boring blue cotton dress, thrifted in Tucson, blah, blah, blah
I am not even sure why I bought this dress in the first place. I guess I thought it would be an easy thing to throw over my swimsuit in the summer, even though I have about a hundred an one little cottony summer dresses like this. ( just as many as the number of purse/bags now!)
I was about to give it back to the thrift store in my weekly bag-o-thrift-store-crap-to-drop-off when I thought of putting some little front pockets on it. I realized that my favorite summer dress have some sort of pockets and that I tend to wear them over and over instead of ones without pockets. This idea led me to my massive and random stack of embroidered thingies: runners, doilies, hankies, aprons, etc from which to choose a pocket material. It was becoming hard to choose because I have a ton of mediocre type pieces and I was looking for something outstanding. Then I hit payday. See below:
1 of 3, using two for the pockets
Tada! Birds! I lurve me some birds, I do, I do! So I found these three linen doily type pieces that have a bird embroidered on them and and edged with some blue and white crochet/tatting/knitting? Don't know ,but its lovely. So I folded each one in half and figured out how to place them for pockets.
close-up of pockets
This will be a little difficult to explain but I pinned the right side of the oval shaped doily down first and sewed it to the dress in a half circle shape. This created the inside of the pocket, or a pocket lining, of sorts. Then I folded the top of the oval down, over the bottom half circle, wrong sides together now, to create the lovely pocket with bird you see above. I just top stitched that down, over the first row and now I have a lined pocket, no cutting involved, and doily is still in perfect shape in case I decide to ditch the dress, it gets ruined, too small, etc. Thus I will be able to take the doilies off and reuse them. Smartyparty!
love, love, love
finished altering
Now i just need to wear it!
Upcycle, rework, and try again! Dance, dance, dance! Sing, sing, sing!