Refashion Friday Inspiration: Lace Overlay Sweatshirt Top

This garment is a basic dude's-to-women's sweatshirt remake but with a simple, prettifying twist! The lace overlay idea can be applied to over garment refashion/upcycle/remake projects and can camouflage as well as adorn. Read on and I'll explain...

As with most of my sweatshirt remake projects, I started with a large unwanted, second hand men's sweatshirt. I cut the sleeves off and put them to the side for later. I then cut up the side seams and carefully removed the neck ribbing. The new front and back body pieces were cut from the sweatshirt, the new shorter sleeves were cut from the old and it was all put back together again using the original neck ribbing with the addition of a lace overlay on the front.  

I chose to apply a lace overlay to this particular remake because the sweatshirt had an annoying stain on the front (see above) that refused to budge when washed. It wasn't a dark mark, more of a tea stain, but guaranteed to be noticeable on the finished garment if left bare. The lace overlay distracts the eye sufficiently for the stain to no longer be an issue. 

This technique could also work well when remaking knitwear that has been attacked by moths. The moth holes could be stitched together and the lace overlay would distract from the blemishes. I have also used lace overlays to semi-disguise an obvious join I was forced to make when avoiding an obvious logo on another second hand sweatshirt remake.   

To continue with the girly theme of this refashion, I added a few pearly buttons along the shoulder seam. A further cute/luxe addition could be to stitch tiny fake pearls at regular intervals to the lace design. Using a pale lace over a dark sweatshirt/knitwear/T-shirt or vice versa would also give a really dramatic effect.

Yellow Sailor Skirt

Inspired by a girl I saw wearing a yellow jacket (a lot like this one) I've been thinking recently about incorporating yellow into my wardrobe. Even though my dad wears yellow water-proofs when he sails on his boat and I already have a distinctly yellow jacket already, it's taken me a while to consciously think of yellow as A) a nautical colour; and B) a colour I could successfully wear.

I had this yellow twill/canvas in my stash for about six months and nearly took it to fabric swaps on multiple occasions, but something always stopped me from giving it away. And finally, after the success of my denim high waist bow skirt, I realised what this fabric wanted to be: a yellow sailor skirt!

The only changes I made was to lower the waistline about two cms and to apply cream buttons following the line of the front waist darts. I have a feeling I should have lined this skirt, I'm not used to using lighter colours and it didn't occur to me during the making process! I've got some cream poly taffeta in my stash so I may do that at a later date.

Here's the skirt in as part of a different outfit. I love how vibrant this outfit is when the skirt is paired with my floral Rizzo blouse. It's like something you'd see on the Tara Starlet website, which is no bad thing in my book!

Also, I'd like to thank everyone for kindly over-looking my earlier statements about no longer making skirts for myself! It seems to me that both this skirt and the denim version WANTED to be made! And as long as they don't languish in the back of wardrobe unworn, I think they fun-filled separates are a welcome addition.

Self-employment HQ: New digs for 'So, Zo...'

Again I'd like to say an enormous THANK YOU to everyone who left lovely and supportive comments on my blog post last week where I explained the changes Pat and I have been going through.  It's completely overwhelming, knowing just how many e-friends have our backs!

Many of you requested that I keep you updated on how being self-employed pans out. My first real move has been to literally move. I'm now time-sharing a desk space at the fabulous Super+Super HQ with my equally fabulous home-girl Kirstin (pictured above with me on Sunday when we moved in some of our belongings). Kirstin will be using the space to make her fabulous range of hand-drawn jewellery, which you can find in her Etsy shop. And me? Well, it's not yet clear what all my activities will entail, but some of the time I will be writing blog posts such as this one!

Super+Super HQ is a creative hub close to the seafront in Brighton. You may have read about it in Mollie Makes, issue 15, in the article written by sewer and journalist Len of the Seamless blog fame. The have a fantastic schedule of crafty and creative classes and events taking place on the ground floor (pictured above). I hope to be teaching a class or two of my own here before long. They also host crafty hen parties (including my own this Saturday!). The top two floors contain desk spaces for self-employed people including illustrators, textile designers, jewellery makers, e-commerce peops and so on.

In the picture above, the one on the right is ours! It doesn't look empty or at all neat any more. I chose to get desk space rather than working full-time from home, even though it incurs an extra expense at a time when funds are thin on the ground. Pat is now working from home almost all the time from our small, one bedroom flat. I couldn't see how both of us working and living in the same limited space 24/7 would be healthy, for either our businesses or our relationship!

So far so good, I'll update again in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, if anyone has any tips on how to structure your own working day, how to decide what activities should have time spent on them, and so on, I'd love to hear!

Me-Made-Outfit of the Week

Me-Mades:

Floral Rizzo blouse

Navy Ruby Shorts

Pants (knickers)

I made these shorts a few years ago and since then I feel that both my sewing ability and my sense of my own personal style have developed a lot since then. Combining them into a successful outfit (successful both stylistically and comfort-wise) with a blouse I made far more recently makes me very happy. Oh, and the sunshine. That makes me very happy too. 

Refashion Friday Inspiration: Front Zip Panelled Denim Mini Skirt

First up, I want to say a MASSIVE thank you for the many sweet and supportive comments left in response to my post on Wednesday about Pat and my recent redundancies and our new plans. To say that I was touched by the degree of e-love we've received doesn't go half way to sufficiently expressing how I feel. THANK YOU all so much.

Now on to what I can give back to the online sewing community: some project inspiration. Today's Refashion Friday inspiration, like most of the things I share each week, is argueably more of a re-make than a re-fashion, which of course depends on your interpretation of the definitions of those words. Anyways, this skirt started out as two pairs of unwanted men's jeans. If you recall from my previous post on How to Select Jeans to Refashion, I spoke about how there are basically two types of projects you can create from secondhand jeans: projects that have very clearly formerly been a pair of jeans (like the scallop hem denim jeans cut-offs); and projects that use jeans as a source of denim fabric. Today's creation falls firmly into the latter category.

I made the pattern by starting with McCalls M5590, the one I used to create my denim high waist bow skirt. I traced off the pieces, shortened it to a mini using the length of my chosen zip as a guide, then split both the front and back pieces into two by continuing the lines down from the front and back darts. These four narrower pattern pieces (plus facings) can now fit onto the leg sections of the deconstructed jeans.

The front open-ended zip was stitched on the outside so the zip tape is exposed and the metal teeth are clearly visible. Please remember to change your machine needles when stitching denim. Buy yourself some 100/16 or even 110/18 needles: your machine will thank you and you're less likely to find yourself swearing like a sailor in frustration!

Happy sewing and happy weekend.

Plans, Dreams and Employment Schemes...

This post is unapologetically filed in the 'life' category. It contains nothing directly sewing or refashioning related, so if that is exclusively what you like to pop by for (and who could blame you!), you might wish to come back on Friday. Today I need to write an update about my personal circumstances, although that will have an inevitable effect on this blog and my involvement in the areas I'm most passionate about (sewing and sustainability).   

As a little background, I'd like to explain that for the last couple of years Pat (Mr So Zo) and I have joked about 'living the dream', i.e, where we both work for ourselves. I'm sure most couples have a similar on-going fantasy/conversation about changing some aspect of their lives to conform to their ideal, however vague or specific that may be. Well, I guess Pat and I have both felt a growing desire to put all the time, energy and effort we exert during the working week into our own goals, passions and endeavours, rather than trying to balance all the things we are trying to achieve alongside our full-time jobs. The idea of complete autonomy and freedom to plan your time as you seen fit is an alluringly idyllic one. 

But like most dreams, ours didn't feel like a particularly achievable one. There seemed no clear path towards making that leap; it just didn't seem to be within our sights so it was always a joke. And then in May, Pat got made redundant totally out of the blue. He was working at a soul-destroying telephone-based job so leaving it caused little heart-ache, but his temporary contract meant he was literally at home the very next day. It was a massive shock, and made things financially very tricky, but we decided to ride with it and see if Pat really could make a go of it as a freelance writer (and whatever else he needed to be to make ends meet). 

Carving out a freelance career takes time, and things were scary-tight but we were making it work by almost solely relying on my small wage. Then a couple of months later, BOOM! I was told the studio where I work was to close down. What can I say? I guess the financial crisis hits every sector and charities need to tighten their belts as much as every other business. Friday will be my last day.

In so many ways it is sad and frustrating, both on a personal level and more broadly in terms of the state of sustainable fashion. And if I let it, it could also send me into a state of blind panic with our wedding planned for next month our honeymoon the month after. But as sad as it is, I am also seeing it as the major opportunity I need to try to become self-employed. Since I found out the news about the studio closing, a couple of full-time jobs have floated my way, but I decided they weren't for me as this is my chance to carve out my own self-employed reality. 

So what form will that take? How am I going to support myself? The way I've realised I work best: with my fingers in several pies. The focus of all my endeavours will be the things I am most passionate about: sewing, sharing skills and knowledge, supporting and promoting handmade and craft above mass-produced. You, my friends, will most certainly be kept in the loop if you watch this space...

Sailor Moon Top

Last month I shared a sailor collar T-shirt idea as part of my regular Refashion Friday feature which was created from a secondhand T-shirt and men's button-up shirt. As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of nautical style garments, and I found it impossible to resist the urge to make myself one too. 

I set to work making a short sleeved version that used a blue men's shirt with subtle red stripes for the collar. But it was bugging me for ages what exactly the finished garment was reminding me of. Finally I figured it out: 

The Japanese manga cartoon franchise, Sailor Moon! That's it! I'd inadvertently made a real-life, grown-up version of the main character's signature outfit. How did that happen?! 

The town I grew up in had one of those shops that sells all sorts of Chinese mass-produced plastic stuff, and often stocked knock-offs of official products or goods that were incorrect or damaged in some way. I can't really remember the exact circumstances, but when we were in our late teens, my friend Anna had a plastic figurine of the magical princess bought from that shop because Anna is really tall with blue eyes and at the time and had the same super-long blonde hair. Hmm, maybe I should send her this top and get her to bleach her (now brunette) hair back to blonde and send her off to fight evil with her magical powers!