Repurposed Crafting

…but I find a lot of dresses to be too short for my taste. Or are they just really long shirts? I really don’t know, but I have this banded bottom shirt/dress/THING just hanging in my closet.

As many know, it’s supposed to be worn like this…

Found here

…which I don’t find it very flattering on my figure. Every time I’ve worn this, I hid the band to make it look like a loose shirt, but it rode up and constantly pulling at my clothes gets annoying fast. Since I like the neckline and how the fabric flows, I decided to remove, loosen and then reattach the entire band.

I cut the band in half and then shortened them to fit the bottom of the shirt. I’ve successfully replaced the ambiguous article of clothing into a definitive shirt!

I was going to make something to wear this week, but I fell ill and slept for most of my MLK day. So, in lieu of what I was originally planning, I decided to show you something else I made this weekend for my friends’ birthdays. It’s still fitting, though, as I used only what I had at hand: remnants and t-shirts.

So, what did I make? Clutch purses! I’ve never worked with zippers before and it was a great learning experience. The first one I made took a really long time as I made some errors [where I had to take it all apart!], but the second one was smooth sailing and I finished within an hour. Yay!

Here they are…

The second clutch had the same interior of one divider pocket. I made the divider black and the inside fabric is the same color as the front band.