Alohaaaaaa.

So, remember about a thousand years ago when I mentioned I picked up some dresses at the thrift store? This was one of them. Because I'm the worst, I completely forgot to take before pictures, but that's ok. All I did was shorten it, anyway, so you can pretty much imagine what it looked like before. 

I picked this one because a) I liked the summery pattern b) I liked the Peter Pan collar and c) it was only like, a buck ninety nine. I cut it shorter weeks ago, then got stalled because I didn't have any red thread. Then, last night, when I went to hem it...I realized I may have gotten a little snip happy. It's kind of short. So I'll probably end up wearing this with leggings in the spring or early fall. 

Check the awesome trick of the light that makes my legs look 8 shades paler than the rest of me. At least I hope that's a trick of the light...

Here's a close-up of the collar and the cute little buttons. And the pattern, I suppose, since the first picture isn't exactly high def. 

Somewhere down the line (when the weather is cooler) I'm sure I'll be revisiting this, to post pictures of how I actually end up wearing it. 

The Sassy Pilgrim/ Weird Tuxedo/ Pirate-Judge Shirt!

This shirt.....was WEIRD when I got it. But I liked the details. Now, looking back, the phrase "The Devil's in the details" springs to mind. But we'll get to that. Anyway, it looked like this:

Like how I talk about details, then post a picture in which you can see none of them? There is no method to my madness.

So here's what I had to work with: cool pleated collar and cuffs, tuxedo-type detail on the front, terrible puffy sleeves, entire shirt 4x too big. Also pretty darn sheer, as you can tell from the picture, but somehow I wasn't worried about that picture ending up too sexy. Just a hunch I had that the overall pirateyness (my only regret is that I didn't have hooks to use as hands) would quash that. Moving on!

My initial plan was to take off the sleeves, shorten the shirt, take it in on the sides, and move the pleated cuffs from the bottom of the sleeves to the armhole edge as a decorative detail. 

Well...It didn't work out. I got so irritated with all the weird fit issues that I tossed it aside for a while (hence the delay in this post). Then when I picked it up to work on it some more last night, I looked at it with rage in my heart. "I hate this shirt," I said to my empty apartment, because I'm weird and I constantly talk to myself. "It fits all wrong and I don't want to spend the rest of my life fixing it and it's too sheer anyway and it stole my bike and called me stupid behind my back and didn't invite me to its birthday party!"

And that was all true. All I had ever liked it for was its details, anyway. So I got my scissors. Chopped off the parts I liked and transplanted them onto a shirt I already had. An hour or so later, I had this to show for my revenge hack-and-sew-athon. 

There's an optical illusion in this picture that makes it look like I'm sort of tan-ish. By optical illusion, I mean that I'm actually sunburnt. 

Here are some close-ups so you can see what made me want to keep the parts I did. 

Here's the former cuff....

And the tux front. I just sewed down either side under one of the ruffles so it wouldn't be visible. 

So the lesson here is that sometimes things don't go according to plan. Sometimes you have to improvise. And sometimes you have to get really, really annoyed, and attack articles of clothing with scissors. 

Either that or get better at planning ahead, but that's for squares. I like to fly by the seat of my pants. 

Thrift store finds!

Stephen and I went to three thrift stores today. The first two were a bust, but at the last one, I found a few cool things. But before we get into that, here's what I wore today, just 'cause I felt cute in it and felt it should be posted for the world to see. Good enough reason? I thought so. 

The first thing I picked up was this silky, airy shirt. I have visions of wearing it with jeans and sandals and a statement necklace when it's hot out.

I also have visions of the Golden Girls wearing it. I'm sure one of them has worn this before. Just not sure which one. All of them, maybe? Except Dorothy. I make a rule not to buy things Dorothy would wear.  

Then I got another shirt, which....needs a lot of work. I'll have a separate post on that. But my real pride and joy was this amazing suitcase I found for only $3.99. I've always wanted one of those old-school hard suitcases, and this one is so fabulously retro. I'm in love. 

I just sit around with it like this (and my dirty Richmond feet. My goodness, I oughta be ashamed), dreaming of how one day I'll pack my things in it and run off to join the circus or be a magician's assistant or sell questionably effective tonics and potions and see the world!

The Ex-Bridesmaid Dress

Every dress I pick up, I kind of fabricate (bit punny, but there it is) a back-story for who wore it and how it ended up in a thrift store to begin with. This one was pretty obvious. 

This picture makes it look like it's weirdly shiny, but it's not. Promise. Wouldna bought it if it was, cause...yeesh.

Very clearly a bridesmaid dress. If it wasn't obvious enough from just looking at it, there's also the fact that there were two clones of it at the store. So...yeah, when I got it, it was a ridiculously ugly Pretty Pretty Princess Dress (contradictory, huh?). 

On the bright side, given that it was a bridesmaid dress, I didn't feel guilty at all about violently attacking it with scissors, because I'm confident someone else wanted to do the same thing. 

But! All I had to do was shorten it and take off the sleeves to end up with a sort of sixties-ish silhouette in the front. And that's all well and good, but you can pretty much imagine what it looks like: the image above, shorter, without sleeves. And on a girl with different colored hair. The fun part though, the whole reason I got this dress in the first place, is the back...

If you look closely, you'll notice my giant wall calendar hasn't been updated since February. I'm on task. 

It scoops low in the back, and has these fun little matching buttons all the way down. Here's a detail shot so you can see the fun-ness.

I wasn't so sold on the sash at first, but decided to keep it in the end because I'm a sucker for bows. 

So, after hacking away at it with scissors for a while, I think this dress ended up looking pretty modern. The back, to me, really looks like something I see all the time on dresses in Urban Outfitters. Except those are always like, 80 bucks, and poorly made. Mine was two dollars. I winnnn!

The disco dress.

This is the first of the two thrift store dresses I picked up Friday. The sleeves on this puppy, in all their glorious retro majesty, have earned it the title of the Disco Dress. 

(Disco gremlin face/pose. Felt right. I stand by it.)

So, you might notice here that...um...well...THE BOTTOM HALF IS COMPLETELY SHEER. I did not notice this until I tried it on at home and went "Uh, hey there underwear. Wasn't expecting to see you." You can see even with a slip, here, it's a smidgle ridiculous. SO! To work I went! See what I did after the jump, cause this is gonna get lengthy.

A thrifty gifty!

(Katamari moment.)

Today Stephen and I stopped by Fan-tastic Thrift. Here's what I found!

I'm fairly certain this dress was destined for me. First because it's a polka dot dress, and all polka dot dresses are destined for me. Second because it fits like a glove. Didn't have to alter it at all. 

And then there's this dress. I was drawn to the light, airy fabric and the color, which is kind of hard to capture (it's more of a pistachio than the pictures make it look). I also liked the ruffle on the front. It had good bones! ...But that's about it. So I took it from this...

To this!

The first order of business was to hem it. Only I discovered when I looked closely that there was a stain right under the butt on the back. Some old lady probably sat in something, then was all sad about ruining her church dress. Or so I imagine. So anyway, I decided to cut just below the stain and hide it in the seam allowance of the ruffle I added using the very bottom of the original dress.

Next I had to decide what to do with the sleeves. First I cut them shorter, to see if I liked them better that way. No dice; still too matronly. So I spent some quality time with my seam-ripper and took those puppies off completely (Shoulder pads and all). Then I just needed to re-hem the sleeve edges....

And that's where I ran into trouble. After taking off the sleeves, I tried it on and discovered that the arm holes were too large and showed my bra under my arms. So I had to take about an inch and a half out of the shoulder seam....which was a HUGE PAIN because of the way the ruffle is sewn in. But I did it anyway. 

So then I had a much more fitted top on a dress that is about 10,000% less old lady-ish! Yay!