Mama Made My Dresses

I have been going bananas with making my little girl some summer dresses since it is easy to make and it's cute. The red fabric I ordered from fabricworm online and since it had been sitting on the corner and waiting to be made into something, I decided to go on and make a dress out of it. Originally I was going to make it into a tote bag, but I made a cute little dress out of it for my little bee instead. It is one simple, easy and quick dress to make. All I did was to cut up a rectangle, cut out the arm holes and cut out a long strip of fabric for the sash. Sew it up and good to go! I have no tutorial here, but I am going to make another one in a different fabric, same style, so I am hoping to show you some step-by-step photos of how to make this really easy dress. It is simple, but cute, yes? Perfect for the summer. I think this is what they called a "Pillowcase dress".

But the questions is, does she like it? Hmmmmm...................

I think she does!!! Yaye!!!

Another dress that I made for her was this thrifted top of mine from years ago and I no longer wear it. What better way to use it instead of trashing it? Refashion the top into a little girl's dress. Ta dah!

I think it is cute on her. She wore this the day I had my OBGYN appointment, and the lady at the office thought she was so cute and stylish. Awe! Thank you so much.

And two more photos for you. Of course, I wouldn't just leave my little man with nothing, so here he is sporting an old bleached towel and turned it into a toga. What do you think (just for laughs)? He is my funny little man. We love him! 

And a basket hat goes with it too. Why not? 

Have a great day, everyone!!!

Firmoo Glasses and Maxi Dress

Boy! Have I been gone from blogging for what seems like forever now? I just have a lot of things going through my head right now that a little vacation from blogging world was needed just to relax and unwind. I could not get my thoughts together and would usually end up in not knowing what to blog or what to say, so instead I took the blog off. Definitely worth it! I had plenty of time spent with the family. The most important thing in the world.

Anyway, I will be back in full swing some time because this month will be one busy month for us. A road trip is ahead of us, but not the purely-vacation-time-kind-of-trip, but something to do with searching for a new place to stay when we finally move to a new place. After the house searching, we are heading to another town for two days for my husband's workshop and we will see what happens then. There might be a little vacation to the mountains or maybe we will go back and look for another house again if we still can't find one. Wish us luck!

For now, I'll leave you with some photos of me and my new free glasses.

Sunglasses: courtesy of firmoo.com (free)

Maxi Dress: Walmart (refashioned)

Shoes: Blowfish via 6pm.com

 

I said refashioned on this dress, but I guess I should call it more like a little tweaked dress. I bought this maxi dress at Walmart last month without trying them on, I just yanked it right away from the rack when I saw the size small and into the cart. When we came home, I tried it on to find out that I don't like the shape of it on me and just make me look like I am pregnant again. No! We don't want a mama-is-pregnant-again kind of look, so I immediately thought of shirring. Shirring is what I usually do whenever I alter clothes to give it some shape without having to add belt. Easy to do!

 (Sorry, I look like mad in most of my photos. Trust me, I wasn't. I was just tired and in a hurry to make it to my doctor's appointment.)

Now, I have a more defined waist without using a belt. Using a belt to this dress would probably be way too much because of that embellishment on the front. That's just what I thought, but again I am no expert when it comes to fashion or whatever. I just go with whatever I thought would look good on me and appropriate.

I got my new freebie glasses from firmoo.com the other day and I was excited to try them on. What do you think? Does it look good on me? Anyway, although this was not the right pair of sunglasses I wanted, but because the one I wanted was out of stock, they sent me a different pair instead. But hey! These are for free, so I'll take it. These pair of glasses came in at the right time when I felt like I needed a new pair of sunglasses for this summer, something inexpensive, and these arrived. Firmoo has some awesome glasses to choose from for both men and women in reasonable prices that you don't want to miss. Glasses that range from different shapes, styles, colors and even prescription glasses. Firmoo also has a virtual mirror, which you can try on a pair of glasses virtually so you have an idea of which pair of glasses suits best for the shape of your face. Awesome!!! Make sure to check out firmoo.com and get yourself a new pair of glasses. After all, glasses are the inexpensive way to sprucing up your style this summer. Now go! Thank you once again, Firmoo glasses!

Note: Even though firmoo.com provided me with free glasses, my words are 100% mine. 

Ordinary Monday and Grocery Day

Off to the grocery store I went today and our temperature today is hot and humid. We are around 84, which feels like 86 according to the weather radar. With that said, I had to wear something comfy (there goes the word "comfy" again) and breezy. I could not decide how to wear my hair because if I let it hang it's quite a bit hot, so my other option was to put it up in a bun again and I tried to put on a scarf. I am not so sure if I look that good, but hey it works. It keeps me feeling cool while the weather is not. This is my mama-off-to-the-grocery-store-look for today. Nothing much happening in this household, but we are trying to make most of our summer here in town before moving to a new place. The summer heat is going to make for a simple mama outfit and possibly more road trip photos. Oh! Hopefully more sewing as well. We will see! 

Scarf: Old Navy (old)

Shirt: DIYed. Thrifted for a dollar a sack.

Skirt: Altered and hemmed to the right length. Thrifted for a dollar a sack.

Bag: Freepiled. Was my mother-in-law's. 

Shoes: Simple via 6pm.com. These shoes are made out of recycled materials.

There is a surprise to this shirt. The back part! 

The back part of this shirt was from NY&C that I didn't like the fitting and the style and I was about to donate it. Good thing I didn't. The pink one on the front part was thrifted and I altered it, which resulted to an unsuccessful altering and way too tight fitting. After I saw the inspiration, this is what I came up with. What do you think?

 My tummy ache pose. 

If you have noticed, there are some corn on the ground for the chickens to eat. Or even birds. Did you even know that birds do like to eat dog food? Whenever our dog Spink doesn't finish eating her dog food, the birds would come and eat them. So cute! Anyway, how did we end up talking about birds? Oh yeah!

Lastly, a photo of my kids. Kuya (big brother) is comforting little sister while crying.

Playing outside making a fort. Isn't making a fort fun? 

Enjoy the rest of your Monday! 

DIY Blazer & Yellow Belt for MYM Entry

I hope everyone had a great weekend and everyone was safe, healthy and happy. Welcome back to "It's Sewtastic, Mama" and hope you will enjoy your visit. Today, I am sharing you this very easy and quick DIY Blazer and my inspiration is Kyla of Blue Collar Catwalk and her lovely DIY Jacket. I fell in love with her jacket when I first saw it and I was wanting one just like that. So when I went to the rummage sale at the church here in town, I was looking for a blazer that I can later on turn into something like the ones Kyla was wearing. I was so excited when I found one and with the price, amazing! I bought this women's blazer for about $1 and since it was a little bit large for my size, I did put it in the dryer hoping that it will shrink a little bit. Its sort of work and I actually like it now. The good thing about it is that if I screw up on this one, then I won't feel too bad about it since I didn't have to spend that much money, but I was really hoping that it will turn out well. And it did!

So here's what I did. As you can see, the blazer did not have four pockets of the front, so what I did was pretty much what Kyla did on her jacket as well. I have a baggy cargo pants that I don't really like that much, so I took off the pockets and sewed it on the blazer. The only hard part on this DIY was the pinning and making sure that the pockets will be even and not crooked. Once you're finished sewing the pockets on the front of your blazer, you are good to go! That was it! Easy, right? I told you it was easy and quick. So go on now and make your own DIY blazer and then come back here and tell me how yours turned out. Thanks for Kyla for the inspiration!

Gray Shirt: Free
DIY Blazer: Rummage sale find $1
Skinny Jeans: Old Navy $20+
Scarf: Walmart $10
Boots: Wanted Shoes $79.99 Free
Belt: Rummage sale find 25 cents

Refashioned Vintage Coat

If you read and follow my blog, then you know that I love to go to rummage sale shopping and I love to alter and refashion things. Well, this post is about refashioning a rummage find winter coat and the inspiration comes from this coat on etsy that I found and I fell in love with the style. So here is the outcome!

(BEFORE)
Rummage Find Vintage Coat

(AFTER)

I love the exposed zipper on the back. It seems like I have been into the exposed zipper thing lately. I think it adds a surprise to the coat. My husband said it looks a little bit like military-esque. It was a little bit tricky for me to make this vest, but I pulled it off and made it happened. What do you think?

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

From Mommy's Sweater to Harley's

This sweater was a favorite of mine and even though I shrunk it, I still kept it thinking I could still use it for something else. This was given to me by my sister-in-law like four years ago and I still have it until now. Since it's been sitting in my closet for years and didn't know what else to do with it, it came to my mind to use it for my little boy HF. The size was perfect and all I had to do was to cut in the middle so I can use it as a jacket. The sweater has sleeves, but I cut if off and used it for something else. I will share it to you by tomorrow on what I did with the sleeves. Since I cut the sleeves off, I had some clothes that I don't wear anymore and I used that for the sleeves, the pockets and other things.

I also cut the bottom of the sweater and used that as a collar. Just pin the cut off bottom and sew along the neckline as the collar.

I added the sleeves made out different fabrics, then the pockets, the metal snaps and my model is looking good. Here is my finished product!

If you happen to have clothes that you don't use anymore, give it some thought and come up with an idea to recycle it instead of ending in the landfill. I have some other ideas for old clothes to share to you so stay tuned.

Now that I see it on HF, I want to add a zipper on the front for more security and he won't have the chance of taking it off because he hates having to wear clothes. He just wants to be naked pretty much.

With belt

It's Sewtastic, Mama!

Rummage Find: Blazer and Coat

Remember when I said I have something to share you about this rummage sale find blazer? Well, this is it and I hope you will all like it. I know I said that I was going to share it to you yesterday, but for some reason a simple (or so I thought) refashion turned out to be a little bit difficult for me to deal with. I took me a long time to really get it right and I did a lot of ripping the seams off and having to do things all over again, but I still made it! Here's what I did.

BEFORE

It was a plain and boring blazer with one old button on the front and I decided to change that and replaced it with one big black button. With the collar I added some ruffles for more of a feminine look to a blazer, then for the bottom of the sleeves I added sort of like a lining to add more interest to the blazer.

The Ruffled Collar (or maybe I should say a pleated collar?)

I do admit that the sleeves where the reasons it took me a long time to finish it since I made a lot of mistakes and it still came out a little bit off for me on the shoulder area, but you won't see it in these photos. Just a little bit of a mistake. Sometimes I feel like it is easy for me to make a new dress than to alter one. That's why when you are sewing, you have got to have more patience or else none of your project will be done.

As you can see from the before photo, the blazer is boxy and no shape at all. So what I did on the back, I applied the shirring effect again to kind of give it a little bit of shape, although I can wear it with belt to accentuate my waist area, but I kind of want it that way for a new look to what was once a plain Jane blazer. I hope this will somehow inspire you to refashion things!

It looks like very Military-esque in this photo. Wear it with pants and the blazer is very versatile. Love it!

It's Sewtastic, Mama!