The British Heart Foundation the Big Stitch

When I saw the British Heart Foundation challenge, The Big Stitch, I knew I had to do something towards it. There is a lovey lady at work who has recent' had a lt of heart troubles yet she's spending a lt of energy fund raising for the BHF so I thought i owl try and help her. what made it even better was she is crafty like me so I got her involved too!

I knew I wanted to go big, i mean go bit or go home right? So I set my heart and buying either a suit or a wedding dress. looking back now I think i was ahead of my time with the refashioners now being suit themed! ha! 

I found the perfect dress on the BHF ebay page set set about bidding. This dress had the most beautiful daisy lace all over it so I knew it had to be mine as Daisy's have always been my thing! I eventually won it for just under 15 and then got it posted over to me. 

When it arrived it smelt pretty bad of moth balls, and had a kind of tissue paper in the underskirt which must have been to keep it stiff. I hung it out on the line for a few days and the smell started to drop. I cut out the paper bit and shoved the whole thing in the washing machine! It survived pretty well considering! the I set upon deconstruction. 

I took the top from the skirt first and I made the whole dress just from the skirt in the end so i have plenty of lace to play with another day, bonus! once the skirt was apart from the bodice, i unpicked the lace around the hem, all the way around. About a million miles of it! I thought I would put this back on the new dress which i did and i think it gives it a lovely finish.

I decided to make the By hand london flora dress, which is a shape of dress I have been looking for a while. High neck and fitted bodice but flowing skirt so this seemed perfect. I cut all the pieces out from the skirt and I used the lining of the skirt to line the dress too. Even the zip I unpicked was the right length, it all fitted perfectly!

We had a bit of a construction party at work where we all brought our projects together and took over one of the lecture rooms. It was great as the skill levels were all so different we helped each other out! Angela made a kaftan out of a maxi dress for her beach holiday, Amy made a pillowcase dress from a duvet - Amy hadn't sewn since school and she took to it like water off a ducks back! Lisa made a handbag from a pair of trousers and a skirt and Jenny made an Ogden cami from a maxi dress! We got pizza delivered too it was fabulous!

Once I had put together all my pieces and sewn back the lace around the hem I decided it was unlikely I was ever going to wear a white dress so I tried to dye it! 

In hindsight I should probably have used a more dramatic colour change, but I dip dyed the dress yellow. The colour didn't stick very well to the lace as I think it was so synthetic it just washed straight out of the lace but did stick a little on the lining and gave it a lovely sade of pale yellow that it impossible to photograph! but it's yellow honest! 

I might re-dye it purple or something brighter so I can wear it more but it looks good in the mean time. I think I used the wrong size top for me as I thought I needed to grade out for my boobs, but I've since made another on and I used a small bodice size and just graded out the waist and it fits me much nicer, so I my take my wedding dress dress in a little but all in all I love how it tuned out!!

My Project for the Refashioners 2016 challenge

What a great idea to reuse jeans in this way! I don't know about you but I had load's of jeans in my house desperate for re-use! I flitted around my ideas but finally decided on a bardot style off the shoulder top.

I looked around on pintrest and found Fabric Godmothers tutorial and thought this was a great starting point.

I started by making the darker jeans one big piece of fabric, mostly because at the beginning I was going to make a dress but I didn't have a big enough piece. This piece then became the top frill of my bardot top.

I then made sure I had enough of the lighter jeans. Now this pair of jeans were bought with 'designer' fraying already put in, which just got bigger and bigger of a hole! So I had to repair these holes before I could use it as the main bodice to my top and not expose myself too much! Once that was done I cut two rectangles one 40cm deep and one 20cm deep.

I used the jeans hem for the bottom of the bodice and I zigzagged in contracting cream thread for the frill which I think gives it a nice finish. One I had made two tubes of fabric, I attached them using the wonderful tutorial above.
I only had thick elastic in, and I'm impatient to wait to go to a shop, so I pushed that through the frill's tube opening I had made. Whilst we are on the subject of threading elastic through.. there HAS to be an easier way to do this?! this is what took me most of the time!tip and tricks most welcome please!

When I first put this top on my husband laughed at my soo much as I had tried it on over my t-shirt and put the frills on top of my shoulders like a vest top, once I rearranged it looked much better (shame about my tan lines though!)

There are so many great adaptations of using jeans to make something else so please check out the hashtag #therefashioners2016 and #jeanius and see what everyone has been making. I love how everyone has used it so different and I especially love the negative space removing the pocket gives you like on my shoulder details.