Vintage fabric hoodie.

Check out the hoodie made for my 15 month old.  I scored some vintage late 70's/early 80's fabric from the thrift store that I volunteer at for $1 a yard.  The toggles came from a sweater I found at the same thrift store.  The brown fabric for the fastening loops came from my old floor cushions that I took apart (and re-did at that link) and the pleather triangles were cut out from a purse I found at the dig and save thrift store. I originally bought the purse to use the buckles for the straight jacket I made a while back.  More uses for stuff, yay!  Anyway, I saw a picture of a hoodie that someone made for a little girl and I loved the asymmetrical design of the front and decided I wanted to make some adjustments.  I changed the hood to make it into 3 panels so I could add more of the accent color and I used 2 toggles to close it, instead of 3 buttons.  I am super pleased with the result and everyone who saw it today commented on how he was dressed so cool.  :-D

Check it out!

Tracing out is sweater/ Cutting the pieces / Basting 

After the necessary adjustments of the hood and collar. 

The best part?  It only cost about $1 to make!  I drafted my own pattern tracing around a sweater he already owns and I used way less then a yard. OH! and the fabric I drafted the pattern onto was a large mens shirt that a friend gave to me to use for any possible sewing projects I have.  I hope you are convinced you can do something with left overs too! 

Vintage shirt of the day.  He wore it under the hoodie :-)

P.S If you have anything that you want to pass onto me for sewing, let me know!  If I can't use anything I donate it but I mostly keep everything, because I never know when it will come in handy.

Antique first aid box upcycle to sewing cabinet

Here is a little something I did to get organized.  My sewing space is minuscule so it's tough keeping it neat yet functional.  Luckily I have a few things around the house that have helped with organizing.  A cigar box for one, and this antique first aid box.  Check it out.

Before

Before:  There was some cardboard glued to the inside that I already ripped out then I had to take off all the left over glue.  I left the outside in its original state and did a quick wipe down to the inside.

My husband found this guy at a garage sale this past summer for $2.00 and he loved it.  He wanted to come up with a purpose for it but it ended up just sitting up against a wall in our living area because it was just never decided on.  It wasn't until I was having a lot of difficulty locating bobbins and pins and anything else I needed that I had a light bulb moment looking at this old cabinet.  I immediately got to work.

The process

I picked up this screen printed sample at a local goodwill for $0.69 and am glad I was able to find a use for it.  The other beige fabric was from freecycle.

There was a bit of sewing involved, but I could have used iron on interfacing.  I was in a sewing mood I guess.  The screen printed fabric on the front and the beige fabric on the back.  I didn't want the glue I used to stick it onto the cabinet to come through so that is why I thought some backing was necessary.  Now I have a place to keep my spools of thread and notions so things are easier to find!  The best part?  This project was under $3!

The result

Vintage Sweater Upcycle to Baby Jumper

Welcome back!
I am really excited to share my latest project with you, because I thought it was a lost cause only to be revived and semi successfully executed! :-D
I had started it a month ago....okay maybe two months ago, I am not even sure.  I am a little ashamed of how long it took me to go back and give it a re-try.  The original fitting did not work at all and I had no idea how to fix it.  During every other project I under took, this one was always in the back of my mind.  Luckily, now that I came back to it I knew exactly what to do to remedy some of the issues.  I say some because, there were some issues I couldn't fix.  Being an upcycle, and a size small, I didn't have much fabric to work with.  My original cut didn't leave a lot of room for error :-/  Even still, I am glad with the outcome despite the bumps in the road.  If anything, it's a comfy garment for my little guy to wear around the house.  It still may work at the farmers market, but we'll see if he manages to grow out of by then. 

Here it is!

Before, Sort of plan, finished!

The original sweather was my husbands.  He found it at vintage shop in SoCal I think.  I ditched the collar but kept the original buttons.  I've worn it a few times but I think I like it for our little guy much better.  What do you think?

How to resize a tie

One of my favorite activity as a family is thrifting.  We all go and look around for as long as our little guy lets us.  He usually gets pretty restless after a few minutes so we only manage to look at the essentials, one of which is ties and belts.  The ties are always hit or miss because the designs are outdated (not in a good way) or it's a nice design but its always super wide.  What's crazy is that after all of this time, I never once thought to resize the nice ties.  Why not right? They are only a buck and change most times.  So I did and I (and my lovely) are quite happy with the results.

I put together a sort of tutorial for you if you are interested in also trying this out. 



I hope its pretty easy to follow.  I would recommend trying a practice tie at first.  Especially if you know you will be working with silk.   You want to make sure that your machine will be kind and not pull single threads out of place on the silk design.  If you find that it does you will probably need to get a needle for silk, or just hand sew when you need to sew.  It's actually not a lot.

I didn't take very good pictures of the first tie, so the tutorial switches to the second tie for pictures.  If you are trying this, please feel free to send me a message if something is not clear.  I will happy to provide additional instruction. 

The first tie took, I am not sure how long because I added extra steps for myself while resizing.  I don't know how but on the second tie I was able to get it done in a little over an hour with a more streamlined method. 





This is where the sewing comes into play.  It's actually not much and since you don't sew exactly on the crease the stitches are not visible.  If you have to hand sew, it's no biggie. 
The picture on the left is the me sewing the lining to the tie.
The picture on the right is to show what my sewing looked like.  The sewing did not intersect.  Notice the brown stitches.





Also, make sure not to forget to sew the little tag back in to the lining and tie.  You will just nestle that right back in before sewing the lining back to the tie.  I double checked my placement because I didn't want to have to open it up again once I just finished it.  I wanted to sew the silk as little as possible so make sure that there was no option for the threads being pulled out of place, which would ruin the whole design.

This last part is the easiest and most tedious part, in my opinion.  You just have to catch the inner layer of fabric while making sure the tie is taught around the inner structural piece.  You know that one you traced on in the first picture.  If the tie is not pulled taught around that structural piece the tie will not be creased properly.  I learned this on my first attempt.

That is all!  Now you have a nice thin non 90's tie! 

Also, if you couldn't really be bother to go through this or don't have an hour per tie.  Send them to me! I can even do a thinner tie! I can do $5 per tie or a multiple item discount.  Please email me at n.andujarfrancis@gmail.com for questions and details.  Make sure to write "Tie Resizing" in the subject and mark as important. 
Cheers!

Meet Vintage, the 4th member of our family

Just a few of my favorite vintage pieces

I remember being about 9 or 10 wishing my mom had saved all of her clothes from when she was young so that I could wear them.  I was too young to realize it at the time, but I had fell in love with vintage.  There just seemed to be something special about having something from another time that resonated with me.  I think that is why I loved thrift shopping so much as a child.  I would find things that my mom would say "I had pants like that when I was a kid" that I had to have.  I have a specific memory of a wide leg printed pants and a wrap dress that I absolutely loved.  The best part about them is that they were made for adults but they fit me as an adolescent.  All of the current sizing was always too big on me, the vintage fit of clothing suited my body much better. 

Fast forward to now, and I still love vintage.  Best of all, my better half can appreciate and wear quality vintage too.  We even passed it on to our son.  Needless to say, the trends can come and go, but vintage will always be apart of our family. <3

How to vintage.  What to buy and what to leave on the rack:
Here are some things to consider when trying vintage.

I LOVE baby vintage.  Check out some of our
little guys collection.

1. Is it made of a natural fiber? This may be tricky because some items do not
have tags.  However, polyester is a pretty obvious because it is also plentiful.  I usually steer clear of synthetic fibers because I am more interested in quality vintage and not so much costume-y.

2. If there is a tag present, check to see where it was made.  You can tell something is most likely vintage if it was made in America.  All of our vintage with tags state that they were made in the U.S.A.  This is definitely a sign of the age,

Some vintage JCPennys and Saks Fifth Avenue

indicating it was before the time when everything was contracted out over seas. 

3.  Is there a smell.  I stay away from anything that has a funky odor because it
might not come out.  You want to have interesting pieces you can modernize and smelling like an old trunk will not help there.  

4.  Is it timeless?  I used to buy a lot of vintage but found that I would only wear them when I was in a vintage wearing mood.  I have since learned that there are classic pieces that can be worn regardless of trends and can be mixed and matched with all of my current clothing.  No need to be in a "vintage" mood.

5.  Have fun with it.  If you have a hunch on something, get it.  Even if you can't envision it right away.  Those great one of a kind pieces are hard to find and even if you can't find a match for a few months, it doesn't matter because it's already decades before the trends!



Check out the recent find my better half came across.  Turns out is is the same kind of coat James Dean (click) wore in the film "Giant".  He is always hesitant when buying items but I urged him to get it.  Yay me! ;-P

Anyway, I hope you are inspired to go out and hunt for some quality vintage.  Be sure to show me any that you have found.  :-)

Hand made books!

I am so excited to share the books that my Husband worked on, under the instruction of a seasoned bookbinder.  You can find the bindery here in Madison on Atwood Ave. called Mendota Fine Binding and Restoration.  Here is the facebook page if your interested in checking that out. 
Anyway, my lovely had a part in assembling these beauties, even if it was a small part, I am really proud of him!

Mine isn't quite paid for yet, as some alterations work will be in exchange for mine.  Call it a friend discount, even as I write this I am eating some AMAZING hummus made by the bookbinders wife.  :-P

Since we are on the subject of books. I wanted to show you this little gem we found in the free "take a book leave a book" library box here in our neighborhood. 

The back says "Simple hints to help you get more satisfaction out of life" and that is what I am all about!  It's filled with too many amazing things to name, but both my husband and I read little bits out loud that we found we HAD to share.  I highly recommend picking this up. :-)

$1.45 Custom Bugaboo Cameleon Hood! Tutorial....kinda!

UPDATED TUTORIAL ** Better pictures, better explanation! Click click :-)

In my last post I was trying to explain how I created the straight jacket so I was kind of inspired to make a loose tutorial for this project.  A custom made Bugaboo Cameleon hood or sun canopy.  Its not super detailed but maybe it will get you started.  I also looked at my current canopy and formulated some instructions to make the process a little more seamless.  It helped, but I still made mistakes.


Here are my mistakes.  I didn't measure the inner piping properly so I ended up having to add a little extra.


I didn't check my sizing along the way because I was overly confident in my template :-/  Turns it seems that the front most piece wasn't traced out properly or something because it was pretty loose on both sides.  I pinched it and chalked where it needed to be brought it.  Unfortunately, it was completely finished so I had to use the seam ripper A LOT to undo the areas I needed to repair.  Oh well, we live and we learn :-P







Here are my crude instructions I wrote out. 

ALSO! Like the title of this post states.  $1.45 including tax is what this custom canopy cost me!  I paid for 2 bundles of fabric at goodwill and viola!  Considering these things cost over $70.00 on the low end, I think learning how to sew is worth the savings.  Give it a shot!  If you are unwilling to, maybe we can work something out where you send me the fabric and I can make it for you for a reasonable cost.  I would be happy to share my experience with you while you have a 1 of a kind custom canopy for your baby.  :-D

Here is the finished product.  I can't wait to make another one!

**check out my new hood and seat liner! I plan to do another picture posting on how to make the whole set.  :-)
http://sewthriftymom.blogspot.com/2013/05/diy-bugaboo-canopy-and-seat-liner-for.html?m=1 ***