Tales of a Newbie Refashionista

I found an awesome website called Wardrobe Refashion. You sign up and take a pledge to not buy new manufactured clothes for yourself for a period of 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, or life, and to "refashion, renovate, and recycle preloved items for [yourself] for the term of [your] contract." I've been looking through the blog and getting so inspired - I want to sign up! The next sign up isn't until April 15, so I have a little while to wait. But that doesn't mean I can't do some refashioning in the meantime!

A while ago I bought some cheap $3 shirts at Wal-Mart for the express purpose of refashioning them. Today I came across a great tutorial for turning a turtleneck into a cute ruffle-collared top. It that looked simple enough for me to try, so I took this shirt:


... And turned it into this:


I cut off the sleeves, then cut them into 1-inch strips. I sewed the strips into ruffles and attached them to the collar of the shirt. Then I zigzagged around the new sleeve cuffs to make them ruffly. The whole thing took less than an hour.

Here's a couple close-ups of the ruffled collar.



Isn't that so fun?

And as an added bonus, here's a cute use for the cuffs of the sleeves:


A little girl's choker! She came up with that all on her own. She loves being girly!

Another refashion I did recently was that black skirt I'm wearing in the above picture. It started out as a velvet shirt with a mock turtleneck. I rarely wore it because the sleeves made my arms look like white marshmallows, and the turtleneck was a bit tight. Similar to this skirt, I cut off the collar and the shoulder seams, and cut open the tops of the sleeves, and turned the shirt upside down to become a skirt. I found a bunch of lace that I bought a while ago at the thrift store, and sewed some onto the bottom of the skirt. I love love love! the way that it turned out. Here's a closer look:


Yeah, it's fun to take one ill-fitting, rarely worn piece of clothing and turn it into something much more wearable and beautiful. :-)

p.s. The lace cuff I'm wearing is available at my Etsy shop. ;)