Super-Swapelicious-Saturday!

Last weekend I attended my first ever Swap-o-rama-rama. What an incredible day of recycling, re-using, creative ingenuity (I guess that's why people coined the term "upcycling", to cut down on adjectives). Organizer Jillian and her team did an amazing job setting up a fashion factory in the Douglas College main atrium. Aside from the clothing tables where participants first donated, then chose, garments to work with there were many inspiration stations to work at: surface design, serger, sewing machines, hand embroidery (where your's truly parked herself), silk-screening, button-making, fabric painting/stenciling and notion/trim/embellishment.

Before After

The 12 sewing machines were busy all day long.

Some of the amazing creations included a gorgeous messenger bag made out of a leather car coat, a summer dress from a shirt/hat/skirt (really!), a pleated and tucked fitted blouse from a men's dress shirt, some high fashion shorty shorts from wool pants and several tops embellished with frilly collars, organza roses and silk-screened images.

At one point, I had 5 young Katimavik participants all embroidering designs onto t-shirts. Look at Tim, he's 19 and embroidering for the first time (a boy after my own heart, he even picked out his first stitches to re-do them because he wasn't happy with the way they looked!).

I had my Sublime Stitching craft pad of embroidery transfers so I let people chose a design if they wanted to stitch along a line. Other's opted for their own design.

My friend Els scored a brand new t-shirt from the pile and added a pink flamingo embroidery!

I think the most popular station, for young and old alike, was the button-making table. Jillian's Mother-in-Law had sent her a pile of New Yorker mag covers from the 60's. Can you imagine the incredible artwork images that were in that pile? Perfect button-making fodder.

Before

...about 2 minutes later

I brought these ones home for the kids.

What did I find? A beautiful, like new, size 0 (just how can they call '0' a 'size' anyway?) brown stretch-corduroy jean jacket for D which I am embellishing with embroidery. It's not done yet, but when it is I'll show you the results.

Are you inspired to recreate a tired old jacket? Looking to put some life into your faded jeans? Then...

mannequin created by Susi Bainard

75th Blogpost give away update

I still don't know how to see who has subscribed to my blog with Google Reader, and I really wanted to have a special give away for all the folks who come to visit regularly, so I will just have to rely on you to leave a comment and let me know if you subscribe or follow along. What's a world without trust, right? Hang in there, I do have a plan, but I just need until next week to make something - I feel like I'm in the middle of a local tornado at the moment....spin, spin, spin!