Monday, May 24, 2010

My friday project

What did you do on friday? I MacGyver'd a dress!
Dress: hand-me-down from Adria
Belt: Vintage hand-me-down
Shoes: Courtesy of ModCloth
Bag: Thrifted ($10)
Sunnies: Fred Flare ($11)
heart and cross rings: F21 ($5)
Bracelet: Thrift ($2)
Necklace: F21 ($8)
photos: chris
A lot of people ask me about thrift shopping on this blog- I seem to have quite a bit of luck with it- one of my secrets is to look for the potential in things. Although this dress wasn't thrifted by me, my friend Adria obviously saw that it had something going for it on the rack, and then when it showed up at my doorstep after a closet clean-out of hers, I saw the potential too. The first thing that caught my eye was the vibrancy of the fabric, I love that bright blue, it's not like anything in my closet already. I also noticed the composition of the fabric, unlike many dresses of it's era (early 1980's) it's not made of polyester, it's silk- one of my favorite materials. The shape on the rack was kind of frumpy and limp, but after trying it on I found that the shoulders fit my frame perfectly and while the silhouette was different than what I normally go for, I liked the change. So, how to make it better? I hacked off about 10 inches from the bottom, and used stitch witchery instead of sewing a blind stitch hem. My reasons for coping out on the hem were because silk is so light any little stitch would show, and I was in a hurry! All in all it took me 20 minutes to make myself a new dress! So, moral of the story: always look for potential! (see the uninspiring before image below)
The before (excuse the bad photo):
How was your weekend?