Crap to Craft~ shabby apple inspired skirt

**BTW, I have started a new summer project- HERE- and would love your help!:)**
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Ok, first off I have to explain that this project DID NOT start off as "Crap" that's just the name of my refashion posts. We got that straightened out? Great, In fact, this project actually started out as a beautiful dress.

A beautiful dress given to me by my sweet friend Tiffany who made it a little small so she mistakenly thought that I was small enough to fit into it.

Not the case.

I apparently have what some would call Swimmers Shoulders and couldn't even put my arms through.

I didn't want this beautiful fabric to go to waste and I remembered this beautiful skirt I saw over at Shabby Apple and I had to make it!!

I cut the top off the dress. I totally reshaped the bottom turning it into a pencil skirt and....believe it or not....put in MY VERY FIRST ZIPPER!!!!

I can not tell you how excited I was. I have been sewing for about 6 years and have always been afraid of zippers till now. Dumb. I have missed out on a world of possibilities.

So this is the finished project:

I think I am in love!

Pretty darn close to the one at Shabby Apple and custom fit to my rear.

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More zippered skirts are in my future. Love. LOVE them.

Crap to Craft~ maternity shirt refashion

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I have been organizing my closet and trying to downsize. So I came across a few shirts that I thought would be great to refashion into something for my girls. I was inspired by this adorable $40 skirt from JCrew.

I assure you this project does not even need a tutorial it is so self explanatory but here goes.

Oh, and because I despise doing tutorials this is the step I was on before I remembered to take a picture.

It was just a plain maternity Tee when I started out. I measured the length on my daughter to see where I wanted it to hit (plus a little over an inch for a casing) and cut the shirt straight across the top leaving the hem of the shirt as the bottom of the new skirt.

I grabbed some elastic and made a casing on the top of the shirt.

Wala....plain skirt done. But now I wanted to make it girly and nothing says girly better than ruffles. I didn't have any chiffon like the JCrew skirt used so I decided to skip it and just do the ruffles.

I cut one inch strips of fabric out of the rest of the shirt leftovers and sewed down the center with a long stitch and pulled the bobbin thread to make the ruffles

.I layed them where I wanted them...pinned and sewed them right on.

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That's that!

I loved it so much that I grabbed another shirt...

and made one for my littlest daughter.

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Comfy

Easy

and FREE!!!

Naartjie inspired Crap to Craft!

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We are slowly sifting through clothes and making piles for a future Garage Sale. I came upon this shirt which is a size 14. Our oldest is 7, so it would be a LONG time before this shirt would have fit.... but I love me some owls and couldn't bring myself to toss it out.

Being the huge fan of Naartjie kids clothes that I am, I took a closer look at this shirt and figured I could save it, mix it up and turn it into a comfy Fall dress and leggings for my 3 year old.

I started with the leggings, I cut the thermal fabric sleeves off of the shirt and sewed them onto a pair of size 4 panties.

Leggings-Finished!!

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For the dress, I turned the shirt inside-out and took everything in about an inch and a half. Neck (on both sides), sleeves (I also pleated these), and sides. And for more of a fitted look I put a pleat in the back of the dress also. Dress-Finished!!

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All in all this project took about 45 minutes.

p.s.- click HERE for an Awesome package Giveaway!

Re-fashion: T-shirt dresses

I have 2 girls and about 20 t-shirts that are either to short for them or have a big stain on the front. I have had a few of these such shirts set aside to make dresses with and it just never happened. Then my friend Suzanne gave me a great pattern and now I can't stop making them. This is a picture of the first one I did, not quite finished.
This is the second, I put the flower over a stain.. and yes had I had more than 5 minutes to finish this I would have used blue thread instead of pink for the stem of the flower. Oh well.


I LOVE them and plan on making tonz more, I think some with tank tops for summer!!

New dress for Macie!

It's back to sewing capes for me, but I thought I would get in one more project! Love this dress! And she does to apparently, she won't take it off!!

sweater dress

~Crap to Craft~

I have had this old sweater since high school and held onto it because I love the colors.

*note- this picture was taken after I had already started to cut into it. I always forget to get my camera out*

It has become smaller and smaller on me it seems so I wanted to re-fashion it and thought a yummy fall sweater dress for Macie was perfect:

I should have waited till morning to snap some pictures but knew I would forget.

I love how it turned out and am now running off to my closet to find more old sweaters to chop up!

Tutorial over at Get your Craft on.

Halloween spirit...

At my daughter Ellie's school, the rule is that kids are not allowed to wear their Halloween costume to school on Halloween. I'm not quite sure why, but in our family we LOVE Holiday's and they are a big deal every year. So, I made a pinafore style shirt dress out of this super cute fabric my friend and I found last week that has fun Halloween colors for her so she would still feel like it was a fun dress-up day.

Pictures of Connors "interesting" costume coming soon!

Millie's pretty pillowcase skirt.

I went garage sale hunting with my good friend....oh 2 summers ago. She bought these beautiful pillowcases with this amazing embroidery on the hem.I told her pillowcase dresses would be so pretty made out of them, but when I made one... it looked like just that. A plain pillowcase! So I opted for a skirt for Millie. It turned out pretty too all because of the beautiful design!

summer skirt addiction

I love making these skirts that have stretchy bands at the waist. I made one for myself, (garage sale sheets fabric) and made this one for a little girls Birthday party that Ellie went to. But an hour before the party I was putting it into a gift bag and looked at it a little. I decided I didn't really like how the white-white band made the fabric look dingy. Even though you really wouldn't see the band when a shirt was put on top of it. So I looked in my fabric stash and quickly made her another one. It was a little longer than the first but one she will hopefully grow into. So, now Ellie has a new skirt too. I want to make 20 more, they would be great for a comfy maternity skirt.

4th of July dresses

I found a cute dress in my favorite kids clothes season catalog and wanted to copy it, so my mom found a pattern that was similar and I gave it a try. I think they turned out cute, even though I made them about a size and a half too big!!