Revamping

There have been tons of really inspiring money-saving blog posts appearing recently. Three of my very favourite bloggers, Vix, Christina and Kate, have all written really thought provoking things in the past few days about cutting back and spending their cash wisely. I like to think I'm reasonably sensible with my money - I have no debts and I've got savings - but I don't think I've got anything particularly ground-breaking to add to the discussion as I don't really do anything special. I'm half Scottish and I was brought up in Yorkshire - I was just bred to be tight with money! However I'm pretty sure I've saved myself a few pounds over the past couple of nights, so I thought I'd blog about it.

I fell over my alterations pile whilst getting into bed at the weekend. The pile was so big that I even dreamed that it had come to life and eaten my rack of Irregular Choice shoes. I'm not sure if that was more of a nightmare than the one last night where Wayne Rooney wanted to have an affair with me. I was running shrieking through my subconscious going "But he's an UGLY gobshite! And he played for my most hated two football teams. Nooooooooooooooooooo!"

Ahem. Anyway, after cursing mildly I was actually really pleased that the pile was now strewn all over the floor as there was all sorts of fun stuff in there! You know when you buy something off ebay for about 99p in the hope that it will fit and look good, but it just doesn't? Well there were several of those mistakes in there, along with a few vintage things, some stuff that was too big and various random charity shop purchases.

I could procrastinate no longer.

Armed with my trusty mini sewing machine, some coffee, and a good book to read when I got stressed out, I went to work.

What do you know? I now have 4 new tops, a coat I can actually wear out in public and I've nearly made an unflattering skirt absolutely awesome. I say nearly, because I had a hemming disaster tonight and had to leave it alone before I burst into tears. I'm sure it's fixable but I can't face it tonight. Hemming is so boring, even when it's going well.

(ignore my utter grockishness in these pics please - I'm knackered, have no makeup on and the light is terrible in my room)

Exhibit 1:

This was a shirt dress that I bought in Cow Vintage in Birmingham for about £3 as it had a huge rip in the side seam. Well as it's a USA size 4 I was never going to squeeze my derriere into it anyway, so I've cut the bottom part off and made it into a normal shirt. Also took out some whopping 80's shoulder pads.

Exhibit 2:

This was a size 18 dress originally. There is an outfit photo of it way back at the beginning of the blog but my god, it's not flattering, so I'm not reposting it here. I had to hack it at a frilly bit so it's a wee bit shorter than I'd like (awful, awful stomach) but I reckon it's alright.

Exhibit 3:


A £1 Primark top. There was always a massive amount of fabric in this anyway, but I was starting to get a bit drowned by it. Side seams promptly taken in and it's much more wearable. Not exactly exciting or even necessarily blog-worthy, but a useful addition to the wardrobe nonetheless.

Exhibit 4:

Another size 18 dress. I think I got this for about 10p at a car boot sale, mainly cos the fabric was pretty. I finally got round to turning it into a top and taking in the side seams so it fits.


Exhibit 5:

This one was quite easy really as I just sewed some buttons on it. Naughty H&M - this was in the sale and had 4 out of the 5 buttons missing. I mentioned it to the guy at the till and had to really push for a further discount. I'm sorry, I don't care if it's in the sale or not. If it's got bits missing I'm not paying the marked price for it.

It's cute though isn't it?

I might have been bemoaning my lack of tops last week but the solution was so obvious. I'd only have shoved all these things in the charity shop pile but I'm chuffed I've managed to make them wearable and improve my sewing skills. They're not exactly immaculately sewn or anything but they're wearable, and it's stopped me from going out and buying a load of new things. Now if only I could get my brain around making things from patterns, I'd never need to shop again.