Zoe Lawson

Attached is my entry for your amazing upcycle challenge! Please also find the dropbox folder with my 5 photos (one is a before, the others are after.)

Choosing fabric for my sews is my favourite part of sewing, this is not limited to new fabric and I do enjoy the satisfaction that upcycle sewing provides…lower carbon footprint, pleasure of recycling and the joy of turning drab into fab!!

My daughters outfit started out as a size M ladies cotton polyester chunky knit sleeveless cardi with a real rabbit fur trim! (Sewing with real fur is such a rarity in Australia.) The bottoms started as a pair of ladies cotton capris, both items bought from an Anglicare Op shop. Like Candice had mentioned in her blog post, I unpicked as much of the original garments as I could – the pants required some of what I like to call “Frankensewing” – where I needed to sew odd parts of the old pants together to achieve the right sized piece of fabric for my pattern! I do like to jig-saw my pattern pieces out of the original garment to avoid this as much as possible!!

Finished garments sewn come from the Cora Cocoon Cardi and Berry Bubble Pants PDF patterns by Rebecca Page. The t-shirt was an old shirt that I added FMA (free motion applique) to using a mix of new fabric and a recycled garment. The FMA pattern is a modified version of the “Oh Teddy” FMA in the One Thimble ezine issue 15.