Blah Caftan to Cute Caftan

Ever watched those PBS specials with fellows in nightcaps and nightgowns? Well, that's what the original caftan I made looked like. So I chopped and lopped and re-pinned, with a strip of stiff cotton-y fabric atop the bottom piece. Thank goodness I discovered chalk, by the way, which replaced the pink magic marker I had been using...

Giving Credit, Paying Dues

Just a word about giving credit for the photos and writings on Embarrassing Disgrace: I found this poster via Design*Sponge. It pretty much sums it up:

Refashion Co-op's Posting Do's & Don'ts page refers to it!

Have you ever found flow charts and diagrams confusing? I have a visual-cognitive disability that makes this chart read like Mandarin Chinese characters... So the contents of it were reformatted to plain old text, sentences and paragraphs... Without the ability to read graphics, you'd think there would be little problem since I can read black text on a white background. Well, you would not believe how incredibly visual our culture is! Everything is a symbol, a photo, a picture... graphed and mapped and clearly illegible for the likes of me. I do not mind, but my professors tend to get annoyed at making the adaptations. Tough cookies.
And now, a fresh pot of coffee is long overdue...
~Rachel

Tunic Time

I'm back!

My Olympus camera finally died and my health deteriorated: That's why I have neither refashioned nor posted. So I bought a refurbished SONY Cyber-shot (2001) and put myself in the hospital for a week. Now I can sew again, take photos, and write about my miserable afflictions.

A new medication has made me gain 15 lbs. in three weeks - without my changing my dietary habits. 

My shame-ridden family... They seem to accept "traumatic brain injury" and "complications from seizures" easier than they accept "mental illness: Major depression." I roll my eyes and sew something therapeutic.

Excuses, excuses...

Both my daughters are home from college. My re-fashionings have come to a screeching halt!! My camera finally died... well, it is gasping its very last... I was still able to take a couple photos of the same old sheet I've been working on since the beginning of the month!! Ugh. The dream is to turn the sheet into a comfy caftan. So far, it's a fail.

Old sheet with nice stripes

Dyed it brown, but it came out yukky
Sleeves are yukky
Caftan is shapeless
FAIL

A touch of yellow

What I'm Wearing Today

GAH! Can't see the clogs yet...

BETTER! Now you can see the clogs...

• Refashioned GAP blouse, dyed yellow, with sleeves removed
• Dyed an otherwise drab blue denim dress (upped the color)
• My beloved Sanita clogs, yellow florals

Tunic Upcycle

A beige linen was so dull and boring I dyed it a rich dark brown. But... it never did fit properly thanks to  generously endowed, um, assets. Love the color, but I'd never wear the darned thing.

Remembering the two-tone skirt made mid-April, I dug out the bottom chopped hem of the blue knit. Then I chopped, pinned, and sewed a new tunic for myself! Woo-hoo! What's so great about it is that I can wear it any season, with or without a shirt underneath.

As a show of mercy, I promise to always wear it with shorts, leggings, or sweater tights because no woman my age should wear anything that short!

A Tale of Two Levi's, Part Two: The Quasi-Prairie Skirt

So who wants doggie friends? I don't, not when I'm eating bacon! Trust me: you do not want your dog's snout hovering near your bacon-bedecked plate. Grrr...

Friday's post tells the tale of how I made like a serial killer and vengefully wreaked havoc on two pairs Levi's with a pair of scissors: Slash, snip, and rip! You can see "before" photos of the virgin and unsullied innocents prior to the desecration.

Then I made an A-line skirt with one pair, and saved the other pair for today's more complicated (for me) project: A quasi-Prairie skirt. It's the Prairie skirt technique I'll be using, but the combination of cloths I chose are not "country-style" prairie. But hey, the photos will hopefully serve as a tutorial of sorts.