Green Dress to Impress

So I think I am finished with the green dress. I know this sounds vague but that's only because I'm not sure if it could use some extra flair, or at least a belt/ sash. What do you think?

Also, it's a little shorter than I intended. I always forget and hem items to hit me at the knee. I'm 5 foot though and what is knee length for me is a mini length on everyone else.

Anyway here is the tentative final result as modeled by my wonderful friend Stacy.

Did I mention it has these awesome pockets?

More to come

The color has more green in it than these pictures indicate

Definitely kind of an old lady dress.

I told you I would keep things short and sweet so here is a new post with very few words. I found this green dress at the Goodwill and fell in love with it. The color is beautiful but it definitely needed some updating. I found a dress on Modcloth that I used as inspiration.

Inspiration www.modcloth.com

I'll let you know what happens. It's going a little slowly but I definitely think It will be worth it.

Getting distracted...

Finished Sweater

Before

So I am pretty close to finishing a pretty green dress but tonight I hit a wall. I became extremely frustrated. Sometimes the best thing to do when you can’t seem to fix a problem is to walk away from it for a while. So I decided to do a quick project with a sweater I recently bought.

This sweater was purchased from a store called Roses but it originally is from Target. It was crazy discounted so I just couldn’t pass it up. Now, it is a size XS so there’s no way it would fit me but I knew it would be perfect for my Etsy store.
I put on a beautiful heart applique in a deep purple. I didn’t take pictures of all of the steps but above are most of the important steps.
In case you are wondering how I did it here are the steps:


1. Cut out a shape. I chose a very simple one but you can go as complicated as you want. Just keep in mind you’re going to have to sew around the edges of it later.

2. Trace the shape onto iron on double-sided interfacing. Make sure that when you lay the shape on top of it you can’t see any white around the edges. You don’t want to iron it onto anything else.


3. Iron on the shape. Use another piece of fabric between the shape and the iron to ensure that you don’t discolor the applique. Let it cool completely! Peel the paper off without peeling off the interfacing. This will make more sense when you see the actual product.


4. Usually when you buy interfacing it comes with instructions. I would follow these but just in case yours didn’t here’s what I did. Place shape on the sweater where you want it. Before you iron make sure you put fabric or newspaper or something inside the sweater. Because this sweater is so thin I was afraid it would go through and be ironed onto both layers. Then use the same fabric as before between the shape and the iron. (Also make sure that the iron is dry and not on a steam setting)


5. After the applique has cooled use a zigzag stitch to finish off the applique and keep it from fraying too much. If you are using a knit like a sweater or t-shirt make sure you don’t pull on the fabric as it’s going through the machine. You will end up with a stretched out or bunched up garment. I never turn my seams under on the applique because, well honestly I’m lazy. Also I don’t mind if it frays just a bit.

*optional things: you can cut out the middle of the interfacing to make just an outline of shape. This keeps it from being less stiff. My interfacing was pretty light so I didn’t bother.

These steps pretty much apply to all applique. So go forth and decorate your clothes! Have fun!

What a Noob

Why hello there!

Hi! My name is Jillian and I am a designer (sort of), amateur alterations lady and avid blog reader. Now I'm going to try my hand a blog writing. Now I don't promise to be any good at it so please try to cut me a little slack.

So, I don't exactly know what I want this blog to be about. I have been obsessively reading blogs on how to upcycle clothing. I love this idea. In fact I have been interested in it since college. So I'm guessing this blog will be about all of the different projects that I want to accomplish, the things that inspire me and just some random musings. Now I've read some blogs where it seemed like the author seemed to think that everything they wrote were golden nuggets of magic. I don't think this so expect my posts to be fairly concise and to the point.

In the interest of getting to the point let me just tell you a little bit about myself. Then I'll be done here, at least for today. I grew up in a fairly small town in South Eastern Kentucky. This is the kind of town where I'm pretty sure I was one of 3 people who had a subscription to Vogue and knew what the words "Haute Couture" meant before it worked its way into our everyday vernacular.

I went to  Western Kentucky University and graduated with a degree in Design, Merchandising and Textiles and a minor in Women's Studies. For my senior project I designed and sewed a line of dresses and skirts upcycled from previously worn garments and vintage fabrics. It was a lot of fun!

At the time upcycled clothing was a fairly new concept. Now it seems like there must me millions of blogs and websites that offer how to's and ideas. If you're wondering what I can add to all the other gazillions of voices out there well, so am I. Let's just take this day by day and see what happens. Hopefully it will work!

Alright, I'm done with this crazy long post. Later!