For Me-Made-May this year, I have challenged myself to take old garments and past makes that no longer serve me in my current wardrobe and refashion them to give them a new life. I call it: ReMade-May! For most of the year, I make projects with new materials, mostly because my fave fabric shops keep releasing hit after hit! It’s nice to be able to support independent fabric shops and I feel lucky that I am privileged enough to do so, but it can be costly to always be buying new stuff and it increases the footprint of my making practice. I felt that ReMade-May would be a great way to breathe new life into my wardrobe with stuff I already have and encourage myself to finally do something with the pile of garments that I’ve been holding onto with the hopes of *one day* hacking them into something else. 

At the beginning of the year, one of the intentions I set for myself was to “make do”. This was all about learning to be more creative with the resources I have on hand instead of acquiring new things to fill a need. Little did I know that a worldwide pandemic would hit and we would be forced to adopt this way of thinking, not only when it comes to making, but in many areas of our lives. One great thing about this challenge is that I am forced to use the fabric from other garments, any scraps I have from past projects, and the thread and notions I already have in my stash. There is no more making a quick trip to the fabric store to stock up. 

When I set out to do ReMade-May, my goal was to do a project a week for the whole month. My plan was to do three posts every seven days with the before, the process, and the after. Yet, as I write this post, we’re currently eleven days into May and I’m only just posting about the first project for the first time since May 1. I actually debated not doing any finished product posts until the end because I felt like I was so late getting the first one up, according to my self-imposed deadlines. One thing I have learned, however, during this pandemic period is that you have to meet yourself where you’re at and take care of what you need in the moment. With everything going on right now, being strict with myself about deadlines (at least in my personal life) or goals feels difficult. I’m really trying to embrace self-compassion instead of self discipline. So with that, I said “eff it” and decided to stick to original plan, even if my timing was off. I may not even end up finishing my remade me-mades until the middle of June but with the way things are, that’s totally okay. 

Week 1 Project 

I had this dress that was handed down to me by a friend who moved out of the country a couple of years ago. When it first came into my possession, I wore it A LOT. Since then, my body has changed and so has my style but I still love the fabric and was determined to refashion it somehow.

I decided to use the Ashton Top pattern from Helen’s Closet for this refashion. As a person with longer legs than torso, I’ve been trying to incorporate more cropped and boxy tops with high-waisted skirts and pants. The great thing about this pattern is that it is designed to be a bit of a scrap buster and doesn’t require a lot of fabric, especially if you’re making the cropped version. Because I basically had the skirt section of the original dress  to work with for the main body fabric, the Ashton in View B was the perfect solution. I felt that this pattern also really fit with where my wardrobe is headed with its minimalist A-line design. 

One of the highlights from this making process was somehow managing to make the top entirely from material from the old dress. From the skirt, I cut the front and back pieces, and used one of those scraps to cut the front hem facing. The back of the bodice was used to make bias tape for the neck and arm holes, and the embroidered section from the front bodice was set aside to add a little pocket at the end. The challenge, however, was that I did not have one continuous piece of fabric to cut the back hem facing. I did have a pile of scraps, including the pocket bags from the pockets that were on the dress before but one pocket bag was not big enough by itself for the facing. I almost dipped into my other saved scraps to see if I had something big enough to cut the back hem facing but I reallllllly wanted to see if I could make the whole thing just from the dress. I ended up cutting the pocket bags into four separate pieces and serging two together at a time to create one length of fabric. This allowed me to cut out two halves of the hem facing plus a little for a seam allowance for serging them together. Since that’s a part of the top that no one would see anyway, I wasn’t too worried about it being so piecey. 

Overall, I really liked this pattern and can see this becoming a tried-and-true for me! My plan is to use this pattern for some of the other remades I have on the docket for this month, as it really fits well within my wardrobe and it’s the perfect pattern when the amount of fabric is a constraint.

—
Pattern – Ashton Top, View B
Designer – Helen’s Closet 
Size – 20 in B-Cup version (no modifications)
My Measurements – HB: 43” FB: 44” W: 39” H: 51”