Before I jet off to Hawai’i

with my hard-working, sexy, generous husband (not ‘partner’ people, HUSBAND – I swear, the next person who calls him my ‘partner’ is getting a clop up side the head) I was going to do a round up of A Year Without Clothes for you, which began December 1, 2008.

 

However, if you see iwom.wordpress.com you’ll see why I can’t do that today! Oi, the state of my nails as I type this out while taking a quick break from the Big Garden Project, which was supposed to happen yesterday.

 

I’ll just say there’s a whole lot of dresses, tops, bottoms, Ts, blouses and shirts, bags, a hat and a new winter coat in my closet that were not there this time last year. I’ll count ‘em all when we get back.

 

I’ll pick up again after Christmas, but since AYWOC is over, the new blog will be:

 

alifewithoutclothes.wordpress.com

 

Thanks for reading along.

Inch by inch

I trimmed the top of the skirt

until it fit the bottom edge of the new top

and in no time at all

I had my refashioned dress. Just the zip to put in and into the carry-on it goes — right at the top so I can change into it on the LAX-HNL leg!

How great will a strand of pearls look with this?

 

 

Braveheart

I was brave enough to cut the new top last night from my scraps

and take the pockets and zip out of the dress I wrote about last month.

I just need to get on with it now. Faint heart never won the refashion game. However, first up this afternoon it’s a quick camisole to match the wrap skirt from the ‘Ju-Ju stripe’. I was going to make one when I made the matching wrap skirt this spring. I said in the April 21 post I was going to make it – I just didn’t say exactly WHEN….

You’d think

this green silk was from my travels in Asia these past two years.

You would be mistaken. It’s post-WWII, given to me by a lady for whom I did a great many alterations back when I was still single. She suggested that I would be able to make a skirt from this narrow width silk but I never fancied that so kept a lookout for just the right pattern.

I found a simple jacket pattern but it was not a lined jacket so I had to use my knowledge base of such things to figure out how to make the lining. The shape is what attracted me so there was no question about making it happen.

This is yet another project I found during the post-floors-finally-going-down sort out of my boxes of fabric and craft supplies: the jacket and lining was all cut out, notes were scribbled, it was partially assembled and the interfacing applied

but set aside in favour of other projects. Or maybe it was one of those things that stumped me and needed some back-burner time. I honestly can’t remember. At the moment I am researching dressmaking forms so probably won’t pick up this particular project again until I have acquired one of those.

At (very) long last

I have decided what to do with the floral print sleeveless top I took apart at the very start of AYWOC.

This stripe shirt was a hand-me-down from my mother from a good six or seven years ago. It almost went into my latest charity bag but for some reason stayed out and found its way into the B-list refashioning pile.

It was easy enough to draft new cuffs from the old ones

 and pop off the rather large stripe pocket to replace with the smaller one from the floral print shirt

and swap over the collar. Just the buttonholes to do later today then.

Leftover Leftovers

Even had enough left of the ivy fabric to cut that apron I’ve been talking about. The D-rings from the briefcase handle harvest will be just the thing for the neck strap and waist tie.

One very special dress

I am not getting in to this size ten (USA) dress again. I was wearing it the day my husband asked me to marry him (well, during the day itself – I was wearing something else at the ACTUAL moment of asking) so if it is going to be refashioned with the aid of a large chunk of the same fabric, I want it to be right. I bought the fabric at Liberty in the spring of 1990 on my first trip to visit my husband in his homeland. This is not just any old dress to refashion.

I’ve had this Simplicity dress pattern since before AYWOC (as per the rules). Since the skirt is kinda sorta the same shape and size as the skirt of the dress, I thought I could make a new top for a new look dress.

I brought this project to Hong Kong but could never bring myself to start unpicking and/or  cutting. Since I just really couldn’t bear for this to go wrong I pulled a Scarlet O’Hara and made a test dress from an old curtain. We had a long thin main room in our London studio: we divided a third of it off with this floor to ceiling curtain.

(So it would not be too heavy I put scallops along the top edge, to which I sewed very lightweight rings. It did the job for nearly a dozen years).

A quick test layout proved there would be enough, so I just cut it out and made it while I was on a roll.

 

An overnight hang and hem is all it needs. Now I just need to be brave enough to take the seam ripper to my iris print dress.

Tokyo Bag

To take my mind off the fact Himself is once again away to London, this time for 2 nights, I had a little surf when I got back from the airport while waiting for the shops to open. I want some fun projects for tonight and while I have plenty of things to from which to chose — in a variety of mediums — it was worth a look to see if anything new took my fancy.

Mind, I do have this, acquired on my last trip to Tokyo. I don’t really need another handbag, but who does? No English, but the pictures are really good.

A while back I saw a really cute bag on another refashioner’s blog which was actually called a Tokyo Bag but I do not remember the name of the blog! I think I got to it via the Burda site. Looks like it’s back to Google before Asda.

Back to summer clothes

Took a wee break from working on the wool coat Saturday afternoon, which was in fact a break from helping Himself with the latest bit of his N-gauge layout where three or more hands were needed for the points wiring.

I tear things out of catalogues and magazines for ideas; this Land’s End blouse picture has been in the folder for a few months. I chose one of my sister’s shirts for this quick transformation.

It was already ¾ sleeves so I only had to take off ten inches. Next came a narrow hem and three rows of gathering stitches five inches each.

So the gathering stitches would pull up evenly (and not accidentally pull through) I tied the ends together.

It took a little fussing to get a two inch section but once that was sorted it was only a matter of topstitching over the gathers and pulling out the first threads.

Plan B for the IWOM (and the BH)

Nothing like getting a call from your Better Half — a call you thought was being made in one city but in fact was coming from another — and being told his plane turned round halfway with a technical fault. To take my mind off the fact he was sitting on said plane while it was being checked out I started our summer to winter wardrobe changeover.

I made these bright madras capris for our first trip to Hawai’i (2004). They did not come to Hong Kong with us (I believe someone called them ‘a bit loud’ for the city). There were — of course – scraps and I came across those a few weeks back when sorting through several boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day for a good two years. Very naughty that. You should really air out and refold your fabric ever so often.

Once I knew everything was okay (the next call was from the office, the flight having been abandoned) I gravitated toward the craft room instead of heading to the conservatory where pots of paint waited. I grabbed a pair of faded lightweight jeans and started this wrap skirt. Kinda forgot to take pictures at the start. Sorry.

It’s pretty basic: cut off the legs, cut those in half again, open them up at the inner seams and lay them out so they start to form a semi circle. (I made a grey linen skirt in a similar fashion which should be in the ‘Bottoms’ category). There’s something similar in my little blue square book for denim refashions, though I am doing the waistband/tie a little bit different and the madras band at the bottom is quite a bit deeper than that pattern calls for. Gone are my days of wearing skirts and dresses ABOVE the knee.

I need a little thinking time so might as well get down to my paint. I wonder if I could do an all-refashioned packing for the Hawai’i trip at the end of November (which marks the end of AYWOC).