Embellishing tops

Tassy lamented recently that she had no long sleeved tops.  I had a look around the shops and boy, I wasn't keen on what I found!  I ended up buying three plain tops in Kmart for $4 and $6 each, with a mind to pretty them up.

When I bought this marle grey I really wanted to add neutrals to it.  I didn't have something specific in mind but thought I'd try some doilies and vintage trims.  I love the offcut trim on the neckline.  It would have been great to have enough to go all the way around, but I think this is still OK.  I wanted the doilies to overlap and casually flow up towards the shoulder, and scattered a few buttons around.  I stuck everything down with a glue stick first, then machine stitched the trims and doilies and hand sewed the buttons.  The wooden bonjoir button came from the underground markets in Wellington when I was there with my family 18 months ago.

Twice at the op shops I have scored tins of vintage buttons.  It's so exciting to rummage through to find really special gems.  I will have to post some pics of special button finds on my blog soon.  Anyway, along with gems there's a plethora of plain buttons.  They're still pretty because they're so shiny and nice and heavy, not like cheap modern plastic buttons.  For this top I gathered all the plain buttons on the table and roughly made them into a heart shape.  I used this to gauge the right size to make my hand drawn heart, then drew the heart on the Tshirt with a water soluble pen. I cut a piece of vintage sheeting the same size and attached it to the inside of the Tshirt for some extra stability.  Then I used a glue stick to attach all the buttons to the heart.  It didn't really take much rearranging to make them fit.  Once the glue was dry I sat on the couch and hand sewed the buttons in place. 

This was actually the first one I did, and if I was going to do it again I'd make the bow smaller.  But to tell the truth, I can't bring myself to pull this apart and do it again, so it's going to stay a big bow. :)  I used leftover fabric from a dress I made Tassy last summer.  I sewed a long rectangle for the loops of the bow, a small rectangle for the centre of the bow and a long rectangle for the ties.

She's got a few new wardrobe pieces now, and all up they only cost $14.