Sunday Best

Here it is...
The final day of February.
The final day of "Celebrate the Boy" Month.
And I've finally finished.



Quite a stretch of the old sewing muscles (haha)--fully lined boy's dress coat with contrasting collar and elbow patches; matching suit pants; and refashioned man's sweater into a boy's sweater vest.

Altogether, one fine looking outfit on one fine looking Little Man.

Or is that just a mother's opinion? :-)

What I learned from this...
Suit coats for boys/men are just as hard to sew as you would imagine. The coat had 21 pattern pieces. 21. And once you get past the collar, it doesn't get any easier. A set in sleeve is very difficult, especially where you don't want any puckers--that's the difference between a boy's coat and a girl's puffed sleeve. But it can be done--with patience and perseverence. MUCH patience. And MUCH perseverence. (I ripped out and resewed the sleeves 6 times in total).

On the other hand, this was the first time I did zipper front pants. And you know what? They're not that hard! Really! I was truly surprised how well it went. And they fit him really well. The only issue--because I was looking for something a little more dressy than the cargo-style pants the pattern showed, I simply left the pockets off. But I realized afterwards that that left zero pockets. But I figured I could get a pass on that, considering he's only 7! (Of course, it was the first thing he noticed when he put them on this morning)

The sweater vest was inspired by Dana-Made-It's tutorial here, with my own twist (more on that later).

And the most fun part? The 70's department store catalog photo shoot we got to have to model everything...

Awww...my little man is sooo shy, can't you tell?

On the Prowl...I'm a Thrifting Cougar...wait, no, not like that...

I've been seeing all over the place people espousing the use of thrift shop materials in "re-fashioning" or even as raw materials.


So today I headed over to a local thrift shop to see what I could hunt up.


And, well, meh.


Yup, meh.


You know, I haven't really been in a thrift shop since my school days, when fear that a classmate would see me kept me hiding near the back...dreading every minute and waiting for my mom to be done looking. I didn't care what kind of great deals she got, the fact was if I was seen it was social suicide.


Fortunately, I am over that.


Since then, thrifting has come a long way. There's high end shops, the prettier euphemism "consignment shops" or "vintage" shops. Thrift shopping has become a way of scoring great deals on barely used items.


Or so I thought.


Maybe I was in the wrong shop, but it was basically as I remembered--kind of icky, other people's junk important stuff they don't want any more for some reason, vaguely smelling of smoke and air freshener. And the most surprising thing of all? The price! I'm sorry, I don't care if its from the Gap or J. Crew or whoever, I'm STILL not spending $7 for someone else's used sweater! I was shocked! Men's dress coats were ranging $30 and up--and they were NOT brand new. Definitely used. I'm a pretty good shopper--I buy most things for my family either on sale or clearance or with coupons. I'm always hunting for a  bargain, and they're not hard to come by. So I don't have any doubt in my mind when I say that I could easily spend LESS in a retail store for some of the stuff I saw there.


That said...ahem...I did grab a couple items off the $1 rack that I thought I may be able to do something with. Even though I was under the mistaken impression that, this being a thrift shop and all, most items were going to be around the $1 range. WRONG. There was a single $1 rack, located at the veeerrrry back of the store.


I don't mean to sound uppity, or snobby or whatever. And I will give thrifting another shot. There's some others around that may be better or lower priced or less stinky or whatever. Maybe there is a treasure trove of gently used items awaiting my re-fashioning hands, and I just haven't found it yet!


P.S. It just doesn't seem like a real post without pictures in it, does it? Probably explains my extensive over-use of bold, italics, and various font sizes here. But my camera, alas, has dead batteries. Meaning it's just mostly dead, which is slightly alive. And hopefully will be fully alive once I get to the store. Maybe I should have picked up that $7 Polaroid I saw today? Who cares if they're not making the film anymore...I just have to find where the USB cable plugs in...

Look at me NOW!

Oh snap.

Look at my shiny new blog template.

Never the same thing twice.

But I'm kind of likin' this one...it may stay around a bit.

Although I have to tweak some things.

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