New ways with black

Lets face it, I'm no more likely to give up black than I am to be a Caroline. Rather than making my planned t-shirts I spent this weekend report writing and doing family stuff. I did find a few hours to do some clever remaking of old black clothes. The idea was to remake them so that I could wear them with colour more effectively. Maybe it was just so I could wear them!

So take one polo shirt style dress with a totally unflattering A-line, slightly too short above the knee and refashion into a cropped jacket with frilled hem. The fabric in this dress is very good quality heavy weight black jersey. It was fairly easy to do. I opened up the base of the polo front and cut up the centre of the garmet leaving a hem allowance of about 2 cms. Then I took about 10 cms from the original hem of the garment, gathered it in and re-attached it. The only hitch with this design is that if you want to keep all the original seam lines in place, there will be more gathering in the back than the front because the front panels were previously overlapped. To overcome this you would need to add an extra front panel on each side to match the button channel. This jacket looks great with jeans but also matches my black pencil skirt which is in the same fabric.

This jacket began life as a very mumsy black blouse that I bought in a hurry and never wore. To refashion it into a jacket I cut off the wide waist band and opened up the front to the key hole neckline then sewed the front edges and rehemmed. It doesn't look fabulous on the mannequin but it really works with a singlet under and my silk sarong skirts for evening. It can be worn open or closed as it appears in the picture.