I’ve been coveting one of the cute running skirts (basically a sporty A-line lycra mini skirt with built-in shorts underneath) from Runningskirts.com for the past few months, but the $48 price tag was a deal breaker for me.

Well lo and behold, the twin founders of the company have put a nice selection of their running skirts on sale for $24 each in honor of their birthday.

Check out the color combos and order soon; the sale is for a limited time only!

If I hadn’t sworn off all new clothing purchases until next June, I’d have jumped on this already. I can turn down any number of regular clothes, but show me a piece of 50% off workout gear and my Paypal finger is ready to pull the trigger. As it stands, I will be sifting through my pattern collection to see which ones can be modified to make my own DIY running skirt this weekend.

:whistle:

I, Maggie Wang, pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of “new” manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 6 months. I pledge that i shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovated, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftyness brings!

I ran across a group blog called Wardrobe Refashion today while searching for a site I recalled reading about in the latest ReadyMade magazine that features projects re-made from IKEA items. I never did find the IKEA-related site I wanted, but I was pretty thrilled to locate a multi-user blog devoted to refashioning, recycling, and reusing existing clothing and fabric stashes to make wearables.

I’m going to see if I can make the cut off for the 6 month pledge starting August 1. This fits right in with my 1 year DIY Clothing Experiment anyway, and it would be nice to see what other folks are doing with the contents of their closets.

Current projects in the works:

- Vogue 2556 Issey Miyake knit dress in red slinky jersey with black contrast (Status: Need to re-mark pleats on front and figure out how to fasten dress without required snap tape.)

- Butterick 4945 Vintage apron with wide flounce (view D–the one in the center made up in cherry print on the pattern info page–with pockets from view C added) in a novelty sushi print cotton (Status: About 60% complete. Need to finish top and back straps and attach to main apron body.)

- Burda 8513 Hipster flared pants in a dark blue mid-weight herringbone suiting (Status: Cut and marked)

- Butterick 4389 Flared party dress (View C) in gunmetal blue-grey stretch satin with textured white and slate print chiffon overlay (Status: Cut, marked, and bodice has been started. Do not have required boning to make strapless version, so will be adding spaghetti straps from View B.)

- Simplicity 9004 Fish shaped novelty cat bed in brown fleece, tan suedelike poly, and camouflage twill (Status: 60% complete. The foam needed for this project is too thick to get through my machine, so I will be–UGH!–finishing this fish by hand using a long tapestry needle.)

For the morbidly curious, my nearly-complete inventory of patterns, fabric, notions, and refashion-ready clothes have been posted to a Google spreadsheet inventory.