Shirt to Shirt Refashion???

Refashion??? You be the judge, some may say no since this shirt refashion is very similar to the original it started out as, call it what you want, refashion or just repair doesn't matter because I love it and my daughter gets extended wear out of a very cute shirt.



Original shirt

So here is the story, my daughter received this shirt when she was 4 1/2 as a gift and I immediately fell in the love with it, loved the fabric, loved the color, loved the style. I however was very sad after just a few wearings my daughter got a huge rip in the front of the the shirt. I decided that even though she couldn't wear it in it's current state, I would put it into my "to do" pile and refashion it into a skirt. Well my daughter is now almost 8 and the shirt still sits in that same pile. "Procrastinator," yeah, that is my, I admit it. This weekend I was going through said pile and decided I needed to either do something with it or throw it out. It was definitely to short to become a skirt but I thought, I may be able to let out the gathered bottom a little and add a coordinating fabric in place of the ripped  fitted portion of the top and make it into a new top all together. Here is a little walk through on how this Children's Place shirt became this refashioned shirt.


First off you need to tear apart the existing shirt. I separated the gathered bottom from the fitted top. This shirt had a zipper which I also removed and saved for use in another project yet to be determined.

Next I used an existing shirt that fits to make a pattern for the fitted top cutting two pieces for the front of the shirt. Sorry I forgot to take  a picture of this step.

I then cut a long rectangle that is 5 inches in height by 1 1/2 times the length of the front pieces. Fold over one of the long sides of the rectangle 1/2 inch and sew down. Then start shirring the back rectangle. If you haven't shirred something before, here is a great tutorial on shirring by Ruffles and Stuff. 

Then you need to attach the back shirred piece to one of the front pieces at the sides, making sure that the right sides of the fabric are together. Then press open the seams. Pressing seams is very important, it makes the difference between a professional looking garment and a wonky looking garment.

Now take your second fitted top piece and the top piece with the shirred back attached and put right sides together. Sew these two pieces together along the curved arms and the chest area as shown by the dotted line, I added those lines, they are not the sewn stitch, pretty cool huh? Yeah, I thought so too.

With the pieces attached, clip your corners and snip the curves before you flip it right side out. This will help to made the pieces lay flat and the edges to look very square.

 With the top flipped so that the right sides are facing out, iron the fitted top part and top stitch around the curved arms and across the chess, making sure to leave the sides open.

This is what you should have so far.

Next take the gathered bottom of your original top and turn it inside out. Then turn your fitted top and turn it inside out and put it inside of the gathered bottom, pin and sew around so that you attach the two pieces, making sure that you only sew through one layer of the fitted top.

Turn the garment right side out and press this seam down. Now turn  it inside out again and press the bottom edge not attached to the gathered bottom and the sides under a 1/4 inch and sew these pieces down, making sure to capture the gathered edge under the turned edge so that the inside looks nice and neat..

Next I cut the tie back pieces off of the original shirt and used these as straps for the new shirt. Sew in place and you are done. You could add button if you want, I still may.

Put the dress on and step back and enjoy your work, Here is my cutie enjoying her shirt again. Please feel free to link back to this post but please don't use my pictures without permission, especially those with my children in them. I know these steps may be hard to follow so if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

On the Go Tic Tac Toe

So it is "Celebrate the Boy" month over at a couple of my favorite blogs, Made and Made by Rae and I couldn't resist making a little something for my youngest boy though I am sure my oldest boy will play with it too, who can resist a quick game of Tic-Tac-Toe, especially when you are on the go. This game will come in quite handy when we are out and about and find ourselves having to wait, like in a restaurant or on a long car ride, you know what I mean, it will keep your boy or boys busy.

So I got the inspiration for this little game when I saw this "Celebrate the boy" guest post by Zaaberry on the Made by Rae blog. These little toy bags got my "em-agination" rolling and I thought, gosh those would be great to make a little on the go game for my son. I altered the bag a little bit from the tutorial by using fabric on the back instead of the clear plastic vinyl, so that I could adhere the game board to the back. (A little tip on the vinyl, a lot of times, sheets and bedding products come packaged in clear plastic vinyl bags. I always keep the bags and then cut them up and reuse them to make things like this or my I spy bags, something I will have to show you another time.) I then used my favorite crafting tool, the Silhouette Craft Cutter (again not being paid to talk about it, I just love it, it is a great machine) to cut out heat set vinyl for the tic-tac-toe board for the back and the words on the front. 

For the game pieces, I picked up a couple of bags of 1 inch wood circles and Jo-ann's and then painted them green and blue. I then cut out the X's and O'x again using the my Silhouette and some self adhesive vinyl. The fun side of these game pieces are that they are double sided, did you notice from the picture, some have a white X or O while some have a green X or O. I hate to waste my vinyl so I used both the positive and negative image created by the cut out to make these game pieces double sided, no real reason, it is just fun and I didn't want to waste the vinyl. 

So there you have it a fun little game for your boys or girls on the go, I have another variation coming up making a checkers game for my kids but for now I must sleep.

P.S. ignore my sloppy sewing, I hate bias tape, I can never seem to get it on neatly, if you have any tips to help me get that tape sewn on there neatly, I would love to hear them. For now I am sticking with the excuse that the messy sewing was intentional, it adds to the games character, yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Girls Dress Refashion

Spring is coming, Spring is coming, Spring is coming, never mind that we got snow and had well below freezing temperatures this week. I just know that it will be here before I know it so I am preparing for it now. I couldn't sleep the other night so I decided to do a little Internet window shopping and came across this little ditty which caught my eye, not only because it was cute but because I thought, I could make that. The inspiration dress is by Juicy Couture and while very cute at $88.00 it is definitely more than I am willing to spend on a girls dress. Time to use my "em-agination" and figure out how to make this myself.

I decided that this dress was a perfect candidate for a clothing refashion. "Clothing Refashion?" you ask, well let me explain. A clothing refashion is when you take and existing piece of clothing that is not longer wanted and turn it into a different item that is. In this case I took an X-large men's polo shirt and refashioned it into a girls dress.

Here is how I did it, not really a tutorial just an explanation of the process. First off, I began by removing the collar of the shirt using a seam ripper.

Second, I found an existing tank top that my daughter owned to use as a pattern for the top of the dress, because it didn't have the skirt, I had to free hand an a-line skirt on the bottom. I wish I had have done a more straight skirt rather than the a-line just because that would have recreated the inspiration dress a little better. For the pattern I used a paper grocery bag that I cut apart.

Once the pattern was drawn and cut out I folded my polo shirt in half and pinned my patten down and cut it out. I left the shoulder seams intact just because it was one less seam to sew.

At this point I sewed up the two side seams and added bias tape made from a ribbed knit around the neck and arm holes.

I then cut a 2 1/2 inch strip of white ribbed knit for the belt. I then ironed the edges over 1/4 inch and added 2 button holes for the tie. Then pin this around the waist of your dress and top stitch around the entire waist of your dress.

 Once the belt is top stitched into place I attached two 8 inch pieces of cording/rope to a length of elastic just smaller than my daughter's waist. I then fed the cording and elastic through one of the button holes in the belted middle of the dress using a safety pin attached to the cording to pull the entire length of elastic around the dress and out the other button hole.

Most of the time, I try to use and existing hem when refashioning clothing just because it makes for one less thing to do, unfortunately, this shirt was just a little to long to do that with so I had to cut off the existing hem and create a new one. for this hem, I used an overlock stitch to hem the dress, (similar to the look of  what a serger would produce) and left it at that. I however may go back and create a traditional hem to this dress because it still fills a little long on my daughter and my husband says it looks unfinished. We will see, depends on if my daughter will really wear it, right now, she is a little luke warm on the dress. Hopefully when we get warmer weather, she will warm to wearing it. I think it will also look very cute with an added white t-shirt underneath. Here are a few more pics of my daughter being a goof in her dress, please feel free to link back to this post but please don't use my photos without asking, especially one's with my children in them.

And a final comparison of the inspiration dress (on left) and my dress (on right), definately not perfect recreation but that is not what I was going for, I simply used the Juicy dress as a jumping off point, all in all, I am satisfied.

Bibs for your Baby

I know I have been posting a lot of baby stuff recently, kind of ironic considering my youngest is almost 6 but it just so happens that I know quite a few people who are having or have recently had a baby. I remember that when my kids were babies, bibs were always in short supply, they are constantly getting soiled with food or soaked through with drool. I know gross but you know what I mean. Knowing this I decided that a few handmade bibs would be a perfect little gift for my cousin who recently had a little boy. I however needed a bib pattern so I googled free bib patterns and came up with this very easy pattern from Chickpea Sewing Studio, a great first project if you are a beginning sewer. I tell you I love the Internet for free patterns, what a great resource. I however have hated sewing with knit fabrics because they always stretch and pucker and I have hated how they turned out but I read a tip recently about using a walking foot when sewing with knits. Can I tell you I have never been so excited, the knit fabric used for the bibs hardly stretched,  there was no puckering and everything laid very flat. With this little trick, I can not wait to sew with knits again, I will have to see what I can come up with using my "em-agination."

Kids can be an Author and an Illustrator

The kids had an extra long weekend because of President's Day which means a lot of questions like, "What can I do, I am bored?" Out comes the art supplies which sometimes means a few minutes of crafting and sometimes means a few hours, this time it meant a few hours with the outcome of a few very cute books.

                        

For inspiration, we used Ed Emberley's Fingerprint Drawing Book. We absolutely love this book and it get used often. This book also makes a great gift when packaged with a multi-colored stamp pad and a sketch pad, a go to gift in our house if we don't have time to make a handmade gift.

My daughter used her "em-agination" much more than I did and chose to write a couple of original stories "Little, Little Elephant" and "Mouse Visits the Circus" (still a work in progress), I simply chose to illustrate one of my kids favorite little poems "5 Little Monkeys". If your kids are bored, encourage them to write and illustrate their own books, you might be surprised by what they come up with. Here are the books we came up with.