CuriousJayne

Elyse and I spend most of our time in the kitchen when we hang out, so we thought we needed matching aprons. We used a Simplicity Retro pattern (#8720) but the design is quite simple and would be easy to do patternless. The prints remind me of Nintendo, or something Japanese. For all things aprony, look at tie one on, and be sure to check out the rick-rack gallery.

I managed to take a break from “getting crunk” and found some time to make a top. I’ve seen this mini yoke style around, so I thought I’d try it out. I really like the vintage style buttons these days, so I threw it on there to give it a classier feel.

Happy spring break!

Last night I went to Hank and Heather’s holiday extravaganza complete with a white elephant gift exchange and fire pit. The highlights of the night were Jason stealing back his own gift (a Burt Reynolds triple feature DVD) and Hank yelling “don’t step on the hibiscus!” when the boys started roughhousing outside. I walked away with a pretty sweet basket of candy and movie passes which was pretty good considering there was a fart machine, a calendar of babies dressed up as fruit and a Burt Reynolds triple feature in the mix.

I wanted a winter dress for the party, so I chose this blue patterned dress at goodwill and cut it down to my size. I finished it minutes before we had to leave so I didn’t even have time to hem it. Here are two awkward pictures of me wearing it before and after.

I also made pumpkin cheesecake bars, which were lovely. Jason was especially fond of them. They are easy to make and are highly recommended. The recipe can be found here.

 I bought this size 12 polyester muumuu at a thrift store for $2.99:

Reconstruction is lovely because you can skip lots of tedious steps. For this dress, I left the neckline and back zipper intact because I don’t care for making necklines and zippers. I also kept the pleats from the original, so I didn’t have to do any damn pleating, which is time consuming.

After much trimming and reassembling, I came up with this little 70’s hippie dress:

A close up of the dress:

So, I’ve got two reconstructed pieces down, but the other two articles I bought are a bit more challenging.

First, I have this alluring spandex top covered in large sequins.  If only I were a figure skater…

Next, I have a turtle neck.  But it’s not just any old turle neck, some crazy crafter got her (his?) glitter-splintered hands on it.

I’ve been stumped on these for a while now; any ideas are welcome.

I usually leave thrift stores disappointed and wondering “why the hell did I just buy this ironic shirt that says ‘greeks do it better’?” So, I decided to give in to the masses of hideous frocks and oversized, gaudy, patterened shirts that are so plentiful.  My first project involves this awful shirt with a weird drawstring feature that I can’t really understand:

Obviously, I hate the shirt, but I was strangley attracted to the pattern- it kind of reminds me of the carpet in a casino.  So after a little work, here’s what I came up with:

The dress in action:

I didn’t use a pattern or tutorial for this, but I came across some really great tutorials on whatthecraft.com for some interesting reconstruction projects that are worth checking out.  Many more dreadful-to-dainty projects coming soon.

I had this red ribbed sweater-ish material lying around, so I made a pencil skirt.  Like any good pencil skirt, it’s a bit snug around the knees, making it difficult to participate in everyday activities.  It’ll be perfect for one of those indie shows where everyone stands still and you just nod your head along with the music.