Upcycling

A dress has been hanging in my wardrobe for the past 22  years. I made it for my brother's wedding and can't remember if I have warn it since. It has long gone out of fashion and is also now a saggy fit, thanks to the fact that I am no longer a poor student living on carb-rich pasta, tuna mayo sandwiches, Toffee Crisps and biscuits!

Hurrah for the latter but I continue to really love the fabric which is why I still have it. I really want to use the fabric to make myself an appliqué blanket but can't lay my hands on any dark grey fleece, especially now that the weather is getting warmer and the shops are full of summery cottons. However, when my lovely friend C moved back to New York at Christmas she left me her plain, dark grey duvet set (thank you, C!). Surely there would be something that I could do with the two?

I thought I'd better check the definition of 'upcycling' before I proceed any further with this post, since I wasn't convinced that turning a duvet cover and pillow cases into..... a duvet cover and pillowcases really counts as upcycling. However, it turns out that it does: "the process of turning waste materials or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value."  I think both the dress and duvet set count as unwanted in their current form (unworn for 22 years and left behind) and I'm hoping that the end product will be of better quality, or at the very least, more aesthetically pleasing.

Take one dress...

...and one plain grey duvet set

The dress contains a lot of fabric but much is in fairly long but narrow panels, hence there really wasn't an option to turn it into another dress, top or skirt. However, I am hoping that I can cut out enough small shapes to adorn both the duvet cover and pillow cases with enough for an appliqué blanket when I can lay my hands on some grey fleece.

For now, I'm just testing out new appliqué shapes. I have drawn out a rabbit based on a silhouette I saw in a painting but need to enlarge it, which will have to wait until I can get my hands on a scanner next week.  It's currently drawn out on A4 paper but a king size duvet cover is no small area of fabric to cover and so I feel it needs to be larger.  I don't trust myself to redraw it quite so well a second time hence I'll be calling on technology to do that for me. I'm hoping to use the bottom back panel of the dress, which has a flare to it so should just about be wide enough to fit the rabbit shape.

And since the rabbit is looking up, he really needs to be looking at something. Still on my bird theme, I've chosen some flying birds - swallows to be precise - but was a bit concerned that the numerous points would make the shapes hard to sew around with the appliqué zig-zag stitch. There was only one way to find out - do a test.

Pleased with the results so far - I managed the wing and tail tips fairly well - I'm off to cut out some more bird shapes and can't wait to make the rabbit bigger so I can complete the project.