What is Fugly Upcycling you ask?

It's really, really ugly (anything with an F in front of it is baaaaad ;) turned hopefully great. :) That was the goal of the upcyclers challenge a few friends and I put on. We picked names from a hat, sent our ugliest knits to the person who drew our name, and wait for the mail lady to come with something upcycled brilliantly for our kiddos!

So it seems I understood the challenge quite well. Oh did I pick ugly. Look what Olivia (of recent etsy shop fame Olivia's Ultimate, plus a photographer extraordinaire) received in my Fugly Mailing:

Yup, that's REALLY fugly. So much so that I really don't want Finley wearing anything made from it, HA!

Now Lisa, of Ellebows, is the one who was supposed to supply me with fugly knits. I had to send her back to the drawing board 3 times because everything she gave me was too cute!! We finally settled on this:

Now, it wasn't so much fugly, but a challenge. The brown stripes is a very stretchy ribbed hoodie, and the other piece is a heavily embroidered knit skirt.

I knew I couldn't turn it into a typical SLD because of all the embroidery, so I decided to go totally out of character and make her a shabby chic two piece halter and matching capris :)

I took a panel of the skirt with some plain pink tee and turned that into a halter top, incorporating the brown stripes of course into the straps.

Then I turned the hoodie into super casual capris and turned an embroidered patch into oversize pockets.

I managed to use the fugly knits as 90% of my upcycling, which was really cool!!

Now, if you're inspired to upcycle some fugly....then get in on the action at Lil Blue Boo, where she is hosting The Great Ugly Knit Upcycle Contest! Your ugliest things hiding in the back of your closet may magically transform into something cool. Plus you may win a sewing machine for doing it. :)

Now that is upcycling at its best :)

xo,
shari