Hi, welcome to "Get Sewing With Me",
The show where I do a little bit of sewing, and I take you with me for the ride.
Hopefully, teaching you some tips and tricks along the way.
So I have a real problem with buying shirts - like blouses, like ones with collars and buttons down the
front - and the problem
with this is, is that I don't actually wear blouses - like, ever.
But for some reason I can't stop buying them
So I have a closet full of blouses that I don't wear!
So I thought I might wear all my blouses a bit more if I made them a little bit more interesting
And it has definitely worked!
So without further ado, let's begin!
So the first shirt I’m going to try and upcycle is this boring black blouse.
Now I found these cute buttons a couple of months ago, and I think that now is the perfect
time to put them to use. I’m first going to sew two matching heart
buttons onto the collar. So, using some needle and thread, I bring
my needle up through my collar right in the middle like this, and then I thread my button
on. For the first few stitches it’s going to
be all wobbly and move around a lot, but if I sew it on tightly – and this is about
after 15 times going up and down – the button will stay in place.
I tied a knot in the thread after bringing it through to the back of the collar, and
there we go! And I simply repeated this on the other side.
The buttons on this blouse were also very ugly, so I chopped them all off, and replaced
them one-by-one with these cute bow buttons.
And I’m really pleased with the final result. This shirt is now WAY cuter than it was before.
So this is another method for upcycling a standard old-shirt.
I layed my shirt down flat, right side up, making sure that the collar is totally flat
like this. Then, I grabbed a piece of lace and measured it to the width of my collar.
Then, with some fabric glue – and just as a side not, you can’t use craft glue or
a hot glue gun here because it will make the collar fabric all stiff – it’s got to
be fabric glue – I put a thin line all along the back of the collar and then stuck the
lace down onto it.
Then I realized that I probably needed to cover the entire collar in glue, so I did
that, pressed the lace down, flipped it over to make sure that the front side of the collar
was totally flat, and then I let the whole thing dry for about 30 minutes.
Now this is actually something that I’ve wanted to do a shirt for quite a while. Drawing
inspiration from fashion designers like Vivetta and Coco Fennell, I’m going to make a shirt
with a statement collar! For this, I’m using iron-on patches. You can find these basically
anywhere – but ebay and etsy are great places to find specific designs!
And, as the name implies, all you’ve got to do here is iron the patches on.
So to do that, you cover your shirt with some cloth, like a sheet or pillow case, and with
your iron on its highest cotton setting you place pressure onto the patch and the shirt
for about 30 seconds. Try not to move the iron back and forth too
much, because you might move the patch. And – the patch is now bonded onto the shirt.
And I repeat this with the other side.
The last one was inspired by a shirt that I saw in Dangerfield, which I thought that
I could probably recreate for a lot cheaper. Now this one does require a specialized stitch
on a sewing machine. This stitch will probably only be found on mid-range sewing machines
and above, but, if you’ve got this stitch, you can give this one a go!
So this is the shirt that I’m going to transform. Before I begin sewing, I round off the edges
of the collar with a pencil, so that I’ll have a rounder collar. This is the line I’m
going to follow with my needle when I’m sewing.
Then, I set my machine to that stitch, and, starting at the inside of the collar, I sew
all the way around the edges, and follow the pencil line around the pointy-bits of the
collar.
I end up with this, and then I simply cut away all the excess fabric.
And with the scissors, you’ve got to get right into those grooves, but making sure
not to cut the stitches – and, hopefully you’ll end up with something like this!
Of course, there is also embroidery! I’ve already covered this a couple of times in
previous videos, so I will link to them here, on you can find the links in the description
box if you’re on a mobile device.
So, hopefully this video gives you lots of inspiration on upcycling your own shirts,
both if you have a problem and can’t stop buying them like me, or if you’ve got some
spare time, and want to make a couple a cute blouses!
Share photos of your up-cycled blouses with me on instagram using the hashtag #diyannika
(and just a reminder that your profile has to be on public for me to actually see
the photo).
I hope you all enjoyed this video, and I'll see you all next time. Bye!