Halloween 2011

Happy Halloween!

This Halloween, Vince and I were invited to a house party with the theme "2011 Bates Senior Prom".  Bates being from the movie Carrie (which was the Hostess costume).  So, with that being said, I went as a prom teenager.  I went to Prom in the early 90s, so the styles were not quite as strange as the 80s, but strange enough.  My reconstructed dress might have more like a late 80s/early 90s feel to it, with elements spanning 3 decades (70s through the 90s) rather than straight 90s.  To my original prom, I wore a knee-length fitted purple sequined dress with a white rhinestone halter strap.  I LOVED it.  I may have asked my mom to keep that one, but there was no way in this decade that I was fitting back into it (ah, size 2, 90 lbs) so I must improvise with a dress from Goodwill.

Vince was my date, but he went as Don Johnson from Miami Vice (aka Detective James Crockett).  I played it off as the "boyfriend that went to college."  You all had that friend that had the older boyfriend that no one ever saw because he either lived in another city/state or was older than they were and went to another school;  whether they were totally lying or not, you may never have found out the real story.  That was my story last night.

I bought my dress at Goodwill, which was a bridesmaid's dress made of satin and organza in GOLD.  Yes, that is my throwback to the 70's decade.  Oh, and it had BIG boobs.

I think saying that it had big boobs was an understatement.  It had really big boobs.  This dress had an organza attached skirt with the satin top extending below the waist in an asymmetrical hem. Underneath was a petticoat to make it pouf a bit.

To reconstruct this dress to be Prom-worthy, I first had to cut the length.  A selling point for me was the asymmetrical hem of the satin top.  My prom had asymmetrical hems all over the place, so I am playing them up to the max.  I pinned up the organza and petticoat and just had the liner hanging down.  I trimmed 12 inches down from the satin hem.

Once that was trimmed away, I sewed a hem.  I then unpinned the organza and gathered it in little bunches along the new hemline of the liner.  Once the bunches were made, I took needle and thread and tacked the bunches in place.  I trimmed the remaining organza to follow the liner hemline.

I pinned up the liner and organza layer to reveal only the petticoat.  The petticoat part was really only at the bottom of the dress, so I just pinned it up and sewed to match the same asymmetrical hem.  This allowed the petticoat to have the pouf effect and stick out the bottom (in a Madonna/tacky 80s way).

I took in the sides at the top.  Just so you know, I'm keeping the big boobs.  I took it in so it's not falling off, but those boobs will be back.

You can't have a fun dress without the one-shoulder-poufy sleeve.  I cut one strap completely off.  I then unstitched the remaining one in the back only.  I needed to reposition this strap to hold my new boobs up effectively.

I took some leftover liner fabric and made a tube.  I affixed one tube end onto the front part of the dress encompassing the strap.  I then stuffed the tube sleeve with leftover organza.  I scrunched up the tube and sewed the strap back onto the back of the dress, but more towards the center zipper.  I then sewed the loose tube end onto the back of the dress.

It's hard to tell, but that is the makings of the poufy sleeve in the above pic.

I still had more leftover liner.  This is where my new boobs come into the story.  I made another tube, but larger.  I took leftover quilting batting and stuffed the tube.  With some arranging, I made a nice set of C's for myself. (With my own boobs, they must add up to D's, right??)  I put the dress on and adjusted the fill and evened it out.  I just tied the boobs on like a bandeau top.  Since they are not real, they don't weigh anything.  I took the strap I cut off earlier and tied it in the middle of the boobs to give a bit more definition, rather than a uniboob.

Here is the finished dress:

The dress actually is not too bad.  It's starting to grow on me.  Vince then spray painted with gold, my shoes and the white petticoat.

These shoes rock!  Who knew a can of spray paint can do such a transformation?

I then put on some finishing touches like black hose and teased my hair and I'm ready for the Prom!  I did my hair just like I used to do it back in the day: banana clip with the hair wall for the bangs with a long tendril.

I had to take the picture by the hedge, just like my parents would have done it.  Not only did I dress up, but Vince did as well, as I said above.  Here is us taking a "professional portrait" at the prom (notice my new rack):

I have to say, no offense to my high school friends out there, but I had so much fun at this prom, more than at my real prom (no teenage boy drama).  If anyone is looking for a party to throw, throw a theme party.  They are a huge amount of fun. (You'll have to check my Facebook to get a hint of how it went) :-)

I also am dressing up for work, but instead of a prom teenager, I will be going as something else.  You'll have to check back later in the week to see my Monday costume!

Happy Trick or Treating!

Ruffle T-Shirt

I've had this t-shirt dress in my closet for at least 10 years.  It is from the Gap and I wore it as a bathing suit cover-up in my early 20's.  It's hard to imagine having an article of clothing for that long.  Anyway, I have not worn it aside from pjs for years.  It was time to deconstruct it or donate it to Goodwill.

What did I decide?  To Deconstruct...by making this a t-shirt with ruffles.  The long length allowed me to adorn it with itself.  Does that even make sense?  I don't know but here it goes:

I cut it about where the waistline would be and hemmed the now t-shirt top bottom edge with a ballpoint needle and a zig-zag stitch with a contrasting color: khaki green.

I then took the bottom skirt part and with my scissors, cut it into one very long continuous strip as if I were peeling an orange.  I did not concern myself that the strip was not perfectly cut.  There were some fat areas and skinny areas and parts where the scissor cuts were a bit jagged.  I figured it would add some character.

Once this was cut, I needed to make this my ruffle.  There are a few ways to make ruffles:

1. Put sewing machine on the longest stitch and sew.  Sometimes this is all you have to do and the machine gathers it for you.  If not, then try #2.
2. Do #1, but have a double stitch.  Meaning sew one line then go back and about a 1/4" apart, sew another line.  Hold one end of the two threads tight then with the other hand slide the fabric away from the holding hand.  This allows you to gather the ruffle and make it as full as you need it to be.
3. Lastly, sew a zig-zag stitch over another, separate strong thread, making a channel.

I chose to do the 3rd way.  Here is a link (Sew 4 Home) to a site that has pictures of what I was trying to explain.  They explain it way better than I can. :-)

The zig-zag method is the second easiest (the first being #1 where the machine just does it for you).  I took the fabric strip and a separate spool of button thread and set the machine to the widest zig-zag.  I placed the button thread down under the presser foot, on top of the material and held it in place and stitched the zig-zag down the entire length of the material.  You have to ensure that you do not actually stitch the button thread.  You are just stitching over it to trap it under the zig-zag.

When I stitched a few inches, I went back to the beginning and tied the green thread and the white button thread in a knot.  This will ensure that the button thread is not pulled out from the channel while zig-zaging and ruffling. I sewed the whole length of the strip.

Then I held the opposite end of the button thread, where I ended, and slid the material down near the knotted end.  This was a long process because my strip was ridiculously long.  I did not want to run out of ruffle so I just did the whole thing.

The button thread will need to stay in the channel to maintain the ruffle until it is sewed in place.  Sometimes it can be removed, but if it is sewed over during the attachment step, then it will have to stay.  I took this now ruffle and adjusted it so it was nice and even.  I took this over to the t-shirt and pinned it, button thread side down, along the neckline of the t-shirt. 

I started pinning it at the back of the neck and where the two sides met in the front where the v-neck was, I continued it down the front.  I sewed it in place and...

How do you like it?  It is not perfect, but it is darn cute!  I will love this shirt for 10 more years!  Well, that is highly unlikely that ruffles like this will be in style continuously for 10 more years, but they keep coming back, so why not later too?

Sun Skirt

Happy Labor Day Weekend!  This is an easy-peasy project today.  I had this sundress that was a bit snug in the midsection and because of that, I never wore it.

I had placed this dress in my box-o-tricks for when I went to a friend's house to use her serger (I used it to finish the sleeves from the Summer Lovin' Sweater).  It became a sewing party, with very little sewing going on (bottles of wine and sharp objects don't mix well, ya know?) so I only got to a thing or two and this dress never made it out of the box.

I decided to make this a skirt.  I lopped off the bottom below the breast cups; I figured, "Why not make it a longer skirt?"

I took it over to the ironing board and steamed a double hem.  I did not even measure, just eye-balled it.  It was not critical because I won't be wearing a top that will be higher than the waistline; it will be covered.

I sewed the waist line hem.  This fits as-is without feeling like it will fall down, but just to be on the safe, I wanted to have a cinch.  I figured out the middle of the back and went to the left about an inch.  I went to my button jar and found a cream button.  I attached the button on the outside of the skirt with matching thread.

Then to the right about an inch from the middle of the back, I wanted to place a loop.  I grabbed my embroidery thread holder and chose three colors that were found in the dress: sage green, light pink and yellow.  I cut about a foot of thread of each color, braided it, and tied it in a loop with a knot.

I sewed the loop onto the outside of the skirt, with the knot on the left and the loop on the right.  This way when it is buttoned, the knot will be hidden.

Once the back is cinched, there is no fear that it was slip down on me while wearing it.  I placed a dab of glue on the knot for good measure.

Viola!  The finished sun skirt!

Now, this is something that I will wear this weekend. I'm glad I saved this sundress from forever being in the dark.  Enjoy the day!

Lace Dress Repair

I bought this dress to attend an outdoor wedding.  I loved how it had the lace and the satin band, empire-style.  When I saw it on the rack at Forever 21 and tried it on, I noticed that there was a section of lace by the top edge that was frayed and had come unstitched.  I bought it and got 10% off because of the frayed lace.  No problem, I can fix that.

Lace Dress - Before

I tried it on again at home and was thinking that it was a bit short for a wedding, in my opinion.  I could have left it, but instead I wanted to sew ruffled satin on the liner hem.  I wanted to give it the look where the liner or lace peeks out from under the main dress.  First, I needed to attack the frayed lace.


This fray saved me $3!


I tucked the fray strands inside the lace and arranged it so it lined-up with the rest of the lace seam.  I took a needle and thread and sewed along the lace seam where it was once attached.

Good, old-fashioned darning!


I knotted the thread so it was under the lace, to keep it hidden.

Seamless - Can't even tell!

Then I bought a length of satin at Jo-Ann's to add my ruffle edge.  I measured the circumference of the liner edge and then multiplied it by 3.  Creating ruffles takes alot of fabric, so the equation could be anywhere from 2.5 times to 3 times the length of the garment the ruffle will go on.  Based on that I had to cut quite a few strips of satin.


Satin ready for cutting


I wanted to have the ruffle folded at the bottom edge, rather than hemming the edge.  This meant that my cut strips had to be about 6 inches wide, so I could fold it in half.  I bought enough fabric, so I could cut plenty in case I made a mistake.

Cut strips (these are folded here to make cutting easier)

Once I had my strips cut, I went over to the sewing machine and sewed each strip, end to end.  This is a technique I learned in strip quilting.  This created a very long strip.  Then I ironed the seams open and folded wrong-sides together in half, matching up edges.


Use low setting on iron and keep going over the fold.

I then lifted the lace part and started pinning the satin to the hem of the liner.  I used my mini measuring tool to create my ruffle evenly all the way around the dress.


I left the fray, but I would have serged it if I owned one.


The liner was pretty lightweight, so I pinned the ruffle so it lined-up with the liner hem.  The weight of the satin flipped the ruffle so if was turned down.  It worked out, that is all that mattered to me.  I'm sure there could have been a more proper way to do this, but I couldn't think of it at the time.

Once I made it all the way around, I worked it so the end of the ruffle was tucked into the beginning.  I then sewed that hole closed.  I then sewed the pinned ruffle.  I had my fingers crossed that it would work out to how I envisioned it....

Viola!  Me at the wedding!

It was perfect weather for the wedding.  The ruffle was just as I had hoped it would turn out.  It added about 1.5 inches to the length.  Still a bit short but I loved it anyway!  I also bought my cameo and pearl necklace from Forever 21.  It is a great place for accessories.

The newlyweds had a table of various succulent plants as the wedding favors.  The table was so beautifully arranged.

I loved the bell jars!

The wedding was outside and the reception was in a converted stable.  Very well done along with the sangria flowing like water!  Let's just say, the sangria was very tasty!  Did I ever mention that I love sangria?  Bottoms-up!