Monday, May 5, 2014

New tops from old clothes

Found an A-line skirt (no photo) with a very funky print in the Yass Salvo's a while ago. Although it fitted fine as a skirt it didn't thrill me. I liked the previous Washi top that I've blogged about a while ago. But, it is a bit on the small side, and the fabric turned out to not breathe too well. It might get re-remade into something else yet! 

Anyway, I thought I'd make the next size up of the Washi using the skirt. I broke every rule about placing the pattern on the grainline to get it out of the fabric - pieces went every which way and a lot were on the bias. But t is fairly sturdy fabric so it didn't warp at all. I also decided to take out two of the front pleats from the original as they made me think maternity, and I am past that stage of my life! I like this version a lot better than the first one, and it's a lot more comfy. 


This second top below is only partly reusing an opshop Tshirt. The contrasting purple is the last piece of new fabric I bought at Spotlight about six months ago, and I've bought no other new fabric since. Since keeping an eye out for stretch knit fabric in the opshops I've amassed quite a stash!

The opshop shirt (no photo again, but you know what a tshirt looks like!) was a Maggie T brand plain tshirt in about a size 20 so plenty of fabric in it, but not quite enough for this. It's a Penny Pinafore pattern, from another independent designer. Fairly simple to make up, with princess seams, and comes as a tshirt, tunic and a dress.
 I made it shorter than the shortest tshirt as I didn't have enough fabric, but's plenty long enough. I'd never done princess/curved seams on stretch fabric before but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.


Oh that's funny, I've just noticed that the version I made looks like I copied the colour scheme from the middle pattern picture! So didn't. This photo also makes it look almost asymmetric at the hem but it's really not, the hanger must have slipped in the breeze that always seems to spring up whenever I take pictures of clothes!

I was very lazy and only overlocked the neck edge, didn't finish the other seams at all, but hey, that's one of the benefits of sewing with knits. This turned out to be a really nice comfy tshirt and more flattering than the usual plain tshirt shape. Certainly figure hugging...

Before I made this top, I had made the dress-length version using the same purple. I planned to make it all purple, but ran out of length, so used a bit of red from an opshop buy years ago. I don't have a photo of it at the moment. A friend's partner refers to it as my 'tennis dress', which I take as a backhanded compliment (get it, backhanded....oh, I am so hilarious when I am tired. Goodnight!)

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