Showing posts with label remaking clothes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label remaking clothes. Show all posts

Friday, April 21, 2023

Trashion/Refashion Show 2023: Quick Change

 

It was about 4:00 pm on the Sunday of this year's Trashion/Refashion Show. The teenager and I were happily ensconced in our spot on the landing of the upper lobby's balcony, the one that replaced our previous traditional spot in the back of the audience in the balcony and our previous previous traditional spot on the floor in front of the accessible seats halfway back on stage right. We were eating our traditional snacks of fruit gummies and sparkling water in cans, and had bonus snacks of full-sized Lara Bars(!!!) from the complimentary snack table backstage. We were sitting in companionable silence, each on our phones (I have found a blog that does a snarky episode-by-episode recap of Gilmore Girls and I will do nothing else productive in my life until I have read the entire run of recaps, including those for A Year in the Life!), listening to a couple arguing in the lobby below. Whenever one of them said something especially shocking, we'd make expressive eyes at each other. We were anticipating the 5:00 backstage pizza delivery, the 6:30 opening of the house, and, of course, the 7:00 top of the show.

A thought suddenly occurred to me, so I looked up from my phone and told the teenager, "You know, I think this is one of my favorite days of the year to spend with you."

She said, "Right? We should do this more often."

Alas that our town's Trashion/Refashion Show happens only once a year! I eagerly anticipate it every spring, and it IS one of my favorite days, and favorite nights, of the year. 

As much as I love watching this kid grow up, watching her grow away from needing her mom's help is a little bit of lonesome--once upon a time, I sewed the kid's entire garment based on a single markered drawing, helped her with her hair and makeup, taught her a runway walk, helped her practice it, chaperoned her every second backstage, and escorted her through the final Model/Designer walk. The first year she sewed her own garment all by herself, I essentially reattached the entire thing together using safety pins and duct tape between the dress rehearsal and showtime. Even last year, I spent the whole week leading up to the show figuring out how on earth to create those dream moth wings of hers, finally finishing them so the teenager could paint them the day before. 

This year... well, let's see. I held her several extra emotional support hair ties for her, and her ipod. I figured out how to keep the tops of her sleeves secure around her upper arms after they kept slipping down. And I took the photos and videos that she requested. 

My help was so unnecessary to my own designer/model that I volunteered to do emergency mending for anyone in the show who needed it--and THEN I had plenty to do!

As always, this kid's concept and execution amaze me. Her idea for this year was a garment consisting of skirt, bodice, sleeves, veil, and flowy overskirt, all separate pieces:



The flowy, modest overskirt is easy to detach--


--resulting in a look appropriate for a night out dancing:



It turned out beautifully, and she wore it just as beautifully on the runway!

Afterwards, the teenager was thrilled that some of her friends had come to see her--


--and I managed to sneak in a little love, too!


And just in case you'd deluded yourself into thinking that you'd be able to see her face if only she would ditch that veil...

Always and forever our favorite mask! I need to pick up pack of 100 before we leave for England.

Next year will be the last year that this kid designs and models as a grade school kid. If she's accepted next year, it will be her fourteenth time accepted into the show and her thirteenth walk down the runway (fucking Covid). I don't know if it will be her last time participating, but it WILL be her last time as the child phenom who's been designing and modeling her own original garments since the age of four--there are a LOT of college students in the show every year!

Contemplating all that, I had another thought, so this morning I asked the teenager, "Hey, can I design you a garment next year?"

TEENAGER: "Hmm, I've never modeled two garments in one show before."

ME: "Right? Could be fun!"

TEENAGER: "Sure, why not?"

Even though the teenager will also do her own entry, I kind of love the idea, for me, of finishing out the Trashion/Refashion Show where I started it--designing and sewing a garment, with lots of love, a little bit of skill, and maybe a couple of secret staples, for this awesome kid.

Monday, January 9, 2023

Bleach-Painted T-shirts: A Tutorial

 

Twice in the past few months, I've wanted to make some kind of custom fan apparel, but I didn't want to devote a ton of time, energy, or money to it. The first was for a Mother Mother concert, and the second was a present for all of the children dancing the (kind of shitty, because you have to wear a fat suit and giant mascot head that's apparently hot, smelly, and hard to see out of) role of Mouse in our local university's production of The Nutcracker

You can do this project a lot more nicely than I did it, with super clean lines and really even tones, but here's how you can ALSO do it quick and dirty-like, whether it's for a concert tomorrow or you've got to make six in a row and you're already bored.

To bleach paint T-shirts, you will need:

  • black 100% cotton T-shirt. The best shirt is obviously a thrifted shirt, and for my Mother Mother shirt I did find the perfect black T-shirt at Goodwill. Speaking of... y'all have the Goodwill prices gotten absolutely RIDICULOUS in your area, or is my town the only one in which the local Goodwills have decided that not only do they no longer need to offer any sales or discounts on the crap they're literally given for free, but they've also just absolutely jacked up their prices to Jesus? I'd long more-or-less abandoned the little indie thrift shops around me for more than just the occasional browse-through, because their selection is the pits compared to Goodwill, but 2023 is the year that I rededicate myself to their cause. Anyway, I picked up the six Medium Team Mouse shirts that I needed via a Black Friday Doorbuster from one of the big-box craft stores. I feel like those shirts have a reputation for being cheap in quality as well as price, but 100% cotton shirts are nothing to sneeze about these days, when pretty much every shirt and its dog is infused with polyester!
  • backing material. This will need to be thick enough to keep the bleach from bleeding through to the back of the T-shirt. I used a brown paper grocery bag.
  • bleach. Get the cheapest, and don't get it on you.
  • cotton swabs.
  • glass dish.
  • paper stencil.
  • glue stick (optional). 

Step 1: Prepare the stencil.


Both of the stencils I wanted to make were word art, so I just did them in Google Docs. Because I am basic.

But at least I printed them as outlines to save ink!


Cut out the stencils and save the widows, since you'll need to place them back on the shirt before you paint.

My Team Mouse stencil took up two pages, so I taped them together with the spacing that I wanted.


Step 2: Paint!


Place your backing material inside the shirt, making absolutely sure it will cover where you'll be bleach painting. 

You can either just set your stencil on the shirt, if it's fairly short and simple--


--or you can tape it down with more masking tape.


I even took the glue stick to the back of those fiddly M and U sticky-outy bits to make sure they stayed put, and I also glued down the widows. I was able to reuse this same stencil for all six Team Mouse shirts, gluing the bits and the widows each time and pulling them up afterwards.

Then, put on a podcast and start painting within the lines!


I found it easiest to first draw the outline of each letter, then color in the center. It made them look wonky as I went, since the bleach activates right away--



--but I think it evens out pretty well by the end:

I'm disappointed in how much the edges bled, but none of the recipients of these shirts seemed to notice, and you also can't really tell when you're standing a normal distance from the human wearing it.

Below is the first shirt I did, though, and for that one I just painted away and it also looks fine:


Step 3: Rinse and Wash.


After I finished painting, I gave the bleach a few more minutes to even out the last couple of letters, then I rinsed each shirt very, very well under cool water and then tossed it into the wash. I washed each individually so nothing else would accidentally get bleach stained, but fortunately my washing machine has an eco-friendly quick wash, so I'm not the cause of the nation's water shortage.

I haven't tried it, but this TikTok recommends a hydrogen peroxide rinse to deactivate the bleach:


Might be worth a try!

Step 4: Show off your beautiful work.


Here's what happens when you ask your husband to photograph you in your beautiful shirt in front of the theater where Mother Mother is about to play:


Seriously, it's a cell phone camera. You have to really try if you want to get your thumb in the way of a cell phone camera.

And here's one particular member of Team Mouse, coincidentally the one who walked by as I was finishing up and asked if she could use the rest of the dish of bleach to customize her own shirt. Since "her own" shirt is inevitably the shirt that I messed up on (can't give a flawed shirt to someone else's child, gasp!), I happily let her also make her shirt the most elaborately cutest:


It's very likely that I'll do this project a few more times this year, because it's SUCH a quick, easy, and cheap way to customize a T-shirt. I would like to get smoother edges, though, so next time I'm going to play around with thickening the bleach first so it can't run away from me.

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Here's an Easy Way to Make a Hogwarts Robe

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World back in 2016.

If you want to be a character from Harry Potter, you need a good Hogwarts robe. With some savvy thrifting, you can make a DIY Hogwarts robe in no time. 

If you want to be a character from Harry Potter, you need yourself a good Hogwarts robe. I mean, of course! But how to obtain the perfect robe? 

You could buy a fairly cheap Hogwarts robe in a costume store, but then it would look cheap. You could buy a super-nice, super-expensive one, but then it would be super expensive. There are loads of tutorials for making your own, either from scratch or by altering existing patterns, but if you price out the fabric needed for making a good-looking, reasonably accurate Hogwarts robe yourself, you'll realize that in that case, you might as well just buy one of those expensive ones, after all (and therefore, how on earth are the people making those robes, even the expensive ones, being paid a living wage? Sigh...).

 However, if your goal is an inexpensive, sustainable, good-looking, DIY Hogwarts robe, there is one very simple, very inexpensive, very good-looking solution for you: You need a used graduation gown!

 If you've got a month or more until you need your Hogwarts robe, check around your local thrift stores. We live in a college town that has a surplus store for random used university equipment, and every now and then they sell off a load of old black graduation gowns. Churches sometimes sell their worn-out choir robes. You NEVER know what's going to show up at Goodwill. 

 If you've got a few days until your costume party, I'd suggest checking out ebay. I bought the graduation gowns used for this project there for about 10 bucks a gown, plus a refreshingly uninflated shipping charge. 

 Another option is, of course, your local Craigslist or Freecycle. People keep the most random stuff in their houses, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to offload it. Just last year, my MIL gave me my husband's old high school graduation gown so that I could upcycle it into a dress for my kid, and Reader, he is almost 40 years old!

DIY Hogwarts Robe from an Old Graduation Gown

To make your Hogwarts robe the most accurate, you'll also want an embroidered Hogwarts house patch; I bought patches for three of the four houses at Hot Topic, of all places, although my little Gryffindor is still without her patch. Apparently there are a lot of Gryffindors in our town! I was surprised that I couldn't find any of the patches at my local fabric shop, especially since they carry Avengers iron-on patches, but oh, well. Maybe YOUR local fabric shop has some! 



 Since graduation gowns have generous sizing, so that a wide range will fit, you'll only have to do any hemming if the gown's sleeves cover your hands. Only my ten-year-old's gown required this-- 
 --and even then, I only basted it, because I know that sooner or later I'll be re-hemming it; these kids grow like weeds! 


 Our Hogwarts house patches are iron-ons, but even so, I sewed them on with invisible thread in the spool and black thread in the bobbin: 

 I didn't even bother to research whether or not you could iron a patch onto synthetic fabric without something melting or something else not sticking, as honestly, I think it simply takes less time to just sew a patch on, and I think the end result looks and drapes better, as well.

Accessorizing Your DIY Hogwarts Gown

When you're dressing as a Hogwarts student, there are some extra accessories that you can take or leave. I decided against pointy hats, because they'd never stay on throughout an entire night of trick-or-treating, but wands are a must, even though they're just one more thing to carry. 

We went trick-or-treating on our university's campus last night, and the kids were called upon to perform several spells, particularly the one that my ten-year-old invented, which calls for pointing your wand at someone and yelling "Trick or treat!" It makes candy magically appear! 

 Since every Hogwarts student may bring an owl, cat, rat, or toad, my kids decided that their familiars should be part of their costumes. Each kid picked a stuffed animal (my Slytherin daughter is allowed to bring a snake as her pet since she's a Parselmouth, you know) and I attached it to her shoulder by means of safety pins. She also slicked back her hair, because Slytherin, but the rest of us wore our hair the way that we commonly do. 

 And there you go! Hemming, sewing, and dressing four people in these costumes took less than two hours, and I think they look better than some costumes that I'd spent days agonizing over. The year that one kid wanted to be a "baby deer," for instance? Ugh!

Monday, September 20, 2021

In Which a Plague of Cats Help Me Reach My Goal (of Remaking a Hoodie)

I have wanted to remake the too-small hood and the stained front pocket on my thrifted Nintendo hoodie for... I don't even know. If someone told me it was a full decade, I wouldn't so much as blink in surprise.

Funny that for something I've had taking up space in the back of my mind for multiple years, it was a single morning's work to actually do it!

I strained the snot out of my poor myopic eyes ripping the old hood and the front pocket with Superglue all over it off the hoodie, then made new paper pattern using the much nicer hood of my favorite Titanic hoodie:



For fabric, I used a flannel shirt for the outside and some stash black flannel for the lining. Gracie helped a lot with this step:

I managed to do all that--AND sew the whole thing back together!--on Sunday morning while Matt mopped up an entire basket of eggs that the cats apparently spent the night throwing around the kitchen (note to self: the basket might as well just sit empty from now on, since the cats will clearly fight over that specific lounging space whether or not it's full of eggs freshly collected from the coop) and the kids followed behind him making an equally huge mess prepping their District breads for our Hunger Games Family Movie Night.

Darn that I was too busy to assist with any of those clearly super fun activities!

Matt drove the kids to driver's ed and when he came back, I asked if he'd take some photos of me in my new hoodie.

Spots helped:


Here she is having second thoughts about helping me model:


Here are her third thoughts in the midst of my clear delight:


And then I guess I wrongly assumed that the photo shoot was over...




Not gonna lie: I am REALLY looking forward to fall weather! I love layers and flannel and sweatshirts and hoods a lot more than I like shorts and sandals and swimsuits. Put me in a Nintendo sweatshirt with a two-layer flannel hood, a pair of jeans and some hiking boots, and a plague of cats to shed on me, and I'll be happy as a clam!

Saturday, July 31, 2021

How to Sew an Upcycled Denim Skirt from Your Old Blue Jeans

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.

 If you sew, and especially if you love to upcycle, the upcycled denim skirt is a rite of passage. Here's how to make one! 

 You will need: 

  well-fitting pair of blue jeans. Maybe they have holes in the knees that you don't want to patch. Maybe they're too short, and you don't want to sew on a cuff or a ruffle. Whatever the reason for converting them into a skirt, they should fit well in the waist. 

  thread and sewing needle for denim. I like using the extra-strong thread made especially for denim, and you'll need an extra-sharp needle for your sewing machine

  decorative fabric scrap (optional). You can piece together the front and back panels of your skirt using the legs from your jeans, but it's also possible, as I did in the photo above, to use a contrasting fabric. Flannel is a good choice to better match the weight of the denim, but anything will work.

  double-fold bias tape (optional). In the image above, you'll also see that I bound the bottom hem with scrap bias tape. It's optional, as you can also simply hem the bottom. 

 1. Measure and cut off the legs of your jeans. Measure from your waist to your desired hemline, then add a couple of inches for hem allowance and shaping. Place your jeans flat onto a cutting mat (iron them first if you need to), with the front and back waistband aligned and the crotch seam centered. See the image above for what that should look like. Cut the legs of the jeans straight across at your measurement, and set them aside for later. 

 2. Pick apart the inseam. You can use a seam ripper for this step, but I actually prefer a sharp pair of thread scissors. Either way, don't be surprised if it makes your hands sore--this step can be a lot of work! 

 3. Sew up the crotch overlap. Iron the jeans again, flattening them and adjusting them so that the outside leg seams are straight. This should shape the jeans into a natural A-line, but there should also be a triangle-shaped flap of fabric at the crotch that you'll have to overlap. You can pick apart the seam there to overlap it more smoothly, but with these thin, child-sized jeans, I just folded the flap over, pinned, then sewed it down. Here's what it looks like from the inside, with contrasting thread so you can see it: 

 Repeat for the back side of the jeans. 

  4. Add a panel of fabric to the front and back. Again shape and flatten the jeans as you did in step 3, then place a panel of fabric behind the legs, to cover the large, triangular-shaped hole in the front of the jeans. Pin it in place-- 

 --then sew around the raw edges of the jeans legs. Turn the jeans inside out and cut away the excess fabric on the outside of that stitching line. The visible raw edges of the jeans legs will fray slightly with washing, but won't fray past your stitching line. It'll look pretty! 

 Repeat for the other side of the jeans.

  5. Shape the skirt. Once again flatten, shape, and align your denim skirt on top of a cutting mat. Use a piece of chalk to shape the bottom edge of the skirt into a more pleasing curve, then trim it to that shape. 

  6. Hem or bind the bottom edge of the skirt. There are a few ways to do this. If your skirt is all denim, you can again stitch around the bottom hem, leaving it to fray up to but not past that stitching line. If you prefer a neat edge, you can fold the entire bottom edge up to the back twice, then sew it to make a traditional hem. 

 I got my daughter's approval to use up a couple of leftover pieces of bias tape to bind around the bottom of the skirt. She likes the extra pop of color, and I think that a bias tape hem is easier to do than folding denim over twice and trying to sew it. 

 Once you've got this method down, you'll find that there are a lot of fun ways to alter, embellish, and otherwise play with this simple design.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

How to Add a Hood to a T-shirt Pattern

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.

 When you're sewing a T-shirt, adding a hood is one of the easier modifications to the pattern that you can make. It's a modification that also looks a lot harder to do than it is, so get ready to impress all of your friends with your mad sewing skills! 

 To make a hooded T-shirt, you will need: 

  a good T-shirt pattern. I'm using the Oliver + S School Bus T-shirt pattern, which you can read my review of here

  a well-fitting hoodie. It should be made from a fabric similar to what you'll be using for your T-shirt, so a sweatshirt with a hood won't work here. I don't always love tutorials that ask you to copy something that you already own--if you own one, do you really need to make another?--but this is the quickest and easiest way to draft a hood pattern. Other options include reading up on how to draft a hood pattern from scratch, or simply asking your buddies if they have a hoodie that you can borrow for five minutes. 

  jersey knit fabric. The blue fabric for this shirt is upcycled from other T-shirts, but the black fabric is store-bought jersey knit. You can see that they both work well here. 

  sewing supplies. Don't forget the ballpoint needle for your sewing machine! 

 1. Trace the hood. I have some extra tips for copying an existing piece of clothing here. Seriously, masking tape is your friend! 

 Note the general shape of the hood in the photo above. No matter what hood you copy, that general shape should be the same. Pay special attention to the curve at the neckline--that's key to a hood that will fit the shirt's neckline well. 

  2. Make modifications. You want your hood to slightly overlap at the front--you can get a view of what this will look like both in the top photo here and in the top photo of my review of the Oliver + S School Bus T-shirt pattern. The degree of overlap is up to you, and there's a lot of wiggle room. 

In this shirt, for instance, the overlap is maybe an inch, but I sewed a second hooded T-shirt this weekend with a hood overlap of at least three inches, and although it felt like a lot as I was sewing it, it looked totally fine and normal on the kid, and she declared that she liked it even better than the first hood. So there you go. 

 3. Add seam allowance. You'll need seam allowance for the bottom and the top/back, and a hemming allowance for the front. I've gone into detail in a previous post about how to enlarge a curve on a pattern, so you should be all set! 

 4. Cut out the pattern pieces and sew. You'll need two hood pieces, and you'll immediately sew them together to create the complete hood. You won't need the neckband from your T-shirt pattern. Instead, you'll sew the hood on in place of the neckband, centering the back seam of the hood onto the center of the back piece of the T-shirt, then sewing all the way around, overlapping the front pieces of the hood at the center of the front piece of the T-shirt. 

 You can further modify this hood by adding trim to the front edge or the middle seam (think pony mane or dinosaur spikes), or making it deeper and taller (think wizard's hood).

Saturday, June 12, 2021

How to Sew a Button Back on Your Pants

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Alas, for the button has just popped off your pants! 

If you're lucky, it has simply fallen to the floor at your feet, ideally while you're getting dressed alone in your room surrounded by plenty of other suitable pants options. Of course, the way this year has been going, it's much more likely that your button has pinged off explosively in the middle of a crowded room, probably while you, yourself, are at the center of attention, and it has first smacked someone important in the eye and then fallen... somewhere, probably deep in a crack between the floorboards. And that was your only pair of nice pants. Fortunately, sewing a button back on your pants is a super easy and low-fuss skill that requires only a basic amount of hand-eye coordination. Anyone can do it!

Tools Needed

You will need:

Replacement Button


Look all over the inside of your pants and it's very likely that you'll find a couple of spare buttons sewn into a seam somewhere. Even this pair of fast-fashion H&M cargo shorts comes with two replacement buttons! If your pants didn't come with any spare buttons, however, you can use any same-sized button. Take a spare one from another pair of pants, perhaps, or ask around your local buy-nothing group.

Needle, Thread, Scissors, Seam ripper


Dig through your junk drawer until you find that travel sewing kit you got somewhere, or ask the hostess or concierge if you're somewhere public. If you do need to buy your supplies new, however, a small travel sewing kit is an inexpensive and practical purchase; look for one that has a seam ripper, a choice of pins and sewing needles, and a small selection of threads in basic colors.

Directions

As a quick note, in most cases, people want to mend their possessions to look as similar to new as possible, and that's okay! Don't be afraid, though, to have a little fun with your repair. With these shorts, I did use the spare button that came with them, primarily because it's a boring brown button. If I used a cute button from my stash then I'd just have one more boring brown button in my stash, instead, and I already have plenty of boring brown buttons, thank you very much. BUT, instead of boring brown thread, I used awesome fuchsia embroidery floss, because when I mend something I like to make it fun. Bonus: embroidery floss is very sturdy!

1. Pick Away Loose Threads

 
Your button likely left a mess of thread behind when it fell off. Use the seam ripper to pick all of that out, being careful not to pierce the fabric of your pants with its pointy end.

2. Stitch An X To Start

 When the loose threads are gone, you'll likely see evidence on the fabric of where the button stitching was. If you're lucky, you'll even see holes in the fabric from the stitching. 



 That's great because you want to sew your button back on exactly where it was before. Thread your needle, and using those holes if you have them, stitch a small x exactly where you want the center of your button to be. Buttons have to undergo a lot of pressure, and this x reinforces the button and your sewing.


 

3. Sew The Button To Your Pants

This part is a little tricky, so stay with me here: you can't simply sew the button directly to your pants. It feels obvious that you should be able to, but if you did, you wouldn't actually be able to button them, because there wouldn't be any room behind the button for the buttonhole fabric. Instead, when you sew the button to your pants, you have to leave a gap between the button and the pants. You're going to do that by holding something narrow--a pin from your sewing kit, perhaps, or the stabby bit of the seam ripper--against the top of the button as you sew it. Here's what it looks like: 


 In the above photo, I'm stitching up from the back of the fabric, using the same hole that I made stitching my starting x, pushing my needle up through one of the holes in the button, and pushing it down through another hole in the button and into the fabric, using another one of the holes that I made stitching my starting x. Before I pull the thread tight, I'm placing my seam ripper on top of the button, essentially sewing the seam ripper to the top of the button. This is the fiddliest part of the process, because you'll feel like you need one hand to hold the fabric, one hand to hold the needle, one hand to hold the button, and one hand to hold the seam ripper in place. Just try not to throw the whole thing across the room and after you've done a couple of passes, the seam ripper will stay put on its own. How many times you sew through the holes in your button is going to depend entirely on the width and quality of your thread. If you're using the thread that came with your travel sewing kit, it's probably on the flimsier side, and so you may need to sew through those holes eight or so times. With my embroidery floss, I only had to sew through each hole twice. With standard store-bought thread, a good number is around six.

4. Make The Button's Shank

 This is my favorite part! When you're satisfied that the button is secure, make sure your needle is at the back of the fabric, then remove the seam ripper and pull the button away from the fabric. Now you've got plenty of room for your pants to button! 


 Push your needle back through the fabric, then wrap it around the thread between the button and the fabric 6-8 times, forming the button's shank. When the shank looks nice and tidy and is completely covered by wrapped thread, stop wrapping so your shank doesn't get too bulky and push your needle back through the fabric.


 

5. Knot The Thread


Sew a stitch through your cross-stitch x, pull it snug, and knot it against the fabric. Cut away the excess thread. Although I used pants for my demo, this method works exactly the same, of course, for any button, whether it's on a shirt or a bag or a skirt. Shank buttons work differently, but you're not going to find those on a pair of pants.