Dress Shirt goes Fashion! (With step-by-step)

Hello everybody! I hope you are having a great summer!

Well I am finally back, after lots of work and some vacation, and I got around to doing another refashion for refashion co-op.

I got this old - but good-quality - dress shirt from my husband, really too good to throw away, and I needed some short-sleeve tops for myself anyway. But of course I thought what probably most of you are thinking: another men's dress shirt refashion, just cutting off sleeves and collar and turning it into a women's short-sleeve blouse? Yawn! 

A bit of brainstorming later I came up with this so-simple twist. One thing I learned: Less is more, most of the time. So I went for ONE eye-catcher on this one:

It sports a cute "cut-in" shape sleeve (as opposed to "cut-outs"....). The "sleeve" being just the yoke from the men's shirt, left entirely "intact", in front as well as in the back:

What is great about this re-fashion is that it gets rid of the parts that usually are worn down most in men's shirts: Collar, cuffs, and even the arm-pits will be cut away if you are using a shirt that is way too big on you...

It was almost too simple to give a step-by-step, but here goes:

The Wonderland Dress!

Ah, what I wouldn't have given to have this outfit finished when it was boiling hot here in Austria... But well, it was the other way around.

The weather inspired me to make this outfit, and by the time it was finished, the heat had also vanished. But chances are I will still like it next year...

This is the Maxidress from BurdaStyle 5/2013, it can be downloaded HERE.
As other people experienced, it takes a little longer to make than one might think. My decision to make it out of this fabulous silk had nothing to do with that though...

Look at this italian silk, isn't it amazing?! And working with it was very easy!

My 10 Piece Travel Set: 9 down, 1 to go!

Wow, I am actually getting closer! These are my pieces number 8 and 9 for my ten piece fall/winter/spring travel set! I have already presented them on my dress form in the last post, but here they come, modeled by me:

I have already presented the skirt, too, with a full how-to/tutorial HERE, in case you are interested. It features half-circle pockets and a visible zip in the back:

But my biggest pride at the moment is this shirt:

Me-Made-Mittwoch #12, hot off the sewing machine!

English speaking visitors welcome! Please scroll to the green textblocks!

Das ist meine Mittwochs Kleidung heute:

This is my outfit today:

Vielleicht langweilt Euch der rote Rock schon - ich habe ihn letzten Mittwoch schon gezeigt (aber  nicht getragen) und Euch auf das Tutorial dafür aufmerksam gemacht. Aber um den Rock geht es ja auch gar nicht, sondern um dieses Shirt:

You might be tired of this skirt already, as you might have seen it last Wednesday and in my tutorial already, but it's all about this shirt:

Ich habe es gerade eben fertig genäht und bin super glücklich damit. Ich nenne es das "süss wie seine Knöpfe-Shirt" (klingt VIEL besser auf Englisch). Es vereint viele meiner Lieblings-Details: Vintage Knöpfe, einen Peter Pan-Kragen, diese kleinen Ärmel, die auf Englisch Cap-Sleeves heissen und deren deutscher Name mir nicht einfällt (ich zähle auf Euch!), und Biesen. Ich habe es selber entworfen und das Schnittmuster hergestellt (*stolz*) und bin sogar mit meiner Ausführung zufrieden. Danke Euch allen für die ermutigenden Worte letzte Woche, die Overlock betreffend. Ich habe ein Buch bestellt und glaube bereits Fortschritte gemacht zu haben, obwohl ich bis jetzt erst das Inhaltsverzeichnis las :-). Hier noch eine Nahaufnahme:

I just finished it minutes before posting it here and I am actually really excited about it. I call it the "cute as its buttons shirt" (vintage buttons) and it features many of the little things I love: pleats, cap sleeves and a peter pan collar. 

I drafted it myself (*proud*), and I am even happy about my execution. Thank you all for your kind words about serging last week! I ordered a book about it and feel like I have made progress already, even though I have only read the table of contents so far :-). Here is a close up:

Natürlich werde ich Euch auch noch zeigen, wie es getragen aussieht. Dieses Top verdient einen separaten Post, denn es gehört auch zu meinem berühmt-berüchtigten 10-teiligen Herbst/Winter/Frühling Reiseset. Dort präsentiere ich es dann auch mit den Hosen, Shorts etc. Hoffentlich komme ich morgen schon dazu.

I will show you how it looks on me when I write the actual post about it. It deserves an extra post because it is also part of my 10 piece fall/winter/spring travel set. I should get around to it tomorrow, hopefully.

Schönen Mittwoch euch allen - wer auch mitmachen will, hier geht's zu Cat-und-Kascha.

Und HIER findet ihr die anderen Mittwochs-Kleider!

Happy Wednesday everyone - if you want to join the fun and wear me-made-outfits (uhm- I guess that would be you-made outfits then...) every Wednesday, go to Cat-und-Kascha. And check out the other great outfits today HERE!

My 10 Piece Winter Travel Set: 7 down, 3 to go!

Oh people, I am excited - my ten piece winter set is slowly but surely coming together. I can already combine a few pieces differently and come up with several outfits!
UPDATE: I posted a full tutorial for this blouse HERE.
Here are my pieces number six and seven:

 A dotted blouse and black shorts. The blouse pattern is made by me - I will share a little how-to on this blog hopefully by the end of this week! - and the shorts are actually the Karl Lagerfeld skirt from BWO 10/2010, turned into shorts.
If you want to look at a few more pictures and get some details, click on the little "read more" button right underneath...

Me-Made-Mittwoch #5!

Wednesday (Mittwoch) again! Try my new Tool in the column on the right: The Google-Translator!

Liebe deutschsprachige Besucher - in der rechten Spalte gibt es jetzt den Google-Übersetzer - er wird Euch zwar wohl kaum helfen, das Englisch besser zu verstehen, aber bestimmt zaubert er Euch ein Lächeln auf die Mittwochs-Backen!

Did it help you understand? I bet not. Did it help you smile? I bet!

I recently took stock of all the things I have made so far, and I was surprised how much it is. So I decided to make my Me-Made-Mittwoch outfits as me-made as possible. Here you see three pieces combined - or maybe I should say two and a half...
The blouse I made a long time ago, it's surprising that I can still wear it, as it was my very first go at a real blouse with collar, collarstand and a button closure. It's the Burda pattern 7831, and it was one of my first things posted in my BurdaStyle studio.
The jacket is from a pattern from 1935, from the same magazine I took the pattern for this white coat I recently finished and blogged about. It was originally meant to go with my linen dress, posted here in the BurdaStyle studio...
The pants are not entirely me-made. They were skinny pants and I don't do skinny pants. I mean, they were labeled a 34 I believe (which is usually a size too small for me anyway), but man, they were beyond skinny. So as you see, I was very bold, removed the back pockets, cut both legs open in one straight line , set in a strip of darker fabric and put the pockets back on. Now I can wear them. I swear I look skinnier in them now than I did before, pressed into them like a sausage....

Find out what the other amazing participants are wearing today HERE. Oh, and you'd be welcome to join in the fun any time. Thanks to cat-und-kascha for organizing this!
Have a lovely Wednesday, everybody!

You know what I did last Sunday?

Yes, we are all excited about spring kissing our cheeks. But I am behind schedule with my winter set. Luckily it is a Fall-Winter-Spring set (a travel set with 10 interchangeable pieces of clothing), and this was the last really wintery item on the list. It makes the hopefully short return of the 1-digit-temperatures more bearable:

Oh, don't say it... I know it. Santaclause, right? So what? I like the little bit of Santa-ness of this jacket, and I know I will love it when the next winter comes around. Somehow it's more of a before-Christmas garment.
I once bought a really great coat in the middle of summer, and it made the arrival of  winter so much better! On that note, this jacket has built in make-me-happy-power for next October.
I came up with the pattern myself. It's basically a circle. If you want to see how I did it, read on...

Me-Made-Mittwoch #3!

Since weeks I say I'll re-organize my closet TOMORROW, which is why I just throw things in wildly. For the first time now, I actually couldn't find a skirt I was looking for. Which is why I ended up with a combination I wouldn't usually have tried. Somehow it works. Let's call it the refashioned menswear look. Or whatever.
For new English speaking visitors: Mittwoch means Wednesday. Every Wednesday, the participants wear self-made clothes. Here are the other outfits!
And here is Cat-und-Kascha who came up with this great idea.

The top is part of my 10 piece winter travel set, I called it a Shirt-T, because it is a long-sleeve T-Shirt with a refashioned mens shirt (collar and cuffs) blogged about here, and the skirt was originally a pencil skirt so tight at the hem that I couldn't board one of those old fashioned cable cars we still have here in Vienna. I used the small part of a tie as belt, and the wide part - well, you can see that yourself. :-)

A Paper Doll gets dressed!

So I have dreamed up this 10-piece Winter Travel Set, and my first paper doll can show off an outfit! She is sporting three pieces: The very warm tweed pants, as well as the newly finished Shirt-T (I feel all smart about that name, too) and the Faux Fur Vest (click on any image to enlarge).

If you want to see what they look like on her, click "read more". Also if you want to see what they look like in real life, on me, though I'm definitely not as cute as her (and I forgot to put on the hat).

Vintage Pattern Plaid Blouse

Isn't it funny how some outfits just seem to tell you where to take them? For some reason this one makes me want to spend a whole day in the library.

I know I am a bit late to jump on the wagon for the tie-front blouses... I had meant to make this one for so long, but other projects kept interfering. I used a blouse pattern from 1953 that I had made once already for my travel set (you can read about it here).

Very Warm Tweed Pants

May I present to you my first piece for the "10 piece winter travel set"?
It's a pair of warm trousers, made of a tweed that I instantly fell in love with. I LOVE tweed. Even though it's basically brown, it's somehow much more than that, if you know what I mean...

Here I combined it with my Jean Top, which I had planned as part of my 10 piece set too, but it got kicked off the list...

The legs are cut really wide, so that I can wear it with very thick, woolen grandmother tights, which is just not possible under jeans, right? And I lined them, so they slide easily even with those heavy duty tights under it... (click the button to read more!)

My 10 Piece Winter Travel Set!

About a year ago, I found a 10 piece travel set in a magazine from 1953. I loved it so much - all the pieces, as well as the idea of having 10 home sewn pieces that can be combined with each other - that I have decided to come up with my very own 2011 version.

Here is the one from 1953 (and yes, I did sew every single piece of it!):

Source: Vorbachs Neue Moden, Heft 5, 1953

And here are my 10 pieces: