Dress Refashion

Bought this dress 5 days before my brother-in-law's wedding.

I had bought another dress months before that I was just not happy with. So I took one last desperate trip to the thrift shop to see if I could find something. I found this long evening gown that was black (which didn't thrill me since the dress I had already was boring black) but after closer inspection I found that this dress had some potential for color.

*Sorry for the poor quality of the photos and the lack of photos. Didn't really decide to blog about this until half-way through and was too rushed to remember pictures along the way.

I decided I would cut the dress to the knee.  I then decided to take the (underneath) colored fabric I cut off the dress and make it into a belt/sash.

After that, I realized I could cut the black fabric a couple inches shorter to expose the underneath fabric!

Was excited to find color under the black fabric! Not just any color - but purple! The accent color of the upcoming wedding!

I used my "rolled hem" presser foot on my sewing machine for the two hems.  If you've never tried this presser foot before, do so!  It is great!  I've used it years ago, but I have now discovered a new love for this foot :)

Great video tutorial for rolled hem foot here

I was SO thrilled with the way it turned out!  I really liked that it had purple to compliment the colors in the wedding (since I was partly involved by reading during the ceremony) and it matched perfectly with the Best Man and the Flower Girl! (My Hubby and Daughter :)

My post about the wedding here

For those of you interested...
I spent $11.24 on this dress at the thrift shop (on 25% off day)

Tutor Hat

How to get (almost) perfect letters painted onto fabric.

(My first tutorial! Tutor hat - get it? :)

I needed a birthday gift for my soon-to-be-sis-in-law, and wanted it to be somewhat themed for this season of her life (it being wedding week for her). So, I decided on a Honeymoon Bag - a beach bag filled with beach stuff (they are headed to Aruba).  I wanted something I could personalize, so I found this great beach bag that was yellow and white with this neat roping and grommets up the side. I searched around on pinterest for an easy way to help me "print" on fabric without really printing on fabric with a printer, but I found nothing.  SO, I came up with this technique! (can also be done with images too!)

What you need:

paper

printer (optional)

pencil

paint

paint brush (small)

painter's tape (any tape will do, just had to keep going with the P's ;)
pretzels (optional)

STEP 1  Print out whatever it is you wish to paint in the size you wish to paint it. (if you're not too confident with a paint brush, chose a bolder font.)

*Now I don't have a printer in my apt, so I instead typed up what I wanted in Word and then traced it off the computer screen (carefully) I don't recommend doing it this way, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

STEP 2   Tape your design down to your fabric.  With your pencil, sharpened to a sharp point, carefully start poking holes in the paper. As you poke each hole, stick the pencil point into the fabric and spin the pencil a bit - enough to make a dot. You can poke lots of holes, but then later on that's more marks you have to be sure to cover. I just poked as many as I would need, in key points for each letter. Just imagine you were making a dot-to-dot for yourself. (which is actually what you're doing!)

I peel the page back from time to time to make sure I'm making the dots okay.

Here you can see the papers I used..

See my dots?

STEP 3 Connect the dots! (and sing "connect the dots, la la lala :)

Use your paint and small brush to connect the dots.  I found it VERY helpful to have the paper I used for the dots in front of me to reference when I got confused with which dot went which dot.

Almost half-way there.  Fabric I used (being canvas) not so easy to get perfect lines since it's not a smooth fabric.

Almost done... (by this point I have almost finished watching/listening to "Nightmare in Jamestown" - the 2nd documentary I watched on Netflix while doing this project. :)

DONE! Phewf!

STEP 4: Reward yourself with the pretzels! What? You ate them already!? 

It's FOR SURE not perfect, but I kinda like the "imperfect" look. It's now ready to get stuffed with beach supplies!

This technique has it's flaws - one being if you wanted to paint in white/pastels on a certain fabric, the pencil marks would be tough to hide.  But I suppose you could use colored pencils.

Some may find the painting part tedious, I found it relaxing.

Hope someone finds this post helpful!