Refashion Friday: Customised Rockabilly Cardigan

I know you've been missing Refashion Friday's here on this blog. It's ok, you can admit it. Whether you  regard customising as a form of refashioning or not (I do, clearly) here's a reminder that you can jazz up charity shop/thrift store scores with minimal fuss for high impact!  

I bought this dove grey cardigan in a charity shop when visiting my in-laws a few months ago. The fit and condition are great, and as useful as a plain grey cardi would probably be, I felt it was a bit too plain. Thanks to MMMay'14, I finally got round to customising and bringing it into regular wardrobe rotation, and it's now one of my very favourite items to wear. 

I've long admired the Rockabilly vibes of Collectif Clothing and other retro/repro brands. I love their kitschy 1950's style cardigans, so that is what I've been channeling here. In fact, I've just found this Bluebird cardigan which mine is very similar to mine, except I've got awesome buttons (care of the very lovely Catherine from Clothing and Sewing blog) as well as the swallow decals (which I bought in Madrid, FYI). These buttons are so fantastic, the gold anchors are on a clear base so the background kind of looks invisible. The decals are iron-on, but I carefully stitched round their outer edge as well so they wouldn't start to peel off after a few turns in the washing machine. 

Lace Appliqué Bolero Shrug

One of the things I worked on during Me-Made-May '12 was figuring out how to work my reversible bolero shrug into my handmade outfits. At the time, I'd just finished it and was hoping it would provide a me-made alternative to the ratty secondhand and thrifted cardigans I always rely on to provide much needed layers. I succeeded in working it into different outfits and it is now a fully integrated wardrobe item. So what do you do once you've made a successful new garment that you enjoy wearing? Make another from the same pattern in a different colour, of course!

So when some stinky synthetic red double knit appeared at work, I thought 'Aha!'. I wear lots of colours that work well with red and I felt that a red bolero shrug would be very useful addition. I used the same pattern as the first version (pictured above) and decided to make it double layered like the first as well. Unlike the first version, I actually had enough red double knit to cut both the layers from so I didn't need to worry about different colours peeking out like I sometimes do with the emerald/black version.

But how to make it more interesting than just a plain red shrug? A post I wrote for the Colette Patterns blog a few years ago discussed lace appliqués and their ability to lift a solid coloured garment. I dug around a found a pretty floral corsage-style lace appliqué. It was actually quite a bit bigger to begin with, but when the shrug was half-made, I positioned the appliqué on the shrug and kept trimming sections away from the appliqué until it reached a proportion and placement that looked good. I then hand-stitched it to the bolero before attaching the two halves and completing the construction of the garment. 

But wait, where has the appliqué gone in the photo above? Well, it's double sided, isn't it?! Genius. When I'm wearing an outfit (an anchor-based outfit for example) that wouldn't suit the introduction of a lace element, I can turn the shrug inside out and wear the plain side.

Aside from colour and the lace detail, the other difference between this version and the emerald/black version is the altered the width of the sleeves. The first bolero shrug definitely feels a bit 'jacket-y' because of the sleeves. For this I wanted to achieve a more cardigan-like garment that would fit under a coat or jacket with ease. All in all, I'm really happy with this garment, but the fabric is a bit of a disappointment (aside from the smell which remains slightly even after washing!). As someone committed to using secondhand fabric only, beggars can't be choosers, and it turns out this synthetic double knit doesn't hold it's shape as well as the emerald or black double knits I used before have. The red garment is a bit baggy at the bottom at the back, and the collar area doesn't sit quite as cleanly as I would have like. Still, if the fabric can keep its sh*t together enough for a few months of wear, it will have been a success and a worthwhile sewing project in my view.

Reversible Bolero Shrug

This post is somewhat picture-heavy compared to the amount of photos such a small, plain creation would usually require to be illustrated adequately. That is because this creation is REVERSIBLE!!!! Therefore, my thought process was clearly that it requires double the amount of photos to show it to you than most creations I blog about!

I've been sniffing around this pattern pictured above for a few months. It lives at work but I haven't figured out how it got there: if it was bought by my boss for herself or for TRAIDremade, or if it was donated to Traid by a member of the public. I was drawn to the shrug style (View A) but so revulsed by the other styles that it took a while for sensory adaptation to kick in and I could get over the hideousness of the rest enough for me to be able to pick the pattern up and work with it.

The pattern calls for a single layer of fabric, but my thoughts were that making it double layered would make it function far better as a cover-up. Finally finding a suitable use for some lovely greeny-turquoise synthetic double-knit stuff I've had in my stash for over a year, I was able to cut one layer's worth before running out of fabric. Although the garment is small and made from only one pattern piece, it is cut on the bias so actually uses more fabric than you'd expect.

I hunted around the studio for something that might work (hoping in vein to come across some of the crazy zebra print double-knit we were donated but evidently have used up) and found some black double-knit with a lovely silky texture that has a similar weight to the green. Considering the black double-knit didn't previously belong to me (though was part of a donation from a fabric producers, so still technically second hand) I guess it's a half-Stash Busted creation!

It was an easy garment to construct (as you'd hope from something created with only one pattern piece!) but I still managed a fluff-up when trying to work out how to attached the two layers together. See Laura? I do make mistakes! There was unpicking and everything.

The two fabrics together create a really nice weight that should provide a decent layer of clothing for the chilly studio. The only unavoidable issue is that, whatever side I wear, the other side peaks through at the edges. But if you pretend it's some sort of contrast piping-style effect (which I am choosing to), it could be viewed as a design feature!

Oh, and the tattoo-style Essex badge? I made that! Maybe I should do a separate blog post on that one day. Anyway, I have no idea why it happens, but even with some image editing, the colour of the greeny-turquoise fabric looks really wrong in these photos. It's actually way more emerald in real life.

I'm really pleased to have squeezed in the making of this garment into my present busyness, because it not only relieves the strain on my three now very ropey thrifted cardigans, but it also provides a viable solution to my continual 'knitwear problem'. My 'knitwear problem' is that I'd like to have an entirely self-made wardrobe, particularly for the Me-Made/Self-Stitched month challenges, but my inability to knit and my refusal to buy new fabric (in this case I'd buy cut-and-sew knit fabric) limit my options for creating viable layering garments that I need to keep warm enough.

The forthcoming Me-Made-May 2012 will be properly launched in a couple of weeks. During it this one, I am planning on upping the ante for my personal interpretation of the challenge and making it extra challenging for myself in a couple of ways. One of those ways is to go back to the original rules I set myself I started this whole thing in March 2010, which means ALL CLOTHING must be self-made. For a couple of the challenges since, I have allowed myself to wear thrifted knitwear throughout the month, but upped the ante in different ways, like by not repeating outfits. Well, I'm going back to my fully self-made clothing pledge, but plan to dress with more variety than the last time I didn't allow thrifted knits. The reversible genius of this bolero shrug means that hopefully you all won't get too bored of seeing it throughout May!!!