Laume's Studio

Let the refashioning begin! Remember I took that Wardrobe Refashion pledge? Well, so far so good, I haven't bought any new clothing. But I haven't done any refashioning of old clothing yet. That is, until the last couple of days when I started to work on outfits for the faery festival.

I gathered up all the skirts, tops, boas, belts, sashes, fabrics, garlands, beads, purses and miscellaneous embellishments I'd collected over the last year and made huge piles on the bed and then started mix and matching them into outfits. I'm making three different costumes, one for each of the three days of the festival. I've been formulating ideas for all the days but I soon discovered that some of the ideas worked better in my head then when translated to arms and limbs.

Each day has a theme. For Bad Faerie Day I wanted to be a raven. The pieces I'd collected went together pretty much the way I'd hoped. There's some tweaking that needs doing - take the skirt in a pinch, make longer ties on the top, make the headpiece, make some shiny jewelry (ravens like shiny!) and sew some feathers here and there. I splurged last year and bought a large pair of black feather wings during Halloween. I tried them on and they didn't work out well. They were too big and they overpowered me, twirled around and hung sideways on my back, and weren't at all comfortable - especially with hard metal sticking into the middle of my sunburned bare back. Fortuantely they'll still be useful, as hubby wanted black wings for his outfit and since he's considerably taller and sturdier than me and wearing a padded vest, they will work fine for him. I'll be making a smaller set of wings for myself.

For Good Faerie Day I had a butterfly theme outfit planned, the one that needed the dreaded floofy green skirt. I started putting together the pieces of that outfit, pairing it with about a dozen skirts and found that the one I liked best was a last minute thrift find that I thought wouldn't be needed until maybe next year. Then, going through other bits and bobs, my idea took a huge leap in a different direction, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean actually, and morphed into a sort of Ooh-La-La French Fae design. I've got a couple of different combinations that work for this idea, the sewing will be easy, and you have to admit, being a flirty French Faery (maybe not completely good per se, but certainly not bad either. Let's just say she means well) is a lot funner (funner?) persona than a flittering butterfly.

I'll have photos of the outfits when I get further on in the sewing. The third day's theme was Family Day, so really, anything would work. I wanted to be either an autumny or woodsy fae so I had two piles - one that looked like a pile of autumn leaves, the other that looked like a pile of moss and stone. I started out sort of leaning towards wanting to be woodsy but I ended up loving the autumn top I made so Autumn Faery it is. Here's where I did ACTUAL REAL REFASHIONING!

I found this stretchy shirt at the thrift store. It had three quarter length sleeves and a black nylon lace insert at the collar - which you can barely make out. Sorry the photo is so dark. The main layer of fabric is a black stretch poly and the crackled look is another layer of stretch brown fabric with golds, greens, and rusts in the design that's sewn on top and then cut into those sections.

I cut out the lace insert and cut both the arms and the bottom of the shirt into a jagged pattern.

At the same thrift shop I found this sheer cotton skirt. The fabric has glittery gold threads running through it and is dyed in golds over a dark cream background.

Below you can see how it coordinates nicely with Charlie Weasley. Both Charlie and George Weasley are big ol' male cats and yet you could fit both of them and the rest of the Weasley family into this skirt as it's a size 3X.

The waistband was very nicely finished with a double set of stitching to keep the elastic from twisting. Considerate of the designer but a bummer for me as I had to remove both rows of tiny stitches - that took the longer than the rest of the steps for both the skirt and top. Then I tightened the elastic to fit around my waist and make the skirt flouncier. I was going to cut the bottom hem a foot or so shorter and make it jagged like the top but once it fit me me at the waist it hung a lot nicer and I decided in the autumn a faery would choose to wear a full length skirt. Gotta aim for authenticity, y'know.

And here's the finished outfit. I added a golden orange fishnet scarf to the waist and a belt of leaves and a satin purse for any faerie gold I might want to carry on my person. I have a crown of leaves and berries. I might add some ribbons down the back. I will also have rust brown dragon fly shaped wings if, knock on wood, I can figure out how to make them, and I have a bit of grapevine wrapped wire to attach them with. If I have time after I finish up the other outfits, I might just sew the leaves directly onto my skirt and around the collar of my shirt so I won't catch on anything with the long trailing vines.

Oh, and once I had all the sewing done, I promptly brushed against a screw sticking out of the back of a chair and ripped a huge gash in my scarf. ARGH. It took me an hour to sew it back together.