Thursday, December 1, 2011

Taking the Boy out of the Clothes

I have two girls.  Two extremely adorable girls.  I tend to be more girly girly when dressing them when given the chance.  Unfortunately, on our income I depend a lot on hand me downs to dress them, otherwise I have to make it.  So my uncle, who means well, kindly gives us hand me downs, but the sad part is his child is a boy.  A super hero, dinosaur wearing boy.  I'm new to the whole up-cycle movement.  I love the idea, but I have the worst time figuring out what to do on my own.  I rely on other people's tutorials for ideas and direction.  But no matter how hard or long I search Google, I can't find help in turning little boy clothes into something more feminine.  So I'm going to go it alone and try to document it here.  I don't promise anything will be amazing but it is a start.

Today, I took my first steps.  I didn't keep everything he gave me, just what I thought had any chance at maybe being passable as something a girl could wear.  Most of the shirts I kept are striped, but in very boy colors like orange.

The first shirt I tackled was browns, blue and white stripes.  A while ago I made a fabric flower based on the pattern from twirlybirdpatterns.  I didn't have any plans for it so I sewed it on like a corsage.  I should have taken before pictures, oh well.

 I'm not sure I like the fit, but I don't want to do much to change the size for now, so that she can wear it longer.
For the second shirt, I was inspired by the blog post from shwinandshwin.  I had a silk flower that I didn't know what to do with till this morning.  So I tore it apart and sewed it on with a button.  I think I like that one better.

Those are the only ones I've done so far and I still have a huge trash bag full of stuff to remedy.  If you have any tips or ideas, I would love to hear about them.

Have a lovely day!
Tonia