Closing Clothes

Editor's Note - June 21, 2016: I originally titled this post, "I just had a crazy week; I don't have to invent a great title!" But now, after a week and some change to decompress and regenerate my creative energy, I have come up with the great title you now see above.

Today, I attended the closing for my first real estate purchase! Pause for oohs, ahhs, and applause. Thank you. While there were many concerns occupying my mind in the days leading up to the transaction, I'm not going to lie that one of the big ones was what to wear to my closing!?

A friend told me to just wear something that makes me happy, and my boyfriend told me I could wear anything (both of them have purchased houses in the past, so I value their insights on this matter), but I didn't feel like that was good enough. For this huge business transaction – where if anything were to go wrong, my professional appearance might be the one thing to make people believe that I could take care of it – I wanted to wear, as Cher Horowitz would say, "My most capable-looking outfit!"

However, my most capable-looking outfits (mostly typical business attire like suits, pencil skirts, and button-up blouses) generally don't make me feel happy; and since most of them come in dark shades of neutral, which I've been wearing entirely too much of over the past few days, I didn't really want to wear any of them.

So I settled on what I soon came to believe was an ingenious compromise, despite the fact that it might be dubbed the "mullet of outfits"—an ensemble that was business on the top, party on the bottom! To whit, I wore a really cute flirty dress and topped it with a more professional-looking blazer (which was still pretty cute and flirty, as far as blazers go).

I wanted to wear low-heeled shoes (this is, after all, the same dress that first inspired my complaint about short skirts and high heels giving me ostrich legs), but I just couldn't choose between kitten heels in almost the same shade of blue as the dress, or ballet flats in a darker teal. Ultimately I went with the teal, because I liked the way they stood out.

The closing went off without a hitch, and I think I can now qualify as the world's first home-owning Unfashionista! Here are Bubalou and I, showing off our new digs.

Island Girl

When we traveled to Hawaii a few weeks ago, the only thing I requested that we do is make a stop at Hilo Hattie, an iconic Hawaiian shop for Aloha shirts and other island apparel and goods. I remembered it fondly from my first and last visit to the islands at age 12, and I also remembered fondly the outlandish Hawaiian print dress that I'd gotten there but shortly outgrown.

This time, now being an adult, if I bought a Hawaiian dress, I'd be guaranteed to be able to wear it for years to come! So to Hilo Hattie we hied!

I was drawn to this particular dark red one with the white and gold plumerias on it because the pattern was bold yet simple, I don't have much clothing in the warmer end of the spectrum, and plumerias were a huge theme in the goods that I found throughout the Hawaiian shops, so it would be a pretty solid memento.

To go with it, I bought a pair of plumeria earrings in matching colors, and then I proudly wore the whole ensemble to work!

Now, even though I'd much rather be snorkeling on a beach than calling a bunch of prospective co-workers for interviews, at least my dress helps me hold onto that island vibe!

I'm also wearing one of the pairs of shoes that I bought over the winter. While I still kind of regret buying yet another pair of tall tan sandals, at least I found a pretty worthy use for them.

DIY Cropped Flares

I have a storied history of loving certain pairs of pants into the ground (Example 1. Example 2. And 3 — interestingly, the pink ones always seem to succumb to some kind of bloody accident). Let me tell you a tale about the most recent pair to meet their maker.

I can't remember when I got these flares, but I'm reasonably certain that I bought them used sometime between 5 and 10 years ago. They had plenty of spandex, and I loved how soft they were right from the outset! I wore them regularly for years, until I noticed they were starting to look a little too dingy and shabby for everyday use (not to mention that flared jeans had hit a low point in coolness). At that time, I designated them my official "hiking pants" and wore them exclusively for that purpose for another 2 years. 

While on my recent trip to Mexico, however, they breathed their last when a huge rip opened up in the knee. My brother happily spent the whole trip wearing a pair of jeans with 2 gaping holes in the legs, but as soon as my pants did the same, I felt conspicuously trashy. Not to mention that since the jeans were stretchy and relatively tight, they caused my knee to poke out weirdly and uncomfortably when I bent my leg.

I briefly considered converting the flares to skinny jeans and shredding them a bit more to bring them up to trend. Holey jeans have come into fashion at least twice before in my lifetime, and now they are having another big moment. But then I decided that no matter how cool destroyed jeans may be, it has never been unacceptable to wear your jeans clean and intact—and that's how I prefer them. So I sadly bid my beloved pants adieu and placed them in the donation bag.

And then, I kept looking at fashion websites, and one thing popped out at me: cropped flares. Cropped flares first hit my radar last summer, and it looks like they're still on the cutting edge of fashion. Best of all, some of the pairs that I've seen advertised have lots of distressing, so my holey jeans would be the perfect candidates to make into crops.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? It's time for a DIY!

I marked a spot on the inside of one leg that I thought would make a good length, then I stacked the legs together and cut through all four layers of fabric at once. Nice. I was basically done.

However, the hole in the knee still needed attention. Parts of it were fraying in a very trendy way, but it was still basically just a slit that was almost invisible when my leg was straight. So I set out to make the hole bigger.

I've never tried to distress a pair of jeans before, so I used a tutorial I found that suggested using a cheese grater or fork. I had just finished my dinner, so a fork it was! 

I put a flattened cardboard box inside the leg to protect the back and provide a little support, and started scratching away. Horizontal strokes seemed to have the best results, as they broke the blue weft threads while leaving the heavier white warp threads intact. 

In a bit of overzealous distressing, I accidentally stabbed my thumb and scraped up my pointer finger, so reader beware! Jean-destroying is a dangerous venture!

After widening the hole around my knee, I scratched up a few spots on the other leg for balance, then I threw the whole thing in the washing machine, to accelerate the fraying process and wash away any orphaned threads.

Now I turned my attention to the bottom hem. I wanted a really mega-frayed look, almost like fringe, which I could not achieve with the natural fraying process. So I decided to use the bottoms of the legs that I had already cut off, fray them thoroughly, and attach them to the new bottom edge.

I discovered that the best way to get a nice even fringe is to turn the fabric sideways (so what was originally parallel to the side seam now forms  the bottom edge) and then pick out the blue weft threads one at a time with an unbent paper clip.

[Side note: the cardboard I'm using as a backdrop is the box that my compression stockings came in! And the orange bandage on my thumb is a direct consequence of my klutziness during the forking process]

After I'd peeled off several rows of blue threads, I finally had a nice fringe about a half-inch long.

I cut the fabric so the fringe was attached to a strip about 1 inch wide, then stitched several pieces of it together to form a long ribbon. 

Then I sewed it onto the inside of the new bottom edge of my pants! I left the edges raw, so that the main body of fabric might fray a little to add to my fringe. 

And when all was done, I had a fun pair of pants that I brought with me to New Orleans! In examining the pictures, I see that the pants almost look straight-legged, and they are a bit big on me, so I think in the future, I might tighten up the thigh area a little bit so that the bottom can look more flared!

Ready to romp

An evening that will certainly involve going out to the clubs, but may also involve walking around outside at a festival while the sun still shines, is a special sartorial challenge. The outfit that you pick can't be too dressy, but it can't be too casual either.

For this singular type of evening, I chose a black romper. Remember when I said I hated rompers? Well, those ugly baggy ones that I pictured still earn my disdain, but this little fitted one-piece with its saucy front zipper is a horse of a different color!

Speaking of color, such a simple black outfit calls for elaborate makeup, so I put my shaky hands to the test and drew on some double-winged black eyeliner (only screwed up once!), finishing off the look with rather bold pink lip gloss.

Shoes and accessories were a decision I saved for last. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to counter all the black with something colorful, or embrace the neutral hues in my outfit and let my makeup be the focal point. In the end, none of my colorful shoes looked quite right, so I narrowed the decision down to either beige espadrilles or black flat sandals with an ankle strap.

I decided to let my jewelry help me decide on a shoe, and after trying on numerous necklaces, I settled for the silver fringed one, mainly because, out of all the choices, it's hardest to find a use for (I've only worn it once since I got it a year ago).

With the fierce cat-eyes and the bold metallic jewelry, I was feeling a kind of tough-girl vibe, so I went with the black shoes. Convenient, since I still was expecting that the evening might involve a lot of walking. I'm learning to embrace flat dress shoes as a legitimate (and very practical) styling option!

Showing that tough-girl side of which I spoke.

Butter(fly) Yellow

 

You should have seen the pile of clothes on the floor of my closet Friday. I had an outfit planned, but it wasn't that great, and in the morning, I noticed it tended to slide down and show too much bra, so 12 minutes before I was supposed to be at work, I decided to change.

Outfit after outfit hit the floor—mostly because (even though at this point, I should have just settled for anything that wasn't too revealing!) I couldn't stand to wear something so plain or dreary on a Friday. Especially on a slightly chilly and rainy Friday.

There was an outfit — this one — that I'd been wanting to wear a few days before, but had had to nix at the last minute because the dress' straps were too long. Thursday night, I sewed the straps to be shorter, so the outfit was wearable...but I had been reluctant to wear it because I felt it was too summery and cheery for a slightly chilly and rainy Friday. Go figure. No wonder I can never decide on what to wear.

But after rejecting so many of my other more subdued and warmer outfits, I was willing to give this one another chance. At least it would help lift my mood! To keep it warmer and more work-appropriate, I covered up the spaghetti straps with a white crocheted shrug.

I still feel like it's a great accomplishment when I accessorize with colors that aren't also found in my clothes, so wearing yellow shoes with this green and white dress is clearly cause for celebration. Bright yellow and kelly green are a natural pairing (in fact, the last time I wore these shoes, it was also with green), so it wasn't that daring, but still. I'm gonna give myself props because no one's going to stop me! Much like last time, I wore a (different) butterfly jewelry set to match the shoes.

 

 

 

Dress to skirt to shirt

Remember the Indonesian Princess (Gypsyish) dress that I later made into a skirt?

Well, after all that work, I still wasn't happy with it. Or, more precisely, I wanted to try out a new trend (the sheer long skirt over the short inner liner that I've gushed about so much) using that skirt as my guinea pig. Sadly, it didn't work. In a tragic miscalculation, I cut the liner way too short, making it entirely inappropriate to wear in public. Since I didn't have any other liners lying around to replace it with, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the overskirt (which I still loved for its dramatic and romantic floral design), turning it into a blouse.

Lately I've been really into the loose, baggy, see-through tops that you can wear over a camisole. I recently got two in knit or crocheted varieties, but I thought the sheer fabric from the former-skirt-former dress would make an especially nice baggy layering top.

Fortunately, it was really easy to do.

I laid out the fabric, pulling it slightly up in front so that the front would be shorter than the back.

Then I stuck some pins in it where I thought the shoulder seams should go, trying it on in the mirror to see how I felt about the length. I was OK with that, so I sewed the shoulder seams in permanently.

Next, I picked out a few inches of the side seam using my seam ripper, to make arm holes.

I cut off the top portion above the new shoulder seams.

Then I cut a nice rounded hole for my head to go through!

The bottom hem of the skirt had originally been sewed without any overlocking or finishing of any kind, so I didn't feel bad at all about doing my arm holes and neck hole the same way.

Here's the shirt after it was finished—basically it's just a big rectangle with some holes in it!

But it looks so elegant when you're wearing it! As long as you're not paying too much attention to the long threads that are fraying everywhere because none of the hems are actually finished!

I found a bamboo grove for my final photo shoot...and naturally couldn't resist trying to climb it! The red welts that are now all over my legs say I probably should have resisted.

The Not-So-Great Wave

What's the good of a dress if you're always wearing it with pants? Especially a dress with a graphic print on it that's really too casual for most occasions that call for a dress!

That's what I thought about the Great Wave of Kanagawa dress that I've had for two years and worn only sparingly.

So I decided to turn it into a tank top. I've converted many dresses in this way, usually just lopping a few inches off the bottom and sewing a new hem. But, much like my top-down T-shirt trim last summer, the best part of this dress was on the bottom and I didn't want to cut it off.

So here's a top-down tank-top trim!

My first step was to carefully pick off all the binding tape that lined the armholes and collar. I was going to re-use it to line the new armholes and new neckline.

Once it was time for refashioning, I began by holding it up to my body so I could decide on an appropriate length.

Then I marked and cut new armholes at my chosen height. 

I sewed new seams where I wanted the tops of the straps to be.

Then I tried it on to see how I liked the fit. Oops, still too long.

After the addition of many incrementally lower shoulder seams, I finally had a length I could live with.

Then I marked and cut a new neckline.

Reattaching the edge binding was difficult. I ended up with a very wavery-looking edge. But fortunately when it's stretched, you can't see the imperfections!

The last step was to create new side seams. The original dress' hip area was now at waist height, so this entailed quite a bit of taking in. You can see it took a few tries before I had it narrow enough.

I wore my newly created tank top for the first time, very appropriately I thought, for a day of beach-hopping in Hawaii!