Two successful re-fashioning projects

I've withdrawn from my sewing room for the time being as it doubles as the spare room and I'm expecting Bex and family to stay vairy soooon. While I'm super looking forward to the Family staying, I am saaaaaaddddd to vacate my awesome room. I have plans to swap things up a bit - on the cheap, of course - once I've banished the Debt Unicorn. I especially like the idea of cubby holes with all my fabric and potential re-fashioning bits and pieces neatly rolled up and stacked so that I can have all the potential at my fingertips. Also: huge jars of buttons and thread (I inherited a huge bag of thread in assorted colours and it's too pretty to hide away, I think).

The point being - last night was my last chance to get on the sewing machine before I packed everything up, and I didn't want to get myself embroiled in a big sewing project (like the epic pencil skirt that I'm intending to make). So, inspired by two recent-find blogs (Refashionista and Cotton & Curls) I did some re-fashioning instead - cut up some old clothes and made them exponentially more fabulous.

The first is a sleeveless sort of peplum-shirt-top that I've refashioned out of a man's shirt. Mostly I followed the tutorial given by Liz on Cotton & Curls to the letter, but I was a bit confused about the sleeves. In the end I cut them a bit bigger that I'd intended, so had to insert darts under the arms to prevent gaping and then just finished the sleeves with a simple narrow hem. Easy!

The second top was a re-refashion of one of two shirts that Shannon had made in India (thus: years ago). The fabric is AWESOME, but because he didn't specify the kind of collar he wanted, both shirts were made with collars that were too Seventies for his needs. I did a pretty shonky remake of this shirt a year or so back but I was never happy with how it worked out - mostly because I cut the neck too wide and the straps never stayed on my shoulders. Last night, though, I was inspired! I took the top in through the back on an angle - narrower across the shoulders and then wider through the rest of the back to make it sort of triangular in shape. I added in a few pleats across the neckline to stop any gaping, and then recut the hemline of the shirt. I stuffed this up - it was supposed to be longer in the front and shorter on the sides (like a man's shirt) but I had the sewing fever at this point and had also drunk a couple of gins. No matter - I'm much happier with the way that it looks now.

Finally - not a re-fashioning project but - I'm super into the way my hair looks after I swum in the sea yesterday evening, so I've made myself some salt spray for my hair. All the recipes I looked at had things like conditioner in them, but given that I use apple cider vinegar for conditioner, I didn't think that'd be much good (also I would smell even more like vinegar all the time?). So, I've fudged it a bit - used water, sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil and some 'organic setting lotion' that I used to do wet sets with when my hair was longer. Feeling pretty good about it at the moment, but I just added it to my already-salty hair, so that's somewhat misleading. I think salt spray is the answer to my current hair woes so I'm feeling pretty hopeful.