Something Useless into Something Adorable

I love blogs.  Craft blogs are a particular weakness.  And really I mean sewing crafts.  I’m not a paper crafter.  I had my go at that with paper scrapbooking.  And I was no good at it.  But I have a little sewing machine that I’m totally in love with, and I imagine myself doing all sorts of amazing things on it.  I’m not extremely confident, though, so I usually just drool over projects and put them in my “When I Become Good At Sewing” file. Yesterday was a busy day.  I had sick kids to take care of, a preschool lesson to plan, a house that was a total disaster, about 13 loads of laundry to do, and a 275-page book to read by that evening for our book club.  So of course I started blog browsing (as one does).  And I came across this tutorial (love love love this blog, BTW).  This is when lightning struck.  I had that SAME, EXACT shirt sitting unworn in my closet.  I didn’t have to be creative!  All I had to do was follow exactly what she did and I would be set. And it was ADORABLE.  And quick.  It would have been even quicker if I would have read to the end of the tutorial and found her tips on working with knit.  Because knit is fussy.  But after I figured it out (and put a hole in a sleeve with my vigorous unpicking), it was a cinch.  I’m kicking myself for giving away the other 3 shirts that I owned in this style because I want to make dresses out of all of them.  They never looked that good on me anyway (I must have been smoking something when I bought FOUR of the same shirt that didn’t really fit well). Averi loves her dress.  She’s particularly enamored with the pockets and buttons.  And because I was feeling crafty (and I obviously had nothing else on my plate that day) I made a bow out of the scraps.  It was originally going to have green leaves (as flowers do) but I didn’t have green felt.  And I knew if I didn’t make it NOW, it was never going to happen.  I did have yellow felt, so yellow it was.  And I love how it turned out.  The yellow buttons add some pop to the dress and make it even more adorable than the purple buttons I was going to use.  The clip was also going to be a headband.  But, alas, I had no spare headbands lying around.  Someone had so kindly broken all of my skinny headbands.  So I raided a clip from the girls’ hair drawer and glued it onto that.  The clip caused some minor trauma because her hair is fine and it kept falling out when she yanked on it (surprise!).  But we solved that by putting her hair in a ponytail first.  And it completes the dress and makes me look like I’m some ultra-fashionable mom.  But we all know the truth. It also helps to have an extremely cute model…     Checking out the dinosaurs she has stashed in the pockets.  So there you have it.  My first repurposing project which turned out exactly like I wanted it to.  Not often that happens!