Some exciting news to share at the end of the post. Stick with me, it is worth it!
In other news: an apology. I was going to post a picture of my skirt today, but it wasn't finished. I didn't have an invisible zipper foot, or even a regular zipper foot, so I was going to hand-sew on my invisible zipper, which really isn't a big deal. but then I started thinking that maybe I'll make my skirt reversible since it already looks really nice on the inside, and if I was going to be putting in the extra effort to hand-sew the zippers, I might as well get the seam ripper out in order to hide my inside seam (this will make more sense next week). I figured that I would just suck it up, take the extra time and make it look really, really good. And in the meantime, while I was making up my mind with the skirt, I decided that I was going to do something up really quick that I had been planning on doing for some time.
So this all sounds very cryptic, but stay with me. So, when I picked out the fabric for the skirt, my mind started to race. I was trying to figure out what I would be able to wear with it-something that I already own. Then I thought about this minty green cardigan that I plucked from my sister's closet a few years ago. She bought it from Value Village, a local thrift store, for two or three dollars, and when she tired of it, she said I could just keep it (We borrowed a lot from each other at the time so I was wearing it often anyway). I was actually planning on giving it away because it looked like this:
Granny sweater alert! Even my hair looks granny here! I think I aged about 50 years.
Being a granny usually comes with saggy arms. This sweater has plenty of arm-sag!
It's just so ill-fitting. How did I ever wear this before?
So I decided to take a page out of Ms. Jillian Owens' and Ms. Charity Shop Chic's books and refashion it!
Now, unfortunately, I didn't think to take photos of what I did to my sweater, because fortunately this took all of an hour to refashion.
Here is the finished product! (Poor quality photos, sorry!)
Done up! Much better!
And unbuttoned!
So I will briefly explain what I did to it. First I chopped off the arms just past the elbow. For some reason I am not really a fan of fabric past my elbows. I think it is because I get all sorts of chalk and pen and pencil on my sleeves when I am teaching. No one likes a dirty sweater. Once I did the big chop, I put the sweater on inside out and pinned it in the armpit, in the waist, and near the bottom to so I would know where I would need to sew on the innards. I also tried to get a rough idea of how much fabric I could take out of the arm-sags. I pinched the sleeves and figured it was about an inch or so. I just sort of winged it to be honest. I then took the sweater off and sewed the sleeves tighter until the armpit. Here, I kept the needle in the fabric while I lifted my presser foot to turn the fabric. Then I sewed down the side of the sweater using the pins as my guide. I tried it on for fit, folded my sweater as perfectly in half as I could, then used my new taken in sweater side to mark the other half of the sweater so that both sides matched perfectly. I then followed my guide and sewed. I chopped off the inner excess (which got rid of some major pinching in the armpit areas), flipped up my sleeve ends twice, and sewed around the circumference of the sleeve to make a cute little sleeve cap, for lack of a better word.
That's it! New sweater complete! And the best part is that I haven't worn this sweater in years, and now I can't stop! Oh! Not to mention that it goes with the skirt I will be showing you this upcoming Saturday. How awesome it that? I think that I will be refashioning other items in the very near future! It is just so easy and satisfying to have a complete garment in a short time period.
Oh. Long story short. Another reason why I didn't finish my skirt is that I have been using my aunt's machine all this time and now that the weather is cool again, it is quilting season, and thus the machine is no longer with me. However: my birthday is in one month, and my other aunt and my husband are amazing:
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| Early birthday present!!! |
Ain't she purrrty? So this is why this post is later than usual. I was putting her together and getting my skirt done! Hurrah!
See you soon!
Carlee
(powered by: Walk Off The Earth "From Me To You")
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