Back in November, I [overenthusiastically] decided to put my newfound crochet skillz to work after I saw this blanket on the Purl Bee. It worked up pretty quickly to begin with, but the more rounds I went, the more tedious/time-consuming it got. I finally finished it over Spring Break… four months is typically not the type of time frame I enjoy working with, haha. I like stuff that you can do in a day or less!
So, after completely re-watching the entirety of Sex and the City, all three seasons of Arrested Development [still haven’t seen the new one yet!], and a few movies scattered throughout, I ended up with a pretty epically ginormous granny square. My sister very kindly agreed to hold it up/act as a scale figure [she’s around 5’6”] in the photo below :)
I used a size G crochet hook, 5 skeins of mint, and a little over 7 skeins of ivory yarn from Hobby Lobby; the yarn came in 377-yd skeins. That is a looooot of yarn. I think I’ll probably stick to smaller projects from now on, but I do have to say it’s hugely satisfying to look at something this substantial and realize that I did that, even though it was kind of a pain in the butt towards the end when it took close to an hour to do one round. Also, I think I’ve got double crochet down pretty well now, haha. Hooray for perseverance!
Click here to see this project on Kollabora! If you like making stuff, you need to check out this site - it is awesome :)
Making more progress on my pile of thrifted stuff to fix up… this is probably my most involved Goodwill makeover to date, and I’m so excited about how it turned out! Too excited to wait till tomorrow to combine it with my outfit post :D
The original: love the color, love the pleats, but they just kinda dissolve into a weird unflattering ruffly mess at the bottom. Seems like it could be a good idea if executed better, so here’s what I came up with…
First, I removed the sleeves. I’m going to add a waistband, so that will come out of one of the sleeves; the other sleeve will be turned into bias tape to finish the sleeve edges and inside seams [I had to take in the sides a bit and added some darts so it would fit better].
Sewing the bias tape around the sleeve edges… hooray! Also, I would like to add that making your own bias tape is not nearly as scary as one would think :D Here’s the tutorial I used, although I didn’t have a fancy bias tape maker - a pin works pretty well to help guide the folds if you pin it to your ironing board and run the tape under it like so…
After that, I cut off the bottom just above where the pleats stopped to get a clean edge, then picked out the ones that made it onto the bottom. I cut off the buttons/buttonhole edges then sewed the cut edges back together to get a clean front, then used a basting stitch to gather it up. I attached the gathered edge to one edge of the waistband I cut from one of the sleeves, then sewed them together, then I sewed the other edge of the waistband to the bottom edge of the bodice.
Et voila! A little bit of an improvement :) Tomorrow y’all can see it in action - now I gotta figure out what to wear with it!
I love how versatile my gold flats are during the warmer months, so I thought having a pair of heels might be nice too. Most of the ones I had seen around were a little more spendy than I wanted…. do I smell a DIY?! I think so :D
Found these lovelies at a thrift store near where I work… the fabric was questionable but I love the scallop-y detail and they’re surprisingly comfortable. Time for some spray paint intervention [paintervention?]
I painted over the fabric with some old acrylic paint I had laying around to cover up the stripes.
…then taped the soles to attempt to keep paint off of them [it was a good effort…]. Spray paint two coats of gold, then one coat of clear sealer, et voila!
A word of caution: you should not follow my example and spray paint in your basement without proper ventilation, unless you want fumes to migrate upstairs despite having several doors closed in between where you painted and everywhere else. Oh well… guess these sorts of projects are better done when it’s warm outside so you don’t have to deal with that :D
I got this skirt at Goodwill a couple of weeks ago. Please ignore the fact that I look like a hot mess in this lovely bathroom mirror foto:
I’ve been wanting a green skirt for a while [probably since I got to wear this cute one of SBK’s in our swap last spring!] and this one jumped out at me - not because it was fantastic in its current form [hello elastic sweatpants-esque waistband], but because I had an inkling that there was enough fabric there to make it into a pencil skirt from an old pattern I got a while ago. It was pretty darn close, but it worked! And it was already hemmed which was super awesome. I had to put in a zipper and a couple of hooks & eyes, so altogether this skirt cost about $5. Sounds good to me! :D I’m tempted to try this again… that’s the best thing about Goodwill - if you’re willing to befriend a sewing machine, it opens up so many more possibilities. And a big pile of stuff to fix up sitting in a corner of your room. It does that too.
- blouse: Charlotte Russe
- tank top: Walmart
- skirt: thrifted/remade
- belt: Target
- wedges: Forever 21
- necklace: self-made
As I may have alluded to once or twice, I have a huge pile of fixer-upper clothes bought with the best of intentions, but I don’t usually get around to fixing them up [this is the most notable exception]; so with that in mind, I debated long and hard [about 5 minutes] about buying this top… the fun print and price ($5.99) did me in, though. AND I fixed it the same day I bought it! Yeah… that’s probably never happening again.
Before [or at least halfway through the process… imagine there’s a sleeve on my left arm, or maybe don’t, I’m not a huge fan]….
and after….
Much better.
- cardigan: J.Crew
- blouse: JCPenney Outlet [altered]
- skirt: The Limited
- earrings: vintage
- flats: Target
I pretty much decided I wanted to wear this today, which is always a pretty good impetus to get something like this done :D Now on to the weekend! Maybe I can tackle some of my other things in the pile….
While perusing various mall shops yesterday, I found a pair of white shorts in Gap, which I liked except for the fact that they were pretty much see-through. No bueno. Then I happened to notice that they still had the white jeans I got last time I was in there for about $5 cheaper than the shorts….. cue the lightbulbs. This was the easiest way I could think of to do this, since rolling the hem twice = no need to finish the cut edge. I like shortcuts :D
what you will need…
- pants
- tape measure
- straight edge
- pencil
- pins
- iron
- sewing machine
getting down to business…
Measure the desired inseam length + allowance for the hem to be turned under twice. I wanted the final length to be 4”, with a 1” rolled hem, so I marked 6”.
From the mark you made, draw a line perpendicular to the inseam, then cut along the line.
One leg cut successfully!
Flip your pants over to the other side, making sure the legs are lined up.
Align your straight edge to the cut leg, then draw a line on the non-cut leg so they’ll match up, then cut off the excess.
Line up your tape measure along the inseam and place a mark at 1” and 2” up from the edge. Repeat for the outside seam, then repeat on the other leg.
Use the markings as a guide; fold once at the 1” mark, then again at the 2” mark. Hooray for hiding that raggedy edge! Pin on either side to hold in place, then repeat for the three other seams.
Once your two seams are pinned in place, you’ll need to finagle the rest of the fold to match, then pin it in place. This is what it should look like when it’s done. Repeat for the other leg.
After everything’s pinned in place, use your iron to press the folds so they’re all nice and pretty :D
Here’s what it should look like when everything’s pinned and pressed!
Now, using your handy dandy sewing machine, sew down and back the middle of the outside seam [orange dotted line] a couple of times for security.
Repeat on the inseam, although for this one, I sewed along the outside of the seam [orange dotted line] because I thought it looked nicer :D Repeat this step and the last one for the other leg, then remove all the pins and press with the iron again.
And now you have a new pair of rolled-hem shorts!
I found this dress at Goodwill a few weeks ago [yesss bathroom mirror fotos!]:
As far as 80’s dresses go, it’s not toooo terrible [cue the not quite convinced expression], but not not terrible enough where I would feel compelled to actually wear it in public…. but it fit well [= way less altering] and I like the fabric a lot, so for $3.50, I decided to take it home and add it to my pile of stuff to fix up… and I actually did fix this one up, hooray!
The end result, after shortening the hem about 4 inches, removing shoulder pads/lace collar, and hacking off the sleeves:
- dress: Goodwill
- earrings: gift
- shoes: Mix No. 6 [via DSW]
I’m pretty excited with how it turned out, although I may play around with the bodice a little more at some point. I do have to say, though, that finallyyy completing one major goodwill alteration successfully has given me a little more motivation to tackle the rest of the ones I have…. stay tuned to see if I actually follow through on that :D
So I was trolling around Pinterest the other day, as I do far too frequently when given half a chance, when I came across something where someone had taken old clip-on earrings and turned them into rings… genius! There are a few decent old earrings floating around my house, so I made sure to repin that one and headed to Hobby Lobby looking for some ring blanks so I could get started :D
materials-
- old clip-on earrings
- ring blanks [adjustable rings with a pad you can glue/otherwise attach things to]
- super glue
- wire cutters
process -
Take your earrings and, using the wire cutters, remove the clip from the back.
Depending on the earring, you might have a bigger piece of metal left than this one did, which would be nice for purposes of gluing it to the ring.
Put some glue on the back of the earring, then attach to the pad on the ring blank. Allow glue to dry, preferably overnight just to be safe!
Then you can wear/admire your new additions to your ring collection :D
That’s probably an exaggeration…. haha. This one should be big enough to fit all my earrings for a looong time anyway!
Back story: I have quite a few earrings, but most of the time they hide in my jewelry box so I never think about them when I’m getting dressed. A lot of my earrings have stud posts as opposed to the fish hook kind, so, while I liked the idea of the picture frame as earring storage, I didn’t think that’d be the most convenient kind of storage for those, since you’d have to get the back off the other side of the frame. Sooo long story short [they don’t teach you in design school that no one in the real world really cares what your rationale for your project is haha] I decided to cut/reassemble the frame so it’d stand up on my dresser.
This gave me an excuse to see if I still could work a table saw… I took the frame, cut it in half, then tilted the blade to a 30 degree angle and cut the ends. I wish we had a chop saw, that would have probably been much easier [aka more cooperative] in that it wouldn’t have spit back leftover pieces in my general direction…. regardless, I made it through with all appendages intact and my frame more or less cut the way I wanted… had to sand a few spots, but that took about 5 seconds with the Dremel. Not gonna lie, I kinda love power tools :D Then I glued the pieces together, let them dry overnight, stapled the burlap into the frame, et voila!
Projects like this make me miss studio/the design process, but hey, I can do stuff like this on my own time now and not have to worry about being graded on it! Now to finish putting the rest of my earrings on there…
I had some things to take to Goodwill this morning and made the mistake of going inside to shop afterwards… I think I came out with almost as much as I donated! I wish you got credits for donating stuff that you could spend there… that would be so greatttt.
Among other scores [brand new Banana Republic blouse with the tags still on for $3.50!], I hit the jackpot with these two frames [one without anything in it = less work for me :D]. Between seeing all these cute ideas for jewelry storage made from picture frames on Pinterest [here are a couple] and sbk’s diy project, I’ve been wanting to make some for a little while, so these were perfect!
first attempt: smaller picture frame / easier process?
materials -
- picture frame
- pliers to remove old staples
- staple gun + staples
- burlap
- contrast fabric [I used the edge of some old sheets so I wouldn’t have to sew anything… laziness ftw!]
process -
Remove any leftover staples from frame with pliers. Cut strips of contrasting fabric to a little more than the approximate width and arrange to your liking, then use the staple gun to attach. Staple guns are kind of simultaneously terrifying and way too much fun to use… haha.
I kinda like the frame done just like this… could be interesting wall art if you made a few using similar fabrics and clustered them together :D More things to file away in my mind under the ‘future apartment decor’ category!
Cut a piece of burlap sized about an inch wider all the way around than the opening. I placed the frame on top of the burlap and traced around the outside edge to give myself plenty of extra fabric. Use the staple gun to attach to the inside of one side of the frame, then do the opposite side, making sure to stretch the fabric nice and tight. Once those two sides are done, repeat for the other two sides.
This is what it should look like when you’re done stapling. After that, you can cut the extra burlap so it’s flush with the back of the frame. Just to make sure it won’t unravel, I went around the inside edge with hot glue.
And now you’ve got a fancy jewelry holder! I used this one for my brooches since I always forget about them hiding in my jewelry box. Stay tuned for the next attempt with the blue frame… I’m about halfway through that one because I had to wait for glue to dry… but it involves disagreements with crazy intense table saws and me breaking out my Dremel from its retirement since third year studio, fun times :D
