Finally i made somewhat of a guide. Tell me what you think!

Reconstructed clothing guide.

Why reconstruct clothes?
-to recycle
-to save money
-to lessen the amount of storage
-to clean your closet
-to make items personal and one of a kind
-to save your favorite clothing from the trash

How do you start?

In my opinion you should start small to get the hang of it. Take a piece of clothing and add something to it. A design, some trim, some kind of flair.
Or You can do something else small like take something away, take out a hem for a rough edge, take off the lace trim, take off the design.

A slightly more advanced thing to do is modifying structure. Subtract length, to sleeves, pant legs, the bottom of a shirt Subtract the size of the shirt by taking in seams. You can do other things like change the collar type of a shirt, add a collar, add a layered collar. Maybe add some sleeves, modify the type of sleeve, add fabric to the sleeves.

Then even more advanced is for more experienced sewers. You can use a pattern to make modifications, completely rework items like making one item into another.. Example, make pants into shirt, make shirt into skirt, make skirt into purse. You can even do something like cut open all seams and hems and think of the item as just plain fabric use a pattern or just freehand it.

What I do is think of something I might want or need and raid my storage for supplies to make that item. Or when i get bored I look for something in storage that I  like and see what i could make out of it.

If you get stuck just do some simple moves.. fold it, look at it, imagine it as something else, take out a seam and then look at it again, take off trim, sleeves anything else and look again .. it will come to you !

And most important!
SAVE ALL YOUR SCRAPS! things that come in handy..
trim, elastic, strips and pieces of fabric, decorative items, snaps, buttons, lace, patterns and everything else! These all could become something. even if you cannot work it as an item itself it could be an add on to another item.

I hope this might help someone make the effort to get a little creative and crafty
And if someone has any additions to this guide then please help me by sending suggestions. 

Trying once again to dress my younger one.

So many resources for fabric in our storage. I found lots of sleep pants, almost too many for my son to wear one a day for a month!

So now to make something else that he might need. I know he needs a little bit better looking clothing than the p.j.'s and cutsie baby stuff. I thought i need to start manking him something that is a little more grown up and kid looking., not baby.

I thought to myself that a vest could be the best thing because he has a lot of shirts that have that food stain that i cannon get rid of and a vest can cover that very well and extend the life of those shirts.

Now i start the easy vest from fleece sleep pants

You start this out by stripping the pants of the elastic and taking out the inseam.

Then fold the pants in half to even up the cut of the fabric. you can see in the picture where there is a part that is longer. I cut a straight line across here to make the bottom of the vest.

 Then lay the pants flat with the seams that we left to the sides. Cut a rounded collar to the back of the neck and then cut a v for the front. But if you do not have a nicely cut pair of pants you can lay a pattern or a premade vest over this to get a better cut.

Then in the next picture it shows how i folded it and pinned it for sewing but then i decided to put an edge stitch on the fabric first, but this is optional to whatever kind of fabric you are using.  you do not see the edge stiitching in the pic but  you get the idea. so fold, pin, and stitch. (order of stitching in next picture)

When you do the fold and stitch (areas for the first stitches are in red) you want to do the arms front to back or back to front. and then the v, and then for the rounded collar you might need to make some triangle cuts in the edge to make it easier to sew without pucker or bumps (this is one of the reasons we do pinning. It helps us figure out how the stitch will go before we stitch it) 

Then when it is all nice and edged you want to stitch the join seam at the shoulder (pointed out with blue arrows)

And that should be it!! if the vest is too wide then just sew a seam up both of the seams on the side to get the right fit for your child. i took mine in about a inch in total for a slightly tighter fit. If you are real patient you can try a more tailored fit for a girl's vest. Or another idea is adding buttons, but that is too complicated for me right now.

but it looked like my boy liked his vest.

Now that the weather is changing my two boys need to get a winter wardrobe. Right now there are a whole bunch of hand-me-downs sitting for my little one but his size is only fitting for my oldest's old summer clothes. Now I have been going through all the clothes trying to make some of those summer clothes a little warmer to wear.

Now before anyone says " Why don't you dress them in layers?" well my answer would be, You try it! My youngest is just like my oldest used to be. You cannot get him to hold still for a diaper change without thwarting my efforts and doing a naked baby run down the hall. How am i expected to get him to hold still for diaper, pants, undershirt, overshirt, and coat????!!!

SO now on my first of the series.

Cute polo, and old pair of sleep pants. 

I have taken the pants apart to use them for extending the polo for the upcomming cooler weather.

I hope this gives people a little idea on how we can use the things we have. You know.. save a little money.. save a cute shirt… Be happy to get rid of some storage :) 

I did promise to have the tutorial up yesterday but the fates were against me again. But through a lot of work i got it all ready for everyone.

But please do not laugh at the crappy drawings and the lack of terminology.

But here is the tutorial to remake frumpy p.j.'s

Going through the maternity stuff again and finding the things i would never wear again i came across the ugly overalls i had when i was pregnant. Well they were cute actually on a pregnant woman but not on me because i was HUGE!!! But now being smaller and have a slightly more flattering waist i thought these would make a cute apron.

Above is the Huge pair of overalls.

I started by taking out the inseam.  

Then i took out the seam on the side 

Took off the straps from their place on the back

I stitched the sides of the back piece, cut off right above the pockets and stitched that up too…  

Totally cutt off the straps and stitched them together

I placed the back piece on the front piece, and then pinned and sewed it right up..  I then cut it for legnth made adjustments like sewing the front pockets shut and cut out the lining because they were just too bulky. I then hemmed up all around the sides and bottom. I cut off the part where the metal buttons reside on the side because it was too bulky too.  

The final touch was to attatch the connected straps to the latches as you would the way they origionally go. . I then took and made some tie straps and attatched them.

In the picture where i wear the apron i have lifted the waist and folded for a nice triple layer at the waist which is a nice protectant from the dish water that always soaks me when i lean against the sink..

But here you go!!!!

I Had my second Child Recently and was left with the maternity clothes and the post partum Fat clothes in my basement. I have been slowly going through them to see what i can do and i made my wat to the one thing i have so many of yet so little of. Let me clarify, I have many nursing bras that are almost like new and not many standard bras that are in the same decent condition. I decided to revamp the nursing bras.

This is a simple thing to do and requires little to no sewing experience but if you do not know how to make a simple stitch through two pieces of material than you might be in trouble.

But other than that here is what you will need"

Needle

thread

Nursing bra

nips of some sort to cut through plastic

Elastic (eyou might find this elastic from another bra, underwear or whatknot but you can buy some if you like spending money.  

start by knowing that i am working with one of those plastic latch bras the bottom part hooks onto the top and then snaps into position . (there are different kind of latches but i am pretty sure you can revamp those too. just use your noggin) 

I severed the bottom latch at the top of the cup of the bra making sure not to cut the fabric. Remove the plastic from that and toss.

(sorry for the pic. the autofocus does not work too well in dim light)

Then I removed the inner liner because we will not need that anymore But still save this because you might need it if it has something in it like elastic you can reuse

Using the same nips i then cut the latch nub ONLY from the top plastic piece that is connected to the strap. If there is some jagged parts then file them down with an emery board or something that can smooth the plastic.

Using the discarded inner piece of fabric i cut the elastic out to use to attatch the plastic back onto the strap. (sorry for the paint on my hands. WHat can i say?? i am a crafter!!)

Stitch the elastic in place

Loop through

Stitch on the end and cut the excess off and there is your new comfort bra!!  

(my kitty cat helped me too) 

I have been blogging about revamping your clothes and using what you have on hand and save money instead of buying a whole new wardrobe.

This girl has taken the simple t-shirt revamp to a whole new level.

This is a must see for freestyle t shirt reconstructing with flair!

I have been recently looking at the old navy styles that are on their website fgor the fall. I am impressed! There seems to be some pretty decent things out now that do not show a lot of indecent things. We have all lived through the Paris hilton miniskirts, the clevage showing tops, and the belly showing mini t's and I was sick of it. As much as we would like to preach to our children "it does not matter what you look like on the outside, it is the inside that counts" But what you wear makes you what is you. If you want to be unique, be prepared to qbe treated different, if you want to dress sexy, be prepared to be treated like an object.  In real life you cannot go into an interview wearing a miniskirt or have your hair dyed purple and be taken seriously. If you dress that way, expect to be treated differently than the person who wears the buisness suit and tie.

We need to tell our oversexed teens too to tone it down. The girls were showing way too much skin. what is a guy going to want from you on a first date? You have already shown him everything you have.  Lets get back to basics, get back to certain expectations. I believe when you walk into a room, your clothing says a lot about you and also says to other people in a non verbal way if oyu respect them or not. This is why we wear sunday best to church, this is why we cover our feet at the white house. People have just lost their way and the distorted idiots in the fashion industry who thrive on shock value and pretentious art have lowered our society standard on dress.. all for money.

But when i see a refreshing sight like the old navy trapeze and the jumper dresses, it makes me think there is hope for these girls to cover up. Providing there is a sweater to go over the shoulders on the trapeze dresses and there is undershorts and tights for the jumper.

Trapeze dress from old navy

My first try!

I just got done turning my husband's plaid dress shirt into a cute casual shirt for me.

I do not have a step by step tutorial with photos because I had no time. i was trying to do the shirt as a trial before the boys woke up.

Here is what i did to it.

I first cut the sleeves off

turned it inside out and fitted it for a new seam against my torso. Pinned where i wanted to tailor the seam, sewed it up along the line and then cut off the excess.

Then i took the sleeves and cut them shorter, turned them so the cuff opening was in the front and then switched arms so i could use the excess part of the sleeve as a slight pucker. I took in the shoulders then attached the sleeves. and then i was done!

Here is the finished product. For my first time it is not so bad!

It makes me feel a little better about myself when you see that a LOT of what you see in the magazines and so on are just heavily edited picture. Not many people have such perfect ski and perfect bodies. There will always be something that needs improving.

Check this out.

Yadogg.com