Casual dress to Pencil skirt

My sister gave me this casual cotton dress back a while ago.  

I wore it a few times, mainly as lounge clothes up at our cabin.  I felt frumpy in it, so I decided it was time to figure something out with it so I would enjoy wearing it.  I cut the top part completely off, turned it inside out & slipped it on as a skirt.  I then pinned down the sides to get it to form to my body to create a pencil skirt.  I may eventually do an elastic waist, but for now I left the top edges raw.  It is always under shirts or under a belt, so it's not a big deal right now.

I did want to show a new concept today with my item-outfit put together.  I wanted to show how you can take an inspiration picture, like this one I found on Pinterest.

The idea was really cute & different, but the black doesn't work for me.  So I took the inspiration & made it work for me

I used the skirt I made that is brown & cream small stripe, brown leggings & my cream sweater.  The original picture had a plain scarf, but I needed color & texture, so I made that the pop of my outfit.  Something I do often & love to do is put bracelects over my long sleeves.  I was excited to see this picture do that.

So, when you are searching Pinterest for your perfect style, maybe consider that pictures that you wouldn't pick for color purposes, have some great style ideas.  I look at pictures to see if there is anything at all that can inspire me & spark new ideas.  I love having a "challenge" to create my outfits.

In the future, look for more inspiration challenge posts.  It is a great way to step out of the box of what you would normally select to wear, and I am all about trying new things!

Plain Tan Skirt Criss-cross sewing

 I bought this plain tan skirt back quite a few years ago.

It was alright, but I didn't choose to wear it much.  I mainly wore it when I was pregnant because it was stretchy and comfortable to fit on the belly.  but during my last pregnancy, I got it stuck in a metal folding chair and got grease on it that stained.

 The mark wasn't that big, but it was enough for me to not feel comfortable to wear it, but I had an idea on how to save it.

The first step was to get rid of the bow.  I don't like bows, so I just tied some knots  down the ties and sewed them straight across to create a knotted looking belt..... some texture.

The next step was to create some texture in the body of the skirt and to hide the grease mark.  This particular skirt is sewn in sections, so I just worked within each section.  I just folded over and sewed right along the edge, creating a tiny seam.

 I created a criss-cross pattern but did not do any measuring of at all.

I made sure to create a seam over the grease mark so to hide it and not make it noticeable.  I continued all the way around the whole skirt sewing random criss-cross patterns and working in each individual section of the skirt.

This shows it more close up,

and here it is in an outfit.  The texture is so great now and I can actually see myself choosing to wear this now.  I paired it with a new jacket top I bought at the thrift store a few days ago, the cuff from my last post and my great leopard belt I bought from a friend.  Where I live, it has been feeling more and more like fall which means that the layers will be piling on (but I love).  Best time of year for me ;-)

Sweater Cut Off

I don't know about you, but on occasion, I have clothing items that I LOVE, but there is something off & it doesn't feel right when on .  This sweater is one of those items for me.  It is this GORGEOUS rich purple that I love the color of along with the pattern, but the length always drove me batty and made me feel extremely frumpy. 

 When I put it on, it hit me mid thigh and I didn't like how it looked on me.

 I had the idea that I would hem it so that I could keep the ribbed edge on the bottom, but when I went to go line it all up and pin it, I saw that the bottom was wider than the upper part where I wanted the bottom to be... so.......

 I just laid it down on my cutting mat and cut a straight edge where I wanted the edge to be.  I then went on my sewing machine and sewed a zigzag edge to help prevent fraying and the sweater to come unraveled.

I actually quite like the raw edge look in general and this one didn't disappoint.  It gave a bit of a ruffled look and I like how easy and fast it was.

 I have wanted to cut this shorter for quite some time and I am glad I finally took the time to do it.  This will be a great sweater to wear this fall.  I bought the sweater about 2 years ago, but didn't wear it last year because of how frumpy I felt in it when it was long.

Here I have it paired with my favorite simple knee high boots, simple stretchy skinny jeans from Forever 21, favorite chunky belt, lots of bracelets/bangles that I got from other people and a fun accent green shirt underneath for a pop.

I have many more sewing/cutting projects to come.  We cover it all on this blog ;-)