Yesterday, I had a blast helping my friend Angie learn to sew – VERY creatively – as I guided her in designing and creating a summer dress for use as she is a featured singer/artist in a local Blue Grass band. This is one creative gal – and I am honored to introduce and guide her into creativity with fabric!
Starting with an aqua T-shirt from Hobby Lobby (bottom of which my grandson and I used to create a necklace for his Mom for Mothers Day – another coming post) – I had her hunt for and bring anything – garment – she liked the fabric of. I got her started by just cutting strips of the garments and arranging them in a pleasing order for the ‘skirt’ of this dress.Each fabric piece was a different width, and given different, unique hem edges. The Rotary Cutter I gave her was totally new to her – a ‘Pizza cutter’!
Then I introduced her to the miracles of serging… first finishing the lower edge of any piece not already finished, or a knit – and then pieced the skirt sections wrong sides together with a wide rolled hem using aqua thread. We firmed up the lower edge of the T-shirt with a strip of fusible interfacing before adding the skirt.
Angies finished 'Re-Cycled' Summer Dress
So – you see our result. The T-shirt was re-cut using a T-shirt knit top pattern of mine. The sleeves were re-cut to keep the original hemline. That ruffle was cut off a print dress and re-used around the neckline of her dress! I also taught her about fusible web and she used it for the flower stems and to create the flowers under the fabrics. You should have seen her delight when I showed her how to couch yarn up the stems and in the middle of the flowers!
She wanted a closer fit at the back, so I made a quick tuck, and fashioned a bow of scraps – WALA – fitted back!
Back nipped in with a tuck and box and streamers from scraps.
Can’t wait to hear her fiddle and sing like a songbird at the next Blue Grass Concert of hers I can get to!