Peasant skirt to Princess Dress

So a couple weeks (months??) ago, I posted this picture on the HopeCycle Facebook page, asking what viewers thought I should do with it.

Such a pretty, mottled green crushed velvet skirt! I just don't wear it any more.

So what to do with it?

Turn it into a DRESS!

I started by putting the skirt on as if it were a sleeveless dress, and creating some darts at my bust.

I think 'darts' is the right term . . . right?

So that's just taking a pinch of the fabric and pinning it in place. Here's a side view.

Suddenly fitted!

You'll notice the back is hanging loose and unfitted, so I did the same thing. Here's the slow-mo version.

Pinch the extra fabric!

Pull it to where it fits!

I then sewed the darts in place, just along the gathered seam there.

The skirt had a lining in it that was dyed the same mottled green-yellow. I chopped that out! (This is where I forgot to take pictures.)

I sewed the chopped out strip of material into a tube, cut that in half, and gathered each tube at each end. Then I pinned the ends where I wanted them on the top of the dress, and carefully sewed them on.

Ta dah! Straps!

Now, I didn't want my sewing to show through the band at the top of the dress, so I carefully handstitched (with a slipstitch) just into the first layer of the band.

You can't see the threads, but that shows where I was sewing.

Also, the material was fraying pretty quickly, so I made sure to sew up the ends of the straps with a blanket stitch to keep them all tucked together.

Like so!

I may be totally butchering stitch names while trying to sound knowledgeable. Apologies. ^^;

I ironed down the darts at the front and back, being careful not to leave weird marks on the velvet, even though the iron was on its lowest setting.

Its hard to taking ironing pictures that make any sense...

And that's it! Pretty easy!

Cute and comfy!

Dorky model pose! And look - LOOK at my arms! My right arm is so much tanner than my left . . . because I always sit on that side of the car and stick my arm out the window. It's a curse.

AND (this was totally planned and on purpose . . . I swear) the straps are adjustable!

Thin straps!

Cap sleeves! WHAT?

And here's the view from the back!

The darts added pleats! Cool!

Do you have any peasant skirts that need refashioning into dresses? Send me pictures when you're done! :D

Much love to all! <3

God is on His throne! Now, if I could just live that way all the time . . .

Just this past week, my husband and I got in a small car accident. Long story short, we were in rush-hour traffic, trying to make an appointment. We tried to get around a gigantic icecream truck (seriously. So distracting) and didn't realize the cars right in front of us had stopped until it was too late. My hubby slammed on the breaks after I started saying, "Stop - Stop - STOP", but then had to swerve, and we still ended up rear-ending the poor guy in front of us, who then bumped the lady in front of him.

This isn't our car (we forgot to take a picture), but the damage looks similar to what our car had -  just add in deployed airbags.

Longer story even shorter, an hour or so later we were back home with a totalled car and no idea how God was going to provide for us . . . but we were sure of one thing; He would.

And He has!

Right after the fact, we lay on the living room floor and praised God for His amazing care of us.
* Nobody was hurt. Seriously - we didn't even suffer whiplash, just a tiny bit of rug-burning from the airbags.
* Nobody was unkind. The guy we hit wasn't happy, but he never said anything unkind, and the other lady was very sweet and let us borrow her phone.
* The policemen were professional and polite and did their jobs well.
* The tow-truck driver was extremely helpful, giving us all kinds of advice and saving us time and money.
* The tow driver recommended a junkyard that would not only buy the car off us, but pick it up for free (we scored $300 off that poor little thing).

Since then, God has kept proving His amazing care for us!
We've been able to borrow a work vehicle for the first three days since the accident, and then a classmate Hubby only just met offered his car since the classmate would be out of town for 10 days. And people from church have also offered their cars, if we can't buy a new car before we have to give his car back!

God is good, and it's been exciting, sweet and humbling to watch Him provide.

Unfortunately, this all sounds like we're super Christians and capable of throwing ourselves totally on God's grace when big, dangerous, scary, uncontrollable things happen.
I wish this were the case, that we've already, at our relatively young ages, learned this hard lesson. God has given us a lot of grace, definitely! But the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that for me personally, this isn't a big trying-ground. It would be for some people, but I'm . . . strange.

Things like general funds and cars and apartments and schooling don't bother me too much . . . because they're either too abstract or the problem is too big and vague for me to get really comprehend. I tend to be more basic.

You know what I struggle with?

Food.

I want ALL OF THIS.

I LOVE FOOD.
 (I might be slightly low-blood-sugar, as I get desperately pathetic and low-energy when I haven't eaten for 4 hours. Maybe that makes me less sad?)

For some people, losing a car would be a really hard problem, and a big crucible of testing. For me, it's every month when we come towards the end of the tiny dollars in our budget and can't make any more grocery trips. It's the staring in the fridge, feeling snacky but guilty because the things I want to eat are my husband's special allergy-free diet foods, so I can't have them. It's the constant war between my head and my stomach.

And I realized tonight that while (for some crazy reason) it's easy for me to depend on God's provision for a new car on a tight budget, what I really need to let go of and depend on Him for is our food and the money (or lack thereof) to buy more food.

Tonight was communion. As those little crackers were passed by, I took a bit of saltine and looked at that flaky, salty, crunchy morsel in my hand . . . and it hit me.

Jesus is the bread of life. He has to be my ultimate fulfillment. Jesus is the 'manna' that came from heaven, that people look at and say, "What is that?" just like the Hebrews looked at the flaky white bread outside their tents and wondered what it was. He's the unexpected but completely sufficient solution for all problems.

These are the things I need to learn, and cling to. More important than feeding my stomach is the nourishment of my soul. Man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God!

"But....!" my stomach whispers, "but . . . I LIKE BREAD. I neeeeed it!"

But I need my Christ more, and He has promised to provide.

Apparently, these need to be my life verses:

³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

God is providing for us in our car needs, and he's been providing food all along (we aren't starving, I promise - which is what makes my food-depression even more silly).

God is good, fully trustworthy, and in control! Now I just really need to take that from my head, and put it in my heart. 

DIY Simple Tunic Tutorial

Today's refashion/tutorial started off as the chopped-off skirt from a dress I'm refashioning.

What to do with this prom dress??

Chop it!

And chop again. Save the top bit for later!

The leftover tube above is what we'll be working with today!

I found this shirt on Pinterest (the bane of my time-management), and have been dying to try making a knock-off (which the pinner made sound really easy... we'll see). Apparently its an Anthropologie shirt, but I can't find it on the actual website!

The bottom of my blue tube is already hemmed, but I knew the top would need a nice rolled hem to keep from fraying all over.

I ironed it to help me out. Phew!

 I need to make a tube at the top of my shirt in order to run a ribbon or sash through, so after ironing the top bit, I folded the top down (wrong side out) about 1.5" all the way around.

But then I realized something . . .

It struck me at this point that the ribbon/sash would have to come OUT somewhere. Oops. :D

So I cut the serging off the side seams (you do NOT want to have to seam-rip through all that nonsense), and then ripped through the seam to make some armholes.

That ribbony bit down there is the serging that I cut off.

Then I pinned under the hem that I'd ironed . . .

Notice there's only two pins. I couldn't find my pin cushion. Oops.

And then ran each side through my machine.

Sewing close to the bottom of the tube, to make sure the rolled hem is sewed down nicely.

Here's where I made a boo-boo. See, those arm-holes that I opened up had sad and fraying seams that needed hemming. Now that I've sewed the tube already, I'm going to have to hem around the tube, instead of just sewing up the sides in a straight line and  then sewing the tube.

See that little circular opening? I had to try to sew around that.
Winging it tends to get me in this kind of trouble.

But I did get it hemmed! Phew!

Now it's time to get that sash through there!

I had this long sash in my stash, just waiting to be refashed. :P

Using a safety pin on one end, I eased it through the tube at the top of the shirt.

Makes things so much easier!

And that's it! Tadah!

I think it turned out pretty cute! It's very free and flowy, and material is really light and smooth. It's a great summer shirt, can be belted or left free, and would also be a great maternity shirt. So versatile!

AND if that yellow inspiration shirt IS from Anthropologie (which I have my doubts, since I can't find it on the website), their shirts sell anywhere from $50 to $150+ dollars.

I'd call this a savings!

This shirt is for sale at the HopeCycle Refashions Etsy shop - go check it out!

Thanks for everything! <3

Face-plant shirt to funky bag!

Today's refashion started out as this funky tshirt.

See the face?

It's pretty cool! There's teal sparkles on the flowers and eyelashes.

So shiny.

This was a pretty nifty donation, and obviously would've been fine to wear all by itself . . . but I can't sell it as-is, and I don't know about you, but I'm not that into wearing giant faces plastered over my torso. So what to do?

I instantly thought of some material I had left over from lopping the bottom off of a prom dress I'm refashioning.

This is actually the lining, 'cus I cut the outer material up before I thought to take pictures.

I cut the loop in half, matched it up right-sides together and sewed them together.

All sewed up!

I then pressed that seam . . . 'cus apparently you're supposed to do that. I'm trying not to be a slacker seamstress. :P

Pressing on the LOWEST setting, since this is super-melty polyester!

I then made a rolled hem at each end, since this is also super-fraytastic polyester.

Fancy pins!

And pressed those hems as well. 

I used orange thread, for contrast! And also because I don't have any blue thread.

So now I've got a patch-work looking sheet of blue, and a fun tshirt. Any ideas what we're making here? :D

I flipped the blue material in half, right sides together, and started to pin.

Look lopsided to you?

You'll notice the edges don't match up perfectly. That didn't bother me, because we're making a BAG! So it doesn't have to lay flat. :)

Both sides pinned!

You've probably noticed I'm not a perfectionist. I'm sorry. (No I'm not.)

So then I ran those sides through the machine!

Where'd the pins go?? I just started holding the edges together with my fingers. It seemed to work better, since I was sewing so close to the edge.

Then I tried to press those seems as well . . . but the bag I'd just made was a bit small to go over the end of my ironing board . . . so I gave up. It looks fine.

This top part got pressed - does that count?

So here's the material next to the shirt! But it needed some embellishment.

Almost ready . . .

I had a little scrap left over, so I decided the bag needed a pocket!

More little rolled hems, and lots of safety pins.

I ran that through the machine as well, stopping and turning every time I got to a corner, making sure the needle was all the way down each time I lifted the pressure foot and turned the pocket.

I then positioned it on the bag and pinned!

Don't worry, I did actually pin it all the way around, too.

I picked a fun moroccan-looking stitch to attach the pocket to the bag.

Adding some pizzaz!

Now it's time to address that tshirt! I turned it inside out and  pinned the bottom together.

Blurry pinning picture, check.

And then ran it through the machine, sewing just above the original tshirt's hem.

I turned it back right-side out, and lopped off those sleeves and the neckline!

It was already a v-neck, so I cut the back to mimic that.

The next bit was hard to take a picture of, so I'll explain; I turned the blue bag I'd just made inside-out, and fit it inside the tshirt, so the wrong sides were touching. I then pinned around just the top of the blue bag to connect it with the tshirt - and then sewed them together with a zigzag stitch!

So bright and shiny!

The tshirt was a bit wider than the blue inner bag, so I gathered the tshirt at each side. 

A little gathering detail!

Here you can see the zigzag stitch holding the two pieces together.

And there you have it! A brand-new, super-funky bag, with a little lipstick/cellphone pocket to boot!

Paparazzi shot!

Cheers until next time!