Thrifty upcycle… top to toddler dress

The last few days have been strange days I guess – been in a bit of a funny mood, who knows maybe its the weather? Or just the comedown from the Christmas season?

Anyhow, here’s what I started with:


This top is a size 10 Target ‘Hot Options’ branded top but I picked it up at the thrift store for 50c and I thought it had some potential.

It is a little hard to make out much of the detail because of the print and crinkled fabric (it is meant to stay crinkled – no ironing yay – but not something I’d wear because ironically I’d be thinking it looked like I simply neglected to iron before heading out, oh and it’s been a while since I could fit into a size 10!!!).

Here’s a quick photo overview (just click on the photo to see an enlargement and read some of the photo text a little easier).

THE PRO’s of this little number:


These buttons are going to be saved for another project and were the original driving force behind my lashing out 50c on the top.




I love little details but probably would not be inclined to hand stitch individual beads onto an outfit unless it was VERY special – too time consuming I think, so already there is a bonus!





THE CON’s of this top:







So, I hope that gives you a better idea of the garment and my reason for showing so many photos of the original is because although this is a refashion I will be incorporating many of the features/pro’s of this outfit in the remodelled garment and knowing how it originally was will hopefully make the following tutorial easier to understand.

Well, shall we get it underway?

…. Yep! I am writing this tute as I go so you’ll have to check back a little later to see the final result – scary thing is I don’t even know what it’s going to look like at this point (other than the usual mental picture in my head, which doesn’t account for any hiccups or roadblocks nor give me the directions on achieving the look)… so cross your fingers for me, check back soon and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have the final instalment ready to reveal!

Cheers!
***UPDATE***
Okay, the refashion is complete… BUT and I’m sorry to leave you hanging with this – I am still putting the tutorial together (they really take a bit of time to work through, sort pictures and not to mention attempt to be logical and fluent). So, here’s a sneak peek:

Hmm… can you picture it??? I even did a little bit of shirring on the back – I am quite happy with this one (apart from the fact that this busy busy fabric really does not lend itself to great pictures) It is a very girly dress and somewhat classical in style but with some modern touches. Well, I hope this little teaser is enough to encourage you to come back tomorrow where I PROMISE – cross my heart and all - that there will be a full reveal and tutorial, that is of course unless there is some major life/domestic/toddler world in crisis type situation!

Righto... ALL FINISHED, VICTORY DANCE COMPLETED now all's that left is for you to CLICK HERE to go to the finished tutorial and dress!

Pay it Forward 2011…

UPDATE 9th Jan 2011: I have two people for my 'Pay it Forward Challenge' - now I just need YOU to be my third... pls read on and consider. It really could be fun!

Just a quick little entry for now (but I am working on another tutorial/refashion which will be coming soon). This post is about a little project I first heard about on the fabulous blog The Clip Cafe.
It’s called ‘Pay it Forward’ and to become involved I make this promise to send three people something handmade at some time during the course of this year.
To be eligible you must also post this on your blog and offer to do the same for three other people and these are the rules:

• Item must be handmade by you
• Item must be sent *sometime* during 2011

My three people will be the first three to comment on this post and comply with the follow on post on their blog (leave me an additional comment or send me an email when you've posted your blog entry so that I can let everyone know who my three "Pay it Forward" recipients will be... and just a side note you don't have to be in Australia for this - I will send my items anywhere post will get delivered!!!)

It is suggested that if you are playing along you give yourself an approximate *due by* date so the people that signed up aren't waiting about too long wondering when they might receive their gift.

I thought that this sounded like such a nice project and a great way to share some of your talent and also to make someone else's day – because it’s always nice to get a little surprise in the mail (that isn’t an unexpected bill mind you).
So, why not become involved – leave me a comment (and if your not a follower feel free to follow me about – not mandatory but you just may get a sneak peak of what I might make my three pay it forward recipients!!), don’t forget to post about it in your blog and in the meantime I’ll start thinking of all things fabulous that I could send my three!!!
And as for timeframes – I will give myself until the end of April; I am thinking I will do my first in February, the next in March and then the last one in April just to space it out a little.

And as for the random photo’s of my girls – they are just ‘decoration’ for this post because my two girls know how to brighten up any day and I figured they could do the same for my photo-less blog post!
Anyhow, must be off to work on another project but come back soon, say hi and check out what I’m up to…

Boot Sleeves Tutorial…

Okay, my aim for this tute is short, sweet, easy and quick. The boot sleeves tute is a follow up to the Knit Top Refashion. If you haven’t checked it out you might like to take a peek before reading on… it’s okay I’ll wait .

With this tutorial your little princess will always have lovely co-ordinated footwear!

Right, here’s what you’ll need (approximate only as how much fabric will depend on the height of your boot to be covered.

I used:

• Less than 1 fat quarter of print cotton
• 2 Collar offcuts from Knit top refashion
• approx 1meter of bias tape
• 2 buttons & a glue gun (optional)

1. Attach bias tape to three sides of your  2 collar offcuts as shown in the photo below (photo shows one completed and one before attaching bias but you’ll need to do both). I stretched the knit slightly as it fed through on the bottom edge as I wanted this ‘tongue’ piece to have a flared shape. Sit these aside for now.

2. Cut two 1” strips from the short side of your print fabric (this is for the decorative rolled rossettes)

3. Cut remaining fabric into two – I wanted the boot sleeves to have a ruched appearance so to do this you will need to ensure the height of the fabric is taller than the boot height as the longer the height the more it will be ruched and it will need to be wide enough to wrap the circumfrence of the boot with seam allowances.

4. Take one of the pieces and wrap it around your boot ensuring you overlap enough material for the seam allowance and pin.

*** You can see in the above picture that I had about an extra 3 inches of height in the fabric (at top and folded at bottom)***

5. When you are happy with how the fabric is sitting cut the fabric to size (again allowing for seam allowance – something I notoriously overlook at times ).

6. This will give you a shape similar to my photo below. You need two of these so you will then need to use this piece as a template to cut the second pattern piece by placing the right sides of fabric together, pinning (if you can be bothered) and then cutting.

7. Now you will need to iron your top & bottom hems (I folded it over about a 1/4” pressed and then folded again) and then topstitch – I did this from the underside as in the below picture just as personal preference.
NOTE: I didn’t do this (and would tweak how I made them next time to do this ) I would at this point determine where the ‘tongue pieces’ – see step 10 -  are going and fold them into the top hem to stitch in place whilst topstitching the top hem.

8. No pictures for this step, sorry, but its straightforward – I hope! Measure two lengths of bias tape that match up with the height of the boot leg from the top edge to about 1” above where the heel meets the sole (you don’t want it going all the way down because not only will it not sit properly but I imagine that it would get very dirty and tattered very quickly if it were to scuff the ground – not a good look). Remember to allow about 1/2” extra length as you need to fold and press each end in so that the top and bottom of the bias strip is not exposed … wait here’s a photo that I hope helps – just click on the photo to enlarge it so it’s easier to read…

9. Sew a basting/gathering stitch (the longest straight length stitch on your machine) at either unfinished end of your sleeve pieces and gather each end to match the finished length of your bias tape pieces. Then attach your bias to the boot sleeve pieces encasing the gathered raw edge inside the bias.

10. Now because I didn’t do this at step 7 I now attached the tongue pieces but I had to put an extra piece of bias along the top edge encasing the top hem to hide any exposed edges… so much easier if you just attach the tongue piece at step 7 encasing it in the top hem.

11. Now to finish use your 1” strips to make rolled fabric rosettes as I did for the Knit Top Refashion buttons and attach to the tongue piece.

12. I then used 3 plastic snap sets on each sleeve on the bias strips but if you don’t have a press machine thingy you probably could use a number of different fastener styles such as hook & eyes, sew in snaps, Velcro (probably wouldn’t look too nice though) or even buttons with either button holes or hat band elastic loops etc.



Woo Hoo… just in time for a victory dance (why is it my tutorials never end up seeming all that short?… hmmm I just hope it makes sense, feel free to ask any questions if it doesn’t). There are many possibilities for variation of design with this - I may just make some variations on this, to go with different outfits.

So here’s the boot before…(and yes I know the toes are all scuffed but that’s how toddler/little peoples favourite boots get!)

And here’s with the boot sleeves…

And finally, with the rest of the refashioned knit…

Hope you enjoyed the tute – I’d love to see pics of any you guys make if you choose to – and before you go, have a browse of my blog, check out some of my other tutorials and be sure to come back soon to see what I’m up to…

And let’s not forget to check out some of the sites on my side bar that host absolutely awesome linky parties where you’ll find a never ending supply of craftiness to inspire you!

Picnic in the park…

Sometimes it really is the simple things in life that make all the difference.

I packed a really simple picnic basket lunch (REALLY simple – I’m talking a couple of vegemite sandwiches, some fruit, some juice, water and a small chocolate treat) and we all headed off for a drive in search of a new, unvisited park in which to have our picnic and a play.

Park found, picnic lunch eaten, a swing, a slide and a run around in the glorious sun… all for just the cost of a little petrol and pantry supplies for the lunch.

It made for the most wonderfully simple and enjoyable day. The girls just loved it and thought it was so super that Big Little Miss M over dinner tonight declared that she wanted to have a picnic in the park EVERY SINGLE DAY! FOREVER & EVER!

I love the unaffected spirit and joy of children … I hope my girls always retain a love of the simple things and continue to find the fun and joy in the everyday.

Knit Top Refashioned…

Well its time to reveal the adult to toddler refashion I’ve been working on. Remember this top I showed you a couple of posts earlier:

And I promised you this $1 thrift shop bargain would be refashioned into a super funky toddler knit…. Well, here it is:

Hmm… the jury is still out on the boot sleeves and the head band… is it too much? I  wanted to have shoes that tied in to the outfit so I made the sleeves with some offcuts and some press snaps so they could go over any of Big Little Miss M’s shoes/boots.  I know little girls can get away with a lot of things but I just am not too sure about these. What do you all think? Here’s a close up of the boot sleeves:








I think they look alright on there own just not sure if it over does the outfit though?
This is more of a winter outfit – and here in Australia it’s summer and the last couple of days have been close to 40c (104f) – so I’ll be packing this one away for later but in many parts of the world it’s winter now so….
If you want to do something similar, read on to learn how I did it.
Materials for the project were:

• Thrift shop knit
• 2 fat quarters of print fabric for bias tape, buttons & boot sleeves
• 2 extra buttons (found in craft stash)
• all the usual suspects ie cutting tools, sewing machine, thread etc.
• (I used my press snap machine for the snaps on the boot sleeves but there are many other ways you could finish them if you don’t want or have snaps)

Firstly, after sizing it up on Big Little Miss M (she wasn’t too pleased about this – and promptly told me that she didn’t want to be a scarecrow!) and working out much I would be cutting away I decided to use masking tape to mark the outline. I used it for two reasons – one being that I was pretty paranoid about cutting the knit and having it unravel into a pile of frizzy curly wool before my eyes and it helped to stabilize the knit whilst it was feeding through the sewing machine so it didn’t stretch all out of shape.


And then because I was extra paranoid about it possibly unravelling I added some more tape…

It really did seem to help when sewing it though as the machine foot and feed dog really didn’t pull the knit out of shape at all. The only thing I’d keep in mind if using masking tape though is that you really shouldn’t leave it on the fabric for too long, so don’t be taping it up then putting it away for another day. The tape will get tackier and near on impossible to remove – I have done this on windows when painting before only to spend hours… no days trying to remove the tacky residue from the tape!


Okay, so I then sewed up the side seams and the tops of the sleeves before cutting (with much nervousness) as shown above.

I then marked from the edge of one of the top sleeved seams to the other, indicating where the collar would be resewn.

I then cut from the point where the top sleeve seam and the collar marking was straight up to the back collar. I then cut two rectangle panels from the collar to reduce its size in line with the total size reduction (these collar offcuts became the front panel of the boot sleeves). Not sure if that is very clear but basically you need to cut excess from the collar to match the new smaller neckline. The original collar had two seams either side of the neck to the rear. I kept this width but shortened the front lapels before restitching the collar back in place.


I then stitched a border of bias tape around the entire outside hems of the knit and also the sleeve openings (I used 1 fat quarter of the print fabric to make the bias tape – this yields just over 5 1/2 yards of bias tape, which I pretty much used up). Now here’s a peek at what it looked like after that… Doh! Can you see my big boo-boo?

Here’s a closer look:

Yep, that darn collar! I was so careful because I didn’t want the knit to stretch and sit all funny that I didn’t think the collar through enough. Sure enough it needed to be stretched around the neck section so that it would sit flat and be much wider like the original top. SO….. out came my trusty quick unpick – darn it I hate mucking up! I ended up unpicking the bias tape from about an inch above the top button all the way around to the same point on the other side, cutting the bias tape and joining up some more before restitching – WHILST STRETCHING the collar. Problem fixed… Phew!


To doll it up a bit more I made some rolled rosettes which I hot glued onto felt and then onto the existing buttons. I also made up a head band with part of the sleeve of the original top and some bias tape and of course the boot sleeves.
Taa Daa! Alright, you know it – victory dance time!


I haven’t included a tutorial for the boot sleeves – mainly because I’m not sure if any of you would like one. Can do it another time if there’s enough interest I guess.
Well, let me know if you think I funked it up enough or if it was over funked… If you’ve any questions let me know, I really do appreciate any feedback and remember to check out some of my other tutes, the fabulous link parties and if you really like my blog feel free to become a follower.
Check back soon, I’ve always got something in the works…

***UPDATE: You can now find the separate tutorial for the boot sleeves here. ENJOY***