The refashion/sewing bug has hit me HARD! I've been aggressively attacking my mending pile this week and I completed FOUR projects in 24 hours! See, I've been stressed lately. When I get stressed out, I work. I work really hard on the small stuff because I like to procrastinate the big stuff. Example: my Senior year of college I had a lot of pressure to finish and execute my final show. I was so busy procrastinating my show that I hand-bound over 50 books in the two semesters. Crazy. This week is no exception to the craziness. I've been so busy planning Penelope's birthday party, working on freelance design, working on DHD design and blogging that I had to just do something that didn't need to be done: refashion a mini-dress. Also, I've done more dishes and laundry in the last week than I've done in the last month. I bought this old-school Paris Blues mini dress ages ago while in college. I think I got it for $5. It reminds me of something my sister and I would've seen at Contempo Casuals (a.k.a. Contrampo) when we would go window shopping in the mid '90s.  I imagine a really classy lady would've worn this to a techno dance club with a pair of 10" platforms heels. Don't you? When I bought it, the sleeves were really huge (I wasn't very confident in my sewing skills back then), so I took it into a tailor to get the sleeves taken in. Even after I had the sleeves tailored, I didn't really wear the dress because the sleeves were really HOT. Hot as in sweating bullets, not sexy. There's also something about slightly bulky long sleeves that makes me feel like the clothes are wearing me, rather than the reverse. I decided it was high time to shorten the sleeves and make the mini dress a little more appropriate for spring/summer. I didn't want to do a regular short sleeve, although that would've been a cinch. I needed to accentuate the shoulders and add a hint of military to this rather hard-core piece of attire. Here's what I did in list form:

• Chopped the sleeves
• Rolled sleeves twice to hide raw edge
• Ironed sleeves
• Cut & sewed two strips of fabric for epelets
• Sewed button holes
• Raided Susan's button stash
• Attached buttons raided from Susan's stash
• Anchored the epaulets on the under side of the sleeve

The changes took an hour or so to make. It was pretty simple. I really like how the cuffed sleeves & epaulets add more of a rock-and-roll feel to the dress. I think the dress will get more use now that I've taken off the sleeves. Ironically, I'm wearing the mini dress right now and I'm sort of wishing I had the warmth from those long sleeves because it's a chilly 40º outside. Brrr! Next week I'll be reporting on Penelope's Birthday party (the invitations were freaking rad) and sharing with you the rest of my refashions! Happy weekend, folks!