Five Frugal Things | Vintage fashion modification, for one

1. I modified a vintage top for Sonia.

She had a green silk long-sleeved top (kindly given to her) that had a lot of irreparable damage in the armhole area, along with several previous repairs.

I suggested that we just give up on the sleeves and make it a sleeveless shirt instead. 

It was a pretty wide shirt, so I made it a little skinnier (that helped to get rid of some of the torn armhole fabric) and hemmed the sleeve openings.

I’ve never worked with silk before and I have to say that I’m not anxious to again! It’s so thin, it’s a little tricky to manage.

My sewing work looks a little sloppy on the inside (it was hard to cobble together the torn pieces into a nice neat seam!), but the shirt is far more wearable than it was when it came to us.

I saved the sleeves because I think Sonia might want to make a scrunchie with them.

2. I inadvertently saved a disposable paint tray liner.

I don’t remember buying one…maybe a friend gave me an extra one?

I’ve been lazily just leaving the paint to dry on it when I finished a project rather than rinsing it or throwing it out.

I decided maybe it was finally time to part with this liner, but I noticed the the dried paint was peeling up. And that I could pull the whole thing off, leaving a nearly virgin tray liner.

That’s Sonia and Zoe’s old aqua room paint you see there, so I’ve been using this tray liner since at least 2015.

(and probably before that, because the green is the old bathroom color.)

And I guess the paint tray is going to continue its run around here, now that it’s cleaned off.

3. I did a long overdue mending job.

Zoe used to have this white dress, which she ripped by accident. I put it in the closet, intending to mend it and I forgot about it for years!

Since Sonia’s had the sewing machine out a lot, I took a few minutes to mend the tear. The eyelet fabric of this dress makes it pretty easy to fix a rip without it being too obvious.

So, now I’ll hand it down to a niece, where hopefully it’ll get some more wear.

4. I bought two boxes of bruised peaches.

I haven’t had a lot of luck with finding them yet this year, but I got a pretty good box for $8.

We happened to be at a pet store that neighbors the produce stand, so I decided it was worth taking a peek. And it was!

The next day, I was nearby again, and they had another almost full box of peaches. YES.

I sliced and froze a bunch of them, because they are way, way tastier than store-bought frozen peaches (which are somehow rather flavorless).

And I also made some refrigerated jam for my girls.

5. I made a card

Isn’t it cute??

(Being not the most creative person in the world, I googled for card ideas and based this off of one I saw.)

Your turn! What five frugal things have you done lately?