Altered: Navy Pants

I bought these old lady pants at a thrift shop thinking I might be able to alter them. And I did. I cut about four inches off of each pant leg, and then sewed elastic at the bottom of each leg. It was simple and I finished it in a couple of hours.

Truthfully, I’m not sure if I will wear these pants out in the world; they might just be pants I wear at home. They’re pretty comfortable as they have an elastic waistband. And I like that it has pockets.

Revamped: Dress to Skirt

I got this dress a while back from a thrift store. The dress was a bit large on me, so I thought the easiest thing to do was to alter it into a skirt.

I cut the dress under its elastic waistband, and cut off a section of fabric to create the waistband. I undid part of the side seam and put in a zipper. This was done not as cleanly as I would have liked. The seam allowance was only at about a quarter inch, so I didn’t sew through all the fabric when I put in the zipper. So I hand sewed the fabric that didn’t catch, which made it rather sloppy. But I was just too lazy to redo it. I gathered the top of the skirt and then sewed the waistband to it.

Overall, it didn’t take as long as starting from scratch, but isn’t something I feel super excited about. It’s a fine skirt, wearable, but not something I love.

Black Velvet Dress Altered to a Skirt

I got this very large black velvet dress from a thrift store for $5. Seeing the amount of fabric, I thought I could turn this dress into a skirt to wear to a holiday party. My plan was to do as little as possible because I didn’t want to spend a long time working on it (as I wasn’t going to be wearing it often). So I wanted to avoid putting in a zipper or hemming it.

First, I cut the dress at the waistline. I used some bottom weight fabric to finish the cut edge because I thought turning over the velvet fabric would create too much bulk. My initial thought was to put in an elastic waistband, but I quickly realized that the fabric was just too thick and would bunch unattractively.

So, instead, I decided to wrap the extra fabric in the front using two sets of eyes and hooks. This took longer than I anticipated, and I ended up moving the eyes and hooks a few times so the placement would fit my waist better.

I also sewed a sash using black bottom weight fabric; I thought it would help cover the skirt’s thickness, and act as a belt to help keep the skirt in place (and I thought it looked cute).

Altered: Navy Coat

When I got this navy coat at an estate sale months ago, I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it. I bought it (along with everything else), mostly on a whim. I think I tried this coat on and thought it fit well enough to get, even though I wasn’t necessarily happy with the entirety of its design. But for 50 cents, I wasn’t going to be super picky. As it was summer, I didn’t have an immediate need for it so it just sat in a corner for a while.

Once the weather started to cool down, I was more motivated to take a look at this coat again. I decided I liked the general shape of the coat, but disliked certain design details that I felt dated it. As is, the coat looked like it’s from the early 1980s. I didn’t like the stitching detail on the collar and the cuffs. In fact, I didn’t like the cuffs at all; I just wanted a straight sleeve, which meant I needed to sew fabric to the ends of the sleeves.

I didn’t want to try and match the navy color of the coat because I thought it was bound to be off, so I decided using a different color would be best. And while I thought a cream color would make an excellent color combination with the navy, I decided to go with black because it’s more practical. I can easily see a cream sleeve brushing against a wet dirty car and getting dark smudges all over it (and no doubt that would happen if I were to wear it). [Sigh.]

I removed the stitching on the collar and removed the cuff part of the sleeves. I just attached the black fabric to the ends of the sleeves in a way that made sense to me. It wasn’t very difficult and took an afternoon to do. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the result; it’s a small change but I think it makes a large difference.

Revamped: Black and White Skirt

From my pile of garments that I got at the fantastic estate sale I went to in August, I selected a black and white skirt to alter. It was a dry clean only garment that lacked a fabric content label (but it may be wool or at least in part); I hand washed the skirt and afterwards saw that it had shrunk. The lining of the skirt could be seen peeking out from under the hem of the skirt. Luckily I was tearing up the skirt, and as long as it didn’t shrink again in the future, I didn’t care about this shrinkage.

I loved the fabric but hated the skirt design. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the skirt in its entirety; just the top portion of it can be seen in the above photo. The worst part about the skirt was the four pleats in the front—it’s just plain wrong. I think it would make just about any woman look like she has huge hips. The length of the skirt was about mid-shin; it was likely meant to be a loose pencil skirt with a slit in the back. Basically, it was an incredibly unflattering skirt.

My first step was tearing up the black and white skirt. I ended up cutting off the top section, below the pleats, because I didn’t want to deal with those pleats. I undid all the seams (including the zipper) because I had to take out the lining as well. So it took a bit of time.

Once the skirt fabric was taken apart, I used a skirt pattern (that was actually the skirt portion of a pencil dress) to cut the fabric down and add some darts. I sewed the zipper in and then sewed the sides together. [Pause.] I admit, I’m terrible with using measurements to my advantage, so I just sewed the sides together (through trial and error) until it looked right to me. I repeated this process for the lining. And then I attached the lining to the skirt at the top and around the zipper.

I wanted to have a waistband because I tend to prefer skirts with one. I didn’t want to use the fabric that my skirt was made of because I thought it would look too busy. I decided to use fabric from the pile of clothes my mom gave me. I selected a black wool jacket as my fabric. I hand washed it before I tore it up. Although I didn’t like the style of the jacket, as I took it apart, I could appreciate its craftsmanship—it was well made. [Pause.] I wish I could sew like that.

I used a slightly curved waistband from a skirt pattern because I thought it would fit better (since when I use a simple rectangle strip of fabric for my waistband, I’ll often have a bit of a gap, which I find annoying). I did my best to align the seams of the waistband to the skirt seams; this took me longer than I anticipated, as I messed up the alignment a couple of times. [Sigh.] The last step was hemming the skirt.

I’ve made a couple of blouses sleeveless, but I kept the basic integrity of its design. This is the first garment I’ve really revamped, breaking it entirely down before building it up anew. I took my time with it; one weekend I tore the skirt up; a second weekend I sewed the skirt section; a third weekend I added the waistband and hemmed it. There was no rush (especially since the weather wasn’t quite cool enough to wear it yet). I was pretty happy when I finished. Although I can see its flaws, I’m overall satisfied with this skirt. At least it looks better to me than it was before; it’s wearable.

Altered: Sleeveless Bias Tape Top

I picked a blouse to do my first alteration from the mountain of clothing I got at the last estate sale I went to. I chose this white blouse that I had no desire to wear as-is; it was too large on me and had a slouchy high neck that I didn’t like. Since I wasn’t attached to this blouse (in any way) and had bought it for 50 cents, I didn’t feel bad cutting it up (because usually a part of me will worry that I’ll “ruin” a garment in some way if I try to alter it).

When I looked at this blouse I saw some potential. I liked the lapped front that covered the buttons. I also thought that the polyester material it was made from wasn’t bad. I thought about different altering possibilities and decided to use black satin bias tape (that I’d made a lot of some time ago) to finish my edges.

So first I cut off the sleeves and took out the shoulder pads. Then I cut around the neckline, along the base of the high neck neckline. I cut the sides open and sewed them in and then I finished all my edges with my bias tape. It wasn’t hard (although it did take me longer than I anticipated). But I think the result is pretty good. It’s a very simple black and white top that will work well with a lot of my skirts. 

Altered: Red Blouse

A while ago, I dropped by an estate sale and the clothing was the only thing that caught my eye. Most of the clothing was $3 a piece, and I took out a bunch of blouses (probably from the 1980s and 1990s) to try on. After going through my pile of potential blouses, I only liked one enough to buy: a red button up Elle blouse. It’s polyester, but it’s nice polyester; it’s silky not scratchy fabric and drapes fairly well.

Although I love the color red, I don’t really own red articles of clothing. Pretty much anything is made in black, but red (or any other color) happens less frequently so there are fewer opportunities to buy a red garment. Also, a large reason I don’t often buy red is that I only think certain shades of red look good on me, so I avoid anything that leans towards orange.

The blouse was large on me, so I bought it with the intention of altering it. Even though I’d never made a blouse sleeveless before, I figured there’d be a simple way to do it. And after looking online I found some instructions that seemed doable (although altering it took me longer than I anticipated).

I think I did an okay job (and at least it’s wearable unlike it way it was before). If I look closely at the armholes I see problems (like I didn’t quite cut them at the exact deepness on each side or the stitching is a little messy). But from a distance it looks fine. It was my first time doing it so I can’t really expect perfection. Hopefully I’ll just do a better job next time.