Another New Endeavor

In 2000 I started garment sewing.  I eventually started quilting, something I said I'd never do, but that's another story.  It only took a few years for that passion to fade but I still loved my sewing machine.  I think the reason why that passion died was because I could never get the clothes to fit right. Plus I found other artistic endeavors to pursue.  I definitely have ADD when it comes to my creative brain!

My husband and I have been long time fans of Project Runway and for me fabric has always been a great source of inspiration.  I love their challenges!  One of the challenges was to shop a pet store for materials and one contestant made a dress out of dog collars.  One of the things I noticed on each episode was that they used dress forms.  Hmmm, I wonder if I got a dress form in my size would that would help me?  Yes!

(Stick with me here)... I LOVE Pinterest and have over 100 boards on my page.  One of my newer boards is called "Altered Clothing".  Instead of starting from scratch I could piece-meal different clothes.
This was the first piece I fell in love with (not created by me):

And this is another one (I love how she did the flowers):

And one day I aspire to do something like this (if only there were more hours in a day!)

So you guessed it!  My newest endeavor is Altered Clothing!  I went to my local thrift store last week and bought three articles of clothing.  A gray sweater which will be my base piece.

A black net-like shirt for draping:

And a dark charcoal gray knit shirt because I liked the "crochet" detail on the back:
                                                           Front:

                                                        Back:

My first cut was right up the middle of the front of the sweater because my original thought was to make a cardigan like the pink one in the first picture.  I ended up sewing it closed closer to the neck and leaving it open at the bottom, eventually adding the charcoal gray knit to that area so I could wear it like a sweater without my belly hanging out.
I cut the crochet off the back of the knit shirt and hand sewed it onto the back of my sweater.  I had two flowers left over so I added some detail to those and sewed those on the front.  For the net-shirt I used the sleeves.  I reattached these to the cut off sweater sleeves.
And this is the end product:

I finally bought myself a dress form for Christmas and I love it although I do wish I was on the smaller end of the measurements but alas I am not.