Monday, November 15, 2010

Rummage Sale Fix

So I love rummage/garage sales.  I always have and I think it comes from the connection to my grandma Mahler who LOVED garage sales.  In the last couple years, I haven’t gone to as many as I’d have liked, but dragging two kids in and out of the car takes some of the fun out of it. 
My daughter’s preschool had a rummage sale a couple weeks ago and I wandered through just out out of curiosity.  They had a bunch of women’s clothes that were really nice, name brand, and priced cheap (50 cents each!)  I’m not brand obsessed, but I do admire some brands because they are made very well. 
Anyhow, with my arms piled full of some various shirts, I came across a J.Crew long sleeved button down shirt.  I tossed it on my pile and kept shopping, only I realized when I got home that someone had cut off the cuffs of the shirt.  Arg, only me!  I was determined to fix it and make it work though. 
So, today I pulled up to my sewing machine, got out my scissors, and went to work.
Here’s what I started with:
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And the sleeves looked like this:
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Using another shirt as an example of the angle, I cut the sleeves off to a shorter length (I measured 10 inches from the shoulder seam and cut, so it was quite a bit longer than the purple shirt)
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I hemmed each side.  I’m not much for measuring, and I know I probably should, but I just eyeballed it.  (Ignore my chipped polish, I need to remove it, but I was to busy fixing this shirt!)
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Next, I turned the shirt right side out and rolled the sleeve twice to make a cuff.  I made sure that both sleeves were even and sewed a seam close to the edge
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I thought it looked pretty good at this point, but it needed something else.  On the bottom there was some detailing with some extra buttons to cinch in the bottom hem.
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I took those buttons and the edging from what used to be the cuff that I cut off (rectangle):
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I used those pieces to add some detailing on each of my new cuffed sleeves
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I think it came out really cute and can’t wait to wear it!
So if there is something wrong with a piece of clothing that you have, make sure you think about a way to fix it, make it better, or hide the problem before you just toss it!
For 50 cents and a little time, I have a really great shirt!  I checked the jcrew website and most of the shirts that looked like this were around $70.00!!

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