Day 115: Bottom of the Bin Skirt

Have you ever been to a Dollar-a-Pound Goodwill Clearance center?  If you have, you know it’s not for wussies.  Only a hardcore thrifter will come out unscathed.  Imagine a huge room with a bare concrete floor filled with huge bins.

Upon entering the store, you grab a plastic box on wheels that has a garbage bag in it.  This is where you store any goodies you might find.

I’m not gonna lie.  Most of it is garbage.  Some of it is gross.  This is everything that didn’t sell at the Goodwill store, no matter how much it was marked down.  :/ Having grown up going to rag pulls and the like, digging through other people’s crap doesn’t really faze me.  I just put on my headphones and go to a happy zen place where the screaming kids throwing nerf balls in my general direction are far far away.

If you can get past the creepily territorial bin-diggers, the bad music (bring your ipod!),  screaming kids, and soiled clothing, you can actually find some great stuff sometimes.   And…it’s all $1 per pound! 🙂

This is where I found today’s piece.

I think we’re looking at someone’s DIY project that went awry.  It looks like someone took an old pillowcase or a curtain or something and tried to make it a skirt by adding a single seam and smocking the top.  Unfortunately, the smocking didn’t quite work out, as it’s completely stretched out.  There were a couple of other problems, too.

Despite its many flaws, I couldn’t pass this one up!  The fabric looks to be really old, and I love the print!

I couldn’t get the stains at the top of the skirt out in the wash, so an amputation was in order.

Now…on to those holes!  Luckily, they were all along the seam, so I just stitched them right up!

So far, so good!  I turned the raw edge at the top under and pinned it.  This took quite a while, as there’s a lot of fabric going on here!

Then, I ran it through my machine.

I pressed my new seam, and pulled out some elastic from my stash.  You can probably guess what comes next.  🙂

After threading the elastic into its new casing and stitching it all up, my skirt was complete!

Except…I didn’t feel like wearing it as a skirt today.  I know…you guys are probably sick to death of me making all these strapless dresses.  I really do plan on wearing this as a skirt in the future.  The weather was just too beautiful for me to not wear a dress today!  It was a moral imperative.  🙂  I used the cut-off scrap to cinch the waist.

Here I am at Bed, Bath, & Beyond in their massive pillow section.  Seriously…how many varieties of pillows do we really need????

After pillow shopping, I headed over to a fun friend’s place for a pre-Halloween party.  🙂

Cheers!