This week has been all about prepping for Fall’s Friday arrival. The season of comfy, cozy, and colorful is my very favorite of all, so I want to make sure to celebrate appropriately. First up? Adding some extra warmth to our living room. This pillow-cover project is really easy to make with an old, unloved blazer from the back of your closet or your favorite thrift store.

I purchased this blazer at The Salvation Army a few years ago, loving the plaid and considering restructuring it for a fitted look. I suppose if I had ever gotten around to the alterations, the blazer might have been a fun layer for Fall ensembles. But during a recent cleaning spree, I found it at the bottom of my mending pile and decided it was high time I either redonated or repurposed this big, old blazer. Now it has a new life as a pillow, and I’m feelin’ pretty good about it!

The process was pretty simple, as most pillow projects are, but working with patterned fabric from an already constructred garment required a bit of patchwork and attention to detail. Check out the directions below to make your own!

If you don’t have enough fabric to properly match up the pattern when joining the blazer pieces, you might need to opt for a standard two-piece cover sewn around all four edges of your pillow. If you have a smaller pillow, are working with a higher pattern repeat, or simply have good luck, it’s much easier to construct an envelope-style cover from a salvaged fabric, as seen above. Envelope-style covers are easier to take on and off, but if you’re not scared of a seam-ripper, and don’t have small children or messy pets, I wouldn’t think twice about foregoing that convenience to save yourself some frustration during construction!

Continuing with my inadvertent “Don’t say no to stripes” campaign, I purchased this oversized shirt from the thrift store, hoping I could belt it for a chic look. But instead of chic, it just looked sloppy. That’s how the blouse become the target of my most recent scissor snipping fest.

I wanted to shrink the top of the blouse, and gather the bottom portion. So, I cut apart the two pieces and used another blouse in my possession to size how to correctly trim the sides of the top. A few snips later, and I ended up with what you see below.

After I sewed darts into the bodice, I tried it on and realized that I cut the bodice too small, so I left one side open and stitched ribbons on the front and back to enclose the side like you might see on a pinafore. Lastly, I hemmed where the sleeves had been removed, and did a loose stitch around the top of the bottom portion so I could gather it to the perimeter length of the top portion. After I stitched the two portions together, it was finished!

It took me about two hours to figure out how to construct this blouse, as I was careful not to make any mistakes. Funny thing is, I still made a mistake, resulting in needing ribbons for the side rather than having room for a zipper. Oh well. I think I really need a dressform that I can tailor to my own size, in order to prevent these mistakes in the future.

Even though I messed up a little bit this time, I’m not going to give up on this style. In fact, I with I had more fabric for the gathered “skirt” portion of the shirt, so I might even hunt for more striped blouses to alter from the plus size section of the thrift store. Oh, the possibilities!

Discovering myself in need of some cute Summer shirts, short enough to leave untucked, and long enough to cover my midrif, I delved into my “to mend” pile for some supplies. Every time I go thrifting, I find a few things that would work if I tweaked them a bit. Usually I just let them go, but this shirt was too cute to pass up.

For this project, all I had to do was a bit of trimming and a bit of stitching. I cut off the sleeves first, and then tried on the blouse to see what length I wanted the bodice to be. Marking that length with a safety pin, I then took my fabric scissors and carefully chopped off the bottom.

The last part involved a bit of sewing. I just turned the edged into two folds, and stitched closed the hem with my sewing machine. If you don’t have a sewing machine, but own an iron, you could use some fusible bond tape to close your hems.

It was a super easy project that took about twenty minutes total. I’m already digging through my mending pile to see what else I can whip up for these hot Summer-like days that have finally arrived.