No, I’ve never read “Fifty Shades of Grey”, and I don’t plan on seeing the movie when it opens in theaters on Valentine’s Day. But I’ve been asked so many times if I’ve read the book that the title stuck in my mind when I decided to refashion several pieces of grey clothing.

Perhaps because of my thrifty ways, I really enjoy refashioning clothing I no longer wear into something I will wear. And as a contributor to the Refashion Co-op blog, I’m required to post at least one refashion per month. Well, my latest refashion post was due a while ago and I have to admit that this is not the first time I’ve gotten a friendly email reminder from the Co-op editor saying my monthly post is overdue. So I needed to whip up a refashion pronto! Since I’ve been on a pullover top kick lately, I decided to stay with that theme.

This top refashion was created from two extremely old and unwearable clothing pieces: a nightgown, and a sleeveless tee. The sleeveless tee fit well, but I never wore it. Sleeveless is not usually a good look for me – my upper arms are rather large. But I’d wear the top if it had sleeves, so I cut away the finished edge at the armhole, and using the sleeve pattern from Kwik Sew 3766, I cut sleeves from my old “Not tonight dear, I have a headache” nightgown. My husband was so happy to see me cutting up that ugly nightgown. I guess in the future when I have a headache I’ll have to take aspirin!

Then I sewed the “nightgown” sleeves to the tee. But the two shades of grey didn’t match at all, and the top looked odd. So I searched my stash for anything else I had in grey and I found the leftover fabric from a pair of men’s pants I originally thrifted for my Pattern Review Handbag Contest Purse. But the pants didn’t match the grey of the tee or the nightgown. So now I had three completely different shades of grey. Sigh.

I put the men’s pants aside and decided to tie the grey from the nightgown arms to the tee color by making appliques from my nightgown scraps for the front of the top. But after adding the light grey circles to the top, it still looked weird. At this point all I had left to work with in grey were the men’s pants. So I cut out some circles from the pants and hoped that by adding another shade of grey I’d create a more interesting color palette on the tee. Well, I kind of like it now, and it certainly hides my arms. So I’m calling this a successful refashion. Mission accomplished!