I am in love with the unusual looking kind of clothing. If anyone remembers junkyard wars then you will remember the futureistic recycled looking clothes they wore there.  I have a facination with this and have founs someone to be inspired by. Her high collars are very inspired and the mixtures of materials and cuts it to die for. She has a very keen eye when it comes to embelishments and this makes me so jealous!

the pic links to myspace page for Jodito and then there is her craftster link here 

maybe i will be ambitious soon and try my hand in the remaking of clothes that would be less of a standard and more into the unusually hip :) 

Months worth of recon begins!

I start by pulling my hair back. I do have headbands in my bathroom but i am not satisfied with their legnth, the tightness, the color, durability and so on. I like cloth headbands but they do not stay put. So.. i made my own from some maternity pants.

 Here are the maternity pants. they are a little bit more lightweight tand denim and they are stretchy so this is nice for a headband

 Keep in mind to press the fabric with an iron after almost every step to keep it nice and even. so we atart by pressing the bottom of a leg, sever the bottom hem, measure your head from middle of ear to middle of ear,  cut a rectangle leaving the inseam (one less thing to sew) but make sure to cut it 1/4 " larger around the edges to have enough room for your seam allowance. 

fold inside out and sew your seam then turn right side in pressing with iron after this step (do not mind the nasty carpet) 

Using the material from the bottom hem feed elastic through it. fold in the edge to the headband and press, insert one part of the elastic to the headband and sew in place and sew the side closed. (pic shows the wrong placement .. should be in the middle of the edge.

Then place on your head and determine the pull of the elastic and then stitch in place like you did with the previous side.  

 Here is an add on that i thought of.

I hate headbands slipping so i had some old puffy paint that i applied and following the directions i used an iron to heat it in place .. now i have a no slip grip on the underside. I know it does not look pretty but i have been wearing it all dat and i have not had to readjust it. :) 

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

I have been having issues with scheduling time for this tutorial thing. I had tried ot do as many as i could last week and was on a roll for my first full week back but seemed to have an issue when i had My oldest only has half day on fridays and then with both the kids i had a chance to start a project but not finish it. I tried on saturday but the same and sunday i had an activity scheduled already. Now as another kick in the gut, i have both kids, I did get my project done, I even made a very sadly drawn out tutorial on paper in detail, took pictures, but now my camera is not working for me to get the photos off of it.

But i will have the tutorial up this evening or night so keep looking. But i managed to get one picture….And i can tell you what the tutorial is..

I took an old pair of frumpy pj's and gave them an easy and cute update.

But the picture is of the pj's Before i worked on them. so… here they are.

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!