Dressed to the Tee

There are some T shirts that you wear and wear till they can't be worn anymore, and there are some that you just wish you could snip up because you see a better alternative future for them. The former usually lands up eventually in you dad's car and is used as a wiper for the windshield. The latter, well, you take it out of your closet and look at it, wondering why you ever bought it and whether you could barter it with your best friend in exchange of that lovely one off piece she bought form a flea market that you have been begging her for the past four months.

Or something like that.

I guess you get the drift.

Off with the arms!

First up, those arms needed to go. In fact, I believe my disdain for the tee began with the arms. The arms could have been better but they weren't so off they went; I got a little carried away and chopped off more than I could sew (lame joke alert). Off went the scissors and the sides were cut up. It looked like a poncho. No wait, a tent - a tiny tent pitched on a curve-less girl.

But all hope wasn't lost. Jersey is a flexible material to work with so all I had to do was tug on it and tie it at the sides. 

The knots ended up looking messy. Atleast for me. I was not happy at all so a few of my tiny friends were summoned. 

  

My tiny friends gave me the finishing touch I wanted. Looks like this one is also going to be worn till it can't be worn anymore and eventually land up in our car's dashboard.

Goodbye yellow stain. May I never see you again.

It's so upsetting when you get a stain on one of your favourite dresses, and not just any stain; a stain that is so prominently visible that you wish you could kick yourself for managing to get the stain there in the first place. Well, I managed to get one such stain on a dress.

Such are the perils of soaking your clothes too long before a wash, because they were too precious to be machine washed. Nobody warned me that a zipper can get all rusty and leave stains all over unwanted areas if you're not careful. So let me take this time to warn you all about them darn rusty zippers. They are not to be trusted.

Beads, on the other hand, can be trusted.

That is something I can vouch for.

Because we all need to believe in the mending power of tiny beads

I hatched a plan to stitch these tiny little friends of mine all over the piping along the neck and pretend it was a design. The plan worked. The stains aren't visible anymore. (Boo-yah rusty zipper chain!)

  

Save the brollies for a rainy day. Summers are for hats.

When you live in a tropical country, it is imperative that an umbrella follows you around wherever you go. Under the scorching sun you can feel yourself getting roasted alive. It's cruel. You can't even risk getting a nice tan. It's the dehydrating, exhausting, energy draining kind of heat. So you HAVE to protect your head.

If you happen to be the kind of person that keeps losing umbrellas or misplacing them ( It was just yesterday that I left behind mine at a friend's place), a nice hat would be a good alternative. You don't want a felt or a velvet one. Nope. Not for a humid place. A nice lightweight wide brimmed sun hat with a simple design would do.

Well, mine was a little too simple, but a roll of leftover velvet ribbon was just around the corner.

The operative word being 'simple' here, I didn't want something that seemed to imply that I was off to the Royal Ascot Race. Hence, a single round of black ribbon with  bow to top it off was all that was done.

Of course fabric glue was created to make our lives easier but it couldn't be used here because I was dealing with plastic. Yep, the hat was made of plastic. And it's not that simple trying to run something like this under the sewing machine. So once again some good old hand stitching was done. I didn't intend to add the bow but since there was still some material left, thought I'd make good use of it.

Take a bow, Miss Hattie 

Now all I need is a lace trimmed basket and I'm ready to go pluck some berries from the garden....

  

Old wine in new bottle

A raid through mom's old suitcase to look for once-outdated-but-back-in-style clothes is a regular activity for me. These raids aren't just restricted to my mom's closet, my aunt isn't spared either. Thankfully for me, she is more than willing to part with her clothes.

While mom chose to stick to feminine, lady-like silhouettes, her sister had the wackiest, most unpredictable sense of style, from dragon-print jeans to floral chiffon dresses.

One such precious find was a military green high waist skirt gifted to her by some distant relative. It had such a beautiful classy cut and fortunately for me, she had it when she wasn't at her thinnest, which means I could manage to squeeze into it, and that was about it.
Definitely not one to be worn to an all-you-can-eat-buffet.
I can't imagine how tiny people were back then, with their 22 inch waist bands.

Now one of the hazards of buying embellishments in bulk is that you start getting the urge to add them everywhere. I have been over utilising these gold trinkets but they just seem to go with everything.

The culprit 

I guess it's okay as long as I don't go overboard. 

To avoid making it look over the top, just a slight hint of gold was added at the waistband; tiny circular gold trinkets alternating with leaf shaped ones.

The barley is turning out out to be a really handy prop

And there it is. I'm still yet to show my aunt what I've done to her skirt. I think she'll like it.

Safety pins on a tee shirt? why not?

Colourful safety pins. These were leftovers that i picked up after handling props backstage in a play. When our Director called up his dad, requesting him to pick up a packet of safety pins on his way to the venue, this is what he arrived with, and I was thrilled because up until then safety pins to me were simply of two kinds - big silver ones and tiny gold ones.

We are often distracted with the notion that safety pins are solely used for holding clothes together, hidden under hemlines; as obscure as possible. And then a certain Gianni Versace came along and created 'That Dress' that not just went down in Oscar history as the most celebrated red carpet gown, but is also credited for catapulting a certain starlet to certain stardom.

The safety pins traveled with me as I moved cities, half in jewellery boxes and half on a denim shirt till I got bored and removed them and off they went back into the jewellery cases again.

I tried re-using them again but somehow couldn't find ways to design them on my clothes. Until recently.
I hadn't realised that tees make a good template. Why hadn't that hit me earlier I wonder.

Look ma! no thread!

It was refreshing not having to sew. Moreover, these tee shirts had grown old and loose. I was about to get rid of the green one till this happened. Yeah. blame it on the safety pins. We women love making up excuses for not getting rid of old clothes.

Pinned at the sides

As I was writing this, I realised that a safety pin necklace wouldn't look that bad either. It could turn out horrible too, but you never know if you never try.

Right then. Off to the market tomorrow to get a packet of safety pins.

On an embellishment spree

A denim shirt is a denim shirt, is a denim shirt. Ah denim. No wonder Yves Saint Laurent rued over not being the man who invented blue denims.

My friend brought over another shirt. A denim shirt. To be honest, it didn't really need a makeover. The interesting collar and cut made it a classy piece on its own. Not to mention the lovely colour (I have to admit I was secretly jealous of the shirt when I first saw it). So even if I wanted to do something to it, it had to be subtle and complement the shirt and not take attention away from it.

A pre-production selfie of sorts

Hence these tiny rectangular brass beads, which were used in moderation so that it wouldn't look as if my friend was choking to death as a result of all the embellishments going around her neck. 

To achieve this, these miniature storey poles were stitched in a haphazard manner around the collar and cuffs. Its great when you don't have to stitch following a rigid definite pattern; makes things so much more simpler.

Have to put in a good word for the invisible thread. It can do wonders! You don't have to worry about coordinating the colour of the thread with your clothes because, well, as the name suggests, its pretty much invisible. It's usually used for shoes and coats but I have been happily using it up on cotton clothes. 

A big shout out to the guy who invented them.

About half an hour later...

Denim shirt gets a makeover. Big thanks to the barley stems in the background for being such amazing background extras. 

Bling Fling- Because some posts need to have a cheezy title

My friend was kind enough to lend me her shirt for me to work on. Hats off to her for bravely sacrificing her shirt without having any idea what I would end up doing to it.

Poor little hapless shirt was brought before scissor wielding, needle swinging amateur seamstress armed with big makeover visions. (figuratively speaking?)

The victim, 2 year old black cotton shirt with no history of alteration. 

I did the most predictable thing- mix black with gold. In my defense, black and gold is a combination that will never go out of style. Not my words. Some famous designer said that but I can't remember his name right now.

Famous anonymous designer wasn't wrong-

Bling, but not in-your-face bling bling that can almost blind you. The subtle kind of everyday wear bling. 

(Random Fact: The word 'bling bling was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in April,2003.)

The best thing for me though, was that my friend liked it. And she agreed to lend me some more shirts to work on :)