Wardrobe refashion frenzy - converting skirts to tops.

When I was having my wardrobe moan recently (still not done that clear out I was going to do last week - must bump it up my to-do list), one of the things that prompted the whinge was the fact that I seem to have an inordinate number of skirts I don't wear taking up valuable wardrobe hanging space for all the other things I don't wear.


Most of them have come the car boot / charity shop route courtesy of my mum, but I am just not a skirty type of person.


So I pulled a couple out of the wardrobe the other day and decided that there was just too much source material there to waste and I simply had to use the fabric for something ultimately more wearable.


Converting skirts into tops - Part 1


Elasticated skirt to halter neck top.


(forgot the before photo AGAIN - must get that stamped in indelible ink on my hand)

LOL - what do think of my drawing - pretty good eh?

Anyway, remove the elastic waistband, and cut the arm hole shapes onthe front of the dress, I just used the skirts existing side hems as the starting point, then cut straight across the back. Hem the armholes.

To size the armholes I just held the skirt waistband to the base of my neck and in the mirror, marked with chalk where my arm holes needed to come down to on the side seams, then measured the distance and adjusted them so that they were identical depths down the seams both sides.

I hemmed the back to create a fold large enough to take a stretch of elastic.

Top tip:
- the easiest way to get a good idea of the amount of elastic you need is to consider it stretches to more than double its size, so run the elastic without stretching it across the area where you want it - here my back, then cut half the amount you have measured, the elastic will then stretch to the area you want to use it.

For the front halterneck, again I created a deep hem to take the ribbon that I had chosed to be the tie, threaded it through, and secured it with a couple of stitches to the middle of the front piece.

Another rainy day

With the skies leaking all over the shop again, I thought I might take the morning to sort out the files on the computer, but I am not having great success. I have now backed up everything, I have deleted, de-frag-ed and scanned registry files but the damn thing still will not work properly. It needs to be formatted but without the disks I can't reload the operating system, and I can't decipher enough Dutch to set up the partitions. I am so frustrated by it now, that I just want to commit acts of violence on it.

The frustrating part about it is, when it works it works fine, I have two photo-editing programmes and it will flip between the two, it will upload files, it will even play some music at the same time, but then it freezes and all your work is lost, transferring files are lost, photos are lost and there is no warning when it will happen. Sometimes it works for as long as 45 minutes, then at other times you have to reboot it 3 or 4 times in the space of 10 minutes just to get to the desktop screen.

I feel that I have just wasted a couple of hours on nothing.

At least I spent the 30 minutes while it was trying to upload some photos drawing up plans for my next attempt at a maxi dress.  ( I hope Thea does not notice that I ripped a page from her magazine for inspiration -  Glamour is her bible at the moment.)

I have an idea of how to fix a dress that I butchered last year, but before cutting it up I am experimenting with the theory on some pink voile that used to be curtain material for Thea when she was into pink, and hope to continue with this once I get home from work this afternoon.