Remake: Black & White Tattered Dress

You got a preview of today's dress already...

The dress was literally coming apart at the seams!

Lots of frayed edges and thread stragglers...

...that just didn't make it wearable.  However, I was ready to nurse it back to health á la Young Frankenstein (gotta love classic Mel Brooks!!) and get it to a state where I could wear it out and about...

Oh, and I wore it out and about!!

I began by removing the shoulder pads that had become filled with bits of sand-like particles.  The original pad had disintegrated and bits of the new matter were coming out of the seams.  (My floor was covered in the stuff!)

The front of the piece basically had two sections open - the left and right side, both detached at the waist.  I wanted to piece it all together so I cinched the right portion and pinned it to the waist, and then repeated the action doing the same thing to the left side.  I pinched the material...

...and then pinned it to the waist.

I stitched the new waist in place...

...and had a brand new, connected dress!

The arms and bottom of the dress were fraying, so I pinned and ironed down both areas, prepping for a new arm seam and hem.  After everything was pinned, I stitched both in place for a non-raw edge in either area.

Now that the top portion was reconnected, but still open down the center, I folded back each side of the piece at a 45-ish degree angle to make a sharp collar...

...and then used a brooch to pin and keep the center of the dress closed.

Check out the after look...

Sleek and classic, right??

I feel like the original piece either had buttons that had been removed at some point, or there was some sort of seam down the center keeping it together.

What I do know is that the pockets were perfectly placed, and the new brooch-gathered waist was working like a charm!

It was the perfect ensemble for a night out with a bunch of friends doing some downtown LA gallivanting.

We stopped at the new ACE Hotel which totally fit my monochromatic color scheme.

Black and white tiles, black and white jacket, black and white dress...

I love the way this turned out!  (And, I have to come here more often to shoot more after looks!!)

I dressed my dress down with a Topshop jacket and a pair of Moschino heels I scored at Buffalo Exchange.  A little mix of cocktail and casual to outfit the evening!

Remake: Black & White Tattered Dress

I made a beeline for this piece when I saw the cool black and white print, however when I picked it up, I didn't expect it to grab it by the torn waist!

It was in one piece, however the entire front of the dress was in two pieces...

...and the sleeves along with the bottom of the dress were shredded and pulling.

Tattered is just the thing to call this one.  I wore it to a little "since Monday is a holiday, we're going out on a school night" party last eve and will have all the after photos up later today!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!  Such a wonderful day to reflect on all the goodness he brought our way and a reminder to continue doing (and being) good to others.

Meg's NDAD Creation

I loved sweatshirts. I live in them a lot of the time (I'm wearing a zip up hoodie right now!). I redid one á la Flashdance for my book and when I saw this one that Meg repurposed, I just had to share!

I just recently did a resize of a large sweatshirt to make it more fitted. This was a sweatshirt from my undergrad years that was just too large. Luckily, the late 90s were all about over-sized clothes, so in the grand scheme of things at the time the size was inconsequential. Not to mention that I was at an engineering school where dressing stylishly didn't feel all that crucial, except during job fairs (note to current students: sweatshirts are generally not acceptable job fair attire).

I wore the Clarkson one on and off throughout college, and sometime afterwards I passed it over to my mom, who recently passed it back over to me, and it has since been living at the bottom of the fleece & sweatshirt pile.

(Um, can I get a what, what to the rest of you guys with one of these piles? I have two. Not good. Really. Not. Good.)

Fast forward to summer 2012, when I bought a sweatshirt from my grad school. My, how times have changed. Semi-fitted with a slight scoop-neck. What one might even call "trendy."

Meanwhile, the one from Lesley is worn on a pretty regular basis since it fits nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I decided the Clarkson (CU) one needed a makeover in the style of the Lesley (LU) one.

Time to see how Meg gives her 90s sweatshirt some 2014 love! PS, I LIVED in oversized sweatshirts in high school. Dare I say it, I even rocked a dickie underneath. Where were the fashion police then???

I started off by cutting the sleeves and then measured them against the LU sweatshirt. 

I pinned them and sewed a new seam from cuff to armpit, trimming the excess with my pinking shears (I left about a half-inch of fabric).

For the body, I laid out the LU sweatshirt on top of the CU one to get a rough idea of the width I wanted, and then pinned from armpit to waist. There is slight shaping as the band at the bottom of the sweatshirt was only slightly larger than I wanted it to be.

I sewed the seams and trimmed the excess, leaving about a half-inch of fabric. A quick try-on and the fit is good!

After the fitting, leaving the body of the sweatshirt inside out, I turned the sleeves right-side out and lined up the upper opening of the sleeve with the arm opening of the sweatshirt. I'm clearly an expert at this eye-balling thing as the sleeves each fit perfectly. Go me!

I pinned the sleeves to the body so that there would be about a half-inch seam allowance.

I used an old Singer Featherweight, that hasn't seen much action in the last few years, that decided to crap out on me!! I can't blame it for taking a break., however, when I took it to the repair shop, "teacher magic" kicked in and the dang thing worked as soon as the guy plugged it in (teacher magic is what I call it since it's often my students claiming something won't work or happen - usually in a lab - until I happen to be in the general vicinity of the students). Grr.

Since I was already in Middlebury helping my mom with a gardening job, I took the liberty of using her machine to finish it up. When I sewed the arm holes I stretched out the fabric a little as I went around because I didn't have elastic thread, or a serger (wish list!), and I didn't want there to be any restriction in the seams.

Less than two hours (total) and one much-better-fitting sweatshirt emerged:

Hello new/old well-fitting sweatshirt!!

I love what you've been doing, have been following you since almost the beginning, and enjoy seeing the process of each piece!

Meg, thank you for giving some love to your alma mater's sweatshirt! I have one that is still in that fleece/sweatshirt pile - this pile actually sits in a plastic under-the-bed bin - that needs some TLC! I just love that you turned it into something that you will wear on the regular now! Now your Clarkson sweatshirt doesn't have to be jealous of your Lesley sweatshirt anymore!! Keep up your awesome remakes!

For more from Meg, click HERE!