Vintage Velvet Dress ReStyle

I thrifted this dress last week and knew that with some minor tweaks it would be a great addition to my Fall wardrobe. I liked the initial length of the dress, but I'm more comfortable styling shorter dresses for myself so I took about a foot of fabric off the bottom and created a new hem line. Nothing complicated here. I just folded the cut edge up about a 1/2 inch and used a zigzag stitch to prevent fraying.  You can see in the 'after' picture that I didn't do the best job at making the sides even so I need to go back and fix that. Besides the dress length, I removed every other gold button with a seam ripper. Fortunately for me, the buttons were purely decorative (no button holes) so it was an easy fix. There are loop holes in the back of the dress for cinching which create a nice option for adding a ribbon and giving the dress a more fitted look. This was an easy restyle and I'm excited to have a long sleeve dress to play with for Fall!

Leather Pocket DIY

 

 You might remember this popular sweater-to-cardigan DIY I did several months ago. Well, I finally got around to making pockets for it. One of my goals this year was to learn to work with leather. My parents got me a bag of leather scraps for my birthday, a book about working with leather, and some basic tools. Turns out there are a bunch of different kinds of leather. Who knew? The scraps I have are garment weight so I was able to use my regular sewing machine, but you can't use pins when working with leather because they leave holes. To keep my leather pieces in place while I was sewing I used a bit of krazy glue because that's what I had on hand. Rubber cement seems to be recommended as an adhesive, but I think that's for heavier weight leathers.

1. Make a paper template that suits the size of your sweater. I settled on a 5"x4.5" rectangle.
2. Select and arrange your leather scraps making sure you provide enough surface area for your template.
3. Use a little glue to keep your leather pieces in place and sew the arrangement.
4. Place your paper template on top of your sewn together pieces and cut out your pocket. I found it was easiest to use my rotary cutter and mat for this process.
5. Determine where you want the pockets to be located on your sweater, then sew them in place.
6. Flaunt your leather pockets and DIY skills!

The Finer Things::Elbow Patches

I don't know what it is, but I just think there is something incredibly romantic about elbow patches. Maybe because they are reminiscent of a time when people would regularly get dressed up to go out....there is just something about them that makes me swoon! I found this sweater while thrifting in the Fall and bought it with the intention of giving it elbow patches, but I never had time to do so until now. I have a ton of scrap fabric, including the sleeves I cut off of another shirt that has white and yellow stripes and I liked the look of it with the plain gray of this sweater. This project is easy peezy. Here's what I did:

 Put your sweater on and mark where your elbows are with a piece of chalk or fabric marker

 Decide on the shape you want your elbow patches to be and make a paper pattern

 Use the paper pattern to cut out your patches

 Pin your patches in place, centered over where you marked

 Then hand stitch the patches in place! I used pink thread for an extra fun touch :)

And there you have some elbow patches for when you're feeling fine and fancy!