Refashion #1: Ankle and Granny to Awesome and Trendy

I'm so excited about my first refashion!

One of my favorite things to find on blogs is a refashion section. I am always so amazed that people can take something hideous and make it something beautiful, like taking a $3 skirt at your local thrift store and turning it into something that would sell for $35 at your local mall. I'm equally amazed by those who can miraculously find these old beat-up pieces of furniture at flea markets and thrift stores, see potential in them, and recreate a gorgeous piece for their home. 

If you love decorating and re-designing furniture, or want to learn, please go immediately and see Brooke at All Things Thrifty. She does super incredible things and then tells you how you can do it, too. Things like this:

table with etched glass

and this:

yellow glazed furniture

and this incredible-ness:

fabric headboard tutorial

Go over there and learn something. I do every time I visit her blog.

 The first time I really took notice of the idea of going thrifting and refashioning clothing was when I saw the section Kathleen had done on her website, Grosgrain, called Thrift Store Thursday where she shows you how she took things from thrift stores and reworked them into something else. I fell in love immediately.

Here's some of her fun refashions:

Coat Refashion

Camisole to Summer Dress Refashion

Skirt Refashion

 Browse through Thrift-Store Thursday section of her blog. You'll love it. 

Another great blog that is fully dedicated to refashioning that I recently found is C&C or Cotton and Curls

Here are some of her fun refashions:

Purple Mumu Magic

head to toe re-fashions

She also has a page on her blog where you can link up your blog called Refashion Nation if you refashion anything! I'm sure there are lots of great refashion blogs out there you could check out.

So when I see the inspiration, I bookmark it or "pin" it all because I think, "Someday I will do something like that!" Unlike many things I bookmark that I forget about or don't make time for, the day has come. I have done a refashion from a $3 ankle granny skirt. 

And. I. Love. It. 

Consider me officially addicted to refashions. I have 2 more pieces of clothing waiting to be reworked.

 When I saw this pattern at the thrift store I knew I needed it. It was fun and a great shade of turquoise-y green. The feel of it is slick and it's thin-I'm sure it's some sort of cheap poly blend or maybe just straight poly, but it feels cool on hot summer days like today.

 And of course the best thing about elastic skirts is you can wear them anywhere on your waist (high or around your hips) if you don't make the elastic part too tight. 

This is my favorite kind of outfit. I could make 20 more of these and be in heaven. 

I kinda used this 20 minute skirt tutorial from Ruffles and Stuff. I strayed from it some and probably shouldn't have since my seam is not super straight (thus the reason for no super close-ups of my sewing handiwork.) I consider myself a pretty novice sewer still and will definitely make more of these to get better at it. 

The best thing about this skirt re-fashion is that it was super easy (even though I managed to screw it up a little-not that you can tell though, really). I simply cut off the top elastic, picked out the seams with my seam ripper (not the bottom hem!!!), and then followed Disney's tutorial! I used the existing hem already in the skirt so I didn't have to re-do that part. Fun and easy. Yay.

Thanks for reading and go do some thrifting - you never know what you'll find that could turn into something awesome!!