The Refashioners 2018 - Inspired By

Once again it's time for the Refashioner's Contest, hosted by Portia Lawrie over on Makery.co.uk.  This years theme is "Inspired By".  From the blog the idea is:

Start with an image that inspires you. An outfit or garment that you covet. A style icon that you admire. A look that you want to recreate.  Find your inspiration….Then we want you to go ahead and recreate it!! The only caveat is…..you can ONLY use existing, unloved garments to do so. These can be from charity shops, from your own wardrobe, or even your old me mades that you don’t wear anymore. The key here, is to demonstrate, that whatever your heart desires, there is a way to achieve that by reusing unwanted garments IF you get creative.

Of course the first thing I did was spend hours in the internet browsing for inspiration.  I'm not the sort of person who gets inspired by designers or fashion - mainly because I never really see it.  So I had to go looking to see what is out there.  I found a number of different inspirations, things that I thought I could do with the right fabric, but then when I finally got out to the thrift shops it was only to find that there was nothing useful there - nothing that I could use to make these pieces.  

In the end I came home from my shopping expedition with just three items.  

1..  A green plaid women's jacket, Size 2 which then shrunk when I washed it (no way am I using anything from a thrift shop without washing it first) so not a lot of fabric to work with there.  The fabric is 100% wool and feels beautiful - I just wish there was more of it!

2..  A blue and black wool checkered womens jacket - A size 6 this time so again not a lot of fabric, but it is 100% wool.'

Showing the texture of the blue/black jacket

And 3..  a purple plaid flannel womens shirt.

The next thing to do was find inspiration for what these articles could become.  I started searching with just the word plaid.  Because I had so little fabric I latched onto the idea of making a plaid corset.  I knew it was unlikely I'd ever wear it but it would still be cool - and then I ran across these images.  

A plaid motorcycle jacket.  I loved it and I figured if I combined both of my jackets I should have enough material to do something similar to this with the side panels and under arm panels in a contrasting colour like this.

Since I had such a small amount of fabric to work with I wanted to salvage as much as possible so I got my unpicker out and spent a good couple of hours taking everything apart at the seams.  

For a pattern I went back to the Burda Larissa.  I used this pattern last winter to make this wearable muslin and then modified it to make this jacket.

The back piece I was able to cut directly out of the back of the original plaid jacket (extending into some of the front piece to get the width required).   The main sleeve piece took up the entire sleeve of the plaid jacket and then I used the blue/black sleeve to cut out the back/under side of the new sleeve.  

The side panels were cut out of the back/sides of the blue/black fabric.  

The right side front piece was able to fit on the remaining front of the plaid jacket but to get the material I needed for the left front piece I had to open out the facing of the original jacket.  Unfortunately when they made the jacket they didn't bother to plaid match the facing piece so there is now some terrible plaid matching right down the front of my new coat.  I'm a bit sad about that but I didn't really have any other choice - there was no remaining fabric to re-cut it and even if there was getting it to line up would have been highly unlikely.  As it was I had to take out the existing pockets and sew the original cuts closed - it's not the most beautiful finish but it's not TOO noticeable.

The remainder of the sleeve and the front pieces of the blue/black jacket were used to piece together the underlap and facing for the front of the new jacket.

I took all the shoulder pads and sleeve heads out of the original jackets.  I reused one set of sleeve heads when I installed the new sleeve, but chucked both sets of huge shoulder pads!

The only place where I used some new materials in this coat was my thread and some interfacing when inserting the two main pocket zippers as seen above.

I looked at making a collar out of the blue/black fabric but couldn't find any pieces big enough - then I picked up the button band from the plaid jacket and figured that I could use that as a mandarin collar.  I really like the way this turned out!

I also used the original back facing piece from the plaid jacket  as I didn't change the back neck curve.  I suppose I should take out the original label at some stage.

As for the lining - I used the green lining  from the plaid jacket for the back, sides and some of the front -wrapped it around as far as it would go and cut out the new arm hole. I then just filled in the remaining sections between the green lining and the facing with some of the black lining from the blue/black jacket.  

The sleeves were done as per the main coat - green for the main section with black on the back/under side.  

The lining was bagged and almost the same length as the coat - The coat is very short and I didn't want to lose any length turning the hem so the the lining goes right to the bottom of the coat.

In the end all the remained of the two coats was a bunch of tiny little scraps.

I knew from the start that I wanted a number of zippers in this coat as per my inspiration photo.  I went through my stash of reclaimed zippers and found one that was a great colour match - I beautiful green that almost matches the green in the plaid.  It was pretty short since it came off a hoodie that my daughter wore at about age 4.  But it was long enough for the main zip as far as I was concerned.  

However I couldn't find anything that would work for the pocket zippers.  So headed to the local charity shop, they don't sell any clothes, but they did have a couple of purses.  I found one that had two great bright silver zippers on the front plus two other black zippers and figured that that would be perfect. 

I took the bag apart entirely - I'll keep that cool sparkly fabric - I'm thinking that'd make great shoes at some stage.  But for now I just needed the zippers.

I put the two sparkly silver zips in at an angle for pockets.

The angle on these zippers is not the best for comfortably resting your hands, but it was the best look visually and they are functional.

The other two zippers from the bag were installed at the same angle over the left side of my chest.  There is only one pocket bag for the two chest zippers - but both zippers do work - they just both open onto the same pocket bag.

All the pocket bags were made using left over lining fabric.

The buckle and the magnetic snap at the top of the main zipper were salvaged from an old handbag that my best friend was throwing out.

The magnetic snap was added at the end when I realised I needed some sort of closure at the top of zipper.  I'd already enclosed all seams at that point so to install the snap I cut a round piece of leather with the snap still attached and sewed the whole circle onto my coat - I'm quite happy with how this looks.

I made the shoulder tabs and the lower band tab out of scraps of the plaid fabric backed with some of the black lining material.

The sleeves were too short at their original length so I used the pocket flap pieces all unpicked to extend the length of the sleeve.  I then took the original mandarin collar from the plaid jacket and used it to gather the extra width at the bottom of the sleeve.

I really like my finished jacket.  It's not the most beautifully finished of garments, but's it's amazing what you can do with a couple of left overs.

Not a bad match to my inspiration!

Stay tuned to find out what I do with the purple plaid - I have a plan - just need to see if I can make it work!

Kielo Inspired Dress

With the weather starting to cool down (boo hiss - I'm definitely a summer girl) I'm starting to think about snuggly clothes and one thing I've been thinking about lately is whether or not I can make a dress that is warm enough to wear during winter (or at the least during fall).

I've found over the last two summers that I'm turning more and more to dresses rather than shorts and shirts - its just more comfortable without that waistband around the waist and I don't have to keep hitching up my pants...and now that the kids are older I'm not doing as much crawling around on the floor so dresses are not so impractical.  However this has not yet carried over into my winter wardrobe.  One of the reasons is that I am a frog and really feel the cold so want as many layers of warm snuggly clothes as possible, however I really don't like leggings.  I'll wear them for exercise if I have to but there's something about the whole skin tight right down my legs feeling that I really don't like.  So therefore no leggings has meant no winter dresses.  But lately I've been thinking about whether a long skirted dress would be warm enough in the right fabric.  I don't know if it'll be warm enough for deep winter but for September/October/November I might be able to get away with it.

My biggest worries was how a print would look on a long sleeve long skirt dress - would it be too much.  One way to find out - try it!

And then I saw Sarah from Wandersitch's leopard print dress.  Long sleeves - check!  Long skirt - Check!  funky all over pattern - Check! and it looks great.  I decided that I needed one of these in my wardrobe.

Sarah's dress is the Kielo Dress by Named Patterns.  When I first saw this pattern I thought it looked interesting, but I figured that it probably wouldn't suit my figure so dismissed it from my mind.  However the more Kielo's I saw the more I was intrigued and I decided that I may as well give it a go.

Which brings me to my next dilemma.  Pattern buying.  I hate buying patterns especially really expensive Indy patterns - invariably they don't fit my weird body shape and require a tonne of alterations anyway so after much deliberation and study of the pattern drawings/photos of the dress on the web I decided to go ahead and draft a version of the dress based on my block.

This was really quite a simple process (or it would have been if I hadn't run out of paper half way through - I finally had to resort to using up my roll of baby wrapping paper and then taping lots of little off cuts to the side to make it wide enough).

The fabric that I chose for this dress is a stable knit.  Its a relatively heavy weight with an almost (but not quite) terry texture on the back.  The front is just slightly fuzzy and printed with a zebra print with faint streaks of blue throughout.

I used a different neckline to the Kielo dress as a high round neckline really doesn't suit me.  So I cut my neckline in a V instead.  I also cut a facing piece which I used to finish the neckline and then top stitched it in place with a twin needle.

 The seams were all overlocked and the bottom and sleeve hems were also finished with the twin needle.  I didn't put in the back vent as in the end it wasn't necessary and I was too impatient to get it finished.

So the conclusion.  Its certainly a different look for me.  It's really comfortable  and I quite like the look when wrapped to the front - I don't think I could get away with any of the other styling options I've seen for the Kielo though! 

It's definitely warm enough for Fall - I'll have to wait and see about winter.  Overall I'm really liking this dress and I'm definitely happy I gave it a try.  The kids and husband both used the word bathrobe when they first saw the dress - but that seems to be the same with any full length, slightly fuzzy thing I make so I've decided to ignore them. 

Looking at the photos I really think some colour blocking would work well with this pattern - something to break up the all over look - especially in the back.  We'll see what I can come up with!

Grey Soft Sole Shoes

Shortly after finishing my last pair of shoes I started a new pair.  I used the exact same pattern but made them up using a grey upholstery weight cotton that has printed images of crochet on it.  I got the shoes to the point where I was ready to put on the sole and just felt totally underwhelmed by them.  They're OK, but they're not WOW! 

original shoes that just don't excite me.

I havn't added the hard sole material so you can still see the bright green undersole.

I decided I wanted to try the same fabric but in a different type shoe - I wanted to go back to my little ankle strap shoes.  I modified the pattern a little, taking out the sides and raising the height at the back a little and was pretty happy with the final shape -

I added a strap that is just sewn the the top of the heel of the shoe and closes with a grey snap.

I did have to take a couple of darts in the heel piece - I've transferred those onto the pattern now for my net pair.

This time I decided I wanted the shoes to be soft soled rather than using the hard soling material so I just cut the undersole piece out of my soft sole material and left a small gap in the seam attaching it to the shoe to turn it inside right and add the innersoles (2 pieces of craft foam cut to shape).  I then hand sewed the gap closed.

(Normally I sew this undersole piece on entirely and then cut a slit in the middle of it to turn it inside right and add the innersoles - this slit is then hand sewn back up  as shown in the picture below.  This is then covered with the hard sole).

I like these shoes a lot better than the originals so I may save my good hard sole material for a different pair of shoes.  I'm thinking on using the ballet flat ones to experiment with making a boot.  I've got a good base now I just need to build it up a bit.

Orange and Yellow 70's two piece

Last winter I was offered a couple of bolts of fabric that my local town hall were about to throw out.  Among these bolts was a very 1970's home decorator fabric in lovely shades of orange yellow and brown.  It just screams 70's curtains.  Well of course I loved the fabric and I wanted to use it to make a very 70's skirt. I never even really thought about it I just knew that I had to make a button up A line skirt out of this fabric.  I didn't bother with a pattern just started draping in around my body. I decided to put the stripes around the body which was a pain for stripe matching but I think it was the right decision.

I wanted a contoured waistband so went back to the pencil skirt I made for last years Pattern Review Sewing Bee and cut out two waistbands using that pattern.

 I then cut 4 panels from the fabric to the length I wanted.  I lined up all the stripes, centered each panel on one section of the waistband and sewed from the waistband out to the the full width of the panel.

The only problem was that I've put on weight since I made that skirt and I found that the waistband was a bit too snug.  To counter this I just extended the front button band (which was just created by turning under the front edge of the skirt twice) up along the front edge of the waistband.

I self faced the waistband not bothering to use any interfacing, two layers of the upholstery fabric really reduces the need for extra interfacing.

Once it was made I realised that I had forgotten to put pockets in the skirt , so in true 70's style I added patch pockets to the front.

I used plain white snaps to secure the skirt up the front. and double turned the hem.  I left it quite long  about 1" off the ground (though in these photos the grass is so long it looks like it's dragging - I need to mow the lawn obviously).

Since I had plenty of this material I decided that it would make a good muslin for a shirt that I had been thinking about.  I wanted a pattern for a kimono sleeve, princess seam top made from woven fabric.

 I started with the pattern for my blue peacock dress and extended the arm holes out into a kimono sleeve.  I also added the waistband onto the main pattern piece plus an extra 4" of fabric to give the right length of top I was looking for.   I modified the front and back necklines into what I was thinking of and then cut out my pattern and sewed it up.  I had to make a few modifications, mainly around the arm hole to get it to sit just the way I wanted it to, then I modified my pattern re-cut it and sewed it up properly - each seam was over locked and then top stitched.

The sleeve holes and neckline were finished in yellow home made bias binding.  I did put a zipper in the back, but then decided I didn't like it and was too lazy to take it out so I just top stitched the zipper lap closed over the zipper.

I'm really happy with how this top came out.

And now I have a whole outfit made with this beautiful fabric.  What do you think?  too much??