There is a box in every crafters home That is filled with old unfinished projects
and stuff you thrifted in the hopes of upcycling - That becomes abandoned.
That becomes forgotten. Well this is the series that tackles that
forgotten box This is The Style Pile.
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Hello!
Welcome to the Style Pile, episode number 15!
So, this episode begins with a little bit of a story to explain how I came to inherit…
literally hundreds of pairs of awesome tights.
About 3 years ago, I found out that my uncle used to run a business that manufactured tights
and sold them to department stores in Australia and in Japan.
And this was about 15 years ago now, um so the business doesn’t exist anymore.
Anyway, there was still a fair amount of stock leftover, um, that had been sitting around
in the basement of his old house for about a decade, and he didn’t really know what
to do with them all, but then he found out that I was into fashion and had a fashion
blog… and he asked if I wanted to have a look at them and maybe take some and even
try and sell some and make some of those cash dollars.
Well, obviously, I said yes.
I was super into wearing patterned tights in 2014 and this was just like some sort of
amazing dream come true for me.
Little did I know, however: this leftover stock would be literally hundreds pairs of
tights.
And because he was doing such a nice thing for me…
I felt kind of obligated to take all of them.
So anyway, 3 years later, after taking a few pairs that I wanted for myself, and also giving
many away to family and friends… and then after also discovering that I’m really bad
and impatient at selling things... well, I still have… all of these tights.
And this here is only about one-third of the entire inherited collection.
There are a couple more suitcases full of tights in storage right now.
It’s far too many tights for one human being to deal with.
Right now, I also am just not that into wearing full-length patterned tights – partly for
fashion reasons, but also because I don’t really like wearing things that compress and
make my stomach uncomfortable.
SO, I wanted to see if I could upcycle some of them into different fashion items, because
I really love the patterns on a lot of the tights.
Yep.
So…
The intro of this video was a little deceptive.
My style pile "box" is much more than one box.
It is this one box, yes, but then it’s also another box here, and several suitcases full
of tights as well.
Oh boy.
So over the years I’ve seen a lot of youtube tutorials showing you how to turn your tights
into crop tops.
And I’ve always been a little bit skeptical of these tutorials, because well… firstly,
they’re always done by very skinny human beings, and secondly, I didn’t think they
ever looked that comfortable.
So FIRST, I wanted to see if this tutorial would work for someone with just a little
bit of fat on their bodies, somebody who wasn’t a size 0.
i.e. me.
And for reference, I’m an Australian size 12 to 14 which I think is a US 8 to 10.
Anyway, here’s how that went down.
So I busted a fresh pair of tights open, lay them out flat,
and then I was basically just going to snip the crotch out in a triangle sorta shape like
this.
First I folded the tights in half lengthways so that the cutout would be symmetrical.
And I also cut the toes off, so that I could put my arms through these new… leg…sleeves.
Because the legs…
Are now sleeves.
You’ll see what I mean.
And this is my first time trying it on!
So this is a baby's top.
[laughs]
Let's see if I can get it on.
[grunting] Owww! [laughs]
Ehhhhhhggjkl!
Uh!
Ohh, it's not comfortable!
The sleeves are alright...
[laughs]
Oh look, there's ladders in it already.
There's ladders.
Cool.
Well.
Where did my boobs go!?
This has completely squashed my boobs out of existence.
And its tight in all of the wrong places!
Ah - there goes another ladder down the back.
Okay, so yeah, the ladders probably could have been avoided if I'd used like a pair
of leggings or something thicker... but if you've got ANY chub or boobage, it's not really
gunna happen!
It's just very, very, very, VERY uncomfortable.
If you like tops that are extremely restrictive across your chest, then, go for it!
Now to be fair, you might be like, Annika, you did it WRONG, you just need to use a bigger
pair of tights and then it'll fit.
So THIS pair came from a size large.
It also has a less visible seam down the middle AND I also tried wearing it with a super padded
bra to try and avoid pancake boobs.
I'm really trying hard to make this work.
And it doesn't look that bad... but I also can't really breathe and I'm super hecking
uncomfortable.
Hey Luci!
Luci: Yes?
Annika: Come give me your honest opinions on this top I just made.
Luci: Ummmm...
Um, it looks like a really.....
Annika: What do you think about the fit?
Luci: I just think... it's... [whispering]: I don't know what to say!
What do YOU think about it?
Annika: It's REALLY tight, I can't, I can hardly breathe.
Luci: you're constantly adjusting it.
It looks like a little bit of like a, of like pressure applied to it and the whole thing
would just - whoop!
Spring right off.
Annika: [laughs] That's what it feels like.
Luci: Like you'd be out in public and it'd just be like, DOINK!
And it would just fly away in the wind.
Annika: Like an elastic band.
Luci: Yep.
Annika: Ooow.
I need to take it off now.
[grunts]
Soooo.. yeah.
The next thing I wanted to try was turning the tights into SOCKS.
And even though I'm not super into patterned tights at the moment, I'm very much liking
knee-high and thigh-high socks right now.
I also wanted to do this because I found out, after I got the tights, that a lot of them
are child-sized.
Not Annika-sized.
But also the child-sized tights are really cute and have cute patterns on them and I
wanna be able to do something with them.
So, with that long preamble over, this is how I turned some of these tights into socks.
Tutorial time!
So as you can see, these child-size tights DO fit around my legs but they are not nearly
long enough for me.
So I’m going to turn them into knee-high socks instead.
So I snipped the waist and the gusset part off, leaving me with two little sockies.
And that’s it.
…
NAH I’m kidding, what kind of tutorial would that be?!
Now the problem with just snipping them like this, and leaving it there, is that the socks
will constantly fall down.
They're not tight enough around the top.
So what I need to do is add elastic around the top of the socks.
So I put one of the socks on to see where it went up to on my leg, and then I grabbed
a 1 inch wide piece of elastic and I wrapped it around this part of my leg.
Then I pulled the elastic a little bit tight – not so tight that it was uncomfortable,
but just so that it fit snugly – and then I cut the elastic to this length.
And using this piece, I cut another piece of elastic that’s identical in length, because
I'm making 2 socks.
For both pieces of elastic, I folded them into a loop like this, and next I’m going
to sew a zig-zag stitch over the elastic ends, connecting the loop up permanently.
And I went back and forth with my zig zag a couple of times to make sure that the ends
were connected super strongly.
Then I turned one sock inside out… except when I did this, I was like: Oh my gosh, the
rainbow on the inside of the sock is this really nice pastel colour, and I like it even
better than the brighter, more vibrant rainbow on the right-side of the socks.
So, I then decided to make the inside-pattern of the socks the new OUTSIDE pattern, so that
I would have PASTEL rainbow socks when I'm finished instead!
So, this is a little bit confusing, but this pastel coloured inside is the new OUTSIDE,
the new "right side" of the socks.
And the vibrant side is the new INSIDE, the new "wrong side" of the socks.
SO, with the socks INSIDE OUT (and this is the new inside-out), I popped the circular
piece of elastic over the top, and I’m going to sew the elastic on all the way around the
outside with a zig-zag stitch, like this.
Singing: Sewing around the top of the sock, doop de doop de doop.
While sewing, I stretched the sock and the elastic so that they would become the same
length and match up all the way around the top of the sock.
Now if you’re not confident with sewing stretchy materials, and just eyeballing this,
then you can use the pinning-and-quartering-method to do this, and I will pop a link of an example
for that in the description.
To finish it off and make it look nice, I flipped the elastic down one more time, like
this.
And next I am going to sew a zig-zag stitch across here.
However, I found it easier to sew this part if I turned the sock the RIGHT way around
first, and then sew over the top of the elastic just by feel.
[music]
Singing, again: Sewing on around the top of the sock, doop de doop de doo, doop de doop
de doop.
And now, these socks are done!
I also wanted to salvage the, uh… not so successful “crop tops” from before, into
thigh-high socks, which I did basically by using the same method I just went over, BUT
before I did that, I had to make new feet for the socks (…coz I cut them off before
to make sleeves), and I did this by turning them inside out and sewing a new foot part
like this, then cutting off the excess fabric from the seam.
So, how did they turn out?
[music plays]
And now it’s time for a mini Lookbook, showing you how I styled these knee-high and thigh-high
socks!
…I’m not really sure what this video is anymore, it’s turned into part vlog, part
fail, part tutorial and part lookbook, but I hope you’re enjoying it nonetheless!
For these pink checkered thigh-high socks, I styled them with a pink top and a pinafore
dress.
I then wore an oversized denim jacket over the top of this.
Oh, and everything else that I’m wearing here is thrifted, of course!
So don’t ask me where these pieces are from 'coz I’ll be like, uhhh, they’re secondhand!
Maybe go visit your local thrift store to try and find something similar!
For the rainbow socks, I basically wanted to turn myself into a walking human rainbow,
so I paired it with this multi-coloured, very bright windbreaker that I recently got from
Depop, and some brightly-coloured shoes.
I stuck to, uh, lighter, more muted colours for my top and shorts, so that the socks and
jacket would remain the eye-catching pieces of this outfit and I wouldn’t totally overdo
it with the colours, because these are pretty strong statement pieces on their own.
Now as you probably noticed in my previous outfits, I like to match the colour of my
socks to the colour of my top.
Then, if I wear something that’s got a pattern all over it, like this polka dot romper, I
think that the matching colour of the top and the socks pulls the outfit together really
nicely.
Generally, when choosing a pair of socks, I try and pair them to another colour that's
already in my outfit.
And finally, these floral socks were also a child-sized pair of tights that I wanted
to upcycle into knee-high socks because... daisies.
Daisies are cute.
I paired them with this cute courdroy dress layered over a white top, and a beret, because…
berets are also cute.
Alright, so that’s one way to upcycle tights –and I really like how it turned out!
Obviously, most of you won’t have inherited 3 suitcases full of tights, but it’s also
a really good way to upcycle old tights that have a small ladder, or some holes, or some
wear, or if you find tights too uncomfortable around your tummy like I do.
So, I hope that some of you found this helpful!
And as for the remainder of these tights… well –
I will keep some for myself, I'm going to turn more into socks, gunna give some more
to friends, butttt I think most of them are probably going to make their way to charity
stores.
BUT if you guys have any other ideas of how to upcycle tights, that isn’t a totally
impractical and uncomfortable crop top, I'd love to hear them!
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