Refashioning: Fixing a Tear and a Hole in a Jean/Pleather Jacket

This one might give you a few ideas in case you have or come across a perfectly good jacket with a hole or tear!

I found this jacket on the Goodwill dollar rack (as is my wont). I don't normally like jean jackets, but this one fit great, had silver metal, and I really liked the black pleather sleeves. . .

Except!. . .

And. . .(I guess someone's dog got to it!)

So, this is a way to fix both problems. First of all, with the sleeves, I cut out a shape like this from the bottom of each of them.

I used those shapes as a pattern for some black jersey that I folded over. (I also added about 3/4" of seam allowance.)

Then, I pinned the jersey to the cut outs.

This is what a sleeve looked like from the right side after the sewing.

The sleeves looked pretty good! But I wasn't finished.

I top-stitched both pieces to add a little Euro-styling to them.

I just think it looks more polished.

So for the hole in the sleeve. . .First, I took off the free arm of my machine and finagled the sleeve onto it. I zigzag stitched the hole up as best I could.

This was just to keep it from shifting and/or tearing more.

Then, I took some scrap paper (just happens to be an extra children's Sunday School paper), and sprayed adhesive to the back of a flower patch that my friend, Tiffany Nix, gave me a million years ago!

Then, I stuck it on the sleeve.

The spray adhesive held the patch in place as I hand-stitched around it.

Looks pretty good! And pretty current, since designers are all attaching all kinds of odds and ends to garments these days.

I think it looks pretty dang good!

The End!

Refashioning: Updating and Deleting a Weird Hem-Line Stripe Trend

Remember this stripe trend from the 90s? It was that sort of nautical thing that Tommy Hilfiger made so popular. (This dress is Liz Claiborne if that tells you anything.) Anyways, I found this dress at Goodwill, and I really liked the thicker stripes, but those narrow ones at the bottom hem just looked really dated to me. Also, the length of the dress was about four inches below the knee--not a good length for me.

So, this is what I did to fix it.

I folded the unwanted striped area in half and pinned it.

This is a close up of the pinning. See how I pinned right along the black part?

This is the pin from the other side. I tried to make sure that all my pins followed along the black line on either side of the fold.

Here is a series of the said pins all along the black stripe that I wanted to keep.

As I sewed, I kept just to the left of the pins to make sure that none of the white peeked through on either side.

After sewing, I ironed the fold up.

And then I top-stitched the fold to keep everything from shifting underneath.

Here you can see my sewing and top-stitching from the back.

Then I cut off the excess of the fold.

( I realize that I could have just cut off the entire bottom hem of the dress and created a new hem, but this way I could keep the actual manufacturer's hem. Plus, I didn't want the dress to be too short. Plus, I liked the big, thick black stripe.)

And here is my completed dress! And you'd be none the wiser if I hadn't told you!

To me, it looks a lot more timeless now.

The End!

When a Garment is too Baggy....Add Darts.

This is a short post, and it's nothing earth shattering. I just wanted to show how to put darts in something.

I bought this dress off eBay from China. Sometimes, things from China DON'T look like the pictures AT ALL. Fortunately, you can tweak them if you know how.

Here is where the major tweakedge needed to happen. Notice how the back part looks like a sack and the dress has no real shape. That's where the darts needed to go.

To make darts, you literally just start pinching into and pinning the fabric until the fabric lies flat.

Note: the first dart is always a piece of cake. The trial is getting the dart on the other side to match! Make sure to measure and remeasure to make sure they are both the same distance from the back seam and the same length.

Done! (I know the fabric looks puckery, especially around that right shoulder area, but that's because the dress is kinda "bodycon" and the fabric is really stretchy and it kept catching on the dress form.)

Yay for a dress with shape!

The End!

Refashioning: Making Clothing More Functional - Fixing a Weird Trend

Sometimes, you find an item at the thrift store and you go, "Now that trend must've lasted about five minutes!" That's how I felt about this dress. From the front it's super Minnie Mouse cute. . .

. . .but from the back, it makes you go, "Crap!" and put it back on the rack, because. . .you can't wear a bra with it!

Fortunately, it's a simple fix.

The first step was to cut the twisted part down the center. To do this, I worked the fabric so that I could fold the bottom of the twist in half like this:

Then, I made a small cut in the fold.

Then, I worked the top part of the twist and folded it in half like this:

And I made a small cut in that fold. (I'm pointing at it).

Then, I worked the fabric so that I was looking at the untwisted band, flat, with my two cuts.

And I cut down the middle.

This cut allowed the twist to lie flat.

I sewed up the middle. Still a problem, because of that hole. If you don't mind the hole, you are done here, but I didn't want my bra to show.

I found a piece of fabric that was slightly larger than the hole.

I pinned it to the inside of the dress around the hole.

And I stitched it up. 

You may like the "before" look better than my fix. It's seriously a preference thing. Anyways, I hope it gives you an idea!

The End!