Refashioning: Transforming an Old Lady Jacket

I bought this old lady jacket at the thrift store yesterday. I really hate the style, but I really love the size of the houndstooth.

Look how baggy it is!

I love the fit of this Banana Republic jacket, but I hate the color.

So I laid the first jacket on the floor.

And laid the BR jacket on top.

Then, I just cut around it. I also cut the ends of the sleeves to make short sleeves.

When I take away the extra, you can start to see how the new jacket will look. Then, I just sewed on the sleeves and sewed the sides up!

Done!

The End!

Two Skater Dresses

It has come to my attention that a former student of mine enjoys reading these posts, so. . .a shout out to you, Lindsey! I miss you! A little bird told me your freshman year went well. . .(That little bird is your mother. I literally almost ran into her at Walmart. Literally.)

Speaking of Walmart, I found this neon yellow sporty jersey fabric at Walmart for $1.50 a yard and so I bought four yards. 

I had no idea what to do with it, so I thought I would start with a skater dress. I did my "lay another dress on top and cut around it" pattern system that I've been using lately.       It's really easy, Guys. Way easier than paper patterns that you have to pin. You should try it.

Maybe this picture will show you how easy it is. You just have to make sure you cut a seam allowance around whatever you cut. You can see here that I extended the torso down a few inches from the original dress. That's because I don't like when waists are just a tiny bit too high.

The piece I cut up there was the back piece with a higher collar. Here is how I cut the front. I used the cut piece as my pattern.

Then, I just cut around it.

But I stopped at the collar.

Then I replaced the original dress on top the piece I was cutting just now.

I tucked the back collar part in. . .

and cut around the front collar. 

To cut the skirt part, I just folded the bodice half of the dress in and laid the skirt part on top of my yellow fabric like this.

Then, I cut around it. You can play with these measurements, you know. For instance, I made the skirt 1/2 an inch longer.

When it came to sewing, I had to choose which side of the fabric I wanted to be the good side. This is athletic fabric, so usually this is the side that shows:

But that was a little too much texture for me and found that the back side was actually more solid.

Skipping ahead. I sewed the dress together but when it came to hemming, I hemmed the front middle bottom hem up 1/2" more than the hem I did the rest of the way around. This allowed for "butt lift." If you don't know what I'm talking about, skip it. I just hate when dress hems hang just a tiny bit higher in the back. Drives me nuts.

Here is a closer picture to show what I'm talking about. I trimmed that edge after taking this picture, just so you know.

The end! All in all this dress only took 1-2 hours. I wasn't really paying attention.

Okay, I know this hem is kinda tacky. Usually, you are supposed to double fold before you hem, do a lining, or use bias tape, but I didn't do any of that for two reasons: (1) If I double folded the collar and sleeves which are curved, then they would have bunched up funny. (2) The only reason to double fold, lining, or bias tape is because you are afraid of the fabric fraying. Since this fabric doesn't fray, I didn't worry about it. You can't tell from the outside and that's the only side that matters. Back in the day when women only had like five dresses, it mattered. Nowadays when most women have tens if not hundreds of dresses, there is no reason to make them last through an apocalypse.

Okay, that dress went so fast that I decided to make another dress with fabric I already had. Before I sewed the yellow dress together, I traced the pieces onto paper. Then I drew a raglan line from the collar bone to the arm pit and cut the pattern along that line. That's what I used to make this raglan skater dress:

I saw a dress on eBay where the raglan line didn't end directly at the armpit, but rather ended just below it. I thought that was unusual, so I did the same thing.

I made a waist band on this one.

I was going to use just the pink chiffon for the shoulders, but it was a tad flimsy, so I backed it with the navy jersey as you can see here:

Also, to reinforce the waistband, I grabbed a strip of scrap jersey out of my scrap box. This is why you should save scraps.

The End!

Tutorial with a FREE PATTERN! - How to Make the "One Eyemask to Rule Them All"

I don't do step-by-step tutorials, but when I do. . .I do them like this:

I am Type 4, and true to my nature, I have three specific considerations that must be followed every night or I won't sleep: no light, no noise, and. . .I know this is really weird, but. . .I have to have my ears covered. If they are cold, it drives me crazy. If you think this is really inexplicably strange, you and my husband should start a club. . .

I bought the eye mask below when I lived in South Korea, and I love it. If you notice, it is extra long. This eye mask actually wraps around your ears and keeps them warm all night! This tells me something very affirming: I'm not the only weirdo out there!

(Sorry for the sideways) I love that the nose cushion blocks out all the light that creeps in at the bottom corners of my nose without squashing my nose. The fabric itself is also very very dark and I can hardly tell if there are lights on or off around me when I have it on. I have even tested it against full sunlight! All I need is earplugs and I'm set for 8 hours of blissful sleep.

Anyways, it is getting old and I haven't been able to find its equal, so I decided to make my own version of it, and I also decided to give you a full step-by-step tutorial on how to make one for yourself if you want. The pattern is at the very end of this post.

First of all, you will need to find some fabric that blocks out a fair amount of light. You don't have to use the same stuff, but I will tell you what I used because I know some people like to do things totally by the book. The red material below is actually black-out curtain material. The middle piece is some black fleece I used for padding. The bottom piece and the nose piece at the top are both made of black silky satin material. Satin feels nice against your face in the winter and summer, so I suggest getting something silky for the facial part.

After it's all cut out, sew the outer curve of the nose cushion.

Cut slits around the curve of the seam (or trim the excess seam off).

Turn it inside out and sew from the outer corners to the middle leaving a hole.

Put just enough stuffing into the hole so that it is smooshy but not stiff. If you don't stuff enough, it won't block the light. If you stuff it too much, it will press against your nose all night and hurt in the morning. You can actually test it against your nose at this point if you want. You don't need to buy a whole bag of stuffing just for this. I actually just used some stuffing from a box that a necklace came in. You could also use stuffing from a recently opened pill bottle.

Now you are going to sew the three layers of the mask together, but first, pin it like this. The outer corners first:

The middle corners second:

(Sideways again. Stupid Blogspot!) Then, pin the other areas, unpin the nose bridge pin, and pin the nose cushion in place:

Then, sew around the perimeter. Ease the fabric around the curves. It's okay if it doesn't look perfect around the outside as long as the needle is catching all three layers of fabric. Also, take it easy around the nose cushion. Push the stuffing down so you can really get into the hem well.

Okay, if you don't really care about aesthetics, you could just sew your elastic and velcro on here and be done, but. . .let's just say we want it to look nice. How we gonna do that?

Bias tape is your best bet. If you don't know what it looks like, it looks like this. Stores usually sell it near the thread.

Pin the bias tape around the outside hem. Bias tape is cut on the diagonal (called the "bias") which allows it to stretch a little. Go ahead and use that stretch to pull the tape around the curves. You can see below that the mask looks a little bunched up. That's because the bias is relaxing a bit after being pinned, but once it's sewn it won't look bunchy. (If you don't pull the tape around the curves as you pin, once you start sewing, it will start gapping and frustrate the crap out of you.)

Then, sew it up. Make sure to fold the last little edge of tape under so you don't have a frayed edge.

The original mask had seams running through the "ear" parts, so I decided to replicate that, but you don't have to do this step if you don't want. This step really should have been done before sewing the tape on, but oh well. To get a nice straight line, pin the top of the seam and the bottom of the seam and connect the dots with your thread. (If that's too hard for you, put in a few more pins to create your line and remove them as you sew.)

Here is another picture of what I'm talking about.

Now cut two pieces of wide elastic. They only have to be like five or six inches each. You also need two 2 inch pieces of velcro. Sew the softer side of velcro like this: Fold the edge of the elastic in and set the velcro on top of that fold. Either pin it in place or ease it through your machine with your fingers. Sew all the way around the velcro with the velcro on top.

Sewing the sticky part of velcro can be tricky because it likes to stick to the thread as you sew. Here's how I do it. I fold the second piece of elastic in and put the velcro on the fold. Then, I flip it all over and sew with the velcro on the bottom. It's a little hard to do when you can't see the velcro, but trust your fingers and go as slowly as you need to maintain control. Obviously, my other hand was holding the camera in this picture!

Then, take the elastic with the sticky velcro and sew it like this: Fold the other edge of the elastic over and put the fold on an outer corner of the mask. Make sure the velcro is face down. Then sew a rectangle. You don't have to sew a rectangle; you can just sew a line, but a rectangle keeps it in place better.

Here is a close up of the rectangle from the other side.

Then sew the other piece with the softer velcro exactly the same way on the other side

--EXCEPT--make sure that the velcro is face up! Otherwise the two pieces won't meet!

The End!

And here is your pattern! All hem allowances are included and are 3/8". The dotted line on the nose cushion denotes the only hem that is turned inside out. Also, the eye mask needs to be cut on a fold. . .obviously. I drew this on a piece of 8 1/2" by 11" paper, so if you need to know for printing reasons, the top edgeof this picture is 8 1/2".