Happy Birthday to Oona!

So Oona of oonaballoona from kalkatroona is having a virtual birthday party today, inviting guests in their handmade finery...I thought it'd be a great occasion to finally refashion a fancy frock I've had waiting in my pile. (If you haven't stopped by Oona's neck of the woods, you should. It's full of pretty things and humor and sewing inspiration.)

My dress for today's virtual shindig started out as this Steve McClintock number from (I'm fairly sure) the 1980's that I'd thrifted a while ago. Let's see...giant puffy sleeves, turquoise brocade, front peplum...check, check, and check. I actually saw another one of these dresses in another thrift store recently, and the design used to have one of those giant wrap collars and a bow in the middle as well. That much was at least removed before it got to me. But still...not quite a fabulous party dress for this era yet. (no, I'm not just going to wear it like this...)


But the body fit me quite well, I liked the color, and it had a terrific openwork detail in the back. So time for a refashion! I hacked off the sleeves next to the seam.


I then turned under the edges and finished them off, and cut about ten inches off the bottom to rehem.


And here's a dress hopefully fit for the party!



So happy birthday, Oona! And hope everyone else is having a good weekend as well! I've got a couple more posts I need to get up soon...updates on, say, where I've been while scarce around the internets the last couple of weeks (vacationing on a lake in Wisconsin with the boyfriend and his family. I learned to waterski!), and some of what I've been wearing...

Day of a little labor

I had the day off from work today for Labor Day, so took the opportunity to do some refashioning (when not dealing with a long work-related conference call). I started out with a dress I'd gotten from the dollar-a-pound a while ago; it's originally some sort of house dress.


I loved the print and the colors and the stretchy fabric, but there was just so MUCH of it all! (Probably should have taken a picture wearing it, but it came down to the floor and was fairly overwhelming.) I cut off about two feet from the bottom, leaving me with a great piece of fabric that I hope will end up in a later project. Then I chopped off the sleeves, leaving what turned out to be some sort of flutter sleeves. The fabric's a knit and doesn't appear to be unraveling, so I didn't even finish the hems. Add a belt and some sandals, and I had this:


Ignore my squinting. It was bright and sunny! And really, really nice out! I went for a run in the late afternoon, the first I'd taken for quite a while...I'm going to try to get back in the game on my workouts this fall.


Dress: thrifted, refashioned. Sandals: Miz Mooz, thrifted. Belt: Forever 21. Earrings: Ebay jewelry lot.

Hope everyone had a good weekend! (or a good Monday, if today wasn't a day off...)

Day 30, with a new refashion!

For Day 30 of Me-Made May Lite, I actually put together a new refashioned dress, so I wasn't just wearing the same jean skirt I've worn again and again this month.

It started out as this floral, lacy dress...is it early 90's, that had this style? Sometime in the 80's? Anyway. Not something I'd be comfortable wearing as is.


I hemmed it 10 inches. Took out the giant shoulderpads...really, we're talking much larger than my hand! Cut off the sleeves (starting with just part of the sleeves, then going for the whole sleeve)). This left large, gaping armholes...luckily, there was enough room in the bust for me to just take in the sides a little bit from the armhole down to the waist. Then I tied some pieces of lace around the top of each sleeve area (this is one part I may modify, and just gather it with a few stitches instead.) And now...


Wow, this looks even shorter in pictures than it did on. I think I probably hemmed it too much in retrospect, especially as it winds up looking even shorter in the back, thanks to having to fit over my rear. Look at that asymmetrical hem action! I swear I cut the same amount off all around...


I'm never entirely sure what to make of short skirts like this. I don't know that I'm totally comfortable with something this short, but I'm also not sure why that is...I see plenty of girls walking around with shorter things, so it's not like I'd be standing out in an uncomfortable way. Am I uncomfortable with my thighs? I don't really think so. Maybe I just don't think someone who doesn't have very slender thighs is "supposed" to have them bare? Eh, who knows what's going on in my mind. So, normally I'd layer a dress this length over something that was around knee-length, but it was so hot, particularly in my place, which (according to a digital thermometer) had been hovering around 85-90 degrees for the past week or so, even when it was more like 70 degrees outside. This may be a long summer.


Hope everyone has a lovely Memorial Day (and three-day weekend, if you have it)!

Day 4

So I managed to get exactly one picture of yesterday's outfit before my camera batteries died...

The dress is a thrifted piece I refashioned last year, mostly just bringing up the hemline from something awkward and mid-calf length. Of course, now the hem is potentially too high, so I tend to wear it with this petticoat-like skirt underneath. I don't know why I'm not quite comfortable wearing mid-thigh hems...I suspect because most of what I do these days is go to work, and I don't feel very professional in a short-short skirt or dress.

Dress: thrifted, refashioned
White skirt: Forever21
Tank top: Express
Necklace: garage sale
Purse: thrifted
Shoes: Naturalizers, thrifted

Speaking of work...I'm so close to finishing this thesis, it's really quite exciting. I'm just waiting for the last one of my committee members to get back to me with his suggestions (which really needs to be soon, as I have to implement any changes he wants and get him (and my adviser) to sign off on the final version before Friday). And then my best friend/college roommate will be visiting this weekend, getting in Friday morning, so I am incredibly excited about that. I'll turn in the thesis on Friday, and then can have a nice celebratory weekend! Now, back to Wednesday...

April!

It's SPRING! Yes, I know I'm still in Massachusetts and we're only in early April and there may still be storms and bad weather and snow. But...the magnolias are blooming and it finally was sunny today and I've decided that it's spring.


I'd had this outfit in mind, or parts of it at least, for a few days now, since I hemmed this floral dress from an unflattering mid-thigh length. I knew I needed to get up the nerve to wear it, and thought it would be an interesting contrast with black tights. Then I'd happened to have the dress next to my purple cardigan and realized they matched (yes, I know I wore the cardigan yesterday. I'm remixing!) And this morning, added the boots, necklace, and hat, after trying to accessorize it in a couple of ways. This look is a bit of a stretch for me, but it was fun to do. Though I admit I only wore the hat to and from work.


Here's the dress without the cardigan. It's got interesting puffed sleeve details, which I'm still trying to decide whether I like or not. Also, the strange face in this picture comes from me attempting to take pictures in semi-public! I was done at the lab very close to sunset and decided to try to find someplace with a bit of light (and an appropriate post on which to rest my camera) on my walk home. I'd missed the late afternoon light on this wall, but these still turned out all right. During this picture, though, there was someone walking by -- and I'm not yet used to the public-picture-taking thing! (or when I do, I usually am having someone else take my picture).


This is with the coat... a very different look when you can't see the floral print!


Details:
Floral dress: thrifted (dollar-a-pound), hemmed by me
Boots: thrifted (dollar-a-pound)
Hat: vintage, Ebay
Brooch (on hat): vintage, Ebay
Coat: thrifted (dollar-a-pound)
Black tights: Hue
Necklace: Ebay


Another quiet day at the lab. Working on the thesis writing, reading a lot about systems of dance notation, getting books from the library, working on a class project. All of my labmates and I are absolutely exhausted for no really good reason...we think it's the rain from earlier in the week? Or some disease going around that just makes everyone sleepy?


Also, did I mention it's spring? I can't wait for the weekend!

Quick outfit post

I felt the need for a highly feminine outfit today...not sure why! This navy dress with white flowers plus the white skirt underneath was one of my go-to pairings last spring...and putting the cardigan over it helped keep it a bit more weather-appropriate. Oh Boston, why must you have so much rain and so many cloudy, chilly days? Yes, I know it's still only March, at least for the rest of the day. But this weekend...this weekend will be warm!

Details:
Cardigan: Banana Republic, thrifted (dollar-a-pound)
Dress: Paris Blues, thrifted (dollar-a-pound), hemmed by me
White skirt: Forever21
Black tights: Hue
Black shoes: Sketchers


Another quiet day around the lab. I spent most of the morning working on the thesis, attempting not to go too detailed in my background sections (do I need a complete essay on the history of modern dance in a master's thesis on gesture recognition technologies for performance? No, no I do not). The afternoon was spent in class, and the early evening on more thesis writing. Then home. I'm remarkably tired for no particular reason. Perhaps it's the weather.


Here's the outfit without the cardigan, so you can see the top of the dress. I love this sweetheart neckline..one of the cuts that fits me well, I think. I really like this dress overall, though I hemmed it a little bit short! The only bad thing about the fit is that the back gapes a bit at the top if I stand up straight. I'm not entirely sure how to best fix that.

A couple of refashions

So I was planning on doing an outfit post today. But it was raining all day (a very gloomy Monday)...and then I ran out after work and went for a bit of a distance in the rain after some free patterns that had gotten posted on Craigslist. The girl had advertised over a hundred sewing patterns, women's and girls' dresses, though she hadn't gone through them. So I rushed over in the pouring rain to snag a bag of patterns, hoping for some great things! I had visions in my head of vintage patterns, beautiful dresses, that one gorgeous pattern that would happen to be just my size. But then it turned out to be about 30 patterns, some without envelopes and almost entirely young girl or doll clothes, like these:


There were two adult patterns...a shirt and shorts set and this dress pattern:


Oh well. They'll be useful when I have small girls in...twelve-fifteen years or so, right? (Actually, anybody currently have small girls who want to wear 90's clothing? Interested in me sending you a couple of these?) But in any case...I got back soaking wet and the clothes had to be taken off. So no outfit pictures for today.

Instead, a dress refashion. I had grabbed a dress from the dollar-a-pound seeing this awesome fabric. Red and white and ginko leaves!


Unfortunately, the dress turned out to look like this when I got home and tried it on:


Hmm. Not exactly to my taste. In particular the sleeves were huge and shapeless, so I wanted to take them off. The armhole was really large once the giant baggy sleeves were gone, so I stitched a new seam up the sides to take them in (requiring multiple tries due to my inability to guesstimate what size circle my arm will fit in). I also changed the shaping of the side to make it narrower near the armholes and increase down to the extra ruffle of fabric. Some vintage seam binding around the new armholes, a belt to give it a bit more shape, and here we are:


I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. It's not a particularly sophisticated refashion...doesn't change most of the dress construction, but it still changes it enough that I'll definitely wear it when it gets warm again. (Like this weekend? When it's going to be 70 degrees, maybe?)



I also did a quick refashion over the weekend of this plastic-ish bangle bracelet. It started out the ugly beige, which I tried to redo (a few weeks ago) with some gold nail polish, but gave up halfway through when that still looked pretty messy:

So I got a piece of printed silky trim from my stash and hot-glued it onto the bracelet, wrapping it around and around and gluing at each wrap. This also serves the helpful purpose of making it slightly smaller and thus more likely to stay on my arm.



Hope everyone is having a good Monday!

Catchup from Friday

So, as I may or may not have mentioned, I joined Chictopia at the beginning of the week when I started doing these outfit posts. It's already been quite interesting. I wore this on Friday, inspired by the colors of an outfit I saw on Chictopia (from accessorypirate). I wanted to try my own outfit with navy blue and black…I took the easy route, a bit, as the dress has both colors in the pattern already. But it also gave me a reason to wear these navy heels for the first time… I happened to be walking through the campus center a few months ago and saw a couple of pairs of shoes in a box labeled “free.” So of course I took the ones in my size (especially as they were still new with tags!). However, as they’re a pretty high heel, I hadn’t gotten around to wearing them yet. I really liked them for the first part of the day, until my coworkers and I went to lunch at one of the Indian buffet places a good 15-20 minute walk from the lab. Then the fact that the shoes were not broken in yet started to get to my feet. I need to figure out how to wear new heels without them rubbing the sides of my feet too badly (though it's better in the winter when at least I have tights on...)





Another part of this outfit I like is the necklace, which is self-made from a modified vintage brooch (which had chipped paint and therefore got a new color with nail polish) and a chain my grandmother gave me. This is a trick I've been doing recently, pinning a brooch to a chain to serve as a pendant.



I wore this on Friday to work, for a demo of my research, and to class. I was planning on going to see a play after work, or potentially go meet up with some friends, but was so tired I decided just to head home. It was a long, busy week! And, actually, it's been a kind of busy weekend...though I did a fair amount more resting and reading blog posts and going thrift shopping with my mother than I probably ought to have given the amount of work that I have to do on this thesis performance before the end of the month. Which is a lot! Finishing the costume design, getting the gesture recognition software to work better, designing and programming sound and visuals and lights to be controlled by the gestures and qualities of movement (some of that is done, but there's still a lot to go), finishing the choreography and rehearsing as much as possible with the gesture sensor systems...yeah. A fair amount of work for three weeks. On the plus side, after that I'll primarily just have to write the thesis.

And back to Monday, soon, and the regularly scheduled work/class/meeting/rehearsal week!