Too bad!  I just found out that my dress and purse (both made by me) made it into Toronto Fashion‘s trend watch.

Photography by Lewis Mirrett. Taken from here.

I don’t know, man, it’s your call: Totally Useful vs. Dressing Like Mom Did in 1991.  There are pros and cons to both of those perspectives, so do whatever works best for you.

Take these scraps of fabric:

From L to R: Waistband straps, the purse, and the attachment clips. FYI, my purse ended up longer than the standard fanny pack, so you might want to cut yours into 6x10" pieces instead.

Take both of the long skinny straps and sew each of them lengthwise, wrong sides together (we aren’t going to hem the straps; we’ll just let them fray to their hearts’ content).

Oh, have you used this type of adjustable belt buckle before?

I think it's called a "parachute" or "side release" buckle. The piece on the left is the "female" piece, and the one on the right is the "male." I'm sure I don't need to explain why (everyone knows that females are curvy and that males have three spiked prongs).

Attach the zipper to the bag (the square-shaped pieces of fabric), right sides together.

It’ll look like this:

Take one of the straps, and feed it through the “female” buckle piece.

Pin and sew both ends of the strap to the right side (as opposed to the wrong side) of the bag, up near the zipper.

Take the other strap, and pin & sew one end of it to the same side of the bag, but near the opposite end of the zipper.

Fold the bag together, right sides facing, and sew the edges together.  Keep the straps tucked inside, and remember to leave the zipper partially open so that you can turn it right-side-out without swearing!

Turn it right side out, and attach the “male” clip to the long strap.

First, feed it through the hole that's closest to the prongs...

Cut off the sleeves, Raglan style, and cut off the collar too.

I can't believe how hard it was to find a non-baseball-related picture of a Raglan sleeve for that link.

Cut off the bottom of the blouse, too.  Um, twice, if necessary.

The strip that is so cleverly titled "this one" will be your neck tie. That bottom piece should be acknowledged as well, as you will be using it to make a loophole on the back of the blouse. Warning: I don't really cover how to make and attach the loophole to the back of the blouse. I'm hoping you'll be able to MacGyver it yourself out of the rest of this tute.

Hem the sides and bottom of the blouse.

Take the “this one” strip, and sew it together lengthwise into a long skinny tube.

Turn it inside out.

Do you know the safety-pin trick for turning out a long skinny tube of fabric?

Attach a safety-pin to one end of the tube.

And stuff him into the tube, feeding him through until your little safety-pin friend makes it through to the other side!

Aww look - he's taking a little trip!

Oh, the tales he'll have for us!

Pin the strap to the front of the blouse, right sides facing together.

Sew it.

On the back of the blouse, you’ll want to attach a loophole for the strap to feed through.  Like I said, I didn’t really include this step in the tutorial, so just take some of your leftover fabric (from the sleeve or something) and sew a tube that fits onto the back of the blouse.

Feed both ends of the strap through the loophole and tie them around your neck into a lovely bow!

It's not really a bra-friendly blouse.

Depending on how adventurous you are, maybe you should think about investing in some double-sided tape for your boobs.

Start with these guys:

From left to right: chest band (which I cut a bit more loosely, just 'cause), two pieces that will become one body of your blouse, and four straps to tie up around your shoulders.

Take the chest band and sew it together along the short sides.

Take the two body pieces and sew them together to form one looooonngg rectangle.  Cut a rounded corner off of one end (this will be on the outside of the blouse and will look really cute – scroll down to the last pic if you think I’m lying).

Measure your bust, add 12 inches and divide by two.  Take that number (let’s pretend it’s 24″) and fold over the unrounded end of your fabric that many inches.

You catch my drift.

Keep folding until it’s all folded up.

Pin together the overlapping parts so that you have one big tube.

Gather  the tube so that it will fit inside the chest band.

I tried gathering it using a hand stitch, and it was really annoying.  And that’s coming from someone who has clocked many hundreds of hours of hand sewing for various quilting projects, so clearly I’m crazy about hand sewing.  Don’t hand sew; use a machine to gather your fabric.

Fold the chest band lengthwise with raw edges facing up.  Place the chest band over the gathered tube and pin it in place, right sides facing together.

Um, sew it together.

Take your strap strips and sew them like I showed you in the last tutorial (fold them in lengthwise, fold lengthwise again, pin and sew).  Pin them in place approximately 3-4″ from the edges of the blouse.

See those X markings? Pin the straps there. Repeat this step on the back of the blouse.

Sew them in place along the stitch line (where the chest band meets the body).

Those bimbos were right: modeling is way harder than geometry.

The body measurements you need for this blouse are:

1) Above your bust, just below the armpits (mine was 33″) for the chest band.

2) Around your bust, plus several inches for optimum blousy effect (mine was 35+6=41″), for the width of the blouse’s body.

3) Lengthwise from just above your bust to wherever you want the blouse to end (mine was 15″), for the length of the blouse’s body.

Add one inch to each of these dimensions and start cutting!

The top strip goes around my chest, the middle strip will be the strap (yes, just one, and no, you don't really need a specific length for that one, you just need it to be long enough to tie up), and the bottom will be the body of the blouse.

Take the strap strip and fold it in lengthwise.

I have the grossest sewing desk. It's really old and has multi-functioned as many things, including bar top for the wild parties of my youth. Oh, the sinful pleasures that this desk has seen and absorbed.

Fold it lengthwise yet again, pin and sew.

You can hem it at both ends by folding the already folded corners into two little triangles:

And tucking the triangle up inside the strap.

And sewing it in place.

Take your other two strips (the chest band and the body of the blouse), and sew each of them together along the short sides so that they form two tubes.

Gather the body so that it fits inside the chest band.

Turn the both right side out.

Take the chest band and fold it in half lengthwise, with the raw edges facing up (away from the body).

Tuck the body inside the chest band, right sides facing together.

Pin and sew.

Flip the chest band right side up, and attach the strap to the middle of the blouse, inside the chest band, along the stitch line.

Try it on in front of your sewing machine.

Don't forget the bikini top!

Cut off the sleeves and collar, cutting a bit lower on the front of the neckline.

Sew along the sides of the bodice so that it fits you better (follow the yellow dots).

Hem the armholes and neckline.

Cut out a small upside-down V from the bottom of the shirt.

*Something I forgot to do was to measure the distance from the top of my shoulder to the middle of my crotch, to avoid a jumpsuit wedgie (and thus, I had a major jumpsuit wedgie).  So measure the distance from your shoulder to your crotch, and cut the V accordingly.

That little V is about 3.5" on either side, but should probably have been about 2" long instead. I'll never sit again.

You could just sew the two V’s together and call it a day, but I think that adding some extra fabric to the crotch will give you a little more room (not to mention, a little less camel toe).

Taking one of your discarded sleeves, cut out a rectangle that measures about 4″ wide and the length of both sides of your V, plus 1″ for hem (my V was 3.5″ on one side, so the length of my fabric strip was 7″ plus 1″ for hem).

Starting at the apex of the crotch, pin the long side of the fabric strip to the front of the shorts, right sides facing together.  Fold over the excess fabric on the end of the strip and sew the crotch add-on to the crotch.

Repeat with the back side of the shorts.

And now it should look like this:

I also tied two little strips of fabric to the shoulders to gather them. Oh man, I didn't realize how large those boots are on me; no wonder I sound like a damn centaur whenever I walk around in them.

Cut off the tops of the two shirts.

I would highly recommend not using a stretchy sweater for the long-sleeved shirt. Sewing two stretchy shirts together totally sucks.

Turn the short-sleeved shirt inside out.  Cut off the sleeves and sew the open sides shut so that it looks like a rectangular tube.

It must be a psychedelic rectangular tube.

With the long-sleeved shirt right-side-out, and the rectangular tube inside-out, place the tube over the long-sleeved shirt.

Pin the top openings together and sew.

Unfold the two shirts from each other so that everything is right-side-out.

Sew along the bottom hem of each shirt to seal them off.

Does the sweater look panicked? Like, "Aaah!! What have you done to my face?!? I'm a monsteerrrrrr!!!"

Tuck the inside shirt into the outside shirt’s opening.

Now you have two choices: you can simply tie the sleeves together and call it a day like a lazy jerk (not pictured: being a lazy jerk), or you can add a clever detail to the sleeves that will attach them together and look cute.

Take some flat bracelets that you never wear, and pin the edge of each sleeve around those bracelets.

And then sew it.

And there’s your tote bag.

Wouldn't that look awesome if you used a button down shirt?

Take an old pair of pants and cut them off at the knees.  I took a donated pair of boot cut jeans that were two sizes too big and I cut them to measure 16″ long.

I also cut off the button closures from three other pairs of jeans (won’t my roommates be surprised when they get dressed this morning?), and a couple of waistbands just for the hell of it.

Not pictured: the waistbands.

Cut open the pant legs on one side, right behind the inseam.  The inseam will be the opening of your vest.

Fold one leg on top of the other and cut out a neckline and armholes.

Make the armholes big!

Sew the legs together along what will be the back seam (the side that doesn’t have the inseam attached to it).  Sew the shoulders together too.

I sewed the shoulders together with the right sides facing out because I wanted to keep the fray visible.

Pin and sew the button closures down the front of the vest.  Pin and sew the waistbands to the armholes.

And if you want to be especially awesome, sew on an embroidered tiger or dragon applique to the back of the vest.

It wasn’t.  The battery just fell out and was hiding in the waste paper basket.  Yep, I’m a full blown jackass.

Anyhoo, here’s the tutorial:

Take a rectangle of fabric that measures about 12-14″ wider than your hips and approximately 33-37″ long, depending on your height (I’m 5’3″ and my fabric measured 33.5″).  And take a strip of fabric that measures 48″ long and 1″ wide.

Again, pay no attention to that second thin strip of fabric. Hemming the strap was annoying and I decided that I didn't need the second one.

Sew the sides together so that it forms a big tube and hem the top and bottom of the tube.

Take your thin strip of fabric and first fold the outside edges inward.

And then fold that in half and pin her down.

Sew it all the way down.

Now, what I did was sew it all together and then cut it into four pieces afterwards.  You can do that, or you can cut the strip into four even pieces ahead of time and then sew them individually.  I also didn’t hem the outside edges of the strips, which might make them fray.  You can hem them if you want, but it looks like a big pain in the butt to me.

Take you dress tube, and with your elastic thread hand wrapped around a bobbin spool, shirr around the top 12″ of the dress.  You can read more about the shirring process in this post here.  Or google it, I don’t care.

Hold the fabric back like I'm doing so that it doesn't bunch up and sew up all crazy-like.

You will be doing this shirring step for-frigging-ever.  Ugh.  And you’ll run out of elastic thread several times.  And you’ll probably vow to never shirr another article of clothing again, so help you god.

But this is what you’ll end up with:

And really, wouldn't you pretty much sell your soul for this?

Pin the four straps strategically to the dress top (like 3-4″ away from the edge).

Oops, blurry! Don't care!

Sew those suckers down, and put your dress on right now!

Do not change into appropriate footwear. Do not take the time to move your mail stack and dog food/water bowl out of the way. Just put the fucking dress on and SMILE.

I should have rotated this page 90 degrees. The width is 19.5" and the length is what was too long.

Fold it lengthwise (the real lengthwise).  Cut out a neck hole and some sleeve holes.

Those sleeve holes are about 9" long. The neckhole is half the width of the fabric when it's folded in half.

Hem everything down and you’ll be left with this:

Meh.

Which might be good enough for you lazy types, but if you shirr the waistline (and maybe the sleeves), you’ll go from “Meh” to “Meow!”

Shirring is when you sew some elastic thread into the underside of the fabric so that you get that cute stretchy gathered look.

You’ll have to hand wind the elastic thread around your bobbin spool.  And don’t stretch the elastic while you wrap, or you’ll wreck everything!

Can you tell that I photoshopped a mysterious red dot off my finger? It would never have been discovered by the naked eye alone, but from this close-up, it looked like leprosy.

Now, I was once told that you’re also supposed to loosen up the screw on the bobbin case so that the elastic thread can feed more easily through your machine.

However, when I tried that, it didn’t shirr at all.  So forget the screw on the bobbin case, and feel free to backhand anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

With the outside of the pillowcase facing up (the elastic thread goes on the underside of the fabric because it’s ugly), sew a straight stitch along the bottom hem.

And after I sewed it all the way around, I just spiralled up and kept going.  I didn’t feel like wasting any elastic thread on backstitching -  this of course puts me at risk for a total unravelling if my elastic breaks at any future point, but whatever, I like to live dangerously.

Oh, and I measured the distance between stitch lines by using the the sewing foot as a guideline. It's slightly more than 1/4"

I ended up sewing about 7 rows of stitching to the waistline.  And then I decided to add 2 rows of shirred stitching to the armholes.

I also photoshopped the stubble from my armpits. That's the closest I got to bathing and makeup yesterday.

Which should explain the excessive crop job on this pic. Don't look at my messy room in the background.