Hello,
It has been a busy week here in the lab. Last week I announced that I was participating in the 31 days of spending zero challenge hosted by Ruth Soukup at Living Well Spending Less. In addition to doing more cooking and food planning she has had us cleaning and organizing our houses. I am pretty sure that my fridge hasn't been this clean since it was new. :-)
Anyway, I have been doing pretty well with the spending no money thing. It has been pretty easy and actually kind of fun to clean out the pantry and plan meals that use what we have on hand. We will be eating a lot of rice and black beans this month but fortunately we have a few other things on hand too.
Any how lets get on with this weeks project. Even though my projects are always upcycled I do sometimes need to purchase something to complete them but I am happy to announce that I was able to complete both of these projects with stuff I had on hand.
I pulled this men's white shirt out of the goodwill pile.
Since it was a men's XXL it was quite big in the shoulders and bodice so I sewed some big tucks down the front and back and tapered them back out at the bottom to fit around my hips.
The top of the shoulder required a little bit of gathering to help it lay smooth.
I trimmed off the collar and cuffs and added some lace.
And moved the top button to make the neck smaller.
I didn't have any yellow ribbon but I did have some yellow paint. So with some brushing and dabbing my white ribbon became yellow.
It might have been a crazy choice to sew the ribbon on by hand but I find hand sewing kind of relaxing and meditative, so after many hours of stitching I ended up with this.
For the hat, well I can only say that persistence payed off. I started the hat project with my custom hat pattern. I made some adjustments to the pattern and then added the faux oil cloth finish. But my pattern adjustments weren't right and the faux oil cloth finish wasn't stiff enough on the knit fabric that I used. All I can say is it was a disastrous hot mess. I suppose that I should have taken a picture but I was just too disappointed. The brim was too wide and the band was too tall and the whole thing was too floppy.
The good thing about projects that go totally wrong is that you get bolder and more experimental with them because you really can't make them any worse. So I trimmed off the brim and made a tuck all the way around the band of the hat too make it shorter then I coated the whole thing with fabric stiffener.
Some how I ended up with a shape that I think can pass for a Mary Poppins Hat.
I hot glue a fabric / plastic bag flower and a rubber ball onto the hat and figured I had better call that good.
Happy Upcycling,
