A week of 'making', with a 'refashion' popped in...

All sorts of fun creative projects were undertaken in my household this past week...

My daughters and I had fun making delicious smelling chocolate and orange stick deodorants from all sorts of lovely natural ingredients.  And I had a bit of fun 'styling' and photographing this, so much easier than being in front of the camera myself.

And with my mums 70th birthday on Sunday, my nearly 8 year old designed and made (mostly directed me in making) this bag, which is made from fabric offcuts as a birthday present for 'Nanna'....

Necklaces were also constructed by the girls as birthday presents, using ceramic pendants they made a few months back.

While creative hubby was at it again making unique silver pendants (the one on the left was given to mum for her birthday).

While I made mum one of these Dogstar inspired items, which can be worn as a scarf, shawl or skirt.

And in between all these other projects, I am also picking away at the epic task of making a patchwork denim quilt cover for my 10 year old.

But for my refashion, I undertook a simple 'pashmina' project.

'Faux-mina' might be a better description, but I didn't really care about its authenticity when I picked it up at an opshop last winter for $2 - I love the colour, so I am happy to overlook it not being the real deal.

And after rediscovering it in my wardrobe over the weekend I had the idea to turn it into a 'drapey' cardigan - I love 'drapey' cardies, in case you hadn't already noticed.

So I folded the 'pashmina' in half and marked a line down the centre.

Then I measured 1 third of the way down from the top, and drew a line the width of my shoulders. 

 Near the end of each 'shoulder line', I drew circles using a small bowl that I thought appeared slightly larger than my upper arms.

Then I cut those circles out.

 I then folded the cut edge over twice and sewed around each arm hole to stop fraying.

I would normally zig-zag a cut edge like this before hemming with a straight stitch, but I only had a small amount of cotton that matched this fabric, so to preserve the cotton I skipped the zig-zag step this time around.

This is what the arm holes looked like once they were finished.  They shouldn't have any problem with fraying because of the double fold I used when stitching.

At this point you could call this DIY completed.  

But as I am not a tassle sort of gal, the tassles had to go.  And after chopping them off, I sewed these edges the same way I did the arms holes.

This is my favourite type of refashion, it was super easy, and I've ended up with an item which can be worn in so any different ways.

If you just slip your arms through it looks like this, which is a little boring, but from here you can do the following...

Pop a belt on...

Or pin it up like this.

And then pop a belt on.

Or pin it off to one side, like this.

Or if you take it off and put it on upside down, you get this look.

And if you wrap the ends around when it is on upside down you get this crop look vest thingy.

I'm sure there are other ways to style this that I haven't yet discovered, but I love the options I have discovered so far.  And I will certainly be keeping an eye out for more pashminas in the opshop from now on in, as I would be happy to have a few of these in my wardrobe.

Pashmina: thrifted $2, Black jeans: thrifted $4, Stripped top: thrifted $4, Belt: thrifted $2,  Boots: Ebay $120? (last season, I think that is what I paid),  Dogstar Kilt Pin: (Not shown in the above 'before' and 'after' photos) - I noticed recently that you can get kilt pins very similar to the Dogstar ones  from Lincraft for about $6.