score

of course amy sedaris's apartment is fabulous

via design*sponge. you can see more here.

muse

there is a real ody:



much fuzzier in real life.

and here's his brother, pork chop, who may have a napkin of his own some day:

possible future subject

labels-to-be

lovely lovely, from diane von furstenburg

refashioning is contagious

i haven't refashioned anything for myself in a ridiculously long time—haven't bought anything new though!—but my nearest and dearest have been taking up the slack.

my mom made one shirt from a pattern and refashioned another (waiting for pics!).

sarah needed some new dresses for her trip to italy and instead of buying some, asked me to make them. we made her a dress form:



and i found her two great vintage patterns on ebay:



we didn't get any pictures before she left—the sewing went right down to the wire, sar stitched the straps on to the last dress on the plane!—but she promised me some good shots, on location on the amalfi coast.

and finally, stephen refashioned! he transformed one of his old yankees shirts from gary sheffield (no longer on the team, a big jerk) to shelley duncan (rookie just called up from the minors, young and really enthusiastic and hitting big home runs):



i am, of course, a mets fan. but i'm still impressed with his work. :)

nightgown to dress

i couldn't resist this silly nightie i found in the salvation army:



the pattern was just too great:



so i reconfigured it into this:



i think it still needs a little tweaking.... i want to put some pleats at the neckline, and i think i need to take it in at the sides a little more---i want it to be loose and comfy, but think it's still a little too much fabric. but even in the meantime, it's been a great summer dress/swimsuit coverup.

p.s. sorry about the blue underwear! i forgot to change to taupe for the photo shoot.....

p.p.s. i had a windfall: some store/company/who knows what down the street from stephen's office was throwing out a whole load of upholstery fabric, and he snagged almost all of it for me:



i think there's some ultrasuede in there!

another old shirt rescued!

this was part of my college uniform:

not only is it ridiculously big (as all of my clothes were back then), it has developed some issues in the back....

.....and so has since been relegated to the pajama drawer (or, more accurately, one of the pajama drawers. i have a few pajama/loungewear drawers. some of my friends find this odd). but i never wore it, because i was afraid it was just going to keep ripping and fall apart. so, clearly, it was time to take it apart myself.

i started by removing the sleeves, then cutting across the back at the spot of the enourmous gaping hole, leaving me with this:

then i cut down the sides, making two pieces, and slit the part of the back that was attached to the front down the middle, comme ca:

i decided that those two pieces coming off the top of the front piece would become straps, so i trimmed them a bit to make them slimmer and hemmed the edges. i also turned the neckband under in the front and stitched it down to make a uniform hem all around.

then i put it all together: pinned the side seams and sewed them up, hemmed the top of the back piece, attached the straps to the back, and hemmed the front piece— which had ended up longer than the back—at the bottom. and this is what i got:

putting it on, i realized that the part where i had hemmed under the existing neckband stuck out....

...and i was going to fix it by turning it under one more time and re-hemming, but then i realized that i liked it the way it was.

the finished product definitely retained some of the pinholes and frayed edges of the original shirt, and i'm glad it did.

i believe i originally bought this at joyce leslie....

this was my favorite shirt in 5th grade.



hey, blame the 80s. anyway, i went at it with the scissors, pieced the pieces back together, and ended up with this:



you can't see it in this shot, but on the back panel (which is all one piece, not three pieces patched together like the front) the stripes go vertical instead of horizontal, which looks really neat at the side seams when the two come together.