CuriousJayne

 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.