Dress too small? Let's fix that

    

 Wow! It's been a while since I posted last. Life happened and time got away from me, but I'm back now! Since I last posted, I have discovered ESTATE SALES! These are a-maz-ing! It's as if you get to pilfer through a stranger's earthly possessions! I wish I would have known about these long ago. They are so much better than yard sales. You get much better deals and find cooler stuff. All the ones I have gone to have had someone in the house that is a crafter or seamstress. SCORE!  The first one I went to was at the house of a sewer/refashioner. There was a huge tote of fabric remnants and the closets were full of dresses that were a size or two too small. That didn't deter me though. Needless to say I was bottoms up in the fabric tote and elbow deep in that closet! With it being the last day of the sale, everything was 50% off.  I bought everything I thought I could use. I ended up spending about $15 and my arms were full. This sale is where I found this beauty: 

 

The only problem was this: 

It wouldn't even come close to zipping.  

I really loved this dress and I really wanted to wear it. I just had to figure out a way to make it bigger. I decided the best plan was to sew panels on each side to widen the dress evenly. I had hoped I could find that exact fabric on the internet somewhere and use it to make it wider. I searched but couldn't find it.  Then, on Saturday, I went to a church yard sale. (Church yard sales are just as great as Estate Sales.) At this particular yard sale, I bought a lot of great fabric. It was "fill a bag for $1" and they handed me a big bag to put it all in 😀.  Another score! That's where I found the fabric that would allow me to finally wear this dress. 

Since the bottom of this dress mostly fit (it was a little tight getting it over my hips), the first thing I did was take my bust measurement. Then I measured the bust (armpit to armpit) of the dress and multiplied this number by 2 to get the total bust measurement of the dress. Then I subtracted the dress measurement from the bust measurement. I took that number and divided it by 2 since I want the fabric to be even on both sides. 

For example:  44" Bust measurement, Dress measurement was 18" x 2= 36" 

                                        44"-36" = 8"  

                                         8"/2 = 4"  

My side panels needed to be 4" on each side, so I cut them 4.5" each for seam allowance. 

My dress is sewn with a seam at the bust, so I measured from the armpit to the bust seam and got 7".  So I cut two pieces of fabric 4.5"x 7.5" (the extra 1/2 inch is for seam allowance)

The other two pieces were cut from the measurement of the bust to the hem of the dress. 

4.5" x 27.5" (again, I added 1/2" for seam allowance)

Next, I had to open up the side seams with the seam ripper. I opened the seam on one side of the dress and put in a panel one side at a time. 

 

I pinned the panel into the side of the dress. I pinned one side of the panel at a time. You could pin both sides of the panel and then sew, but I did it one side at a time. 

I left about 1/4 inch of white fabric above the green fabric. This gave me enough white fabric to fold down twice to finish the seam when the panels were sewn in. 

 After I sewed the panels in to the dress, I sewed the short panel and the long panel together where they meet. 

This is how it looked up to this point...

 

The next step was to fold the raw edge of the fabric at the top of the dress 2 times and sew a seam.  This gives it a polished look and keeps the ends from fraying when washed. 

I repeated all of that on the other side seam of the dress. 

Then I folded the bottom hem of the dress twice and sewed a seam. 

I tried the dress on once more and....

Yay! It zipped!!!! (I was so happy I may have jumped up and down)

I love my new dress!!!

Front Door Wreath Refashion

This tutorial involves absolutely no sewing. However, I made it and thought it was super cute, so I'm gonna show you how I did it. 

One of my favorite things to do is find things I have lying (laying?) around my house to use in my craft projects.  The only thing better than crafting is FREE-ish crafting! 

To make this wreath, you will need the following things: 

A frame. Any frame will work. You'll want something kind of big. Mine is a 16"x20". If you don't have a frame, you can grab a blank canvas (or an old painting you don't want anymore), like I did. 

Fake Flowers. I used an old bouquet and just ripped the tops of the flowers off. And BONUS: when I made the bouquet, the flowers came from the Dollar Tree. So even when I purchased the flowers, they were still cheap! 

Cardboard. You'll need this for the number or initial that you will be covering in flowers. I used an old Amazon box. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I have a ton of cardboard boxes. You could also probably use poster board or a shirt gift box. 

Acrylic Craft Paint and Brush. I picked a bright color, because my door is navy blue. If you want to leave it natural, that could be cute, too. 

Scissors, String, and a Hole Punch. 

The first thing I did was turn the canvas over and ripped off the cloth until I just had a frame. 

You could remove the staples and carefully remove the canvas slowly.

OR

You could rip it off quickly as I did, like a rabid jackal...

What? I was excited to get this show on the road.

Once that is taken care of, grab your acrylic paint. If your brush is small enough, you can obviously just get the paint as you need it from the bottle. My brush was too big, so I had to use a paint palette. A butter bowl lid will work if you don't have a palette. 

Paint the frame. I slapped my paint on quickly, because I wanted my frame to look old-ish and distressed. I put mine on a  tote lid so it wouldn't get on my carpet.

While that's drying....

I grabbed my cardboard, and decided how big I wanted my number 5. Then I free-handed it on the cardboard and cut it out. 

I punched a hole in the top of the "5" for when I need to put the string in it to hang it from the frame. 

Next, pull the fake flowers off of their stems. There should be a teeny tiny nub on the back of them sticking out. Poke tiny holes in the cardboard and push the teeny tiny nubs in there. You can hot glue them on there to make sure they won't fall off. I didn't though. The sun shines directly on my front door and the heat melts the glue. So I just poked mine through and called it a day. 

This is what the back of mine looked like when I was done.

Now, I put the cord through the hole I punched earlier and tied it around the frame. 

Like this: 

And that's all folks! 

Look how awesome it looks against my blue door! 

I hung it on the door using a wreath hanger I got at the Dollar Tree.

I love how the distressed frame looks...

Thanks for reading! 

If you try this, I'd love to see the final product!

***Also, if you wanna stop by my online jewelry store

 I'd love to have you there!

Invite your friends, too!***

www.therufflybuffalo.com 

How To Re-shape A Cute Summer Top

Hey! Thanks for stopping by to read this. I got that shirt on the left for free. I probably would have paid for it. I tend to buy clothing that looks great on skinny people without thinking it might not look the same on me. However, this time, I lucked into a free shirt. I decided it might look good without that awful elastic faux drawstring waistline. I don't understand why designers don't get this...women with bigger waistlines do not like clothing that cuts into or sticks to their stomachs. Seriously. And please, for the love, nothing that "blouses"! That's not a good look either. Take a look at that before and after pic above...I weigh the same in BOTH pictures. They were taken the same day. I look thinner and more "put together" in that second picture. (Or at least I think so.)

So for this tutorial, I'm gonna show you how to re-shape a top with 4 super easy changes.

To start, I grabbed my handy dandy seam ripper to take out the stitches of the elastic casing.

Once I got all the stitches out, it looked like this:

No worries, those wrinkles will come out with an iron.

I cut the sleeves off next. I like to cut the sleeves right before the armhole seam. (This makes it easier to sew the raw edge up.) With the shirt inside out, I rolled the raw edge over once and pinned.

Then I sewed down the raw edges of the armholes.

With the shirt turned inside out, it was time to 'fit' the top. Starting at the armpit, I pinned the shirt down the sides. I like for my shirts to flare a little towards the bottom so the shirts aren't clingy.

I ran the shirt through the sewing machine along the pins.

I tried on the shirt. When I had it the way I wanted, I turned the shirt inside out and trimmed the excess fabric.

I wanted this shirt to have a little something extra. So I grabbed an old white t-shirt and cut a wide strip. I folded it in half.

Then I put a gathering stitch in the wide white strip to make a ruffle.

Next, I pinned that white ruffle along the neckline.

This is how the ruffle looked after it was sewn in.

Annnnd, this is the final result. I love it!

Thanks for reading! 

Stop by my zibbet.com shop and buy a beautiful piece of jewelry lovingly handcrafted by me! 

zibbet.com/therufflybuffalo 

twitter.com/rufflybuffalo

facebook.com/rufflybuffalo 

A Pretty Shirt Refashion

 Man, I have been super sporadic with my tutorials lately.

 I finished my spring semester in May and my kids will be done with school tomorrow! (Yay! No more alarm clocks to set or lunches to pack until August! WOOHOO!) 

I'm hoping to do a lot more tutorials this summer. Fingers crossed! =)

But for now, here's how I made this shirt....

  

Ugh. For realsies, I should never wear shirts that have no shape ever again. And note to self, get a hairstyle. yikes! lol 

Anywho, onto the clothing...

I was gifted 2 big bags of clothes from a friend of a friend. They were too big, but only by one size. Even though most of the shirts were in great condition, they were shorter than I prefer. Also, most of the shirts looked like the red shirt on the left. Whomever (did I use that right?) owned these shirts before me either really loved the style or they got a seriously great deal. I have a ton of these shirts now.  

 I love the red, but it needed updated and shaped. So I searched through the bag and found that middle shirt. I love the pattern, but a shirt in my size should never ever ever ever (did I mention never ever?) have that as an all over pattern. Geesh. I knew the pattern would look perfect as an accent. 

So here's the tutorial: 

This is an up close shot of the shirts. See that crocheted part on the neckline of the red shirt?

 I started with that.

I couldn't grab my seam ripper fast enough. I got rid of the crocheted panels on the shirt. 

Btw, this is one of my favorite parts of a refashion...the demolition. =) 

I had to use my scissors on some of the crochet part, some of it was super stubborn.

The picture below is what the shirt looked like at this point.  

Next to go were the sleeves. (I need some tank tops for the summer.)

Instead of using the seam ripper here, I just went straight for the scissors. I cut off the sleeves right before the shoulder seam.

With the shirt turned inside out, I folded the raw edges over twice and pinned them down. 

Then I sewed the seam of the arm holes.

For this next part (with the shirt turned inside out), I tried on the shirt and pinned under the armpit then I pinned the shirt down the sides. I didn't want it to be tight, so I flared my pins out towards the bottom. 

 After I was sure I had it pinned just the way I wanted, I sewed along the pins. Once I finished sewing the shirt, I trimmed the excess fabric from the sides.

 Back to the neckline. I wanted to add the patterned material as a trim and then add a modesty panel to the neckline.

I cut a long strip of fabric from the patterned shirt. Mine was 2 inches in width. 

 This next step, I used this tutorial I found at Craftsy.com. It's an awesome tutorial on how to make a V-neck. I modified it slightly to only use the front part of the neckline and not all the way around.

The picture below is what the v-neck looks like from the inside of the shirt.

 The picture below is what the v-neck looks like on the outside of the shirt.

 To make the modesty panel, I cut a piece of fabric from the patterned shirt. I took the easy road and found a piece of the neckline from that shirt that already had a finished edge.

The next step was to pin the modesty panel to the v-neck.

(this is the view from the outside of the shirt)

 I sewed it and trimmed all of that excess fabric off. 

To make the trim at the bottom of the shirt, I cut off the original bottom of the patterned shirt. (Again, I saved myself a step by not having to hem the trim.) I don't remember the exact width of the patterned strip, but it was really just a preference on how long I wanted the shirt to be. If I had to guess, I would say it was probably 4 inches. 

I pinned the strip up under the shirt and sewed it to the shirt. Once, I was finished, I trimmed the excess patterned fabric.

And this was the final result! I love this shirt. I think it's flattering on me now. Or at least it's way more flattering than it was in the beginning. =)  

***Stop by my zibbet.com shop!***

www.zibbet.com/therufflybuffalo 

Thanks!