Refashion – a piggyback KCWC challenge

September 17, 2010 · Filed under I sew., I thrift. A lot.

The Kids Clothes Week Challenge (KCWC) is just around the corner.  Do you have a plan yet on how you might proceed?  I am especially inspired this morning after putting together a rather questionable ensemble for Isadora to wear to school.  Having ransacked all of her drawers, pulling out anything with a size 4 tag to sell at a local resale event, we were left with one long sleeve shirt and one short sleeve dress.  Both had pink in them, so they match, right?  I’ll be refilling those drawers with some size 5 goodies after I visit the sale today and also as KCWC progresses next week.  Which brings me to a sort of piggyback challenge:  Refashion.  Can we rock this challenge and crank out a whole pile of wonderful clothes, refashioned from larger thrift store cast-offs?  Hell yeah!  Join me!

The biggest wardrobe void I need to fill for The Girl is long-sleeve shirts.  We’ve had the problem before, and I’ve found myself frustrated with both the quality and variety out there.  I really can’t be bothered to shop for brand-new clothes if I can avoid it – underwear, socks, and sometimes pajamas excepted.  With this in mind, I tackled the problem head-on about a month ago, driving somewhere in the vicinity of Dig & Save, our thrift Mecca, when I suddenly realized that it was Wednesday.  Half-price day.  Clothing on Wednesdays sells for just 50 cents a pound, instead of the usual $1.00.  Yes, I think I shall, I said to myself in that most-satisfied-with-my-rampant-cleverness tone.

In the amount of time it took me to schlep the kids out of the car and into a cart, weave around the congestion in the paltry store aisles, divert the attention of my nap-deficient kids with things that were SHINY or FUZZY or (God forbid) LOUD, I was able to heap the cart with a delicious array of clothes from which to construct smaller clothes.  I heaved the shopping cart onto the industrial-grade scale at the checkout, removed my kids (they were already paid for) and proceeded to hand over $12.00 for the whole lot.  Hot damn.

So I shall be working from this collection all next week.  I happen to have this Jalie pattern for knit tops that I’ll use for reference.  I will also reference the infamous 90 Minute Shirt tutorial, where I hope to glean some tips on the best way to apply binding on the edges.  Mostly, though, I’m going to sharpen my scissors, take a deep breath, and start cutting. The real beauty in working with thrifted materials like these is the freedom they give you to cut and pin and experiment with abandon.  You don’t need to be too ‘precious’ with the fabrics, or too afraid to cut into it because you’ve only invested a few quarters into each one.  This is where incredible design innovation happens!

Care to join me?

Pull out the pile of clothes you were going to donate, or the pile of clothes you might already have collected for this very purpose, and use your kids already-fitting clothes as a template.  You sure don’t need a pattern – they are far less useful, actually, when not working with linear piece of yardage.

Some hints -

+  If using your child’s clothing as a pattern, be sure to consider the stretch (or ease) needed.  Using a pair of knit pants as a pattern to make cotton pants will give you a pair of new pants with too little ease to fit over the butt.  Try to match like pattern clothes to like fabric.

+ A good exercise to help pair up fun and clever design combinations?  Pretend you’re doing a photo shoot of your collection, like for a blog, and try to lay them out in the most interesting way possible.  Fan-tastic.  I dare you not to drop everything and start sewing that very minute.

Let’s do it!