Refashioning: Old Lady Pants into Skinny Pants

Updating a pair of pants is pretty easy, but there are some important things you need to look for first.

I really liked the color of these Kathy Ireland (remember that brand from the 90s?) blue velvet pants that were on the Goodwill dollar rack. Velvet is having a moment right now. The legs were way too roomy, but notice how the legs are straight--not flared. That's the first thing to look for.

I put a pair of my favorite skinny pants over them. You can see all the extra fabric along the insides of the legs. If you are wanting to do this project, you can't do it with flare pants. I mean, you can, but you will have to take fabric off both sides of each leg (because flare pants flare out both sides), and that is really hard unless you have another specific situation....Which I shall explain in the next picture.

Okay, see how the inner seam here is just a regular seam with no top-stitching? Let me show you an example of top-stitching in the next picture...

Here is an example of a pair of pants with top-stitching. It's a "flat feld" seam to be exact. Anyways, in order to fix flare pants with flat feld seams (which most of them have, at least in the inner seam), you would have to take all the seam work out--which is at least three rows of stitching per seam. Why all the trouble? Because the top half of flare pants are generally pretty form fitting and you would ostensibly be fixing only from the knee down on both sides. It would look super awkward to sew a normal seam into a flat feld one. You'd get a weird bend in the seams on either sides of your knees. Anyways, that's way too much work, and when I saw the afore-mentioned blue velvet ones, I knew that they wouldn't take much work to fix!

Okay, another thing to be mindful of: the back of the leg is a bigger pattern piece than the front. You can see where my fingers are pointing. On either side of the leg, see how you can see extra fabric creeping up from behind? That is because most people have more dimension on the back sides of their bodies than the front. (If you didn't, you'd look weird.) Anyways, I have seen these "Make Skinny Pants from Your Old Pants" blog posts before, and they don't take into account the percentages of back panel to front panel, and they end up making the front panels too slim and the backs too large. This is because as a pattern is graded (made bigger or smaller), the grader deals with percentages, not just making the shape bigger. Anyways, if I flattened the inner seam and cut the inner seam portion away as a 2 dimensional object, the back panel would be end up being much larger than the percentages you see here, and it would look super "Amateur Hour" when I finished.

So here is how I compensated. I pulled the crotch up!

Then, I laid the red pants on top as a guide for pinning.

I sewed along the pins.

When I tried them on, I realized that the leg on the right side of the screen was tighter than the left. You can especially see between the two pins that it's tighter. What I should have done was to pin one leg, sew it and test it, and then cut both legs to the same measurement before sewing the other leg. That would have saved time. No matter. It's a learning experience!

So what I did was to cut the seam down on the good leg.

Then, I matched up both legs, one on top of each other.

And then cut the bottom leg to match the top one.

You can see here how "off" my sewing was! By almost 1/2 an inch!

I sewed up the second leg. . .

And took out the tighter of the two seams.

I had a ton of fuzzies now, so I took some packing tape and rubbed them all off.

Matching legs.

Below you can see the pants before and after. 

The End!!!

Refashioning: Making Clothing More Functional - A Formal Skirt from a Dress

Hey, you know how it's a "thing" for kids these days to wear a formal skirt with a T-shirt or sweatshirt? Here're a few examples:

So here's how you can make your own formal skirt! (Yet, another way to make a skirt from a dress) This will allow you to wear the nasty old prom dress in the back of your closet WAYYYY more often! This post will help you make your clothing not only more functional, but also more current.

Okay, for this one, I wanted to keep the wide waist band, but if you look at the picture below, you will see that there is whale bone in the bodice to give it a corset-like stability. I could either waste fifteen minutes trying to pry it out without ripping the waist band (and still possibly rip the waist band), or I could just suck it up and make a thinner waist band.

I think you can guess what I did.

I cut it with pinking shears, because I don't care about inner seam reinforcement sometimes. If it's pinked, it won't unravel. Let's not waste time on stitching the raw edges. . .

I folded the band in at the waist and pinned it. . .Oh!. . .Remember to make sure that your zipper is zipped down past the waste before you start cutting, otherwise you will cut your zipper tag off!

This is what it looked like on the inside. Kinda messy, but no one will see it, so who cares.

The finished skirt!

This is what the finished seam looks like from the inside.

The End!

Refashioning: Turning an Old Lady Shirt Backwards. . .Literally!

I frequent my Goodwill on the weekends because all tags of a predetermined color are only a dollar! Honestly, most of the clothes you see in this blog. . .and on my person. . .come from this rack. Anyways, I'm always on the lookout for my "Type 4" colors, and my green in particular because it's my favorite. When I find it, I usually just buy it--even if the item is gross--because I love this color, and I know I can turn it into something else. I hope. . .as always, that this post gives you some ideas!

Here is an old lady shirt I found the other day. 

It's that really weird crinkly, yet stretchy, polyester fabric. It's usually really horrid, but on this particular shirt, the color really shines--almost sparkles. I can't stop looking at it. These pictures don't do it justice. (My camera has a hard time with greens, unfortunately.) Just picture the boldest green you have ever seen, and. . .that's it!

The first step was to cut the shoulder pads out!

Then, I cut the collar off.

Then, the sleeves.

Next, I pinned and sewed up the button placket. 

This used to be the front, but I wanted the buttons in the back, so I pinned it to the back of my dress form and used the form as my pattern. (This is actually a technic of pattern making called "draping" because you drape and pin the fabric onto a form and then cut away everything that doesn't lie flat. I don't do it very often, but I probably should. It worked really well.)

I also draped the front (which used to be the back).

Next, I worked on the sleeves. For this, I did my usual cheating method of cutting around sleeves of a shirt I already knew fit me well.

I sewed up the sides of the sleeves.

Then, I pinned the two bodice pieces together and sewed them.

I added elastic to the tops of the shoulders as reinforcement. This fabric is super stretchy and I didn't want the shoulders to stretch out. I've noticed this method on factory-made shirts I own. Turn your garments inside out sometimes! You can learn a lot!

I pinned , then sewed, the sleeves to the bodice.

Then, I sewed some black stretchy fabric to the neckline, but. . .I guess I forgot to take a picture. (I get ahead of myself sometimes and forget that blog posts need pictures. . .Tons of my projects never even make it on here because I forget to take pictures. . .Oops.)

Okay, so. . .It kinda looks like Star Trek, but. . .I love Star Trek (especially Mr. Spock, may he rest in peace), so I'm okay with that!

I added a leather Peter Pan collar necklace that I made (example of a project I never photographed), and wore it with a jumper so I wouldn't look like a Starship Trooper.

The End!