Reconstruction

I got on a little kick of making new things from old ones. I was taking pictures of Olivia today in a dress I made for her out of one of Travis' old shirts and I realized that in the background were the old chairs I reupholstered for our patio. I thought it was a good opportunity to blog about both reconstructions.

First, Olivia's cute little dress. It's actually probably more like a nightie with the light, white fabric, but I couldn't resist her wearing it to church today.



The front was the back of the shirt, the back of men's shirt has a perfect little bodice for little girl dresses. And adding elastic to the old sleeves, and cutting them up, makes nice ruffly straps.



You can see the buttons that used to be on the front now button up the back of the dress. Looks so nice and I didn't have to sew a single button-hole.



And on to the chairs. Here is what they looked like when I bought them for $20 total off of craigslist. I love craigslist. As you can see, they were in awful shape and of course couldn't be used, but great price for some nice wrought-iron which I love.



After buying outdoor fabric and foam and tons of staples here they are behind Olivia. Not bad and a lot cheaper than I would have paid for new ones.



Both projects were a lot more involved than I envisioned, so I think I'll be taking a break from reconstructions for awhile. Especially reupholstery. It's months since I jammed a screw-driver in my thumbnail taking the old staples out and it still is a long way from completely recovering and looks awful. But I think I'll leave that pic off this blog.