we'll see what happens to that.

Forever 21 to Fairy Princess???

My youngest sister (henceforth referred to as "my baby sister;" my other sister will be "my younger sister") buys way more clothing than me, and is way more concerned with looking fashionable because she's in high school now. However, a lot of times she'll decide she doesn't like something and get rid of it - but not throw it away. She stuffed a lot of things on the top shelf of her closet, but this past year, we switched rooms. I guess she either forgot or didn't care about the collection of cut-up dresses/skirts she had, because she left them in the closet. I have since claimed these items.

So this one was once a Forever 21 dress, but my baby sister cut it into a skirt and top. I don't have any before pictures really, but here's the top:

 So imagine a skirt attached to that. Now the first thing I thought when I saw the poor skirt many months ago was decide that it would be really cute with a thick waistband (once I removed the seam leftover from my sister's initial cutting).

I dug around in my fabric bin and pulled out a sheer green stiff-chiffon-thing with sparkles glue on it (from Joanns) and a very pale blue lining fabric, sewed them together, folded the result over, ironed it, and stitched it to the waistband.

Very fairy princess, but it's a little flat.

Now, I'd been working hard on a petticoat to fluff up a costume skirt, but I ended up with more tulle than I wanted to put into the petticoat. Not wanting to waste any, I stitched the remaining layers to the lining of this skirt (four layers). Then I realized that the bottom layer stuck out from the lace, so I cut four/five inches off, gathered it, and then stitched that to the lining too.

boom BAM

Then I added the little leaf/wing ties to the back because the waistband didn't actually go all the way around the waist (OOPS). But I think it's cuter this way! I also put in two small pieces of boning to keep the ties from collapsing the waistband - it's some of the most professional construction I've ever done~ Last thing I had to do was re-sew the hook & eye closure that had been on the dress originally, because apparently companies are incapable of getting that done before you buy a piece.

So this was a pretty labor-intensive refashion, and used a lot of fabric that I bought, instead of other old garments, but I'm really proud of it. It's super fun to wear, but I'm not sure where to wear it, haha.

(ultimately what this is is me taking a perfectly normal, everyday item from Forever 21 and turning it into a tutu and I'm completely okay with that)

Navy Blue Band Skirt - REDUX

Okay so FIRST I want everyone to know that the girl behind Vintage-Vixen dyed her hair bubblegum pink and it's GORGEOUS.

Anyway, back to business.

As I mentioned last time, I had two of those old band skirts. For the second one, I decided to get two outfits from it, which required the use of some extra fabric I had lying around.

The first part was just to cut the long skirt into two pieces, leaving the waistband intact, and freeing up about two yards of fabric one foot wide.

oh I also had to open up the hem - which added like four more inches it was great

Okay so there's that.

I took the top half of the skirt and added lace to it and got this:

only picture of this you get because I'm lazy

So that's cute! Now, for the rest of it, I realized I didn't have enough fabric to make a romper just from the band skirt remnants (well I probably did, but it would be a funky looking tiny romper). I pulled out this old swimsuit cover-up that my sister had cut into a shirt and left in my closet to rot. I cut the shirred top away from the skirt part - initially intending to use the shirred part but then I realized it was too narrow, so I decided to work with the plain fabric.

(which I ironed like a madwoman)

 And then there was a bunch of sewing together of fabric that I didn't take pictures of because I got into a zone. But then I decided to add pockets! I had decided on a navy/white/red theme because I found some ADORABLE buttons with that color palette in my mom's button collection, so I took some old scrap fabric (from church banners or something) and turned that into red pocket edging, and used the extra shift fabric from my hi-low dress as the lining.

Observe my guidebook in the left corner.

The other things I did were:

• add the buttons to the front
• sew 5 pieces of elastic across the back because I didn't want to give up on having a shirred look
• stitched down all the seam allowances and hems with red thread so they would show up on the right side
• added lace to the straps of the romper because the navy blue is a little stretchy.

Aaaand that's about it! I miscalculated the length of the shorts a couple times so I had to take out the entire central seam, but that's kinda par for the course when I don't feel like drafting a real pattern oops.

I have a very small head in this photo and it's kind of unnerving.

What's that in the background of the after photo you ask? Why, it's Cirque du Soleil! My friend and I were going to see Amaluna because we weren't going to Otakon this year.
I decided I wanted to make a romper because a) I didn't own any and b) I wanted to sew something because I wasn't making a new costume.

I have since added lace to the bottom hem because it felt incomplete, and now I'm totally happy with it! The only problem is that blue and red are Odd colors!!!!

Navy Blue Band Skirt

Both of my little sisters were in middle school band (as was I, but I went to a different middle school) and so both of them ended up with the same ridiculous elastic-waist, floor-length or longer heavy navy skirt that looks completely frumpy when paired with the required button down white shirt and bow tie. And since they both ended up with those skirts, that means I ended up with those skirts!

Considering the color and the weight of the fabric, I decided that a strapless dress was the ideal thing to do with at least one of the skirts. The blue is kind of nautical, and paired with a white hat and the appropriate jewelry it makes a really cute summery outfit!

you can't really see my contrapposto from this angle

This is actually an older refashion - I've had the skirt in question for a while and wore it - several times - as a strapless dress with the embroidered ribbon trim simply wrapped around it before finally getting down to work and sewing everything together.

The process was straightforward, just time consuming. I cut off the elastic and took in the top of the dress to settle snugly around my chest, then installed a zipper in the back. The next thing was to sew the embroidered trim to the dress, which I did by hand since I didn't want the machine catching the embroidery thread. I put one layer around the top of the dress and one just beneath the bust line, which created the line I wanted while also catching the weight of the fabric and helping it not fall off my body.

I'm gonna wear this for my cousin's wedding this weekend with a really cute pair of blue heels, so I'm excited about this dress!

I'm thinking I'll make the second skirt into a short, flowy skirt and keep the elastic waistband, and then use what I cut off to make either a romper or a pencil skirt. Thoughts?

Reduce, Reuse, Refashion?

I have been a long time fan of vintage and thrifted clothing, and I've finally decided to use this blog for its intended purpose. Inspired by Jillian of Refashionista (I went through 75 pages of her blog in three days - oops) and Solanah of Vintage-Vixen (my longtime fashion crush), I proudly present Jane of All Styles!

I'm starting with a refashion, since I've had this dress tucked away in my closet for a while and wanted to make good on the potential I saw when I first bought it.

Please forgive my lazy photo editing...

Not long enough, boring cut - ah yes, it's the classic of my childhood wardrobe.

So! This started off as a plain 90's frock - a bias cut crinkle chiffon over a slip that had no interest aside from the floral pattern. I cut the slip to about mid-thigh, then cut a semi-circle out out the front and attached it to the back of the dress for the high-low effect that's been so popular recently. I also ripped the sleeves off.

There were two triangles of fabric that had been incorporated into the dress because of it's bias-cut construction, and those I saved and stitched along the collar to add a little sailor-outfit interest (I've been watching a lot of Sailor Moon).

To finish, I added lace (a lucky find from my local thriftstore a while ago) to the entire hem, and the bottom edge of the sailor collar, and then finished the arm holes with elastic lingerie lace (which came from one of the numerous sewing collections my house has inherited from various dead great-aunts and grandmothers).

I'm pretty happy with it! Except the back hem does touch the ground if I'm not wearing heels, but the first time I wore it out I ripped the lace with said heels... It was an easy fix, but I'm going to have to be more careful with this dress in the future, haha.