With Goldy (I just decided that's the name of my Granny's Singer sewing machine because of it's sun-aged hue), I have become newly obsessed with altering my clothes. (Follow the jump to see pictures of my two first attempts!)
It really started when Track and Field Day was coming up at my school and I knew I would want to be in jean shorts. Unfortunately, I realized that all my shorts would probably be considered too short to fall under the category of "teacher professional", so I thought I would go buy a pair of bermudas. Then the idea hit me: I have so many pairs of jeans and several of them have cycled to the back of my draws because they don't fit perfectly...maybe I could...
And off I went! I chose a pair that still fit me well around the waist but were too short. I put them on, stood in front of the mirror with my scissors and made a tiny snip to mark the length I wanted them. More accurately I marked where I wanted to cut so I could hem and make a large cuff. After much measuring, pinning, and re-pinning I raced to my sewing machine and made a quick stitch.
I was so pleased with myself! I had a pair of shorts that I could wear to school on warm jeans days and Field Days and they didn't cost me one cent (or the drudgery of trying on ill-fitting, pricy, new clothes).
A part of me knew I couldn't stop there, but the desire to alter lay dormant until today. Summer vacation has begun for me and that means I have free time to do all the crafts I've been saving on my Pinboards, like this one from designer Lisa Storms, "Turning a T-Shirt into a Cardigan".
I dug through my drawers looking for a long sleeve T-shirt I would be willing to part with when I found a lovely, lavender, beaded sweater/thermal my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas several years ago. It had shrunk in the wash just enough to be too tight and low-cut to wear comfortably, but I never wanted to get rid of it because I liked it so much. I decided it was a perfect candidate to receive new life as a cardigan or whatever it ended up being when Goldy and I got through with it.
This is a drawing of the shirt before, because I realized I am terrible at taking before/during shots when I'm crafting. I don't know if it's because I'm so into what I'm doing or if, in this instance, it was because I was half following the tutorial, half making things up as I went along. At any rate, I sketched this picture so you could get an idea for the type of shirt I had before. I called it a sweater/thermal because it was kind of a hybrid of the two. The bottom edge was raw and had a kind of curvy baseball shirt hem. The neck like had buttons that went down to my waist and stopped.
I decided to slit the shirt straight up the middle to meet the buttons to open it up like the cardigan tutorial said to.
Then I measured down 1.5 inches from the bottom of the buttons and cut across. I hemmed this part under to make a clean edge (didn't measure the hem...just eyeballed it because I was impatient). I used the remnant to cut two more 1.5 inch wide strips of the fabric to form a ruffle (because I'm kind of obsessed with fluffy ruffles right now). I basted (by hand, unfortunately) across the top of both strips and pulled the thread to gather. Finally, I pinned the ruffle to the bottom of the sweater and used the machine to stitch it in place. I decided to leave the sleeves long (for now) because I liked the way it looked to have them pushed up to three-quarter length and I enjoyed the idea that I could still pull them down if I really was wearing it to ward off a chill.
Let me know what you think!
God Bless <3
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