Well hiya and welcome to The Refashioners 2016 edition. The ever lovely Portia of Makery | Random Acts of Creativity has once again rallied the creative community to….well…be creative. Last year, the challenge was to refashion men’s shirts. You may remember my make…here.  And this year? None other than jeans…and…only jeans. Denim jackets, dresses, skirts and shirts need not apply. Sounds daunting, yes? As I watched the mind-bogglingly-fabulous {my blog – my words} makes roll in, I convinced myself it was a spectators sport. ‘Nope, not gonna do this one. It’s all been done, and to perfection.’ my inner critic cried. On the one hand, ’tis true…no one wants to be a copy-cat. On the other hand, what a lame-capital-O cop out. Fortunately, somewhere…somehow…my inner dialogue changed. I knew I needed the push…the dare…to just see what I could do.  Portia’s challenges have thus far coincided with my local thrift store’s end-of-summer-clear-the-store sale…can I hear a whoop-whoop. I headed off with a mission…not any ‘ol jeans would do…I wanted dark, dark, wash blue jeans and light, light, wash blue jeans, both in fairly decent shape.  My finds…photographed above… were exactly right.  

I’ve no idea who coined the phrase, ‘Limitation is the mother of creativity.’  but it really is true.  Once I had my materials in hand… just two pairs of jeans….I began to tap into what often seems so elusive…the flow of creativity.

Yes, I admit….I lucked out with those dark wash jeans. Size 38″/32″ and almost zero fading. I basically took them apart…I removed the back pockets, the waistband, the zipper, and I unravelled all the seams {scary how easy it is to unravel a jeans seam, LOL}. The front of my dress is cut from the front legs…those are the original jeans pockets. I had to remove the rivets…I still have them…in order to sew the side front seams and the waist seam.  The back legs were used for the back of the dress. I nerded out and reused all the Levi labels….I think REAL LOOSE {the dress people, the dress} is my favourite…and I reused the zipper as well.The back label was hand sewn using the original thread from unpicking the seams. The side panels are from the back legs of the light wash jeans. The sleeves are from the front legs. I managed to squeak out both the collar and the collar facings with literally bits of fabric.

Contrary to the men’s shirt challenge…this year I used a pattern for my make. I’m wondering if any of you have guessed which one? Why yes it is….it’s my Clare Coat Pattern from Closet Case Files. I’ve wanted to make a dress out of this pattern for awhile now….and it turned out to be just right for the REAL LOOSE dress silhouette I was going for. It feels fun, comfy and it’s very wearable. 

All in all…The Refashioners 2016 was a personal win for me. There’s never a bad time to channel creativity, but the timing of this year’s challenge was sweet serendipity. As much as I enjoy playing around with graphics and minor web design…putting together my new blog was a bit of a brain drain. And. That was with loads of help from G! And a super template from Themes Art. My sewing didn’t exactly take a backseat, but my recent makes have been feeling a little uninspired. Working on a project like this…where things develop intuitively and organically…has helped me remember that I can create, rather than just sew together, LOL.  Thank you for that Portia…now…please…head on over to Portia’s blog to check out the many, many,  brilliant jeans refashions.

And enormous thanks to you too…it’s not just my makes that have felt a little uninspired. I’ve been so focused on actually getting a post published, that my writing has been a little, dare I say, dull.  So…yes…THANKS for hanging in there with me and THANKS for your continued support! I appreciate it very much!

My Other Clare Coat Makes:

 Velvet Bow Clare Coat

 My Polka Dot Clare Coat