Re-invintage as Refashioning!

When your children are small you spend hours and hours teaching them things, then one day they are grown and return the favor.  My daughter Becca increased my vocabulary this week when she sent me an address for a friends blog, who had spent the day refashioning with her sisters.  It looked like fun, so I googled 'refashion' and found lots of fun sites showing off what clever girls had made from clothing that had issues.

Becca wanted to play too, so we made a date to get together and refashion.  She came stocked with items she had picked up on Dollar Monday at the local thrift store, along with a few items of clothing that she loved something or other about, but each had an issue that kept her from wearing it.  These pictures are the result of our first foray into refashioning.  Some successes. and some boo boos, but we will tell all!!

This rosette is made from part of a dress that was a favorite of Becca's.  Her husband had picked it out for her, but it was just a bit too short for her to be comfortable wearing it.  It's a silky jersey print, that flows nicely and feels delightful.  This is what we did.

The wrap top made it a bit tricky, but we cut it about 6 inches about the dresses 'waist' line and hemmed it.  This meant hemming two thicknesses of the stretchy fabric in the front, which was a little tricky, but

the resulting skirt, with a hippy tie, has all the pop and flow of the dress and falls about 6 inches longer. 

The tie across the hips is still suggestive of the wrap style, and the rosette made of left over fabric ties the neutral black t-shirt into the outfit.

In this instance, Becca loved the dots and border print of this cute red and white top, but being somewhat busty, she disliked the emphasis on the bust line, and the way it made her feel that 'things were going to fall out'.  Using the red T she had worn under it in the past, we made

a simplified top that kept the things she loved about it's predecessor, and even allowed her to go from long sleeves to three quarter sleeves on the top.  Then with the left over sleeves and bottom portion of the red t she was able to embellish

this fun black and white print t, adding some personality.  The idea was great, but when we added the ruffles straight down the front we did not think about the stretching across the bust that would occur.  See, we learned something that will be useful in the future.   We did like using the bottom portion of the red t sleeves to make the other t sleeves longer and give them a layered look, as the shorty sleeves had been cut in such a way that they made the upper arms look fuller than they actually are.

So that is our foray into refashioning.  Go out and google some sights that share people successes.  It's very fun.  One interesting thing is realizing that no idea is really new.  I remember as a child the most clever mothers who remade old coats and dresses for their children.  The difference with refashioning is that it is quicker, than completely taking an item apart and cutting smaller pattern pieces from it and then essentially starting from scratch.  The focus in refasioning is on using seams that are in place, when possible and adding or taking away elements.  Definitely a creativity builder and a fun mommy daughter date!!  Lets do it again! (And guess who has asked for a sewing machine for Mother's day?)