From mini-dress to mini-skirt... well, not-so-mini-skirt

I didn't think in trying it on in first place because I would have been naked... isn't it ironic?. This dress was really short! even for me, and you know that I'm only 145cms height. I'm not prude either, it's just... I don't have the thin, graceful and firm body of Adriana Lima... bah! who needs that body when you have a sewing machine and a $1 dollar dress that came out of the clearance corner of a store!!

Yes!! $1 dollar! isn't it amazing?

Anyways, back to the dress... I liked the colors, especially because I have some shirts that look well with whatever new design I could come up with. The other thing was the pattern, I kinda liked the shapes and the dots and... wait... is that a dragon? and is it SMILING? ookkk girl... I think I've already had too much wine...




Ok, now back to the refashion. In this case, the most obvious piece that came to my mind was a skirt, so to make this an easy-breezy refashion I used the 3-step method: Cut-Iron-Sew. This is a great method for hemming long pants, skirts or shirts (story of my life) or fixing damaged edges in the clothes.

Following these simple steps, I started by Cutting the top of the dress. I also did a couple of stitches on each side of the new skirt to adjust the waistline and adapt it to my body. Then, I did a double hem to prevent fraying and passed the Iron on it to make it firm.

The last step was Sewing the hem and that was it! in less than 15 mins my new Thanksgiving skirt was ready to shine... in the office. Yes I know, in Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October but... what the heck! there's always an excuse to feel pretty and new!

While the rest of Canada is under 30cms of snow, here in Halifax it's only rain!! and cold!

The Old Maid Blouse

Ok girls, I started this blog with an easy refashion and a broken needle in my first sewing machine lesson. Crap! that hurts.

But fear not! I've been practicing the whole week and today I'm proud to bring a great transformation before your eyes. Let's start off with this beauty that I found at Value Village the other day for $4.99 bucks. Obviously I don't have the way to find out how old it is but holy cow!! something with that style and cut must be very very old... from the past century perhaps?

Ok fine, I'm exagerating just a little bit. The truth is, the blouse looked too nice and well preserved to be 100 year-old. In any case, I took home this great archaeological treasure which also was the perfect candidate for a refashion with style!

What did I like about it? Besides the good quality of the fabric, it has the rare virtue of being un-wrinklable. Believe me! I washed it by hand in warm water and didn't show a single wrinkle! I wish my 30yo face skin was the same!. Finally, I liked the fine lace line around the neck and the front.... kinda charming don't you think?

Making the bias-tape

Anyways, I was still convinced that I could save this old-maid from another 100 years of solitude* so I started by removing the long boring sleeves. I was debating whether cut them off entirely or maybe leaving a little bit of... But... No! wait! for petite girls with wide back and prominent shoulders like me, the last thing we want is to grow... horizontally... so... sorry guys, you have to go! I still needed to polish up the rough border of the new short sleeves so I made a bias-tape out of the leftover fabric from the old sleeves and sewed them to the blouse.

Now the waistline. The original cut was so straight... I think the previous owner must have been a very conservative woman, I wonder if she was a nun, an orphanage principal... an Amish? anyhooo... honey, you're in different hands now and you're going to show off a little bit of curves! I said a little bit!!! I want to give the illusion of a thin waist, I don't want to look like a bad sausage wrapping. To do this, I wore the blouse backwards and started to pin the new silhouette.

It would've been easier if I had a mannequin! [sigh]. Well, me and the mirror will have to do the work.

Now back to the sewing machine. A tip for beginners like me: if you're a fan of push-up bras, try the blouse in wearing one of those, just to make sure it'll fit your boobs. Also, after pining your new silhouette, I strongly recommend using a pencil to draw the lines where the stitches are supposed to go... once you run the sewing machine it could be very difficult to keep them on the right path... and go slowly!.

And there it is! With a little bit of patience this old-cranky-maid turned into a fresh and young executive ready to grab some cocktails after work!

Look at me being proud of my new blouse!

*100 years of solitude is actually a great novel of my favorite author, Gabriel García Márquez. Nobel Prize 1982.

Scarlett's Curtains

Picture from: http://southernthings.web.unc.edu

If I have to choose just one single story that I utterly love, that would be Gone With The Wind. It’s a shame that nowadays they don’t make movies or write books with stories like that one.

Yes, I have to confess the old-senile lady in me yearns those kick-ass heroines like Scarlett O’hara who had to face real freaking hard situations in life… I mean, for real!... not like The Hunger Games or this girl falling in love with this vampire sort of thing. 

Anyways… sorry, I know most of you love that, it’s just that I don’t get it girl. If you think you have 99 problems, please let this old lady reminds you that Gone With The Wind has at least 300 pages, or if you prefer the movie, well, that’s almost 4 hours. 

But who cares about problems, Scarlett was fabulous! hell yeah!. She knew perfectly what she wanted and no matter how miserable she could feel sometimes, she would never be plain and ordinary. I could give you tons of examples but for obvious reasons I’m going to talk about one in particular: the part where she had to ask Rhett for a money loan, embarrassing enough for a woman but… nevermind… she needed it to save Tara. He was in jail so she had to go there which isn’t anybody’s favorite place to go for a walk but what the hell, sometimes a girl gotta do what a girl gotta do… 

The problem was… she didn’t have a decent outfit to see her crush! THE HORROR!!!! Scarlett wasn’t precisely a ninja at sewing. Before the war started, she was just a young spoiled girl who had never put a button on a dress… and embroidery?? c’mon!!! 

Picture from: http://southernthings.web.unc.edu

Despite of this, she decided to solve the problem in the ‘Scarlett’ fascinating way: taking her velvet curtains and making a stunning dress out of them.

The authentic refashion that made history in the movies, by the way...  Top that Katniss!

And if you think that was easy, just think what would you do if your super awesome dress gets burned with the iron just one hour before your date with the man of your dreams, and you only have nice curtains in your apartment! Lucky you that this blog exists to save you! 

I wish I could see more stories of brave women who demonstrate they’re not what they have but what they’re capable of doing with whatever life gives them. Women that face real challenges in the only way they can: being fabulous women… don’t you think? 

So, back to the refashions… do you remember any refashion that saved the day? wanna share it?

The Snake-y Shirt

I bought this shirt back in 2006 when I was still single, young and beautiful... and didn't have that muffin top you see in the picture. I found it on sale (my favorite word!) when I was still living in Bogotá, Colombia. Not only the price was attractive but also the cross over style with the V-neck... kinda liked it back then.

It came with me when I moved to Canada and now, 8 years after I bought it I didn't feel like getting rid of it because... you know, it's part of the very few souvenirs I keep from my beloved country. It also has been always a good companion of adventures, the color is still in good condition and I still love some nice features like the print in the back... so I decided to take my needles, threads and scisors to start the resucitation of this old gal who joined me in so many parties and hangovers in my good old days.

The shirt is 90% cotton and 10% elastane. As you can see in the pic, it had two loooonnnng ropes? that I could tie up in my right side so the shirt doesn't open and leave my bbbeauties out there for the guys visual pleasure... It did look good on me 8 years ago, before the cake, the ice cream and the pregnancy started to build up my new body shape. But now, I felt that those to ropes -that look more like two snakes- were wrapping up and sophocating me until death!

So the first thing I did was trying it on once more to stablish the new siluete that made me look better. I secured two anchor points with two hand-sewed stitches. The first one was the V-nec vertex and the second one was placed in the right side of my hips. Here, I put two quick stitches to avoid leaving a long trace that could be interpreted as a surgery scar caused by a sword or appendicitis.

Now that I secured the interior layer of the shirt, I proceeded to secure the exterior. I put the shirt on a table and following the hem that was already there, I hand-sewed the fabric against the interior layer to close it. This way, the shirt won't open again.

Once the shirt was all closed, I could finally cut the snakes for good!!! what a relief!!!

I left a ruffly ending when cutting the exterior snake and then I remembered I bought some silvery decorative studs at Walmart that worked well as a cute finishing.

The girl in the back got earings as well!