At Last... The Repurposing Post

“Sewing clothes is sometimes easier if you don’t start from scratch. Refashioning a favorite piece of clothing can make you happy, your budget happy and the earth happy.” - Julie Kundhi

You may recall in January this shirt I made for Avery out of one of my old shirts. Well our Relief Society Meeting last night was a Savvy Shoppers Trade Show and I was asked to set up a booth showing some ideas on how to repurpose clothes. I got busy and made a few things out of my old clothes so here are the much anticipated results.

The first thing I made was a dress for Avery:

The top was an old shirt of hers that had a hole in the tummy. I just cut it to an empire waist and added some of the fabric from this old skirt of mine that was too big on me:

I used this tutorial as my guide. I thought it turned out great. And she loves wearing it because I made it just for her! Next to go was this old shirt of Merrick's. It's a soft knit fabric that doesn't fray but he never wore it so I tried to get some use out of it.

The result:

A cute ruffly shirt. I used this tutorial for the neckline. It was really fun to make and everyone last night was impressed that it came from that big frumpy shirt of Merrick's! Who knew! I used the original hems on the sleeves and the bottom and the top neckline didn't need to be finished because the ruffles covered it up. So cute.

The last thing I have made so far was a super cute dress out of one of Merrick's dress shirts.

I used this tutorial and I must admit, this was the most complicated project I've done because you have to thread 5 pieces of elastic through 5 casings you make but it turned out really adorable. Here's the back:

The last project I'm working on still is this dress, also made from a men's dress shirt. I'll post pics when I'm done with that.

The other project on display last night was from my friend Lindsey Green. You can check out her fun repurposing creation here.

Lastly, I wanted to give some links for some really great repurposing blogs that I found in the process. My main inspiration is from makeitandloveit.blogspot.com, but here are several others I found with some good stuff:
http://www.dana-made-it.com/search/label/Refashioning%20Ideas
http://www.vanessachristenson.com/search/label/thrifting
http://www.rufflesandstuff.com/2009/08/tutorials.html
http://freesewingpatternsdaily.blogspot.com/search/label/repurposing
http://nikkishell.typepad.com/wardroberefashion/
http://www.kundhi.com/blog/category/refashion/

And some books you can check out:

Sewing Green: 25 Projects Made with Repurposed & Organic Materials by Betz White
Dozens of Ways to Repurpose a Pillowcase by Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott
Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures by Amanda Blake Soule

So maybe you can try this too! Go through your closet (or your husband's!) and see if there are things you don't wear but are still in good shape and then go online to get some cool ideas. It's fun, it's free, it's easier than sewing from scratch, and if it doesn't work out, you were just going to get rid of it anyway right?