Reclaimed.

I love that, ‘reclaimed’, ‘repurposed’, ‘reused’. Not just the word, but everything about it.

I have been reclaiming items since I was a child. One time I made a ‘Flintstone’ car out of the plastic from pushpops. I made a Santa Sleigh complete with Santa and reindeer out of toilet paper rolls and cotton balls. It was my mom’s favorite gift that Christmas. I made clothes for my American girl dolls. I made toys. I made picture frames. I made anything and everything. In high school, I moved onto clothes. Being the youngest of three, the majority of my wardrobe was composed of hand-me-downs from the older sisters. I could have had it worse. I could have had brothers. I could have hated their style. I could have had a lot of things, but for the most part I didn’t mind their clothes. I just wanted them to be mine. I didn't do refashion often as Mom didn’t approve of me cutting up practically good clothes. My sewing skills were elementary and still are. It didn’t always work out in my favor, but for the few things that did, I was really proud of them. I didn’t have a sewing machine, so I did it all by hand. And most of my repurposing projects were just minor things, a slit here, lace detailing here, a little puff paint on the sleeves (yes, I did this once to decorate a Cross Country shirt – I loved it for about a month. Then I realized how awful it was.).

Recently, I started repurposing a lot more. I’ve had motivation (and free DIY patterns) from this site, Cottons and Curls, which has helped a lot.

I repurposed these light blue pants below, but failed to take a before shot, so I will just tell you they were flared or taper pants. Anna, you might recognize them, they use to be yours. Now, they are light blue skinnies, perfect for beach work wear.

Then I tried to repurpose a flannel shirt. I bought it for a 90s party I threw last year as a move in celebration. It's a man's shirt from Eddie Bower, so it was super wide on me. Again, no before picture, but you can see by the after that I am still making mistakes. No, I am not holding my arms up, they are stuck like that because I sewed the arms way too tight.  I guess I thought my arms were much smaller than they actually are.

This is my next project: Simple Shirt into, cute omber dyed tee. Pictures to come!

So, I’m new at this. Please tell me if any of my reclaimed fashions are hideous. I need your advice - leave me your comments. Thanks!