De-Fashioning: A Silk Dress into a. . .Beauty Pillowcase?

So this one is going to be a little backwards. . .That's why I called it "De-fashioning."

I have been trying to sell the following dress on eBay for TWO YEARS, and it has been hanging in our spare bedroom. I bought it on sale for next to nothing from an online consignment store--even though it's totally opposite my body type--thinking I could resell it and make a profit. It is 100% green silk satin. It is "Laundry by Design" and was originally $300, or something! I had it on eBay for some ridiculous price, like $13. Lots of people viewed it and a couple people added it to their watch lists, but no one ever bought it or even made an offer!

This is the back. 

So, now we come to the epiphany that I had today. I have been reading more and more (from very informed places like fashion magazines and. . .Pinterest), that I should be using a silk satin pillowcase. It's apparently good for your hair, because it doesn't strip your hair of oils like cotton does, and doesn't promote breakage due to its slippery nature. It can also benefit your skin by not promoting acne and wrinkles because it's organic. So, here's the epiphany I had: Why should I pay money for a silk pillowcase, when I already have one hanging in my closet?

See how it's backward? Normally, a DIYer tells you how to make something from nothing. Here I am telling you to cut up a frickin' $300 dress to make a pillowcase!!! 

Now, here's why I'm posting this: You can create a beautiful silk pillowcase yourself by frequenting thrift stores and looking for silk items on their sale/dollar racks. I just bought a 100% silk hot pink over-sized shirt yesterday for $.40! So, it can be done! I once found a 100% silk zebra print prom dress for a dollar. (I blogged about that one here. I turned it into a skirt.)

So here you can see the metallic sheen. (It's actually much greener in real life.)

First step.

I opened the dress out. The part on the left was polyester lining that I discarded. The part on the right is silk.

It's hard to explain, but the bottom strip of the dress was sandwiched between the lining and the fashion fabric. In order to free it, I cut this seam off.

So, here is the dress in all its fundamental parts.

The part on the right is the bottom strip I was talking about before. (You can see the ironed fold down its center that I opened out.) I used this measurement as my guide for cutting the bigger section of the dress. That part I'm cutting off on the bottom of this picture will come up later.

After I cut, I "trued" up all the sides. This took awhile because silk satin is EXTREMELY slippery.

I got all my sides cut. If you look on the left-hand edge, you will see a seam. That is an original seam of the dress. I figured that would be one less seam I'd have to worry about sewing, so I used it!

This is that little part I cut off earlier. This would become the opening of the pillowcase.

I measured it out and trued it up as well.

I sewed both ends of the band. . .

. . .and then I folded it in half, ironed it, and set it aside.

Even though it had straight seams, I still used pins because it wanted to slide all over the place.

So, here you can start to see the pillowcase coming together.

I made sure to zig-zag all my seams, because this fabric was fraying like crazy!

All I needed to do now, was attach the band.

And through the magic of blogging, it is now attached.

I cut off all the excess fraying.

Okay, I know what you are thinking. "If she is worried about wrinkles, doesn't she realize she has a big old seam down the middle?" Don't worry, I'm way ahead of you.

See? I have one of those chiropractic pillows where you sleep on your back when your head is in the middle, and on your side when you are on either side. You can see the seam is in the perfect place. My face will never rest there.

Okay, another tip, and I would've explained this earlier, but it was too confusing. Anyways, if you make a pillowcase like this, make sure that the slippery part goes from side to side and not up and down. You move from side to side in your sleep, so you want the sheen to go with your movement and not against it.

So, I pretty much used the entire dress for this. I just wanted you to see. (That big part is the lining. Look at what is left of the actual silk! Not much!)

The End!

Dyeing Chanel Leather Shoes...or...How to Give Yourself a Mild Heart Attack, Followed by Lots of Happiness

I don't know if you can tell from my former posts, but I love Chanel. However, since I am not independently wealthy, I like to shop for Chanel on eBay. That is where the shoes below came from. I actually only bought them because they came with two Chanel bags and I wanted to use the bags to protect another pair of Chanel shoes I bought off eBay. Weirdly, it was cheaper to buy the shoes with two bags than to buy the bags themselves off eBay! Anyways, they just happened to be my PERFECT size. . .but not my colors. Enter, Tarrago shoe dye.

I did some research and came across this shoe dye from a company called Tarrago. Since my other Chanel shoes are black, I didn't want to buy black dye. Also, I couldn't commit to a pure color. I wanted green, but shoe dye in general doesn't seem to come in the bold kelly green I'm looking for. Also, the pointedness of the shoes really calls for a more neutral shade. For instance, if I turned them red, they might look a tinge "hooker-y." So, I decided on metallic silver.

All my supplies: The dye kit, the shoes, and some green scouring pads.

The directions and online tutorials said to rub your scouring pads together before using to take the abrasiveness down. I soon learned that Chanel shoes NEED as much abrasiveness as you could get from a scouring pad. If you could find a scouring pad that was just this side of steel wool, that might be a good idea.

I didn't know how strong the primer would be, and I didn't want the logos on the heels of the shoes coming off, so I put a piece of tape backwards over them.

Then, I taped all over the heel where I didn't want primer or dye. I used my fingernail to really tuck the tape into the crannies so the dye job would look somewhat professional.

I found it was easier to use masking tape that had been split when taping around curved areas.

I also taped the sole.

Then, I put a little primer onto a scouring pad and started rubbing. . .and rubbing. . .and rubbing. , .and I really strongly felt that I was getting nowhere. I even tried to use a little nail polish remover and the shoes looked just as shiny and sealed as the day I'm assuming they were new. I'm so serious when I say this: This part of the process took well over an hour. This is the part where I'm between, "Um. . .What have I done?" and, "Have I even done anything?" followed by, "Will the dye even take?" and then, "Will I actually have to throw these gorgeous shoes away?" 

and finally, "I may literally hate myself."

You can barely tell, but the shoe on the left is the one I scoured for over an hour. The one on the right hadn't even been touched yet. In the tutorials, the scoured shoe is like...all dull and messy and ready for dying, so you can maybe see why I was having a silent panic attack.

After a few hours of scouring so much my back was starting to hurt, and really getting nowhere with as much dulling as I had heard needed to be done, I decided, "Fine! I'm just going to start painting! I'm sick of scouring and I don't even care anymore!!!"

This is after two layers. It's best to dry the shoes with a hair dryer in between coats of dye.

The directions said to take the included paintbrush and add some paint to the included sponge and apply the paint using the sponge with little circles. The little circles started to create little bubbles in the paint that started drying like little dots, so I nixed the sponge and just used the paintbrush the whole time so the layers would be smooth.

The shoe on the bottom has three layers and the top shoe has four layers. I stopped after four, even though the directions said you could do up to five. I just didn't want it to cake, and I also didn't want it to crack when it dried fully. 

The directions said the shoes would be dry after 5 hours and fully dry after 12. I waited 24 hours.

The finished shoes.

Happiness!

The End!

Shiny Silver Fuzzy Sweatshirt

I made a sweatshirt using the sweater below as my pattern. Blogger's sideways ways have struck again.

Here it is. I did my same "lay it down and cut around it" method that I've done a million times before, so I skipped right to the end.

A close up. This fabric is really interesting. It's shiny and almost metallic, yet fuzzy, and if you look hard enough, you can see sort of a paisley pattern going on.

A super close up.

The End!