Morning Glories and Lilacs, Men's Shirt Refashion

Check out those Morning glories in the background

 This week I pulled another men's shirt from that "fill a bag for $5" stash that I'd scored several months ago at the local thrift store. I also had picked up a batik style beach wrap for $1.00 at a garage sale. It was in the same color family as the shirt and I liked the combo.

First I cut the sleeves and collar from the shirt.  The sleeves were sewn to the front, cuffs up, below the bust line. The beach wrap was cut to fit and sewn to the back along with a pretty embroidered piece cut from a damaged table runner.

Are these lilacs?

I used a tight zigzag to applique the embroidered piece to the shirt.

Finally hemming the bottom of the sleeves and adding some lace trim to finish off the raw edges in front.

I wore this top this weekend to an auction (one of my favorite summer activities!) and managed to spill coffee down the front. So now it's totally broken in!

Happy Sewing!  --The Elevated Bag Lady

Roses and Polka Dots

This week's upcycled fashion is a loosely structured long top combining a knit top and a tiered skirt. The cropped knit top was in my closet and I had worn it many times over other longer tops for a layered look.

I decided to give it new life by adding two tiers from the bottom of a thrift store skirt. It's always kind of  nice to be able to skip some of the detailing tasks by using something already gathered, hemmed and trimmed--as this skirt was.

Since I am hardly ever without my cell phone I added a pocket to the front.

Voila! Finished!

Auction Bricks into garden shed floor

It's summertime in Wisconsin and I've been busy going to auctions, one of my favorite activities. SW and I had discussed buying pavers to cover the dirt floor in the garden shed (which is rapidly developing into a "she-shed".) It was a great idea, but it wasn't until I bought an auction lot of old bricks that I was able to come up with a plan.

The bricks had been collected by someone (thank you someone!) from various places. They were different colors and ages, some quite old. My favorites were the yellow bricks, but there was a limited number of those. Eventually I decided to use the yellow bricks to form a "sun" motif.

Here is a photo of the bricks after we loaded them into our pickup truck and hauled them home. Although the bricks only cost us $15.00 we were a little concerned that the heavy load would break a spring in the truck! It was really riding low to the ground. But we got lucky . . . and home, no harm done. These bricks were piled up in back of a barnyard, so we first loaded them up for transport then unloaded them into our garage. That's two times moved, and then a third time to the garden from the garage. An average brick weighs six pounds. So when I say we moved a ton of bricks, I'm really not exaggerating!

A ton of bricks!

Moving that ton of bricks on a very hot day!

SW and I are not professional bricklayers but we learned some things by going to Pinterest where you can get good ideas and then link to step-by-step instructions for DIY.  We were quite pleased with the finished product and will enjoy sitting in the garden even more than we did before.

Take Care! --The Elevated Bag Lady