happy first full day of summer!

The past couple days I have been working on a few new things. Since my main objective with the products I make is to upcycle or refashion them, I have been reading into tailoring and how to alter clothes.

I found a couple great refashioning blogs that I just can't get enough of! (Thanks Kelly!)

refashionista.net and refashionco-op.blogspot.com tons of great ideas of what to do with the ugliest thrift store finds!

Anyways, yesterday I turned a pair of my favorite pre-pregnancy skinny jeans (that some how still do up.. with the help of an elastic hair band by the end of the day though..) that had a huge hole in the crotch area into super cute lacy shorts. The lace covers what tearing there was left beautifully!

Another thing I have been working on the past couple days, other than orders of course, is a cute formal red dress that is completely refashioned from a flapper girl costume that I found a couple years ago at the thrift store. This will be my first refashioned dress that will be for sale. I'm quite excited about it.. and really wish I came up with this idea for my freaking wedding! I would have been much happier in this dress! >.<

The original dress was meant to be a costume, and was completely hand made to begin with. (Not very well, I might add) I've had to take this thing completely apart to redesign it. But that's okay, because im definitely getting the outcome I was hoping for!

So far the only trouble I've had is with the breast darts, but after some tedious stitch picking (oh how i loathe stich picking!) and a little help from my Dearest Judy I was able to fix the problems.

*Me and hubs at the murder mystery party. Little did we know Miss H was conceived only two-ish days before this! Can you tell i dont like parties?*

The dress was originally very wide. Flapper dresses traditionally weren't fitted to begin with, but when I first wore this dress to a Murder Mystery party in '09 i had to take it in a fair bit to fit me like it should.. and it was still pretty big. All four of the darts on this dress are very off when just trying to take it in, so that's been put on the list of things to redo on this dress. (The first thing was to take off the hideous gold, plastic sequins!!)