Up Cycling Clothes

Do you have a few skirts lying around your wardrobe or have you found a few skirts that you haven't worn in such a long time or doesn't fit anymore.  Well if you have little girl's like me who absolutely love dresses you can turn your skirt into a dress for your daughter/s to wear.

There are lots of different tutorials out there for what is called up cycling your clothes, I even found a book at the library called Fashion T-shirts: easy-sew projects for fun fashion by Lorine Mason, which has step by step instructions on how to up cycle, of course, t-shirts.  I liked it so much that I bought a second-hand copy from Amazon :

During one of my visits to our local charity store I found 2 skirts that I thought would make great dresses for my 2 little girls and they were only 3 dollars each.  Unfortunately I did not take a before photo of the skirts but here is how they turned:

The brown and blue skirt was really easy to change into a dress as the zipper was at the side.  All I had to do was put it on my 4 year old, mark where to cut for it to fit and then cut and sew down one side.  I used the off cut to make the straps.

With the pink and white dress, the zipper was at the back, so I had to mark both sides then cut and sew, trying to make sure that both sides matched.  Again I used the off cuts for the straps.

I used the tutorial from the blog V and Co .  This wonderful blog is by Vanessa Christenson who is a stay at home mum in the United States.  The blog has lots of great tutorials and you can also purchase a step by step pdf of any of the tutorials from Vanessa's My Shop page.

I have a tub full of clothes to upcycle so hopefully in the new year I can come up with a few tutorials of my own. 

So go one give it a go and have a look at Vanessa's blog,  which I'm sure will give you lots of imspiration.

Happy Sewing

Jennifer

So what to do first?

While reading through all the wonderful blogs that are out there I discovered the pillowcase dress.  That's right the pillowcase dress.  There are so many different tutorials out there for this dress and you can find it in Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose a Pillowcase by Suzanne J.E Tourtillott .

My girl's love to dress up like fairies and I thought what a great and cheap way of making them a few fair dresses to wear.

So my Mum and I went searching for pillowcases:

and this is what we found!

I already had pink Tulle at home from another project and I used the white pillowcases with pink flowers to make the dresses, the other pillowcases I used for the inside of a crayon rolls that I have made as gifts (that's for another day).  The tutorial that I used was from Prudent Baby .

And here is the finished dresses:

I made the straps out of the bottom of the pillowcases that I cut off instead of using ribbon as per the tutorial.  To make the wings all I did was fold 2 layers of tulle together and used a CD to make the wings a circular shape, them attached them to the dress with the pink ribbon.

I made two more one for my niece and one for a friend's little girl:

This time I used purple Tulle that I had for the wings and I bought some pretty ribbon for the straps and to attach the wings (please excuse the fridge in the background).  

So if you haven't made these dresses before please have a go and if you have but haven't read the Prudent Baby blog please take a look and have fun as there are so many new and exciting ideas from other crafty mum's out there.

Happy Sewing!!!!

Jennifer