Bytes & Bobbins

As promised, I’m back with another refashion!

This one is a dress that I paid $1.99 for at the thrift shop.  It looks to be from the early 80s (it has a definite 60s flare, but it’s too loose in the waist and sits a little too low to be from then).  It’s a really cute mint green color that I just love.

I removed the sleeves, shortened the hemline, and took the waist in/up.  I love how it turned out!!

I signed up for wardrobe refashion…again.  This comes on the heels of my husband announcing that I’m being “cut off” from his millions  :)  In all seriousness, we did have to have a nice long convo about my spending habits, and my inability to temper myself when it comes to SALES SALES SALES!  I’ll admit it, I have a shopping problem and I’m at the breaking point, or at least, my tiny closet is, so I’ve signed up for a two month membership to the refashioning blog.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Wardrobe refashion, the premise is that you sign up for a certain amount of time, and in that time period, you are forbidden from buying new clothes.  You can buy thrifted clothing and alter it, or “refashion” something already in your closet. It’s fun!  And it’ll help curb my habit.

I’ve been busy already.  I had a whole load of thrifted items sitting on my sewing table, just waiting to be altered, but I’m not going to show them all at once!

The first is an orange/purple/red skirt with an elastic waist that I scored it for a mere 99 cents at the local thrift shop. I was GOING to cut off to just above the knee, but I think I’ll try it like this for a while:

Check Back tomorrow for another morsel! :)

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My Picture ledges are finished!  You can see how excited I am by the following ridiculous photo montage:

On a more serious note, they worked out without many tweaks being made mid-construction, which is unusual for most of my projects.  I normally take a “figure it out as I go along” approach but to convince my dear husband, Neal, to help me out on this, I needed pretty reliable plans.

He started by gluing the pieces together.  Notice Fran, “The Foreman” looking on, approvingly.  He set them aside and allowed them to dry.

After they were dry he used some carpentry nails to secure the back and front pieces to the middle board.  I sanded the glues off the bottoms and spray-painted them a matte black.

I was a little unsure of how I wanted to arrange them on the wall.  you remember my original plan.  But we ended up changing the lengths, so I cut some craft paper to the general shape of the ledges and taped them to the walls to get exactly the right balance and spacing.  Neal claims to do his best carpentry work in his Hugh Hefner PJs.

After drilling the holes and lining everything up perfectly…

We finally have our picture ledges on the wall.  I haven’t exactly finished styling them yet, but hey — they made it on the wall.

Shabby Apple is a great little store with lots of gorgeous dresses.  I’ve been wanting one for some time and now that Meg Nielsen has a giveaway going on, I’m hoping I’ll finally get my shot!  To enter Click here and leave a message about how much you love this dress!  :)

I’ve been experimenting with ways to wear my new Dizzy Floral Dress from J.Crew.

J. Crew Dizzy Floral Dress – No. 2 by RDewing07 featuring J Crew

Dizzy Floral J.Crew Dress by RDewing07 featuring J Crew dresses

J. Crew Dizzy Floral Dress – No. 3 by RDewing07 featuring J Crew dresses

You know, I love JCrew, but they are darn expensive. In any given week, I’ll surf their website maybe 3 times looking at the new stuff, hoping to figure out some way to replicate their looks without spending too much dough. Usually it’s not too hard. But there’s one (actually more than one, but for the sake of my argument and the length of this post, just work with me) item of clothing that’s really hard to “fake,” as in hard to find/make a knock off: Bathing suits.
I’ve had a few NICE bathing Suits in my time, I’ve had many more cheap-o bathing suits and from these suits I’ve learned the aforementioned truth. Cheap bathing suits are great, but if you’re looking for something you want to keep past one season, they really can’t be relied upon. The colors fade , the fabric gets “picked” very easily, and it looses it’s stretch all too quickly. It’s one of those wardrobe staples that you know will get put through the wringer and for that reason, I’ve decided to invest this time around.  So after drooling over the jcrew one pieces for about 3 months,  I used the 30% off sales items and purchased this, and just because I had the discount and it’s so cute, I got this.  :)  And now I wait for them to arrive.

I’m starting a new reoccurring blog post.  It’s called, FASHION POLICE! — original, I know.  Today, while surfing the target.com shoe department, I saw something that inspired me to make this new topic. They are called Sun Luks, by Muk Luks, and they are U-G-L-Y.  Someone should take these shoes out to the back of the barn and PUT THEM DOWN.  They’re suffering really, suffering through their own hideousness (that might not be a word — but words escape me right now.)  What do you think of these thing?  Can you think of ANY WAY to style these so that they don’t assault the eyes?

In my apartment, I have a long wall (about 8 feet) that spans the distance between the front door and the dining room window.  This also means that it occupies two rooms.  Does this make sense?  Am I being confusing?  There is no wall that separates the dining and living rooms, but we’ve put a bookshelf (this one) between the two to create two separate spaces.  This means we have a wall, that’s long, bare, and awkward. Let me draw a picture.

Up to now, I’ve been attempting to treat the wall as two separate panels, the one that resides in the dining room and the one that is visible in the living room.  It isn’t working.  I’ve decided to create a gallery wall of sorts.  I’ll be using picture ledges.  Have you guys seen these things?  I love them!  Crate and Barrel has them, Ikea has them, Target has them, but NO ONE has them in the  right color or length for my tastes; enter, stage-left my DIY skillz  (Did I really just spell that with a Z? Indeed I did.)  So I’m planning to try to make these things out of some lumber and some screws…Here’s my plan:
We will be using the screw on the front, but my husband assures me we can put putty over the head of the screw and it won’t be noticeable once I paint it.  I want 3 of these things: one at 5 feet, one at 3,5 feet and one at 2 feet.  I estimate this will cost under $40, we’ll see.  And for fun, here’s my illustration of what I *hope* it’ll look like come Monday.

So, It’s been a year since my last post.  I realize this.  I think I’m going to give it another go — this whole blogging thing, that is.  And I’d like to start things off with an amazing Ready to Wear Collection from Marc Jacobs.  Seriously — I can’t afford any of these things, but I can certainly try to cobble together a pattern and sew some of them.

The brown, two-piece outfit reminds me of a refashion from this blogger.  Maybe I can accomplish something like that, also, maybe I can just shoot for NOT taking year long breaks from blogging again :)  I’d count that a success.