As well as making the sweaters and tunic skirts, I made three dress.

They were very enjoyable but took a fair amount of trial and error. Originally my stitch mixes were very ambitious but also very fussy so I crocheted and frogged in equal measure. Figuring colours was also tricky as I wanted to used all the colours but equally didn’t want the look too busy.

The first dress was from an unworn ASOS dress from the charity shop, with bare shoulder detail. I trimmed the sleeves to make a trapeze style dress. The fabric was a viscose mix and a good weight. I trimmed the neckline and armholes with 2 simple lines, and the hem was done with coloured bands of stitch mixes. I used mainly US half-double stitches back loop only or a basic fillet stitch.

I had purchased 2 of the same teeshirts from the charity shop, both were XXL cotton teeshirt which had some wear, and still plenty of wear left in them.

Both were cut and I put front and back pleats to take in the excess fabric at the ‘yoke’. I had tried gathering, but did not like the ‘effect’ of this. I could have cut these also to an a-line shape but I wanted to try a different cut to see how it worked.

For Dress 1 – I did a toned colour scheme. I trimmed the bottom of the dress with a series of stitches with coordinating colours ending with a ‘block stitch’. The shoulder band was crocheted separately and attached afterwards. The stitch is a v stitch.

 

For Dress 2 – I used some contrasting shades. I did a mix of stitches and patterns and got a bit more ‘experimental’. I swatched a fair bit for this which took a long time but it was worth it to get the balance in the end.

For the yoke did a simple rectangle shape using v stitch and with lines of different colours.

 

I then finished the armholes with lines of US single crochet and had to also ‘take in’ some of the excess from the armholes with some decreases.

The dresses were donated to Cope Charity Shop for Fashion Revolution week, the idea being that the charity shop could show them in-store to show some upcycle techniques for tee shirts, and I also did a free workshop in the museum to share the techniques from the makes. Luckily Claudia and Angelica from the weekly stitch meet ups (yarn collective galway) and helped show the crochet, so by the time the workshop was done, everyone learned the blanket stitch and crochet stitches.

Cope Charity Shop hosted a discussion for Fashion Revolution Week on the future for sustainable fashion. In ways I am rather surprised that more charity shops dont get involved with Fashion Revolution week – Galway and Ireland have a lot of charity shops and one thing that did come up in the discussion on Sunday in ‘Cope’ was Spain and Estonia do not. When I approached Cope Charity Shop originally last year to ask if they would show my remakes in the shop, they were the only shop I considered. They have high standards in their shop and also have a good outreach with their social media page. They also seemed to me to potentially be open to the idea (and I was so right there). I would love to see more charity shops work with other makers.

I have the links to the Cope Charity Shop Facebook page here – they did some wonderful photos of the makes, and their shop window has all the fashion revolution tips.

 

Again, I really enjoyed the making for the event, as by having to do repeat makes really upped the game and I tried a different take with each make, and experimented a lot more on the theme that I would do on single makes. I also got to make styles that I may not wear but others would (like skimpy beach tops!). I also got to try out some new crochet stitches, and my new favourite stitch is the ‘box stitch’ – thats the turquoise blocks below as I have also started to make a navy version for myself!

The stitch guide and pattern  will be listed with my patterns in the pattern page here hopefully next week…. once I finish the chart!