Dress Makeover

Yesterday I made over a dress that's been in my closet for six years!  

That is a post picture, btw.  Previously, it had fit me something like a garbage sack, so I added in a sash in the back, seen in these two pictures:

Oh yeah, taking pictures of your back in a mirror is SUPER HARD!!!!  Anyways, I made each side of the sash out of a long thin piece of fabric.  I folded it in half, right sides together, and stitched it with a reverse seam allowance (is this a thing? I want it to be a thing) of 3/4" (aka, there were 3/4" that would actually make up the sash, and the rest I trimmed as close to the seam as possible.  I then stitched one end shut and turned it right side out with the help of a plastic stick from an Edible Arrangements thing and a lot of hope.  Finally I top-stitched with the tiniest possible seam allowance to make the whole thing flat instead of tubular.  Result can be seen here:

I inserted it by opening two seams in the back of the dress just a little and sewing the open end of each sash piece into the seam.

I also replaced this elastic, because the elastic it came with was DEAD.  I used reclaimed elastic from an old pair of underpants FTW!

Adorable picture of dog's nose in corner is adorable.

The final major addition I made was pockets!

pockets out, like a hobo -- see how huge they are?

hand in a pocket

The dress had two layers, so I drafted in line pockets and sewed them into the inner layer as seen here.

I then ripped part of the matching seam on the outer layer and re-hemmed it so I can access the pockets!

All in all, I'm very pleased with myself for making a previously useless dress into something I'll wear over and over again all summer long!  And all for free, with stuff from my stash.

Acne Week 1!

Took some more pictures today.  Tried smiling in them, in an effort to look a little happier!  Here they are:

Left Side

Right Side

Straight on.

I think I'm seeing a bit of a reduction!  One weird thing I've noticed is that my acne seems to be better in the morning and then worsen over the course of the day.  These pics were taken at about 8:30 pm, for reference.

For this next week, I'm going to continue to work with the Earth Child soap and Tea Tree Oil solution at night.  I'm also going to look into if there's a good way to exfoliate.

Working on Acne. Week 1

I'm pretty much counting on having few to no readers right now...  Starting a deliberate journey to help heal my acne by taking embarrassingly close up pictures of my face every Wednesday.  Without further ado, here are this week's terrible pictures:

Right side of my face

Left side of my face

Straight on

So yeah, I look pretty bizarre... hopefully I'll get better at taking pictures of myself.

Routine I've been using up until now:
-nighttime washes with LuSa organics earth child soap.
-every once in a while topical tea tree oil, undiluted.

 My plan for this week:
-nighttime and morning washes with soap
-5% tea tree oil solution applied to face before bed
-eliminate processed sugars and grains from diet

I'll check in next week with a new set of ultra-flattering pictures and a report on how well the week goes.

Tights and Vibram FiveFingers

I love wearing my VFFs, and I love wearing skirts.  Problem: in the winter it's too darn cold to wear skirts without tights.  This leads to the following problem:

Feet in tights just don't work with VFFs... it's the whole issue of not having toes thing.  So I decided to grab some scissors and see what I could do.

I put my scissors into that hole and then cut it open just enough for my big toe to pop through.  I then repeated with a small hole by my baby toe and repeated the process for my littler toes.  I cut a large hole so that all four of my toes could get through, and the tights were held on by a swatch of fabric hitting me right where a flip-flop would.

And voila!  I now have toes to put in my VFFs !

All problems with skirts, VFFs and winters are now solved.  This solution was significantly warmer than going without tights, and looked just fine once my feet were in the shoes.