Refashioning: Biker Chic Magic

As my stash of refashionable items gets smaller and smaller, I am finding less outlets for my ragey-creativity. As I have mentioned in the past, sewing is one of the only areas of my life in which I am not a paralyzing perfectionist. Knowing this about myself is crucial.

Refashioning is my escape hatch, it’s where I let out my perfectionist build-up of hormonal steam. It’s the power of destroying something and turning it into something else that is so deeply healing to my soul.

I do have one or two things that I hadn’t mutilated beyond recognition in an effort to balance my hormones.

This was one of them:

So what do we have here? A pair of polyester-ish, non-breathing, too-sheer ugly-as-all-get-out tattoo-ey-ish leggings. They were hand-me-downs from someone, whose dignity I will not disparage on my own platform.

Why someone would A. think it was a good idea to make these in the first place, B. Buy them in the first place, or C. Keep them around thinking I might actually wear them is an absolute mystery.

That said, I did keep them around. For years. And as I did my mega-declutterings, I continued to keep them. So, I don’t know what that says about me, but whatever it says, so be it.

Biker Chic

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So far, it was a pretty straightforward refashion for me, in spite of the flashy, rather unpleasant-to-the-touch material. I opened up the inseam, then tried to figure out what I was going to do with this monstrosity.

After chopping off the legs to make a kinda baggy tube top, I was left with the legs with which to make some magic:

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I halved each leg lengthwise. One of the leg’s worth of material would become the peplum, the other…well. We shall see.

So far, so good. I mean, unwearably weird looking and the material still gives me the heebie-jeebies, but so far, so good.

That je-ne-sais-quoi

My sister Poppy talked about strapless undergarments in her masterpiece about life being too short to wear ugly bras. I also own no foundation garment that would make a strapless top a feasible element of my wardrobe, and not even for one single unimaginable minute would I go without. So this whole strapless thing, while cute, was not going to work.

I debated about how I could rectify this. I emptied out my notions bin:

I took the remaining to leg-halves and tried safety-pinning them to the top to make little sleeve-y things. It kinda worked!

So I created a casing, then inserted some elastic:

Honestly, not so hateful

As I said to my sister (who is not the guilty party responsible for this monstrosity), this little number is wholly impractical. I mean, that awful texture, that crazy pattern. But, for whatever reason I kept those leggings all these years, I did manage to make something that I kinda want to wear. I mean, I’m not super-duper enthusiastic about it, like I am about this or this but honestly. I don’t hate it.

Compare for yourselves:

So yes, I am going to wait for a biker-themed masquerade party to actually wear this out in public. But boy oh boy! when I do…watch out world!