Grandma's Apartment

So I will be really honest here (I can be honest on my own blog right?), my grandma's apartment is kind of.... Boring. I feel like a reverse hermit, stealing away to the Atrium to get on the wifi to check my email and cruise the Internet and make phone calls to a certain Someone... ;) I spend a lot of time here. In fact, I am here right now!

So I've found myself with a lot of time to kill. And it is during these times that I find myself doing strange goofy things. Like snapping pictures of myself (not my most favorite thing- makes me feel ridiculous and yet, as any self respecting teenager would do, I do it anyways.) wearing big sunglasses .

Or writing poems about Flower people:

"A row of Terra Cotta houses,
Made of small flower pots,
Where the flower people,
Sing their songs,
And their music is not sung with words,
But with water,
In a never ending liquid dance,
Of sound from their throats."

And pillaging things from the FREE TABLE!!! There is so much to say about the free table. It is quite a novelty . You just add things you don't want and take things you do. People just come and go. There is always a few items there. (Except now, because the room is being occupied by a group of coupon clipping ladies.)

I like cruising by it, just for kicks. And Free is the best price anyways. (Even better than thrifting!) The other day, I was doing laundry and as I passed by, I saw a beautiful black skirt with white embroidery and beading on it... I snatched it up!

And then, I pulled out mom's sewing machine and I made a few snips here and sewed a few lines there and in thirty minutes, I had myself a dress!! I'll post the before and after pictures from my camera once I get home. It looks great!

For now, I have provided a cellphone picture that makes it look purple.

 BEFORE:

 AFTER:

 Gotta Love DIYs! I did this from a tutorial:

from this blog

Unfortunately, I cannot take any credit for the genius idea. But I loved the way it turned out!!

DIY Adventures

It began with the discovery of New Dress a Day. A fantastic website this woman started with a sewing challenge. Clothing budget for a year: $365. That is one dollar a day folks. One dollar. And while, I'm not about to go on a sewing rampage and vow to only spend one dollar a day on clothing for an entire year... I couldn't help being inspired!!

So you can imagine, that when I found a pile of clothes on the ground in the alleyway in our neighborhood, I snatched up the opportunity and sifted through them. I ended up picking out three pieces of clothing. In the pile, there were a lot of scrubs and miscellaneous other clothing... Like pants that are unfit for the desert, for example. (They looked like they belonged in the north pole!)

I snagged three pieces. Two of which, I have already worked on, and one of which I have evil plans for.

The first was a white collared shirt with a sleeve missing.

It was a coldwater creek shirt so I could not bear to just leave it lying on the ground, even with the sleeve missing. And it had potential, so I brought it home. I intended to turn it into a little bolero. However, like a black thumb tending to a garden, I killed it's potential! It was awful! Everything was going well as I removed the other sleeve (which I carefully ripped out the seams to do.) and then, I cut it too short. Maybe it will make a nice bolero for a 5 year old. Or a flat-chested little girl. But sadly, not for me. Oh well. At least it was free. I love finding stuff on the ground!

The next thing was a very large collared shirt:

Mismatched Button Job!

It is difficult to tell in this picture (Cam was acting as my camera man and then he quit in the middle of the job!), but it is a blue and white pattern and it's got kind of a batik feel to it. It was a pretty nice shirt, but I wanted to do something different with it.

So.....


I made it into a skirt!

I cut it just above the pocket (which is there on the right, but it's hard to see.) and  sewed up the sides. Once I had sewn a straight line, I put it on inside out, pinned the sides and sewed it again for a fitted skirt. Then I folded the top edge down to make the waistband. (And having the button right at the top there was literally a miracle. I have no idea how I managed it.) A few tweaks and adjustments later and it was done!

Tada!! I liked it so much that I wore it to church on Sunday! My friends could not believe that it was a shirt, until I showed them the pocket.

Next from the pile on the ground will be a pink plaid granny skirt, which I hope to turn into a sundress! I have really been in a sundress groove lately. That's all I want to buy! I just like them so much! =) I plan to take a lot of fabric off the bottom edge and use it to make a bodice and straps. All this DIY stuff has been very exciting. There was a rummage sale last weekend and I got a bunch of good stuff, most of which I don't even need to alter! I have been turned into a thrifting machine. All thanks to my lovely mom. I had no idea that Thrift shopping could be so much fun! Or that I would find so much good stuff! It's amazing.

So these are the DIY adventures I have been up to recently, and I am sure there will be more to come!

The Most Beautiful Dress in the World or Why I Now Love Thrift Stores

Dear folks, the first annual homeschool vintage ball is coming up in February!! And I am sooo excited! You can dress up in any era (including modern) and then you get to dance and have a ton of fun!

Mom and I decided that we were gonna make a dress and I picked out this amazing pattern that I really loved. (It was just a modern bridal gown that we were going to do in blue.) But we nixed that idea due to our inexperience at sewing clothing (and lack of time) and went thrift shopping instead!

Yay thrifting!! (I swear, they had cuter clothes than I would've ever expected!) I tried on about eight dresses. There was a cute little black dress that was probably my second pick. But THEN. Then, I tried on the final dress and it was The One. The dress to top all dresses. Mom picked it out. It's a strapless dress, that was too big. I practically swam in it and had to pinch the back to look decent enough to come out of the dressing room. But it was so beautiful!! And a decent price. (twenty bucks, no biggie.)

We bought it. Tee hee hee. Bonus! It was half off! So we got the dress for only ten dollars! Then we came home and altered it. Yee haw! The dress is a mauve-y pink-y purple-y color. A color I would not have picked for myself, but when I tried it on, it looked so nice! "Dusty Rose." is the word I'm thinking of. It looks beautiful.


So we went to JoAnns to get matching thread and some extra fabric and then with the soft whir whir whirring of the sewing machine and drone of football on t.v. and the guys' excited yells at every touchdown, we went to work.

The bodice was too big, so we moved the zipper in and then we added straps to the dress to make it "homeschool approved." But extra support is always a good thing in my mind. We also made a few repairs in the skirt; that's all. The whole thing was a snap. And for twenty bucks (counting the costs to alter the dress), that's a steal! It was amazing.

So now, I love thrift stores! I had no idea that they would have so much cute stuff! Maybe it's just low expectations, but wow! =D I have not been very impressed with the Twice as Nice close to our house. They're selective about what clothes they take and are on the more pricey side. But thrift stores.... *thumbs up* 

 Post-altered dress. Don't tell my mom I put this unflattering picture of her bedroom up on the internet. It's the only room in the house with a full length mirror. Obviously, a photograph can't capture the true color and depth of the dress. (but the backlighting and messy room don't help either. just look past those things.)

I will be posting more pictures of the dress in all its fullness and glory after the ball. I'm so excited!! I'm such a girl. =)