Today's piece comes from my gal Luisa all the way in Costa Rica. We became pen pals last year after she emailed me her amazingly inspirational story...wanted to learn Spanish, wanted to Latin dance and ended up making her way down to CR and now teaches English. I took a CR trip the summer of 2009 right before I had the idea to begin this blog, so I totally associated with that as well.
I loved that she followed her heart (read all about her here - http://lessons-la-frontera.blogspot.com) and loved that she sent a thrifted Costa Rican piece my way...
"Just wanted to let you know that your taste of the tropics (a.k.a. thrift piece from Costa Rica) is on its way!! I'm not sure how long it will take to get there, but I hope it'll be there soon!"
What better than an email like that to come before getting the tropical piece above?!
I began by removing the sashes at the waist, as I was going to take this a bit more down the flutter sleeved route.
With the sashes removed, I'll be re-adding them to the piece just a bit lower down the body.
With wanting a bit of flutter up top, I measured the piece on my body and pinned it where I wanted the new seam to be. After stitching down, I'll be taking out the original seams and letting them hang loose.
I stitched the sashes back (I removed a bit of the seam right on the hips, put both sashes in and stitched up real quick) and sewed the area on the torso where I wanted the top to fit. Once the body was all stitched and fitted...
...I grabbed my seam rippers and began taking the seam out at the shoulders all the way to the hips.
My new piece was complete!! With the sashes reattached, I ended up wrapping them in front and tying a big bow!
It's super hard to see the fluttery areas that I tweaked at the shoulders and all along the body... (I guess I should have jumped up and down for this one!)
...but here's a little close up I took after to get a feel for what the finished product was looking like.
I think I may have to just rewear this one again...
Ooh, and I loved that a quick trip to Forever 21 presented this piece to me -
It was their $19.90 version of a dress with virtually the same floral print, just 25 years later. I'm still waiting for it to get stifling hot before I begin some spaghetti strap action, but it will be here soon.
Luisa, thank you SO much for sending this piece my way - it made me revisit my CR photos...
&
...and is getting me craving another trip back :)
