Greeny Crafter - Serger Pepper

Hello! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. I spent Sunday twiddling with some LED lights, and it drove me nuts.  This week our Greeny Crafter is a lovely lady, Irene, from Italy. I got to know her through Google+ when I was looking for patterns. As some of you know, I'm terrible at patterns, but I'm hoping Irene will be able to help me out!

Who are you? 

I'm a 30-something Italian mom of a nearly 5 years old LilPotato. I started sewing when I was roughly the same age of my daughter, while watching my mom sewing with Burda patterns. When I was 22 I went off my parent's house to live with Mr.P (without a sewing machine), so I took a break in my sewing adventures. Some year later, I was so lucky to receive a Singer basic sewing machine as a birthday's gift from my mom and my sewing passion has re-emerged. Year 2012, November... Santa gave me a serger... and I decided to start sharing with the world anything I was learning to do with this magical sewing machine, like threading a serger... Nowadays: one year blogging at Serger Pepper and my blog is an important part of my life: I couldn't imagine my days without my readers, their comments and this "sew and share" thing. 

How did you get into refashioning?

I've always hated to throw out things, I was for keeping them all, eventually repurposing if they were no more good to do what they were born to. Refashion gave me the opportunity of reuse old pre-loved clothes and transform them in something unique (and that costs ideally no money: I am a frugal mom that tries to teach her daughter that recycle is better than throw out... do you know Paw Patrol? They're our new cartoon must!). My first reason for refashioning is saving money, then there's an environmental why... I hate to see all those clothes thrown away when they could be used a lot more, considering how much cost (in money and in earth health to create them!) I have to confess you a secret: I hate to mend and if I lose a button, often I don't replace it, but don't tell it anyone... shhh :D 

What do you find difficult about refashioning?
The hardest part in refashion for me is... my stash! Take a look...

...and consider that this one is the sorted part of it!   I'm really a scrap hoarder... I keep any little scrap of pre-loved clothes, bed sheets, towels, old bags (you name it, I have it in my huge stash): any original detail/button/hem/hardware maybe one day I could add it to some fabulous project! The problem is to keep anything organized... this is the real challenge! I'm right in the middle of the (longest ever) sewing room re-do, Low-Budget and repurposed, obviously! I moved 3/4 of my fabric stash but I still have to figure out how to store all the pre-loved and waiting-to-be-refashioned garments/bed sheets/curtains... suggestions? I have an idea of designing some new boxes... but I need more time in my days, 24 hours aren't enough!

Any tips to share?

An easy (and timesaver) tip is to look at your clothes trying to imagine which detail could save you time or an annoying sewing task (like buttonholes or hem in knits, my favorite) and use the original one instead of sewing buttonholes/hems/others from scratch: you'll have the double result of saving time and adding some pleasant detail! Q4. My favorite one for design is the Plaid and Ruffles dress: here I've been able to transform a boring front button placket in a boatneck! 

For a more frugal and useful refashion, I'd suggest you to check my Lovely Panties (from old t-shirts) FREE pattern and tutorial. I'm working on a version 2.0, coming soon!

The most useful refashion I've ever done are my daughter's cloth diapers. Sadly, I wasn't blogging at that time, so you only can see how they are outside: I used old flannel bed sheets and old towels for the soaking material and colorful fabric remnants for the outside - I only had to buy some FOE, a little of PUL and Velcro, spending less than 200 $ for all my daughter's diaper (plus, she was out of diapers at 18 months... not bad, isn't it?) To stay tuned, I'd suggest your readers to sign-up to my monday's newsletter, so they can also download my two (and growing) exclusive FREE patterns: The Eriqua Dress and The Mary Skirt. If anyone was a Pinterest addicted like me, can join my "Refashion Obsession" Group Board or, if they're more a G+ person, join my Community there... or both, just ask :) Thanks Agy.