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| This is me and Granny (before I lost 35 lbs) |
My Maternal Grandmother, was Dortha Dee Kinslow. She was an amazing woman. She had many amazing talents and skills. She was a mom, grandmother, great-grandmother, a school teacher, a seamstress and many other things.
One of my favorite stories that came to us at her funeral was from the funeral director. Granny had taught this funeral director when he was young. He told us that one day he was playing at school and ripped his new and expensive coat. He apparently flipped out pretty bad because he knew his mom and dad didn't have a lot of money and was going to be pretty upset he had ruined his new coat. Granny told him not to worry and she would take the coat home and fix it. He said the next day she came back to school with the coat and he couldn't even tell where the rip had been and his parents never knew it happened. She was very talented when it came to repairs of clothes, and upholstery. I swear she could fix anything made of fabric.
She could look at things and see how she wanted to make it and then just sit down at sewing machine and come up later with whatever was in her head. Once she sewed a very pretty cover for her mother's handicap toilet, (ya know the kind that looks like a grown up potty chair that sits in the middle of the room). They covered when Momma Nona wasn't using it and it looked like any other chair in the room. People sat in it when they came to visit and never knew what they were sitting on. She didn't have a pattern, just a thought in her head.
Anyway, occasionally I like to try to do the same thing. Please understand, I got 1/16th of granny's abilities. Granny was very meticulous and detail oriented and I am like a bull in a china closet, I want it done fast! So I don't get the same results she did.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine put this picture on FB of a skirt that she saw in a boutique. It was cute. I thought "I bet I could make that".
So yesterday I went to the thrift shop down the road, and with $10 in my pocket, I picked out 4 pairs of jeans and came home with a mission.
I called mom for a little pre-project consolation, and then got to cutting.
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| I cut the legs off the jeans of the size of the skirt that I wanted, then measured out a 6 by 6 inch square. Then I cut as many squares out of the rest of the jeans as I could, never counted how many squares I cut. |
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| I sewed the squares together in a pattern making a long strip. |
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| Then I sewed them together in strips, then sewed the strips together to make a "tube". |
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| I sewed the tubes on the top of the jeans. |
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| The back, I made the slit in the back a little off center, I thought with all the patches being off center, It looked better.
I am no, Dortha Dee, but I felt like I did pretty good, with no pattern and never have seen the real skirt in person. I thought it was fun. I made this one for my friend that posted the picture. I am going to make one for Breanna now. She said she wants her patches to be more "all over the place". That should be a little more challenging.
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