From dress to skirt

A friend of mine asked me if I wanted a dress of her daughter’s which was covered in paint. She loved the fabric and thought that I could make something with the pieces that weren’t full of yellow and blue paint. I have to admit that I never say “no” to fabric even if it’s only small scraps but when I saw the dress I quickly realised that I could rescue it. All I had to do is cut off the stained top and part of the skirt to recycle it.

The photos were taken with the old camera and you can’t see the stains very well but they are there. Promise!

There were a couple of paint stains that I couldn’t cut away so I hid them with the bow at the back and the yo-yos at the front. My friend was really pleased with the result and her daughter loved getting her favourite dress back even if it had been turned into a skirt.

An Old Favourite

I have this jumper. It’s my favourite. It’s ripped.

It’s not a big rip but as it’s at the front I felt that I couldn’t just sew it together and leave it at that. It would be too obvious. The solution was to make some fabric flowers, add some buttons and thus save my favourite jumper.

I went with blue flowers because I usually wear this jumper with my favourite jeans.

There are so many great tutorials for these flowers I thought I wouldn’t add another one. A quick search for fabric flowers and rolled fabric roses revealed lots of possibilities. I used Tea Rose Home’s tutorial for the five-petaled flower and My Sparkle’s how-to for the rolled roses. The fluffy one with the button centre was made from the selvedge of a Kona solid which I simply gathered to a circle and attached to the jumper with a blue button.

I’m wearing my jumper as I’m writing this post and I keep looking down as I’m so pleased with the result. Sad, I know….