Upcycled a skirt

Lucky me! I got to go away to Mexico at Christmas! Of course, a trip means new clothes! I wanted a skirt, but the summer fabrics are all gone from Canadian stores. So, I bought this top at a discount store. It already had the elastic at the bottom, so I thought, I can flip that to be the top. And away I went!

First, I cut off the bodice at the armholes. Then I separated the ruffle from the neckline and cut away the sleeves.

The sleeves became godets to insert in the skirt. Each sleeve was cut down the middle of the sleeve, to give me 4 godets. Next, I made a slash in two places on the skirt front. The sleeve was cut into a wedge shape.

 Here's the godet, inserted in the skirt. I paid attention to the grainline, placing the sleeve-godets opposite ways on the front.

 There was the uneven shape of the sleeve head at the hem, which I cut off. Luckily, this type of knit doesn't fray, so no seam finishing or hemming. I needed this fast, right?

Finally, there are 4 godets inserted.

I wanted to use up all the fabric, so the neck ruffles were separated into 2 and I sewed one down each side seam. The original seam was crooked anyway, so I cut it open and inserted the ruffle.

 Here's the curved ruffle, all pinned in place. I had to gather it to control the fit.

 Not bad, huh? A final press and my instant skirt was ready to go!

Have you done any upcycling latey?

West End Studio Tour launches

Last night was the launch party for the tour. The artists work was beautifully hung at Wall space gallery on Richmond Road, there was food, beer and cake, to celebrate 15 years of the tour. I had so much fun chatting with everyone. All we artists work hard to make the tour a fabulous event, but rarely get the chance to just socialise. The talk was of framing challenges, paint and new media and how much tidying up needed to be done before Saturday, when the tour starts. Somehow, we'll all be ready.

Here you can see most of us, plus what I wore (red and blue).

This morning I am packing up to move my work over to Paula Zoubec's, who has some great paintings lined up for the tour. I gave a last dab of paint to the Paverpol piece I am working on and glued it to the base. This had suffered a couple of knocks, which I tried to fix with shoe polish. That didn't work, so now it has a gold glaze to it, which goes with the figure.

I wore my upcycled dress, which you can see on my other blog http://www.edwinarichardsstudio.blogspot.com/ I had many compliments on it and encouragement to craete more art to wear.