Week 5 of 52 - Trash to fash!

In my refashion stash I had a couple of sweaters that belonged to my grandma. She died five years ago an that was a really difficult part of my life, since she was the focal point who brought my family together. Losing her, while at the same time dealing with severe health problems was a true challenge for me and for the rest of my family.

It was my grandma who installed the notion of frugality and insisted on every piece of clothing to be kept and reused. She used to tell me how my mother grew wearing refashioned clothes and that it didn't make her any lesser person than the one she became. She insisted on making us (me and my sister) frugal and grateful persons. I wish if had only taken on more of these characteristics then I have.

When I was a teenager, I was so annoyed about keeping all the old stuff, especially the clothes and then I did not quite understand what the proverb 'One man's trash is the other man's treasure'. As I grew older learned the wisdom to it. Being creative thought me to keep the small things which had the potential of beautiful, and as I was keeping the clothes (sometimes I wish I had kept more of it, but then, I would have been buried in stuff in our little apartment.

But hey, my 'refash stash' is quite bountiful as is. For this week's project, I used the sweatshirt with funky collar and a zipper:
very a

and quite common, boxy, turtleneck sweater:

First up, I have unpicked the sweatshirt's collar, zipper, the bottom hem and weird rubber tag. As I thought I was going to make a dress, I decided to pick the hem to gain more length, only to realize that it would look so much better if I'd make the cut at the level of my waist.
So, I proceeded with trimming the length to the waist and chopping off the sleeves, as I wasn't going to keep them anyway. As the sweatshirt was too wide at the waist, I have narrowed it by bringing the side stitches inwards at an angle to better match my figure.

Next up, I cut the sweater just below the sleeves to use its trunk for the bottom part of this tunic. As the knit was machine knitted, there was no need to hem it, so the better.

I measured a piece of elastic to my waist and stitched it to the bottom (aka the skirt). There are some great tutorials out there on how to do this, like this one. Next, I used the same method to stitch the top and the now elasticized bottom part.

Now for the fun part. As these colors are so similar and neutral, they needed a pop of color and it came to me to - my absolute favorite color! Turquoise! I turned my magical suitcase inside out to find turquoise / aqua / gasoline colored stretchy lace! Perfect for making accents on this tunic!

So, I chose a similarly colored thread and hemmed the neckline and sleeves with zig-zag because the sweatshirt top fabric texture required something bold to make it a little less common. In place of the zipper, I placed a piece of lace in a triangle shape. Finally, I added a piece of the lace to the front, along the waist to give it some more visual interest and pop! Et voila!  

I think it turned out really well! From trash to fash!