Shirt to Dress Tutorial part 1

Here's how I went about this piece of re-purposing:
First I cut off the sleeves inside the body area (removing a couple of deodorant marks) and zig-zagged quickly round them to prevent too much fraying. Then I lay out the shirt and measured the shoulder seam from collar to cut dividing up into equal sections so that I could fold, pin and iron three tucks to bring the shoulder in to just cover my bra straps:

First measured and marked out divisions with the pins

then folded one pin to the next to form the tuck

I continued these folds down the back, getting them to narrow to nothing and over the shoulder down the front about 12cm.

Notice how the fold form a sort of V shape down the back.

Now at this stage it would be wise to do some basting, but personally I'm never very wise so I then set off with the sewing machine top stitching along the formed tucks. I did not start and stop right at the very ends of the folds, but varied the position of where I started/ stopped on each fold making sure to make a firm finish at the end of the sewing. The top stitching on the back went generally lower than at the front.

When I tried it on the arm holes were very gappy and  the overall shape was still to wide at this point so a took in the side seams to fit more closely under the arm, flairing out to run into the original sideseams towards the bottom. (This picture is upside down, arm holes at the top)

I then finished off the arm holes by using a piece of opened up bias binding (you could use some ribbon- cross grain is best) and pinning it with the edges together and front sides facing from the bottom of the arm hole all the way round. This was machined on following the crease of the fold line on the bias tape.  The next stage was to turn the bias tape inwards so that it was on the inside and no longer visible then pin (baste?) and top stitch around the edge to neaten off. Hopefully these pictures will help that to make sense.

In part two I will describe how I finished off the dress.

Shirt to Dress

My husband was reorganising and was throwing out some of his lovely, quality work shirts 'these can be rags' he said; I think not!

So, a bit of cutting and sewing and I've made a dress out of the first one:

Tutorial to follow

Knit Love Club - ''2luvcrew"

Finished these socks in record time for me after casting on the second sock before I got distracted and went on to something else. The little love hearts are so stretchy and fun to knit. Another great design from Alice.

Stash Control

So, after my earlier confession of a complete loss of self-control with buying yarn I have managed to look away on a number of occasions (though had to sign up for next year's Knit Love Sock Club). Just to demonstrate the obvious need I have for yarn here's my latest acquisition.

This was brought back from a Norwegian Cruise by my mother in law who I have just converted to sock knitting. I know nothing about this yarn, except it's very squishy and was a brilliant present... isn't she great? She knows me so well!

Hummingbird Treats

I love my Hummingbird Bakery book so when we visited London I just had to search out one of their shops.

So off we went for a wander round Liberty's and then round the corner to their branch on Wardour Street. We had a selection of cakes between us, but definitely the chocolate brownies came out on top for me, but it was a close run given their heavenly cupcakes.....Divine.

On the way there we made a brilliant discovery: The Cloth Shop window caught my eye as we headed purposefully to the bakery so we had to make a stop off to explore it's brilliant range of fabrics. I was beside myself with excitement because they had some lovely natural fabrics that I just couldn't get locally. I shall certainly nip back with an actual plan of what I want to make when I'm in London next, as it was it was just a case of headless chicken!