So I got my hair did the other day, a trim and a dye job.  It's such a refreshing feeling walking out of the hair salon.  You feel like a new person.  A slightly brighter, better version of your former drab self. Well that's how I feel anyway.  I was thinking about this as I was going through my closet.   I have a few items that I have totally worn the shit out of.  I've worn them so many times I'm absolutely sick of looking at them, much like my hair by week five when the gray starts showing.  Your clothes can start looking gray to you as well.  Take for instance this white shirt....

Last fall/winter this shirt was in weekly rotation.  It was perfect to pair under my favorite green cardigan.  Great for those once a week work days when I get up and don't want to have to think about what I'm going to wear.  Well it has started to look a little gray.  The white is no longer a bright white anymore and the armpits...let's not even go there.  I could never wear this without a cardigan because of those scary yellow deodorant stains.  Don't need to scare anybody, all though I've probably scared y'all.  Sorry, just keeping it real.  Anyhoo I remembered I had a bottle of brown Rit dye and decided to give my first dye job.  If it didn't work out I wouldn't be too sad about having to trash this shirt, even though it was my favorite, it's seen better dayz.

First thing I did was to remove the white buttons.  I then got a 3 gallon stock pot and filled it half the way full with water and cranked up the stove to bring it to a boil.  While I was waiting for the water to come to a boil I rinsed my shirt in hot water and wrung it out thoroughly.  Got an old dishpan that I didn't care if it stained and filled it with the boiling stove water.  Added about a half cup of the brown dye (which was probably more than enough) and added my shirt to the mix.  Now the directions say to stir your clothing continuously for 30 minutes to an hour.  Alrighty then, I don't think so... I stirred it for about 10 minutes continuous (till my arm got tired) then off and on, letting it soak for a full hour.

After letting it soak a full hour I removed it from it's warm, toasty bath and rinsed it under warm water until the water ran clear.  Threw it in the washer and washed it on the hot/cold cycle then of course tossed it in the dryer.  And here is the end result...

This is after a full day of wear so don't mind them wrinkles.  It's turned out a little lighter than expected because of the cotton/poly blend fabric.  I like how the thread around the ruffle provides a nice contrast.  I mixed the buttons up to keep it interesting.

In this close up you can see the marbly (is that a word) effect the dye had on cotton/poly blend. 

I'm excited to get some more wear out of this shirt.  It's like new again.  This is just one way you can do some thriftin in your own closet and breathe some new life into those over worn garments.  Have any of you dyed your clothes to give them a new look?  

Who hasn't heard or seen of the Sewaholic Renfrew?  Well if you haven't pull yourself out from under that rock because this is one sweeet pattern!

Friday I woke up got all ready for work and realized we had freezing rain.  Just as I was about to get on Facebook to see if anyone posted about road conditions (gotta love facebook for that) my hubs called me from his work and told me to STAY HOME!  Well you'll hear no back talk out of me!  It was pretty bad out and my car is like one gigantic ice skate.  I could of easily been one of the slide offs on the highway I kept hearing about all that morning.  So what else to do but sew all day, yay!

I used a fun rainbow print cotton knit jersey from Girl Charlee.  I only had one yard of this fabric and the pattern calls for a little over 2 yards.  I really had to finagle the pattern and fabric to get what I needed out of it.  The neckline was supposed to be cut on the bias.  I didn't have enough fabric to do that so it was cut on the straight grain.  Totally explains why my neckline is now floppy and stretched out after I washed it.  Now I know why bias cuts are important. Part of the learning experience I guess!  I really wish I could find more of this fabric because I would totally fix my goof.

I can't say I disliked anything about this pattern.  Easy to follow and super quick.  I took others advice and measured the pattern pieces and compared to other tops I like the fit of.  This really helped me a lot when it came to choosing a size.  I cut a size zero and the only alterations I will have to make next time is enlarging the circumference of the sleeve as it is a little snug.  I also extended the length of the top which I think I can get away with not doing next time.  You can see the wrinkles forming so that's telling me it may be a little too long.

Be prepared to see a lot more of these tops from me.  I love a quick easy project.  I've got some more Girl Charlee fabric set out to make the cowl neck version.  Catch ya on the flip flop! Peace..

I love going to thrift stores.  Sometimes I find gems, sometimes I find turds.  But even a turd can be polished into a sparkling gem!  All you need is an imagination, a clothes pin and a sewing machine.  Quick projects for me are making over thrift store turds.  This one here was a little challenging because it was about 5 times too big.

First thing I did was cut out the sleeves.  Sleeves are my nemesis so I hated doing this because I knew they'd be a bitch for me to sew back in.  But I sucked it up and grabbed the scissors.  I then tried it on and figured out how much I needed to take in the sides.  I took in each side 3 inches and it was still a little big and prego looking.  I decided to use elastic to gather the waist to make it more defined.  I marked off where my waist hit on the shirt, measured out my elastic the size of my waist, pinned the elastic to my shirt matching up to my chalk line then started my machine and hoped for the best.  While sewing the elastic I gently pulled on it so it would gather up (if that makes any sense at all).

Let me know if you'd like to see more of these posts! I could make this a weekly Thursday tradition. 

Hope y'all are having a good week.  Vito says, "Breathe...it's almost over!"

So I was strolling through JoAnn Fabrics the other day on my lunch hour trying my best to avoid the fabric section.  Let's not kid here I didn't try really hard at it.  I always have to visit the clearance section and my no buy rule has pretty much went out the window.  So I came across what I thought at first glance was a hideous jungle print.  Something I would of never looked at twice if it wasn't for Jungle January going on right now at Pretty Grievances.  My blog roll is swimming in  leopard, tiger and zebra prints that have opened my eyes to stepping out of my own comfort zone.  If anything @ $1.50 a yard and being a shiny polyester this would be good for a muslin.  So I bought a couple yards anxious with how it would turn out.  I chose to make Gertie's Portrait Blouse...

If you don't have Gertie's book you should really really get it!  It's jammed packed full of Gertie's own vintage patterns and variations.  This is the first pattern I've make from the book besides drafting my own peter pan collar with her instruction.

This top was easy peasy!  A total of 4 pattern pieces all cut on the fold.  I mean how much easier do ya want.  You could trace, cut and sew all in one day!  Sweeet!  There are bust darts, front and back tucks for hugging your curves and a side handpicked lapped zipper to keep in line with the vintage feel.  I opted for an invisible zipper well cause I'm lazy.  The seams are all finished with pinking shears also to keep in line with the vintage feel, seriously..not because I'm lazy!

I cut a size 2 based on my bust size.  Next time I will cut a size larger and adjust if needed.  The armholes are a little tight and  I was only able to use a 1/2 inch seam on the sides or it would of been too tight in the waist area.  You can see it is really short so I will add about 3 inches to the length as well.

I rather like it with this orange cardi.

Recently I was given a couple of blog awards by the lovely Cari @ Cari Homemaker Deserves a Cocktail.   Thank you so much!!  It's a good feeling to know that others are out there reading along. *blushing*  Make sure to go take a look at the leopard print skirt Cari just made.  It has a very retro vibe going on that I just love!

The first of the awards is the Premio Primavera award.

This  award is given as a thank you for your comments.  The rules are to acknowledge the last nine commenters on your blog and link their blogs as well (if they have one). So to the next nine peeps, thank you so much for reading and all your comments. I heart you guys!!

Miss Crayola Creepy

Making It Well

Ginger Makes

made by J

iheartfabric

Cuckoo Chanel

House of Pinheiro

Linda L

Bimble and Pimble

And a big thank you to everyone else who comments and is not mentioned above.  You all get an award in my book!

The next two awards were also given to me by Cari.  Thank you!!

The rules are as follows..(why do all these awards have so many rules??)

1. Thank the person who gave you the award. - Thank you again Cari!! :)

2. List 7 things about yourself

3. Name others to pass the award on to

7 things about me...

 1.  I work at a hospital. I'm an accountant and I get to play with all their money..mwahahaha

 2.  I love to cook. In fact I'm so good at it the fire alarm cheers me on every time!

 3.  My celebrity crush is Andre Benjamin.  He's got style.

 4.  I have a handbag addiction.  I'd pick a new handbag over shoes any day.

 5.  I love movies and books about the mafia and true crime.

 6.  Is there anything better than a cannoli??

 7.  I could eat eggplant parm every single day and never tire of it. (and cannoli's for that matter)

 8.  I think I was Italian in another life.

I pass this award on to you! Everyone of you who takes time out of their day to read my blog and cheer me on.  I would love to hear 7 random facts about yourselves...do tell!

One of my goals this year was to get rid of my ginormous pile of fabric scraps I've been accumulating.  I hate throwing anything away so if I think I can somehow recycle it later I'm keeping it.  I have a huge Mood Fabrics bag in my closet spilling over with a year's worth of fabric scraps. Thought I'd share real quickly one easy way to get rid of those scraps and spruce up your decor as well...Pillows!!!

I had a coworker ask me to shorten the length on some hot pink curtains for her daughter's room.  I took the leftovers and made this bolster aka neck pillow following this super easy tutorial.  I finished it this evening in under 2 hours.  Note the pet pillow I made in the first picture is stuffed only with fabric scraps and it's rather heavy.  For this neck pillow I stuffed it with a mixture of fabric scraps and pillow stuffing so that it would be fluffy and comfy to lay your head on.  So that is something you might want to consider.  Do you want a flat hard turd to lay your head on or a soft fluffy cloud??? Maybe that's why Vito won't lay on his pillow...hmmm.   She also brought me a couple of old blue pillows that needed sprucing up so I made the black envelope style pillow covers using this tutorial. 

So if your a hoarder like me and you save even the tiniest of scraps I found pillows is one of the easiest, quickest ways to get rid of them.  Do you have any other ways to use them?

Happy New Year everyone! Hope these first 6 days have been good to you so far.  I've started out the new year with a new sewing room, so-so skirt and a ridonkulous goal (more on that later).  I finished the Colette Beignet this evening, or actually last night since it's technically Sunday @ 2am now.  What can I say I'm a a night owl. 

I'm not really sure how I feel about this skirt.  The fabric is a wide wale corduroy that I got in a mystery bundle at Fabric Mart.  I'm not really crazy about this color.  It's just off.  I wish it was a darker brown. Better than that I wish it was navy blue because that's the color I really wanted to make this skirt in but since I already had this and I'm on a no buy looks like this had to do...sniff..sniff..

This was an intermediate pattern and it proved to be just that to me.  This was my first skirt with an attached lining.  Attaching the lining to the facing was tricky, tricky, tricky!  I cut a size zero and the only alteration I made was to shorten the seam allowance just a tad when sewing the facing/lining to the skirt shell (it was just a tad snug around the waist).  I also omitted the pockets and belt loops.  I originally had the pockets attached but the bulkiness of the corduroy caused the pockets to kind of protrude on my hips. Not a good thing so I took them out.

I had a hell of a time with my buttonholer and my blind hem foot.  It took me two hours to figure out how to even use my blind hem foot then I had to practice, practice, practice.  My sewing machine instructions were pretty vague on how to program the machine for the blind hem food foot mode (omg can you tell I'm hungry, my stomach is literally growling).  I finally figured it out after a lot of cussing and I like the outcome.  I will use this foot more often!  I wish I could say the same about my buttonholer.  If you follow me on instagram you seen just a little peek at what my buttonholer was doing.  I haven't the foggiest of what the problem was...janky buttonhole foot...user stupidity (probably the latter).  I swore I was not going to hand sew 11 buttonholes so I kept on with horrible results.  I ended up using a tiny zigzag stitch to finish out most of my buttonholes.  Let me tell ya they look HORRIBLE.  Luckily my thread blends in pretty well and you can only tell close up.  I'm terrified to ever have to use my buttonhole foot again.

And lastly what the *smurf* happened down here...

Oh and about my ridonkulous goal.  If you follow Karen @ Did You Make That, then you read her post on the 2013 sewlutions jar.  Basically you commented on her blog what your goal was for the year.  She then puts everyone's goals in a jar then at the end of the year we all come back and fess up on whether we accomplished them or not.  Well Miss Shanni Big Pants here said she was going to sew one thing a week. WTH.  I don't even think I thought that through I just started frantically typing.  I just got done saying quality over quantity now I'm going to try this???  Oh well we will see, I won't stress myself out about it.  It will be fun to try though.  I did accomplish it back in September when I made myself a monthly goal of just that but that was only for 4 weeks, we are talking about 52 weeks here - 52 items!!  Oh and they can be either, clothing, accessories or refashions.  Did any of you throw a goal into Karen's Sewlutions jar?

After reading everyone's comments telling me NOT to turn this skirt into a bag I decided to let it sit for a few days and come back to it.  So glad I did.  I was able to fix the uneven hem.  I just simply let out the hem on the side that was shorter.  I let it out as much as I could and it was still off  a tad.  At this point I was unsure what to do so I threw it in the wash while I stewed over it.  Well what do you know after I washed it, it shrunk it up some and it looks almost perfect.  Funny how those things turn out.