The Silk Blouse

I was a lucky girl that day!!. I found this blouse in the second-hand store, but it was brand new. It had the tags from the original store (except the original price) and a spare button attached. I loved the colors and the print of the fabric... oh AND the fabric! pure soft, delicate silk... as soft as my baby boy buttocks!!

Even though the silk is a precious material to wear, its maintenance is a nightmare. You can't just throw it in the washer and don't even think about the dryer. You can't put it to direct sunlight, you have to be careful with rough surfaces and its mortal enemy it's red wine... which is not very compatible with my personality but... still, a girl needs at least one piece of clothes made out of silk.

So I decided to work carefully on it, trying not to pull too much the threads and making nice and soft cuts when detaching the long sleeves. I used the finished sleeve hems as ribbons to attach them to the waist so I could join them in my back.

But the plan of joining them in the back didn't work as expected because there was too much shapeless fabric. My derrière looked like I had a pony tail... I could even make a parody of the Kim Kardashian "break the internet" picture.

So my plan b was joining the ribbons underneath the blouse. Just like this picture. For this, I had to make two big button holes in the back of the blouse, parallel to my spine. Once the buttonholes were finished I could pass the ribbons through them and attach them together with buttons.

The last step was finishing the hems and the size of the arm holes.

I have to confess I liked the final result. It's a fresh brand new blouse to go out and grab some martinis with my husband... because... you know... silk doesn't like coffee either.

The Purple Halter

I like being organized. It just makes my life easier. And by organized I mean to have a plan for whatever I'm doing, from cooking to travelling and specially in case of emergencies... I'm freaking scared about the idea of not knowing what to do if something gets stuck in the toilet or if we run out of gas in the highway in the middle of a winter storm.

I need planning... I need knowing... indeed, we all need to know what to do in those cases right?

The same happens when I'm working on a refashion. I generally buy the clothes knowing exactly what I'm going to do with them. I make a plan and follow it as much as I can to avoid ruining the piece and doing the opposite of my actual goal, which is, recycling clothes for re-using them, not re-throwing them away.

In this case, I bought this semi-tunic thinking in a skirt. It looked pretty straightforward so with that plan in my head and my ripper in my hand I switched gears to transformation mode.

But, once I cut off the sleeves, the improvisation bug started to itch in my head. What about a blouse? that cute embroidery at the bottom would look great on your waist or maybe on the hips... I wasn't so sure about the blouse since the neckline was horrible and there wasn't too much fabric there to make something else up... besides, I'm not that good at improvising.

Oh but... I'm also stubborn, and easy things kill me of boredom. So I decided to go the complex, improvised way hoping to get a decent outcome without stabbing myself with the scissors.

As you can appreciate in this nice collage, I removed the horrendous purple knitted squared neck (3). Then I opened up one of the remaining sleeves and measured the fabric I needed to reconstruct the front part of the blouse (3 and 4).

I passed the iron over both the amputee neck and the fabric I needed to add in to leave a trace that I could follow when sewing them together  with the machine (5)

Fabric added, I proceed give it a little bit of shape by cutting it out using the back of the blouse (that remained intact) as a guide, obviously leaving some extra centimeters to hem the armpits.

At this point, the lack of planning led me to a sleeveless blouse with halter neckline. Ain't even mad!

Next step was fixing the waistline. Not a problem, just wore the blouse inside out and did some pinning. Then some stitching. Then some more armpit fixing.

I sewed only the right side of the blouse. For the left side I added an invisible zipper so I could get myself through the blouse.

The zipper installation... [sigh] that part was tricky... thank you God for YouTube!. I found this awesome quick tutorial made by Smarmyclothes that did the work of explaining that to me in a nice and entertaining way.

Now, the last step was finalizing the new neck. When I added the fabric to the blouse, my idea was to cover my torso up to the neck, but I needed a solution like a button or a pin or a tie to be able to open and close the neck so my head can pass through.

Then I followed the tie path and made a bandanna out of the other remaining sleeve. I stitched the bandanna to the neck in both front and back leaving one side open.

After trying a nice bow tie in my neck, I remembered I  had a nice recycled necklace pendant that I converted into a brooch months ago. Sweeet!!!!

The cherry in my milkshake. Couldn't be prouder of my new blouse.

I like being organized, but from time to time I also enjoy letting myself run free with just my intuition. If something goes wrong, you can always have wine!

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.