In the beginning there was.....

I graduated high school in 1975. Yep, that ages me a bit. But I was very aware of the fabulous 60's and the cool fashions that came out of that era. I can remember sewing crochet flowers to my very cool denim navy surplus jeans. Big bells and all. The military surplus store the next town over was the only place to purchase the utmost cool fashions. Pea-coats, sailor pants, army jackets... you name it. Unfortunately it went the wayside to the hipsters and their stock-brokerage firms and high end shopping centers.


So I have this very wonderful and interesting friend in Australia. (They call it OZ. I think that is so cool.) My friend Karen Ellis has a brilliant  blog called RudeRecord. Her and her husband are all about being frugal, recycling and reusing as much as possible to reduce waste. That is the utmost cool thing!

Karen told me about a book she wanted a look see at but it was out of print and not available in OZ. Also shipping from the US was more than she could deal with. Sooo, I checked it out.

With a measly purchase price of $5.98 including shipping, I was up to the task to help her out.

And then I procrastinated..... for a long time. Cuz that's how I roll some days. But she gave me a gentle reminder the other day and I knew I needed to get this done!

So to start... here is the cover.

It was written in 1976 by Diana Funaro.


Multitudes of great information is covered. So much that there is no way I can cover it all. But knowing my friend, I figured anything that dealt with up-cycling or re-purposing something might help.

So back to the 60's. First came the jean skirt. Then of course the inserts into those wonderful big bell bottom pants. The book covers how to do both. I scanned a picture of the jean skirt for you.

Most of the book looks like this as far as illistrations. Not many actual photos. I didn't think they did a good job of representing the garments. So I passed on those. (Sorry Karen.)

The classic jean skirt with the insert. A staple for the 60's gal.

 Of course there was another style of jean skirt too.
The cut off skirt with a different fabric at the bottom.

Shameless plug for two of my jean skirt creations. This is my modern take on the last picture.

Yep, I'm kind of a messy scrappy kind of girl. By the way, I used all kinds of jean scraps to make these.

Any whoooo, back to the book.
(I just realized I got stuck on skirts here.)

So here a couple more pages from the book.

They are about making wrap skirts from tablecloths and such. I love wrap skirts. They are great for dealing with size issues. One size can fit quite a few different sizes.

Here is one more popular skirt. The handkerchief skirt.

This is a very simple one! Just sew four square hankies together, fold and cut a circle for the waistband. Attach a waistband and you are set!

Here is one that would have helped me the other day with a sweater upcycle. (I really need to read more of this book!)

This is taking out a turtleneck collar and changing it to a crew neck collar. Needless to say, I botched mine terribly and it is very "free form" right now. Sigh... now I know what to do for next time.

So these were some of the easy projects I found. There is so much more! It goes into all kinds of alterations and instructions on different embellishments as well. Beading, applique, embroidery and more.
Again, every thing is pretty much line drawings but if you are good at following written instructions (I am not! Surprised?) you should do great.

So hopefully I was able to give Karen in OZ (soooo coool!!!) a good idea about this book.
Now, I need to go and fix that damn sweater collar!

If you just have to have this wonderful vintage book. You can get it on Amazon here...
It is offered at many different prices. Don't let the $0.04 fool you. I think it will cost a bit more. ...


Until next time!
Oh, and my skirts are on my Etsy website along with some pretty cool patched jeans. Curiousorangecat.etsy.com


Thanks for visiting!

Blue Jean Upcycle Part Deux

So, I got the waistband covered. I broke two size 100 needles to do it. It gets a bit thick along the seam line. I dropped the feed dogs and used my darning food to messy sew everything on.

I sewed the belt loops back on. Not to bad if I say so myself. 

Next I appliquéd the flower and other embellishments. I still had my darning foot on. Here is a picture of the starting point.

...and the finished flower. By the way, big flowers like this one are great ways to learn and practice free form sewing.

I added a little bird from one of my favorite fabrics. 

The back needed a little something too. I thought some vines would work nicely. I of course used my Accucut to cut out the vines.

Here is the finished product! 

Front...

Back...

I still want to through it in the wash and see if everything holds up. I have a pile of jeans and guess what I'm doing tonight??? Yep, seam ripping the side seams. I have plans for tomorrow! 

Until later!! 

Cheers.

Blue Jeans Upcycle...A work in progress

Being a child of the 60's patched blue jeans are nothing new to me. I use to sew all kinds of stuff on my jeans. Crochet flowers were my go to most of the time. Oh, I was soooo cool.

Fast forward many years.... I'm needing some new inspiration. I keep hearing from family and friends that I need to do patchwork jeans. Ok, I get the message!  After a bit on Pinterest for inspiration I came up with these. I LOVE the waistband.

I couldn't find a good source to credit for the picture. So all I can do is say, check out the thread on Pinterest and maybe you can find the original source. I could not. So sorry who ever you are... but your jeans are AWESOME.

So here is where I begin...

 Boxes and baskets filled with fabrics some with Wonder-under already ironed on, some not. I dump everything out and start looking for cool stuff.

I used my seam ripper to cut the outside leg seams. That way I can use my sewing machine to sew everything down and sew it back up again with no one knowing the difference!

I found this really awesome flower from a Kaffe Fassett fabric I had cut out long time ago. It was so big I just couldn't decide how to use it. These jeans begged me for it. Yes, the clothes do talk to me. They can be so bossy!

I ironed it on the front of one pant leg.

I'm still working on what other things to add. But this is my base inspiration.

So I also needed to deal with the waistband. That was my favorite part of the Pinterest jeans.

A bit of un-stitching was in order. I needed the belt-loops to get out of the way! So I used my seam ripper to cut the threads on the top part of the belt-loop only. I kept the bottom so I could just sew the top back up without having to try to figure out where it use to be.
Now for the fun part. I measured the waistband and cut pieces of fabric a little longer than needed. ( I'll cut it down later. They all had Wonder-under on them so I ironed them down the best I could.

Note: I used a Teflon ironing sheet to keep the sticky stuff from getting on my ironing board.

I will messy sew them down later..... To Be Continued.....