Holidazed

I'm glad the holiday season is about done, but I still get those "party's over" blues. Also, I concur with many others who have shared this sentiment when I say that 2016 can suck it. I'm never ready on time to share seasonally-appropriate material on this blog or in social media. That's why I'll be showing you an "ugly Xmas party sweater" long after I wore the damn thing.

That's not it.

Let's do a little review of the last two months.

November brought us the election and an end to all the annoyance that comes with it; and it ended in a horrible twist that I sure didn't see coming. Not sorry for the political opinions. I do feel sorry for anyone who had to discuss our president-elect at their family Thanksgiving table. 

Thanksgiving. I had been dreading it for months. Mom said we had to all agree that there would be no political talk as it was going to be hard enough for us due to our huge loss.

Jesse...months go by and still I think about him every day. Here's the full story. Thanksgiving and Christmas are prime grieving seasons and I knew I'd be missing him the most during these times. Sometimes I think back to last April and the accident and I think, "Did that really happen?!" His absence at the table really drove that truth home. 

I made something, though!

See that? It's a big sweater with some clothing scraps. I combined them. 

I don't know where I got the idea. I guess I wanted to make a memorial that wasn't so obvious. I decided on that black sweater in that picture up at the top. That would've been a "before" shot, but it wasn't working out. I bought another long, black cardigan as long sweaters are something I pretty much wear round the clock in winter. (Savers $3.50, by the way.)

The scraps that I would use like patches were from t shirts that I'd been collecting. I wanted angel wings, cars, and I wanted sneakers.

That was his thing, he liked collecting sneakers. I was thinking I would have to print out an iron-on or something if I wanted sneakers. I actually looked through boy's clothes at Goodwill and found a red t shirt that was exactly what I needed.

I decided where I would place them and pinned them in place. The sneakers would be the focal point on the back with this wings over them. The cute little muscle car would go on the front, but it looked odd due to its small, elongated shape. I sewed the car to a scrap from the shirt I got the wings from so there was less negative space on that side of the sweater. Then, I carefully sewed them in place.
I finished it just in time for Thanksgiving.

The picture is all filtered and really doesn't do it justice. I grabbed a few pics one night at my aunt's request. My family loved it! I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but my aunt, uncle and other cousins really thought it was great.
The dice are mostly symbolic of the arbitrary nature of the events in his life. I found myself taking a chance on college because of his inspiration. Then, out of all the schools and grades in my city, I ended up doing observations in his kindergarten class. It's been said that having a baby is like playing the genetic lottery and my aunt rolled the dice on this one and managed to hit the jackpot. And in the end we all lost.
Wow that's depressing! I'm gonna call it quits for the night, here's a preview of what I hope to share within the next 24 hours.

To be continued.

You must be my lucky star

Yeah, I know these blog posts are coming fewer and fewer, my bad, so sorry, etc. Here's a great refash of a really cool dress.
There's more...more of my poor blogging habits. There's no "before" picture. I know I took one at some point, but it doesn't seem to exist. That's because I started this project awhile ago and I'm just writing about it now.
Fear not! I drew up an artist's rendition of it:

LOL you guys. As you see, this dress has many of the common themes of '80s clothing. Actually, a common theme of my refashioning is complaining about the problems of '80s clothing. Such as:
-Oversized fit.
-High necklines. 
-Poof sleeves with shoulder pads and when you take the pads out, you're still left with a bunch of room at the top of your dress.
-Weird waistlines. Dropped waist? I don't get it, I don't want to have a square shape. The darling dress as depicted in my little drawing had a regular elastic waist. What it also had was an extra layer sewed into the shoulders and neckline and falling below the natural waistline.
One of my biggest complaints is a large top that flows over the waist band like so:

What you haven't seen is the incredible print my dress has.

Stars. Black background, silver/blue/pink stars. I should have sold it, but I needed this incredible print to be mine.
I really dropped the ball on the pictures for this project. I actually did something really cool with it. I can try and describe. Oh, and I can wear it three ways!
I took off that extra top layer.

Since it was all connected I had to repair the neckline and I went ahead and made it a little lower.

Pardon my pretentiousness. I'm like, "oooh, I'm glamorous!"I also hemmed it like, one inch. I think I actually took a small chop off the bottom and then realized I should not have. I folded the hem once and then used this stretch lace

to hide the raw edge:

I just wanted to show that cool vintage packaging.
So, I had that top layer I wanted to do something with so I did. I just can't exactly what. I think maybe I sewed up an arm hole and used the neck hole for...let's just look at the pictures shall we?

Ok, so here's the dress with the top layer. (Look, a star necklace too.)What's happening here is I've got one arm through it and the ties (scroll back up to my drawing) are still connected to the top and are tied around my waist so it's like a wrap dress that has a peplum look on the left (your left) side. Close up?

I love a good asymmetric look. Here's another way to wear this thing:

Now, I've got the top on sideways or something giving me one side with a big, flowing arm hole. Words are really not working with me here. More close up.

That's a selfie closeup. Can you see I connected the two layers with a brooch? Here's a picture of it alongside the necklace so they can be better appreciated:

Here is the dress with a belt on it:

Here's a line up! The one labeled as 3 is my favorite.