♫ Make Thrift Buy intro music ♫
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 3 of Make
Thrift Buy. A show where you guys send me clothes that you found online and I try to
re-create them. Today’s challenge was suggested by Victoria
Valenzuela, and it’s of this awesome Pin Up Girl Clothing Sailor Dress, which retails
for $132 dollars. Now I was lucky enough to find this dress at the thrift store the other
day, which I thought could be used for this project. So…I thought I’d give this one
a go! The first thing I did was to make a cut out
on the front of the dress, just like the one on the picture.
I drew the cutout on with chalk, and I hacked away at this with some scissors. Then I folded
all the raw edges back inside the dress about half an inch, and I stuck some pins in to
hold it all in place. I then very carefully sewed around the cut
out really close to the edges. Using a straight stitch but pulling the fabric slightly as
I went because the dress material was slightly stretchy, and I didn’t want the stitches
to snap, andddd I ended up with a pretty nice looking cut out.
Now, there is a distinct lack of anchors on my dress. For this I decided I would make
a stencil so all my anchor shapes would be the same size, and…I totally forgot what
anchors looked like. Thank you Google Images! First I drew an anchor onto some cardboard,
and then attempted to cut it out precisely. Which is actually A LOT harder than you would
think! A good 20 minutes later and I had a real dodgy looking stencil, but…it let me
trace the basic shape of an anchor so I figured it would be good enough.
Then I went to the craft store to get some fabric paint, but the guy at the craft store
actually recommended this Posca pen would work fine on fabric. I was a bit dubious that
it would show up well on black fabric, but I also thought that using a pen rather than
paint would be easier so I trusted him and I went for it. And to my amazement, it worked!
So I did one, and then I just repeated this all over my dress.
Soo…Five hours and hundreds of anchors later and a shape of an anchor is basically etched
into my brain. I’m not going to be forgetting what an anchor looks like any time soon. So
apparently to set the marker into the fabric you iron it at a high temperature without
steam on the reverse side of the fabric. So I did that. Now, because I have terrible foresight,
I drew my hundreds of anchors before testing that they would actually stay on the fabric
when washed. Yeah…
BUT, to test whether this pen works on fabric I popped the dress into my washing machine.
I’m really not happy about this. [washing machine noises]
Please be okayyy Yep, and…heaps of them faded. Like…heaps
are basically gone. Yeah… Okay so…It’s actually not that bad. As
the dress dried a lot of them became a lot clearer to see, and most stayed on pretty
well. So, I just went back over the faded ones with the Posca pen again, and I made
a mental note to myself to only ever gently hand wash the dress in the future.
So back on track, my dress had a black tie in the front, whereas the one from Pin up
Girl Clothing has a white tie. So I simply snipped off the black ties. Then I used these
pieces to make a stencil for two white tie pieces. I added a seam allowance, and also
made them a little bit longer. I cut out four of these, then pinned them
together two at a time, and sewed using a straight stitch all away around the edges;
leaving the bottom edge open so I could turn them the right way around. Then I attached
these to the front of the dress and sewed them on.
So the real question is… How did I go?
♫ music plays ♫ So in conclusion, if you’re lucky enough
to find this style of dress in a thrift store— then this something you can really easily
make. [Scissor snipping and zipper noise effects]
So my version by Pin Up Girl Clothing: $132. My version: $8.
Now I do have to say that the one on Pin Up Girl Clothing is probably quite a bit nicer,
with a full skirt, and inbuilt pockets. Plus my one is black, theirs is navy, BUT I think
for $8 this is a pretty decent replica. So let me know what you think, and keep those
suggestions coming, and I’ll see you all next time!
♫ Outro music ♫