Week 32: Kate

I’m getting red shirted today!!

Week 32: Kate - Before

Thanks to Kate in MD, I received this seemingly awesome top in the mail.  Zac Posen for Target, hello!!  His collection premiered last April and fell during my year of no shopping, so I was just left to drool over the collection via photos.

Zac Posen's Targe Collection

Now from the front, it looks fab.  But the view from the back…pucker up, baby!!

Wrinkled and puckered!

“I’ve been going to Goodwill looking for things to refashion and I spotted this funky top and thought it was too good to be true for only $3!  Until I took the tags off, washed it, and FINALLY noticed the pulled fabric all across the back panel.  For months I hunted for another piece of fabric that would complement the existing colors and feel of the piece thinking I would replace the whole back panel, but I gave up.  And so I bequeath you…”

Aside from the wrinkles, there was puckering on a few spots that even after ironing…

Iron Man!!

…wouldn’t come out.  What shall I do?!

I went to my fabric stash and voila, I came across something that would work well.  Kate even mentioned, “maybe you’ve got that elusive matching fabric in your collection…” and why yes Kate, elusive fabric I do have!

Stretchy lace!

It’s a fun stretchy lace material and I wanted to do something similar to this piece from Topshop.

Topshop's Lacey Look

No lace on the front though, just lace on the back, cutting out the areas with pulled material and subbing in this fabric.  I started off by taping the spots where the fabric was going to lie between…

Tape Time!

…as I needed to do some seam ripping to remove the lavender-snaps-ribbon from the shirt itself before I trimmed out the material.

Seam rippin'!

Once the seams were removed, I took scissors and began slitting three lines across the back of the shirt, in the pulled areas, using the snaps as guides.

Open backed!

I took the piece to my ironing board, turned it inside out, folded, and ironed the edges down so there were three strips cut out.

Folded and ironed!

I cut a panel of lace fabric and affixed the whole thing to the back of the shirt, by pinning it to all the free edges.  Once it was pinned down, I turned it inside out again…

Added my lace...

…and sewed each strip in place.

The front…still looks the same.

Same front!

But the back…hello see through panels of lace!!

Week 32: Kate - After (New Back!!)

No more pulled fabric and instead matching sheer lace to fix those issues.

What a fun piece to work on – Kate, thank you for sharing!!