Guide to reconstucting clothing
[ Posted by krista Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:29:28 GMT ]
Finally i made somewhat of a guide. Tell me what you think!
Reconstructed clothing guide.
Why reconstruct clothes?
-to recycle
-to save money
-to lessen the amount of storage
-to clean your closet
-to make items personal and one of a kind
-to save your favorite clothing from the trash
How do you start?
In my opinion you should start small to get the hang of it. Take a piece of clothing and add something to it. A design, some trim, some kind of flair.
Or You can do something else small like take something away, take out a hem for a rough edge, take off the lace trim, take off the design.
A slightly more advanced thing to do is modifying structure. Subtract length, to sleeves, pant legs, the bottom of a shirt Subtract the size of the shirt by taking in seams. You can do other things like change the collar type of a shirt, add a collar, add a layered collar. Maybe add some sleeves, modify the type of sleeve, add fabric to the sleeves.
Then even more advanced is for more experienced sewers. You can use a pattern to make modifications, completely rework items like making one item into another.. Example, make pants into shirt, make shirt into skirt, make skirt into purse. You can even do something like cut open all seams and hems and think of the item as just plain fabric use a pattern or just freehand it.
What I do is think of something I might want or need and raid my storage for supplies to make that item. Or when i get bored I look for something in storage that I like and see what i could make out of it.
If you get stuck just do some simple moves.. fold it, look at it, imagine it as something else, take out a seam and then look at it again, take off trim, sleeves anything else and look again .. it will come to you !
And most important!
SAVE ALL YOUR SCRAPS! things that come in handy..
trim, elastic, strips and pieces of fabric, decorative items, snaps, buttons, lace, patterns and everything else! These all could become something. even if you cannot work it as an item itself it could be an add on to another item.
I hope this might help someone make the effort to get a little creative and crafty :)
And if someone has any additions to this guide then please help me by sending suggestions.
