MONSTERIZED JEANS

I'm told the average woman tries on sixteen pairs of jeans to find a single pair that fit properly. I've lived that, and a whole lot of other women I know have, too. So when my favorite jeans sprang an air leak across the knee, it was nothing short of a disaster.

I sat and looked at the raggedy tear, and sighed. Looks like a great big old mouth, I thought. And then I smiled. I couldn't wait to get busy patching them.

Here's what you'll need to do the same:

Buttons
Beads
Scrap of red fabric
Thread

Do you see faces? I've been playing with my buttons and beads! Buttons with beads in their centers for eyes, a triangular bead for a nose, ring beads and metal spacers as another eye option--raid your sewing and bead boxes, use your imagination, and have fun!

Then you can get down to business. Measure the tear you're going to patch.


Cut a piece of red fabric that's about 1/2" larger all around than the tear in the jeans. If it looks like the fabric will fray, finish the edge with a row of stitching, or use something like Fray-check on the raw edges. Then turn the jeans leg inside-out, and pin the patch in place.


Make sure you haven't pinned through both layers of the jeans leg, and sew all the way around the patch. (Optional: Blow mental kisses and hugs in the general direction of whoever invented free-arm sewing machines!) Again, make sure you're sewing through just the patch and the torn jeans layer.

Now, ordinarily, you'd want to sew as close to the tear as you could, and you'd want to make it as invisible as possible, but don't do that this time. You're creating a mouth, and you want the red to show, and even gape open a bit when the knee bends, so sew near the edge of the patch.


Turn the jeans right side out, and play some more. Lay them flat and arrange your selection of beads and buttons to create a monster face. When you've decided on one you look, lightly mark the placement with a pencil, and sew in place by hand, using sturdy thread.


I haven't actually finished my jeans yet. I can't decide which face to use!




Now, it may or not go without saying, so I'll say it. Not every full grown-up woman would wear these, but I can think of a few thousand little boys who might, if their mamas chose to patch their little jeans like this!

EASY-PEASY: DRESS BECOMES CORSET

The two problems with corset, as I see it, are the usually high price, and the difficulty of getting into and out of them. Laces! They look great, and they give you a certain degree of size flexibility, but they're a pain when it comes to getting dressed and undressed.

I was a little tired of my old corsets anyway, and wanted a new one for the Pirate Festival this past weekend.

What you'll need:

• A dress with simple lines, sleeveless
• Loopy braid trim to coordinate with the dress
• Lacing cord or ribbon
  

Here's what I did:

Start with a dress that fits reasonably well, and has simple lines. A Princess-line is ideal. You might have one in your closet already, or you might need to buy one. It's tempting to get one that's a little small, or a little big. Resist the temptation. If it isn't at least close to your size, you'll have to make adjustments in the back and/or shoulders.

This one was half off at Goodwill, making it just $4.50:

Fold the dress exactly in half, lay it flat, and split it up the middle.




Make sure it's exactly halved, or the front edges will be skewed.

Turn under and stitch a narrow hem on the newly cut edges. If there's a facing at the top, open it out, and keep hemming.




Now you'll want to try the dress on, to see how much you'll need to turn under on the front edges to get the gap you want. I opted for about 2-2/15" (5.1-6.4cm) Press that much to the inside, and stitch close to the edge. You've just created a self-faced front opening.




Turn the corner sharply when you reach the bottom hem, and continue, to complete top-stitching detail.

Sew your loopy trim on, turning the top end to the inside, and adding a rosette to cover the bottom end.



You'll want the trim to extend over the garment edge, for ease in lacing:



Hope you can see what I mean!

Sew the folded-back top edge invisibly to secure it, and to hide the end of the braid:






Ready to lace up!


Add the laces, try on the corset, adjust, and tie with a bow. Unzip the back to remove!




Finished!

As you can see, I left the dress its full length, which gave me long panels over the red taffeta skirt. That's one option, but you might want to cut it off waist-length, or leave a bit of a peplum. It's all good.

I didn't get a good photo of me in the bodice. That would have happened the first day, when I didn't get a photo of me at all. Lame, I know. The second day, it turned cold and rained like a pig, and all I have is this one, with layers upon layers of clothing, the "wrong" blouse, and not standing up. Ah, well. Such is life, yes?




Layered and bedraggled, with fearsomely fun pirate comrade

The trim I needed for this project happened to be on sale when I went to Joann Fabrics. The entire thing cost me less than $10!

I REMODELED MY JEANS!

For some time now, I've been admiring a pair of daughter Laurie's capris. They're denim, with a wide turned-up cuff.

Funny, isn't it? Fashions seem to have about a twenty-five to thirty year turn-around. I had a pair as a child, and then when my eldest was about twelve they came back into style, and now, here they are again. That daughter is now 36, but I'm never going to forget trying to find a pair that fit her "back in the day".

The women on Mama's side of the family all have actual calf muscles. Let me tell you, there are no bird-legged women in this family, or even close. (It's probably all the Native American blood.) By the time I found a pair that would fit around Mel's calves, which were even stronger than heredity gifted her with, due to years of soccer, the waist and hips were miles too large. Oh, well. And I digress.

Suffice to say, I wanted a pair of those denim capris for myself. I just didn't want the pain of shopping for them! So, Monday, I pulled a pair of pegged (Do they still call them that?) jeans from the drawer and went to work.

Here's what I did:

First I tried them on, turning up the cuffs to the desired length, and making sure they were both exactly the same.




Then I marked the place where the fold fell, and split the outside seam to that point. That's easier than splitting the inseam, since most jeans have a flat fell seam there, but not on the outside.

Then I ironed a crease at the bottom. Because the legs narrowed all the way to the ankle, turning the cuffs up left a V-shaped opening at the side seams, and the hem was not horizontal, at right angles to the inseam. I cut off the hem, and straightened what was now the top of the cuff as I did so.





(The tops aren't straightened in this shot, and I also cut off the seam allowances where I'd split the seam.)

I thought I was going to do a narrow hem and leave the cuffs like that, with embroidery around the edges, but when I tried the jeans on that way, they looked like a pirate's trousers! Well, that wasn't gonna work, not for me, lol.

So I folded the points of the cuffs down, forming a triangle of reversed fabric on the fronts and backs of the legs, with the bottom at lower outer seam edge, and the top on the inseam. I tacked the edges invisibly, stacked two red buttons on top of each other for a trim, and sewed them on, and Presto! New capris from old jeans!









Now the only problem is that they aren't actually what I was trying to make, although DH has declared them "Really cute!" (And I do just love it when he uses words like that, which are totally uncharacteristic of him.) Tch. I don't know. I may have to try it again. In the meantime, though, these have become my new favorite pants. YES!

MATERNITY (TO) EMPIRE

It's hard to resist a twenty-five cent t-shirt, at least for me. I didn't resist this one, in spite of the fact that it was a maternity top. I wanted to see how hard it would be to turn it into an empire-waisted top. It was pretty easy, so I'm sharing the process.

Start with:


A Maternity T-shirt


You'll also need a fabric belt. I've used one that loops through chrome rings, but a buckle style would work as well, or even ribbon, tied in a bow.
Split the sides. Don't worry about picking the stitching out to do that. Just cut the seam, but make the cut on the front side of the seam, because the next thing you're going to do is get rid of the extra width in the back of the shirt, which will cut the old seam off at the same time.


Cut away the extra back width

Now measure your own back width, at the point just under your breasts. You want the back of the shirt to be the same width you are, so you'll do a little shaping now. Fold the back of the tee in half lengthwise, and the tape with your own back width in half also, and put the folds together. That will center your back width on the back width of the shirt. Mark where the end of the tape falls, adding some for seam allowance, and cut a gentle curve in to that point.

There's a good reason for shaping the back: When you gather the front of the shirt, it will pull the extra fabric from the back forward, and the side seams, too.


Match center backs of tape and tee, and mark



Cut a curve in to the mark

Next step is to figure out how much belt you need, and whether you want the buckle to fall at center front, or to one side. If you want the buckle at the center, remember that you'll need less length for that end than for the other, because of the part that will loop through the buckle. Play with it. If, when you're done, you don't feel like it's "right" you can change it. I did!




Once you've cut your belt lengths, measure down from the armhole to the point just under your bust. On me, that was five inches. Lay your inside-out tee flat, front up, but lifted out of the way. Pin the ends of the belt to the back edge of the tee, with the top edge of the belt on the mark of the under-bust point. The right side of the buckle end should be face down on the shirt back, but the loop-through end should be face up, because when you thread it through the buckle, it will reverse itself.


Placing the belt

You're almost finished! Sew up the side seams, being careful not to stretch them out of shape.

Note: When you cut the extra fabric away at the back, the side seams became slightly different lengths, but shaping the back will have equalized them somewhat, and any additional difference can be eased as you pin and sew.

I'm a big fan of short cuts. One of those is what to do when you reach the hem. The long cut is to pick out the hem for an inch or so on front and back, sew the side seam, and then re-hem. I don't like to take the time, but I don't want raw edges showing either, so I turn the seam allowance back to the seam itself, in a triangle, and sew right down to the point. It looks like this:


Fold and sew to the point

From the outside, you see this:


No raw edges!

The last step is to tack the buckle of the belt in place, to keep it from drooping.

The neckline of the shirt I used was too high for me, and I had extra belting, so I cut the neck down and added this:


A triangle of trim

Here's the finished shirt!

APPLIQUED NECKLINE, ALTERED T-SHIRT

Been working on this for several weeks, but it's been so busy around here I only just now finished it. I'm pleased with the outcome, even if it did take weeks longer than the one afternoon it should have.

Some few people may remember I had a whole lot of fabric to sort a few weeks ago, and that the reward for the task was to keep what I loved. I fell in love with a sheer panel of fabric that had embroidered lily-of-the-valley on it. I mean, really fell in love with. It was (brace yourself) sheer inspiration. Lots of ideas, but which to use? This is what I chose:

First, the fabric itself:

Turned the way I'd use it


So 3-dimensional!


Cut out carefully


Position and tack in place

An added note: Be sure when you use fabric glue to read and follow the directions. I ended up using Liquid Thread, which must be ironed to be permanent. Until you apply heat, it can be washed out. The motifs I cut out frayed very easily, so I coated the entire piece on the back, just to be safe.


Cut away excess fabric

Follow the line of your appliqué piece, leaving enough for a narrow hem.


Turn edge under

You'll probably need to clip all the curves to relieve any tightness or straining. Miter excess fabric as needed, too. I used invisible thread, which is rather like very thin fishing line. It's transparent, so even using a whipstitch and going from color to color, it doesn't show at all.

Turn a narrow hem along the back. It's a good idea to stay stitch across the back first, to keep the fabric from stretching. I used a rolled stitch there, but a straight stitch would have done, I think. T-shirt jersey doesn't fray, so I didn't finish off the raw edge.


All Done!
I thought of covering the back neckline with bias tape or ribbon, but opted not to do that.

Can't wait to wear my altered tee!

SAVE MY SHOES!

I'm trying to get organized. Do you know how hard that is for an ADHD person?

Well, it does have its upside. I get a lot of things done, many of them unexpected.

For instance, yesterday I set my favorite pair of casual shoes next to the front door, preparatory to removing the shoe laces and throwing them out. (You'll see why in a minute.)

One of my goals today was to get the entryway and porch tidied and swept, so this afternoon I walked over to the front door and picked up the shoes. I had every intention of carrying them out to the dumpster, and then sweeping the floor.

Dang. I just couldn't do it. I know they're cheap shoes. Cheaply made, and bought even more cheaply, at the Goodwill, but they're really comfortable. The soles are soft, and even with that leg-lengthening heel, they feel good, and they let me run. (Yes, I am often too impatient to get where I want to be to walk.)

I started to pull the laces out, but I was thinking, There just has to be something I can do with these shoes. I don't want to give them up!

See how the toes are peeling? That's all that's wrong with them.


I carried them over to my sewing table, and started rummaging through the fabric samples. Maybe I could cover them with soft fabric. Then I spotted the zippers on the table.



The germ of an idea

I'll just show with photos what I did, because it's late, and a picture is worth a thousand yada yadas.



Marking the spot



Now the other side

When I was finished, this is what I had. I think I like them even better now!