Drab Guess T-Shirt Brought To Life

Yes, I bought another olive green t-shirt. I seem to be drawn to this color, then I get it home and realize it’s kind of lifeless. Thank goodness I have lots of colorful t-shirts I can cut up to refashion into a garden party on the drab newcomers to my closet.

An almost exact replica of my before top.

Please don’t hate me – I forgot to take a before pic, but I did pay my penance by spending hours searching the Internet just to bring you all a before pic.

Awhile back I refashioned this top:

before

after - sorry for the blurry pic

Problem is I still don’t like the top. I wore it a couple of times just to justify the time I spent refashioning it and then it took a long vacation in the back of my closet. When I acquired this drab Guess t-shirt though I brought out my old refashion and started cutting out all the flowers and leaves on it. One movie marathon later and I had a huge pile of leaves and flowers, some of which I used for this project and some which I’ll use for a future project.

piles of flowers

I tried to use my sewing machine to stitch down all my flowers but I ended up with a gnarly mess, so hand stitching it is. One more movie marathon later and this is what I ended up with:

front

flowers creeping over my shoulder

I’m happy with my new t-shirt and don’t mind at all that I had to cannibalize another t-shirt to get it.

 

Striped Maxi Skirt

This refashioned skirt has become a wardrobe fave of mine. It’s just like pulling on a pair of jeans. With pattern mixing no longer on the nerd alert list the blue and white stripe pairs with almost everything.

Unfortunately this is one of those projects that I was so excited about doing that I started without snapping a before pic. I know, I know, one of these days I’ll get it together but I’ll offer up a similar pic to give you an idea.

Not me. Not my dress.

Cute dress but the bodice was much too small for me. I cut the bodice away from the skirt and was going to make a casing and insert elastic but I didn’t have any elastic on hand. Enter plain navy t-shirt.

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I cut the bottom off, 12 inches from the hem. I slipped it like a tube over the top of the skirt and safety pinned it to the skirt. Flipped the top of the tube over to create a yoga-style waistband. Tried it on to see if I would need to adjust the length of the skirt and it was a couple inches too long. Since the skirt had an existing slit I decided to cut a couple of inches from the top of the skirt and then stitched the waistband to the skirt using a zig-zag stitch so that it could stretch without breaking the thread.

And here’s the end result:

I wanted something cute and comfortable to wear to an afternoon at the Orange County Art Museum with a walk on Balboa Island and dinner at Mozambique. That’s asking a lot of one outfit but I think this skirt works just as well with a sweater and boots as it will later in the year with a summer top. Don’t ask what was going on off camera to warrant the expression on my face! I like this pic though because it shows the slit so I’m publishing it anyway.

I didn’t have time today to do this but I think I may use the  cups from the bodice as pockets on this skirt.

Happy crafting!

Jeans Jewelry

I have a pair of jeans with a huge rip in the knee. I like the rip, although I think it’s a bit too large. In an effort to get out the door quickly I used some large safety pins inserted from the inside of the leg so that just the silver bands showed, looking somewhat like giant staples.

I'm feeling a little 80's grunge in these jeans today.

Later in the day my bracelet broke and I ended up with a handful of silver beads. H-mmm! I have an idea!

My jeans have their own jewelry!

Now I’d say that’s making lemonade out of lemons – one big rip + one broken bracelet = Irish Attic designer jeans.

DIY: Miu Miu Inspired Sandals

Hello again! I’ve prepared an easy DIY tutorial for you. You all have probably seen the famous Miu Miu sequin socks. Well I’ve decided to try something a little bit different, but in the same theme.

I thought of embellishing an old pair of sandals and cam up with these.

You can check out the full tutorial on Refashion Co-op.

xx Nina Mia http://nina-mia.blogspot.co.uk/