Sewing Inspirations

Anyone else follow New Dress A Day blog? I love that blog! People send this girl dresses and every day she makes "something" out of it to wear that day. Some size 42 dress gets chopped down to a cute vest or an old Easter dress with weird collar, with minimal effort, turns into an adorable shorty dress.

She's amazing!

So anyway, she kind of inspired me...

My 16 year old is at Jazz band camp this week. I'm missing her... HI MADDY! If you've got access to internet... Who knows? They let you keep your cell phone with you at any rate.

Last week, she and a friend went shopping for some things she'd need. An ankle length dress and shorts. She called me from the Salvation Army! Maddy had already been to Target and picked out a strapless summery dress but wanted a shrug to go over it. She found a short sleeved lacy tee with only the front lined and called to see if I could make a shrug out of that.

From what she described it sounded like it was a good match, so I said sure.

On Saturday morning, we tried it on her to get her ideas on how to do this and then I cut up the center front. With it on her, we pinned one side to the length and shape that she wanted.

Removed the lining by just cutting extremely close the side, sleeves and neckline until it was out.

Pinned the side seams together, neckline and anything else so that the two sides of the front could be right next to each other.

Then trimmed around, leaving a good half inch for hemming. And then did the other side front the same way. Then put down my straight edge and cut the back straight across.

She tried it on and I found that I should have angled down a bit more then cutting across the back. Oh well... Live and learn.

Ignore her red sport bra...

To hem it, I used invisible thread and stitched a line where I wanted the hem to be. Then folded at that line and ironed. Then did another stitched line on top of that.

By sewing rules, I should have folded it up another time to enclose the raw edges, but Maddy was anxious and we were going to be late to a graduation party. So I just trimmed the raw edges all the way down and then we were done!

We'll get to see her in it at the end of the week concert that she'll be playing the vibes in! I can't wait!

Here is the finished product and she was very happy with it!

And if she's happy, I'm happy!