DIY Winking Collar | Make Thrift Buy #19

Hi, welcome to Make, Thrift, Buy, the show
where you send me interesting, weird, cool,

expensive, mass-produced clothes from the
internet, and I try my best to recreate them

through a combination of thrifting or crafting
or sometimes both!

Today's challenge was sent in by TheMusicivy
who wanted me to try out this winking eye

shirt. Now I originally think that the shirt
was by Asos, it's been sold out for a long

time, and there are copies on a bunch of wholesale
sites all over the internet. So I think that

this is a pretty perfect one to try and recreate.
So, let's get started.

The first thing that I did was to go and find
a collared shirt at

the thrift shop!

I wanted to find a plain-coloured shirt with
a nice big collar.

I did find a white shirt, but the collar wasn’t
big enough

So I chose this light-pink shirt instead.

I set up my reference picture, then, using
a pencil, started drawing a closed eye onto

one side of the collar.

On the other side of the collar, I drew an
open eye.

And the good thing about using pencil for
this step is that you can rub out any errors,

and start again, until you’re happy with
the design.

Then, I also got some embroidery thread in
a contrasting colour to the shirt.

Embroidery thread is thicker than normal thread,
and normally comes as 6 threads all woven

together like this.
The more threads you use, the thicker your

embroidery will be.
I am going to use three threads, so I divide

this into three threads each and pull the
threads apart.

Then, with one of these three-thread pieces,
I thread it through an embroidery needle,

and tie a knot in the other end.

Then, I start embroidering!

So for the closed eye, I am going to use what
is called a “back-stitch”.

This is where you bring your needle up about
a rice-grain’s length away from the previous

stitch, and then insert your needle at the
end of the previous stitch.

When you pull the thread through, also make
sure that you don’t pull on it too hard

– because you don’t want to bunch the
fabric up in-between the stitches!

Then I continued back-stitching all the way
along the eyelid,

And did the same stitch on all of the eyelashes.
Which gave me this.

For the eyeball, I did all the outlines also
using a back-stitch technique.

So I went all the way around the eye, and
the iris of the eye, like this.

To fill in the iris of the eye, I used a different
embroidery technique. This one is called

a satin stitch. So with a satin stitch, you
start at the edge, and bring your needle up

at the top of the shape, bring it down at
the bottom of the shape, and bring it up again

at the top.

So your shape is slowly filled in using these
long, straight stitches.

I continued this all the way along the shape,
until it’s entirely filled in.

And it’s super important that you don’t
pull your threads too tightly when you are

doing a satin stitch here, because otherwise
you’ll bunch your collar fabric up.

Then I used a backstitch to finish off the
eyelashes, and, I’m done!

So now the question is – How did I go? How
does my version compare to the original?

[Electronic dance music plays]

[Electronic dance music stops]

*Sigh* I'm trying to wink, you guys, I'm trying
to wink. You know, to like, match my collar.

Okay.

[Electronic dance music resumes]

No!

[Electronic dance music stops]

See that? That's a good wink, right there.
Yep. You should do this whenever you're wearing this shirt.

So, I think that this one worked pretty well.
So my conclusion is:

[zipper, scissors snipping sound effect]

Yeah, definitely thrift a shirt and make this
for yourself. What I particularly like about

this is that you're not restricted to the
one jumper like you are in original item,

where the pink jumper appears to be attached
to the shirt - at least in some iterations

that I've found.

With this one, you're free to change it up
however you want! Wear it with sweaters, underneath

cute dresses, and it even looks pretty cute
just by itself.

So that's it from me, I hope that you're all
having a really good day - give me a thumbs

up if you liked this video and don't forget
to leave suggestions for clothes that you

want me to try and recreate in the comments
section below.

And I hope you're all having a really good
day! Bye!