The Gardening Skirt

Over the up coming year I would like to refashion more clothing for myself instead of sending all the good stuff to the shop. I thought about this a lot before Christmas and came up with the idea of challenging myself to refashion a random item of clothing to see what I could come up with. The trouble with that idea though is that I know myself too well. I knew I would avoid the overly tricky or ugly pieces and pick something within my comfort zone. So I enlisted the help of my husband, handed him £5 and explained my idea. I told him that anything went and that he should pick whatever he wanted.

What a bloody stupid idea that was.

He came back with the swamp green monstrosity you see above. He thought this was funny for several reasons.
1) I hate army surplus gear and like crocs, cannot fathom why anyone would want to wear them willingly.
2) I hate khaki green even more than army surplus gear. It's the colour of sludge or what you get when you mix all the Play Doh colours together. In short, this is not the sort of thing I would want in my wardrobe.

Now as this is my first refashion for the blog, I made some school girl errors. Number one was forgetting to get a good picture of me wearing the awful thing. I'm going to put that down to being too busy trying to figure out what the hell to do with it.

In the end I went with a tube skirt and then thought "hey no problem! I can dye it black and it will actually look really good!" School girl error number two.

Always, always read the label first my friends. Preferably before you've spent money on fabric dye and stuck it all in the washing machine.

As you can see, the patches took just fine. However the disgusting swampy green laughed in my face and stayed swampy green. Brilliant. At this point I had to concede defeat with the colour. Due to the fabric being acrylic no dye or bleach would make any difference. Weirdly however, it was the green that led me to come up with my next idea.

During these cold and often wet winter months, getting outside in the garden can be a bit of a chore. I realised I could make myself a warm skirt that would add an extra layer of warmth to my legs while I'm out getting the garden spring ready. Not just that, but I could make pockets with the patches to keep my phone or secateurs in. Now you're talking!

So on with the refashion. I simply cut the jumper width ways underneath each arm and then put it on to measure it. I wanted it to have a snug fit, but with some stretch so I ended up pinning it in a bit.

Even the cat doesn't seem to be amused with me cutting this thing up. Am I the only one who doesn't like it as it is??

And this is where I forgot to take photos of the next few steps. Trust me though, they happened.

I made a waistband using strips from the sleeves and 1" wide elastic.

I unpicked the patches from the arms to make the pockets and placed them on the sides of the skirt as I wanted to be able to move and bend freely so the pockets had to be out of the way! I also made the pockets deep and asymmetrical so that anything I might have in them won't fall out when I bend down. These got pinned and stitched in place and then et voila! I have a new gardening skirt!

It's still that stupid swampy colour so I'm sure my husband will feel he's won something there, but hey ho. It's a refashion I'm proud of, it will get some real use and I can hand on heart say that it is now a part of my wardrobe!

Make Do and Mend - Sunflower Stalks

It's been a while since I wrote a make do and mend post so I thought it was time to write another one. And with summer in full flow this particular one seemed perfect.

Last autumn I cut down the giant sunflowers that had grown in the garden. They were definitely past their best by this point. The petals had wilted away and the seeds were ready for harvesting, so down they came. I chopped off the heads to dry out the seeds and trimmed the leaves off the stalks. Then I left them in the shed over winter.

 

By late spring it was warm enough to hang our washing outside again. This is one of my guilty pleasures. Not so much doing the washing or even hanging it on the line, but the fact that I don't have to see wet washing drying on every radiator in every room of the house. Something that comes hand in hand with winter over here.
However we needed a new pole to lift and support the washing line and I knew that one of the dried sunflower stalks in the shed would do the trick nicely. I actually ended up using the very one in the photo above as it was the strongest looking.

Once the stalks dry out they become very hard, (no sniggering at the back please) and depending on the size, they can take on the strength of small tree branches. The fact that they are so straight make them perfect for all kinds of things. I've used smaller dried stems to stake beans, peas and even other sunflowers in the garden.

As for the rest of the stalks I'd stored away, they helped create a tipi for Alessi, (and the rest of us) to play in.

So there you have it. If you grow sunflowers and have the space to dry them out, I would definitely recommend giving it a go.

Current Projects

A sensible person would only have one project on the go at any given time. 

Clearly I'm an idiot.

I've currently got three different projects to keep me busy, all of which are on my Winter List which I'm making steady progress on and *touch wood* should finish soon. Here's a little introduction..

1. Bedside Cabinets. 

You can't tell from the photo, but I've already made a start on these Ikea basics. The table tops came out further, but in order for them both to fit on either side of our bed I've had to saw the edges so they are flush with the drawers.
I'm still undecided on whether I will paint or stain them and those knobs are definitely going.

2. Winter Coat

This will be my first bash at making a coat so I'm a little nervous. I'm going to make pattern A with a tweed material. I'm looking forward to it as I hate trying to find a coat I like around this time of year. It's hard enough when all you can find are parkas and duffel coats, but the search is made even harder when you start hunting for petite coats. So fingers crossed this comes out ok!

3. Dining Room Table

I actually took this photo when Dan and Alessi were in Kent. It's clean and pretty looking, there's the give away! Usually it's covered with notebooks, empty cups and dried blobs of weetabix. 

It's a bit of a 'make-it-up-as-I-go-along' project. So far I know I want to sand the top and paint the legs, but that's it. This could be interesting..

And there you have it. This is the start of my latest projects. I'll be updating my progress in the hope that it will keep me motivated - we'll see!

Make Do and Mend - Patched Jeans

They're not much to look at. Just an average pair of jeans that are past their best. 

They're also the best pair of jeans I've ever owned.

Eight years old with worn knees and stained with wood preservative, this pair of jeans have seen it all. They came to Vegas with me when we got married, have climbed the Empire State Building and danced 'til late to Fat Boy Slim one wet and muddy Glastonbury. The holes in the knees are the result of crawling around the floor with Pip before she could walk. There are SO many fond memories attached to these jeans. There's no way in hell I was going to bin them when they could be so easily mended instead.

Here's a close up of the jeans before I got busy..

And here's a close up afterwards.

I. Love. Them.

I think the patches make the jeans look loved. In this day and age it would have been too easy to just chuck them out and buy a new pair, but what a waste! 

These are special enough to mend and hold on too so I'll wear my patches with pride.

Make Do and Mend - the dress revamp

I was going to post this over the weekend, but couldn't face it after coming down another throat infection. I'm starting to feel better and less sorry for myself now. Thanks to everyone who gave me running tips after my last post too. I actually made it out for twenty minutes of running/walking on Sunday evening and to be honest, it nearly killed me, but I surprised myself by enjoying it so will definitely be making a habit of it.

Anyway, back to the making do and the mending. Last time I fixed our bowing clothes rail with an old bit of wood found in the shed. This time around, it was my tunic dress that got the old fixeroo.
This was the first dress I ever made myself. I made it before I studied dressmaking and hadn't got a clue what I was doing. It was one of my favourite summer dresses and I wore it as much as I could get away with. That was, until I went and got printer ink down the front! No matter how hard I tried, no amount of washing and stain remover was going to shift that bad boy.

So I went rooting about in my crafting cupboard and got creative. With a little bit of lace and some black buttons you would never know it had an ink stain down the front!
I also decided to add bell sleeves as an after thought. I didn't want to wait until next summer to wear this again, but it's too cold for a sleeveless dress and I wanted to be warm. I am SO glad I did this. It gives the dress a 70's vibe that it didn't have before and it's once again, become my favourite item of clothing.

I was also wondering if I ought to make something similar for the shop? What do you think? I might add one as a test run and see how popular it is. Either way, I am definitely making myself some more of these!

Make Do and Mend

I wrote a post just over a month ago detailing why my penny pinching efforts had come to a screeching halt. The washing machine ended up costing us more than we'd been quoted and that minor car repair I mentioned? Let's just say my savings account took a battering and we now own a new (to us) car. I could cry.

So now not only has the penny pinching got to start up again, but I also need to get a damned sight more creative with ways to not spend any money at all. That's why I'm jumping on the make do and mend bandwagon. It's not just about nostalgia, but in this case, necessity too.
Our house is old and there always seems to be something that needs replacing or fixing in it. My clothes are becoming very tatty, but I can't justify buying a whole new wardrobe either. A good old fashioned 'make do and mend' approach is exactly what I need right now.

Recently we were going to buy one of the those clothes tidy things to the tune of £20. Why? The rail we'd fitted into our make-shift closet was bowing in the middle. Rather than have the weight rip it out of the wall, we thought a clothes tidy would be a good investment. Right now though even a cheap one seems like an extravagance.
So instead of forking out more money, I delved about in the shed and pulled out a piece of wood I'd used to make the old chicken run.

Before, our clothes rail looked like this:

And after cutting, sanding and painting the pole, it now looks like this:

Bish, bash, bosh. Job Done. A small and modest start to my new 'making do' habit, but one I'm proud of nonetheless. As I've said, our house is old and my clothes are tatty so there will be plenty more to come I'm sure.