FO: Navy Skirt Refashion

This was a case of fabric love at the thrift store. I was searching the skirt rack of my favorite shop during a bag sale (everything they can shove in a paper grocery bag for $5), which  means I was being much more open to refashions, when I came across this lovely skirt. The fabric is 55% linen 45% rayon, and it's a 6 gore style with a button front. The only problem - it was extremely small. Actually I believe it was actually a size Small considering it had a 26" waist (the size tag was gone). In spite of its waist measurement, the skirt was very long and very flared - like almost a circle skirt - so I knew it was a great candidate for a refashion :)

I started by measuring my waist (39") and then measuring at various points down from the waist of the skirt to find the spot that fits my waist measurement. It happened to be about 6" down. So I made sure to add seam allowance and chopped the waist off.

I had to make sure the top button hole would still be accessible, so I had to fudge around with where to cut, but I got there in the end. Next I overcast stitched the cut edge (this stuff was already fraying like crazy) and pressed 1/4" over from the edge. I decided to use a ribbon for the inner waistband (from a spool of also thrifted ribbon). I cut the ribbon to measure plus a bit to fold over, then I melted the edge and pressed about 1/4" inside to give a smooth edge at the button bands. I edge stitched the ribbon at the pressed line of the new waist. Basically I understitched the ribbon to the fabric. This way I could just press the ribbon inside and it was all invisible from the outside. Then I top stitched around the other edge of the ribbon (about 7/8" down). My thread was such a dead match that the top stitching sinks right in. I had to do some forceful pressing to get the ribbon to curve around the waist, and I had to fold the ribbon under at the button hole so I didn't cover it, but it all looks fine from the outside now.

Next I had to figure out the buttons. The skirt already had lots of buttons, but with the new length on me the buttons stopped about 5" above my knee. That's a bit high for my comfort, so I took the buttons off the section I removed from the waist and made new holes for them below the original buttons.The bottom 4 buttons in the photo on the right are all new ones I added. I also had to decide on a finished length. After changing the waist it hit me about mid-shin, which is not generally a length I go for, but it wasn't awful. I just had to decide if I should leave the length or go just below the knee. Eventually I decided on just below the knee to keep with the summery feel (I just really like knee length skirts).

I now have a delightfully swishy linen skirt :) I love the fullness of the skirt - it really makes this feel more girly and fun. I was hoping this skirt could replace a previously much loved Refashioned Navy Blue Skirt. I wore that skirt until it was coming apart at all the seams. I still miss it, lol. So this new navy skirt helps to fill that void. This new skirt is certainly a bit fancier feeling being a linen/rayon blend and having such a wide hem span, but the color goes with a lot and most of my wardrobe is a bit dressier anyway so it works great in my wardrobe.

 Back view - I love the way this drapes. I'm narrowing down more and more clothing aspects that I like or don't like, and I don't really care for true circle skirts because they end up with pools of fabric over the tummy area. It just feels like I have to fiddle with them to keep them looking good. This skirt doesn't pool until below the tummy, giving a nice smooth look over my area I want to distract from, which I love. I will admit that the buttons seem a bit heavy for the angle of the grain of the fabric, meaning that they like to sink between the folds of the rest of the fabric (you can see this in the first photo), but that's a minor issue.

And what's a big skirt project without a twirl photo? I really like this skirt. Having worn it a few times now I may change the ribbon waistband to a petersham ribbon - the polyester I used was a cute color and I had enough, but it's a bit scratchy on my skin sometimes. Other than that I love this and know it will be a great piece to have in the Florida heat. And even better it only cost me about $0.50 to make :)

Yay for refashioning!

The Great Sweater Unravel

So, I've read about other people re-purposing old sweaters they find in thrift stores, but I never thought it was something I'd be able to do. This isn't because I don't have the desire to, oh I so do, but ... I live in Florida. I don't think I've seen a single hand-knit sweater in all the years I've been thrifting, probably because you just flat out don't need them here. It occurred to me that I could possibly use a non-hand-knit sweater though, so I would look inside any that I came across. 

One day, the craziest thing happened. A nice lady came in the jewelry store to find a silver shawl pin for a wrap she was knitting. She had the knitting with her and let me take a look - it was a nice drapey yarn that variegated from pink to purple to gray and it had a metallic strand running through. She happened to have the yarn label, and showed me it was Blue Heron Rayon Metallic yarn. Of course when she left the shop, I had to look this stuff up - it's just what you do as a fellow knitter - and I discovered that this yarn is $46.00 per skein! Yikes! I had that big price on the brain when I went by my favorite thrift store on my lunch break, and I came across this:

Dudes, this was so kismet. I'd never even felt a rayon yarn before that day, and here was my second experience with an almost identical fiber in my grasp. And it was only $1.50. This Lauren by Ralph Lauren sweater was a size petite small - both designations I do not fit into at all - but it was 68% Rayon/22% Polyester/10% Metallic and it seemed to be about a DK or Worsted weight. AND it was made in such a way that I could unravel it. MUAHA HA HA! (that's my evil laugh, by the way) The way you can tell if you can unravel it or not is simple - look at the seams. If the seams inside are serged together, you're out of luck; but if the seams are "seamed" together - like you would if you had knit the sweater yourself - you can take it all apart :) That picture above and on the right shows the inside of the seam has yarn sewn back and forth - that's what you want.

Since fate was completely on my side with this endeavor, I also ended up buying an unopened seam ripper for 25¢, which enabled me to start ripping this baby apart as soon as I got back to work, lol. I basically went about this in the reverse order of how it would have been knitted - starting with the sleeves, then the neck band, then the back and front. The sleeves came off so easily! I just slid the seam ripper in the seam and picked a few stitches out. Once the seam was opened a bit, I was able to just pull on the seaming yarn and it came completely undone. I did the side seams next, giving me a rather hilarious sparkly poncho to torture my nephew with. Good times. After that, I had to get back to actual work, but I was quick to work on it more on my day off.

Once in my sewing room, I was able to really make a big mess give the project more room. The yarn was being ... a bit persnickity. When I first began the unraveling, I thought that maybe it was fingering weight yarn held in double, but when I really got going on it back at home I could see that the yarn had 4 plys and they were all unraveling separate from each other. It turns out that rayon yarn is just as slick as rayon fabric - the synthetic fibers don't have any barbs to hold them to each other, thus the squiggly mess of plys. This was annoying, but not impossible to deal with. Eventually I just decided to hook it up to my yarn winder and wind it straight on. I weighed the sweater itself down and turned the crank. I kept enough tension to get the kink out of the yarn on the ball, but I had to be careful not to drop that tension - the yarn would quickly spring back off and get all kinky again. Just for the record, the "correct" way of doing this would be to wind the yarn on a swift or something else that you could make a hank with, then wash it to remove the kinks. That just wasn't going to happen with this crazy, splitty yarn, so I just went with it. I've re-wound wool before and it lost the kinks just from the tension of the winding, so I'm hoping for the best here.

Since the yarn was so crazy splitty, I did have many instances where I had to cut the yarn, remove a knot, then tie it back and keep going. Also, the neck band was so all over the place that I could never get it to unravel. When it was all over, I had 390 grams of yarn in balls. and 32 grams of crazy kinky mess that I couldn't use. I'm really not that worried about it. So, if we compare this to the Blue Heron Rayon Metallic, which comes in a 227 gram ball for $46.00, that would make this 390 grams cost $79.00 ... and I paid $1.50 for it. Sure it took about an hour to unwind it all, but Hello! Check out that price difference! Well worth an hour of my time :) I still have absolutely no idea what I will make with 3990 grams of sparkly gold metallic yarn, but it is now an option if I want it, lol.

I was so elated by my success with the gold sweater, that I dug into my stash for these babies. I bought these two 100% cashmere sweaters in the same thrift store about a year ago with the intent of taking them apart, but at the time I didn't have the equipment of the know how, so they've sat in a pile ever since. Personally, I would never wear these sweaters as-is (I would die of heat stroke for one), plus I'm just not a big fan of cream or baby blue. Since these sweaters are 100% cashmere, it would be no problem at all to die them whatever color I want :) These are also Ralph Lauren sweaters as fate would have it, and they are also seamed together so I could take them apart :) Yippee!

I started with the cream sweater, and again with the sleeves. At first, I was getting a little worried about the outcome of this project - the yarn is fingering weight, and all that tugging to unravel was causing a lot of breaks on such a soft fiber. Also, the yarn in actually was held in double - creating 2 strands that I had to pull out and not tangle with each other. On the first sleeve, I would pull it out by hand and wrap each strand around an embroidery frame I had to keep them separated. The original plan was to wind them onto the swift to get a hank for dying - but it was splitting so much and taking so long that I said bump that and I hooked it up to the yarn winder again, lol. I held the embroidery frame with my feet and wound it directly onto the yarn winder from there - I'll make it dye-able later when I'm ready. For the second sleeve, I wised up and hooked one strand straight into the yarn winder, and the other onto the swift. I would unwind it by hand to a certain length, then spin the swift and the yarn winder to wind up the yarn I had unraveled. It took forever as well, but it was better than wrapping the yarn by hand onto that frame.

Each sleeve took me about an hour to undo, so I didn't finish the rest of the sweater yet. I ended up with 108 grams in two balls of yarn afterward. I did the math on on the yarn that was wound on the swift (i.e. measure the swift circumference, multiply by how many strands are wrapped around it) and I estimated 350 yards in that one skein, so I'm confident saying I have about 700 yards so far of this yarn. I know this will be really useful for making all kinds of things in the future :) I'll have enough for a sweater for myself along with countless gifts - I mean, who doesn't love cashmere?! These sweaters cost me $3 each, and I still have the body of the cream one along with the entire blue one left to unravel. One of these days, I'll finish this up.

So, that was my first ever experience recycling yarn from a thrift store sweater :) I love that I've got some really expensive fibers now that I paid almost nothing for - sure it took a ton more work than just clicking the "checkout" button online, but I feel it's worth it since my budget would have never paid for these types of yarns otherwise. I can tell you right now, this will not be my last time unraveling sweaters. I can't wait to find more!

Do You RecycleBank?

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have probably heard me mention some coupons that I have received through Recyclebank, but I've never explained what that is :) Recyclebank is a website that is completely free to join and allows you to redeem points for coupons - what's not to love?

There are many ways to earn points on Recyclebank. You acquire points from obvious things, like recycling, or from easy tasks like pledges and quizzes. Sometimes it is as simple as watching a short video or reading something about being "greener." Once you join Recyclebank and sign in, you can click the tab at the top that says "Earn Points" to see what tasks are currently available. Most of the tasks are from the many sponsors of the site, all of whom promote their greener packaging and more sustainable business and manufacturing practices. So, you can usually expect to see rewards offered from Aveeno, Kashi, Naked Juice, McDonalds, Dove, and P&G Future Friendly among others.

So, why do all these quizzes and such? The rewards :) I know that sounds selfish. I should say, "Oh, just doing the earth a favor is reward enough for me :)" but why not get a monetary reward as well if it's available? It's nice to get rewarded for doing something you probably should be doing anyway, am I right? It's just a nice incentive.
Anyway - back to the rewards. Recyclebank rewards its users with coupons or online coupon codes for 'green' and organic products.

All of the available rewards can be redeemed using your points. Some of the coupons can be printed, but some have to be mailed (Coke and McDonalds are snail mail). Many of the coupons are constantly available, while others have limited numbers that can be 'purchased' so you may have to snag them quickly. They also have 'daily deals' which are sometimes specials that will only be available that day and on a first comes first serve basis and other times the 'daily deals' are regular coupons that Recyclebank has decreased the cost on just for a short period of time. For example, I recently redeemed some of my points for s $2 off Any Naked Juice coupon that would normally have cost me 90 points, but only cost me 40 points - not bad :) And while you can always earn more points, you never know what new opportunities will be available for earning, so you learn to be very selective with what you spend them on.

I know this was a long post, but I just want to let you know that I really like being a member of Recyclebank. It not only encourages me to be better about my recycling, it rewards me for doing it with exclusive coupons that I would not be able to get otherwise. Anyone who has looked into it can tell you that organic food coupons are few and far between; so if I have to answer a few questions to get a good coupon, no problem :)

So head over here to join now so you can start earning rewards yourself :)