Spring Scarf Tutorial: Part III

Day three is here and spring is in the air! I'm waking up to songbirds and warmer temperatures...and then I checked the weather and Thursday it'll be 35 degrees colder with a possibility of snow. :-/ Meh. Anywho, I am a little partial to how today's scarf turned out :). I started out with this stretched out bird print top that I never really wore. My husband quickly made me aware of the fact that he didn't like it, and so it sat. It really wasn't very flattering on me, but I still liked the print. So, I found some scraps that would work with the red and blue scheme. The blue and white striped fabric are sleeves from an early refashion of a top turned skirt and the coral/red strips are from an XL mini skirt taken down to a size M mini skirt. They are all jersey knits, lightweight and perfect for scarves.

I started by gathering up the front of the top up to the neckline. Then I pulled the wide coral strips so that they rolled in on themselves and then braided them along with the front of the shirt (the back of the top, being longer, will become the front of the scarf). I then took the two sleeve ends, turned them inside out and slid them over the ends of the coral fabric at each end of the braid. I lined them up, pinned the fabric in place and sewed around the edges to create a tube.

Backtracking just a tiny bit: before the braiding, I had turned the top inside out, sewed the sleeves shut and turned it right side out again as you see in the photo on the left. When I tried the 'scarf' on to see how it would hang with the sleeves closed up, I realized that by sewing them straight up and down instead of angling towards the neck, they hung weird. They either pushed out at awkward angles or I could push them in and they'd still end up hanging out. So, I ended up opening the sleeves by about two inches for this next step. I pushed the blue and white sleeve ends through the newly opened holes on each side from front to back.

Once pushed through, I sewed them together and they hang behind the bird fabric. This took care of the weirdness that the sewed up sleeves created when I hung it around my neck initially. I just took an awkward moment and made it work for me! And I'm kind of in love with the outcome! My husband still doesn't like the bird print and color combo :).  Oh well, I think it's cute! It has a little bit of a nautical flavor, I feel, and I'm good with that.

This scarf is a prime example of trial and error (leading eventually to success). The process seems short when looking at the steps in the photos, but this required a lot of playing around with the pieces to get them to come to this conclusion. I had no clear vision of how it would turn out and essentially let the creative process lead me to the decisions I made as I went along! I tried having the striped sleeves hanging around in front by themselves, with another striped scrap to connect them, more coral fabric to connect them....none of them really worked for me. And that happens A LOT in refashioning. Even if you begin with a clear vision of what you want the outcome to be, it can sometimes all go south pretty quickly (unless the refashioning gods are smiling upon you and you never encounter a single hitch!) and you just have to roll with it. Its all about flexibility: having a flexible process and being flexible with what the outcome will be. And it usually surprises me :) in a good way!

I've already had a chance to wear this one and it just felt so bright and cheerful...which may have been partly due to the fact that it was the sunniest, warmest day we've experienced in five months (until today)...but I think the scarf has that feeling on its own. Tomorrow we've got another scarf lined up and ready for its reveal! Come back to check it out, pretty please ;).

Peace,
Andrea