Shopaholic Mother-in-Law

Each stack is one style of shirt,
just in different colors!

Thank goodness for my shopaholic mother-in-law (no disrespect!). She loves to shop & loves clearance sales. She buys multiples of the same shirt/dress/whatever just in different colors...then she decides she needs to clean out her closets and brings me two garbage bags full of clothes to go through. This last time I picked out all of the shirts (a good portion never wore - still have tags!) to refashion into shirts for myself or into clothes for the kids. There is a style of turtle neck shirt that she got 11 of! A whole rainbow of colors. As I type this I am thinking I could make myself a color blocked tunic by cutting up a few shirts and then sewing them back up to make a longer length - I'll have to play with that idea. If not for myself then definitely for B!

There were a few dresses that I fished out that are slinky fabrics. One is a black and white floral pattern in knit with a red sash and cross-over bodice that I am thinking would work better for me as a skirt - I just can't fill out the cross-over bodice; plus it is several sizes too big but could be gathered for the skirt.

Most of the shirts are long sleeve, so it will be easy to make B some leggings in several colors - just what I need to get made! D needs a few more long sleeve shirts so I'll be able to cut down some of these (got one made, that he is wearing today, in his school colors).

There are a few nice striped blouses that I need to figure out how to re-fashion; luckily they are extra large sizes so there is room for cutting up. I was thinking that the sleeves (which have nice cuffs) would make nice pants for B, just have to play around with piecing together to get a whole pant without it being too patchwork.

On another topic, I have the bodice sewn up for McCall's 5673. It went together smoothly - I took the extra time to mark the seam lines on the gussets so that helped quite a bit and everything fit together great! I hope to finish sewing it up this weekend but we'll see, Hubby will have all weekend off so I will either get lots of sewing time or very little.

I hope you all have a good weekend and hope we all get some sewing in - I'd love to finish my dress and be able to wear it next week!

Blessed Be,
Alyssa