The 50p Outfit

Well this week has been interesting/busy/stressful... I have joined Britain's legion of the unemployed as I was made redundant last Friday, on the plus side that means more time for sewing, on the negative, no money for fabric so I will be working through my epic stash of both fabric and yarn.

Obviously unemployment means I need to economise, which conveniently leads me to this skirt I found on sale at a local charity shop for 50p (OK I'm bending the truth a little bit, as I finished re-fashioning this skirt yonks ago but never blogged it, bad me!)

 This is how the skirt looked when I bought it, the waistline sat super high up on my rib cage and the hem was at my mid calf, soo yeahhhh real attractive!

Here's what it looks like now, with bonus pic of a top made entirely from scraps, more on that in a bit

So here is what i did to the skirt -

Unpicked the zip & rescue waistband button
chopped several inches off the top and bottom of the skirt
sew up old centre back zip opening & unpick side seam
insert zip in newly unpicked side seam (I hate centre back zips on skirts)
create new waistband facing from cut off fabric
sew hem
add hook & eye to top of zip (grudgingly)
profit!

shot of the cheap and cheerful waistband and probably the best representation of the colour (which is what drew me to it in the first place)



On to the top! which I have no further full photo's of ... oops...

anyway the pattern is Simplicity 2599 which I think everyone and their dog has made. It went together easily and I will probably make a couple more as it's a good wardrobe basic.

I made this top entirely out of scraps, the blue is from the skirt above, the yellow is from the 1994 dress and the white is the remnants of some cotton poplin that I've been using for lining/underlining

considering I 'eyeballed' rather than measured the fabric I was pretty pleased when everything lined up!





also, should I ever have my own country, this will be my flag