National Sewing Month: ReMake

crossposted at BlogHer

The themes of National Sewing Month are to ReUse, ReMake and ReStyle. This week, I will be looking at ideas and inspiration for ReMaking items.

EVEnl shared a great ReDo of a Tshirt shrug at Cut Out + Keep. With just some simple cutting, sewing a casing and adding some ribbon, we get the basic shape. Take a look, though, through the project gallery. By adding lace, yo-yo florets, diffrent ribbon styles -or even simply changing where the shrug is tied- different looks are created. LOVE.

JoAnne's Fabrics offers a free pattern for a felted laptop sleeve (pdf). While the directions call for using store-bought felt, I want to make one of these from a felted sweater. Diane Gilliland wrote a good basic tutorial on Felting Sweaters for CraftStylish. And if laptop sleeves aren't your bag (ooo bad pun), ThreadBangers has a nice round up of felted sweater projects including Leethal's own wool boots tutorial on craftster.

Nik at {appliance} came up with a great project: using 2 large scarves, she designed a wonderfully wearable scarf dress. You might not have enough time to create your own and enter the project sponsored by Sewing Republic and Burda Style (my challenge would be finding the scarves) but then maybe you do.

Kristen at Thimbly Things has been remaking clothing into skirts. First she made her Happy Friday Skirt from a dress, then she turned J. Crew pants into a skirt, too.

Got Neckties? About.com's Family crafts offers this great little project to turn an unused necktie into a small purse or cellphone case. (hat tip to Sweater Surgery for the link.)

Cassandra at Dandelion Bones seems to be taking the theme of ReMaking very seriously. She's reworked the same tank dress two times. Or is that three?? After completing the project once -and wearing the dress one day-she determined that it needed some reworking. So she cut off the skirt, improvised a new design and started sewing. Then:

There came that point where I was sewing along, perfectly proud that I was constructing without a pattern to guide me, and I stopped to flip the skirt right side out. One side was wonky. I had somehow pleated the length that should not have had any gathers. For a moment I was ready to quit, and I actually turned my machine off, unplugged it, and threw the "skirt" aside. I pouted for a minute, but I just couldn't bear the thought of that fabric going to waste, and I picked it up to look again. The solution was simple. It did involve a bit of seam ripping (which I just do not like at all,) but it didn't take long, and I revved the machine back up and finished.

The final project is so cute, that I'm sure she's glad she took the time to make it just what she wanted.

And finally, check out all the blogs that MaryAnne at Thrift Craft Mama highlighted in Favorite Sewing Blogs post.


I also blog at: Weight for Deb and BlogHer on Wednesdays and Saturdays.