Upcycle floral skirt

 I found this skirt in a thrift shop and fell in love with the colors.  It is a little redder than it appears here but it is a orange red, a very pretty color.  The skirt was too large and too long and rather shapeless.

I cut off the waistband

I  shaped the skirt making it narrower in the waist and hip area and taking more off the top.   I straightened up the right side seam a bit more than you see in the picture below then,   I serged the new front and back together.  I had considered using a real waistband and zipper but I decided that I wanted to wear the skirt sometime this year so I serged the top edge, turned it under and added an elastic waist.  I  saved a lot of time by using the original skirt hem by  opening the hem up on each side seam and re-stitching  after the sides were serged. 

Here is my finished skirt after about an hour of cutting and sewing time. 

 

 

 

My cost for skirt and elastic is about $3 but the important thing is I am happy with the results of  this upcycle project and it is no longer in my sewing room.

 

From Bird seed bag to Grocery bag

Today  I did a bunch of boring sewing,  home repairs such as fixing a hole in a towel, securing stitching on a couple of my husbands shirts, resewing a handle on a straw basket and shortening an extra long pillow case.  While being able to fix these things makes me glad I can sew and keeps the items useful longer, it was not very exciting work.  I did manage to make another grocery bag from a bird seed bag.  I really like using these bags better than the plastic ones from the grocery store.  The bird seed bags are made of a sort of fabric that has lots of nylon threads running through it.  This makes the bags very strong and able to hold a lot of weight.  Unlike plastic bags they will also stand upright when filled making them much easier to transport in the car.  The nylon handles also make these easier to carry than either a plastic bag or a paper sack, and they don't rip spilling everything onto the ground.  Both of these bags originally held 20 lbs of bird food and being able to keep these out of the landfill and give them a new useful purpose makes me really happy I can sew.