The Refashioners 2018: Kid’s Edition

As detailed in monday’s post, I’m taking part in The Refashioners again this year, this time as part of the blogger line up. It’s no secret I love the creative challenge provided by the premise and the motivation behind it so like last year I couldn’t resist making a children’s wear version of the challenge as well.

I found inspiration in the garments I found, a silk chiffon strapless dress, a pink cotton shirt and some viscose ladies trousers, and some designs found on Pinterest (which you can find on this board).

So, the chiffon dress became a smaller, swishier dress with butterfly sleeves. The dress had extra seams in non-conventional places (a real feature of refashioned clothes!) and utilised the original lining and  cut down zip. I didn’t feel I could press the dress without damaging those delicate silk crinkles so it remains a little crumply but the real virtue of the dress is the beautiful fabric and the way it moves.

I was all for adding a little beading detail to the front bodice but the small client said it was better nice and simple.

Next up the pink cotton shirt and viscose trousers which underwent unpicking, dyeing in tea (that pink was too pink), screen printing and reassembling, to become…..

A new shirt and culotte dungarees!

In my plans those culottes were going to be wider but fabric shortages dictated the result. I used my own Graphite trouser pattern as the base but made the legs as wide as I could, adding the bottom piece of a trouser and back pocket to become a bib, and piecing together the straps out of scraps.

There was more fabric to play with in the shirt and I was able to reuse the original sleeves as I wanted them to be a little voluminous and the original placket and hem which saved time on the finishing. It did mean that I wasn’t able to lay all the fabric flat to screenprint (using my Bobbinhood kit) on, which meant some of the little birds ended up looking like little bats, or splats, but I figure those are just touches of originality.

I’m looking forward to the rest of The Refashioners 2018 Challenge especially as I’m hoping for some inspiration for all the silk shirts I’ve collected at car boot sales over the summer…

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