I recently did a fun challenge – an upcycling clothes challenge
The biggest city close to me, Aalborg, had a sustainability festival that I have always wanted to participate in in some way.
This year due to Covid-19 a lot of the events had to be online.
I thought that as a bit of a challenge, since I normally love to to do workshops with normal sewing or upcycling clothes, but those workshops are always with real people – making them fun.
But this year I still wanted to do it, so I signed up for making two 1-hour upcycling livestreams from my facebook channel, one with clothes and one with homeware textiles. The videos are all here on my IGTV. They are in Danish since it was a Danish event, but I cannot wait to make some in English as well.
IT was SO much fun with this upcycling clothes challenge!
I had planned out clothes and textiles for both of them – and I did not know quite how much I could do in that time, but I went for it with lots of speed, and it turned into a lot of things actually.
Alan did the camera work, and he was really great.
I am definitely going to be doing more how-to DIY-videos like that. Normally they take ages because I edit two video tracks together, one with the detail shot and one with the general shot. It is quite slow, and there is never enough time to edit. But as long as can get a camera man to help me it´s super quick. Its not perfect, but for what I want it to be it´s great.
So I can recommend that lots. If you have somebody who can be bothered to help, who you can joke a bit with, and who knows a bit about what you want the shots to be. Crossing fingers he is going to keep wanting to help me..
The things I made were:
- A bag out of a pair of jeans and a shirt with pockets for lining.
- A hat out of a cute little jumper.
- A little pencil case of the rest of the little jumper.
- A dress of two shirts.
- A dress of a top and a scarf.
- A skirt of a shirt.
- A skirt from a pillowcase.
- A shopper from a pillowcase.
- A dress from a duvet cover.
- A clutch from some leather from a sofa.
The details on the items are not perfect at all. I talk about that I the videos a bit.. But it is simply just too show some fun and quick ideas. So if you think the seams are bad, it´s fine, so do I. They are just not the focus in this case.
I am really happy to show some good ideas for upcycling stuff. It is always better than to throw stuff out. Of course not buying so much in the first place is much better, BUT if or when you do have the things, then make the most of them. Give them to someone who can use them, sell them, or use them to make them into something else.
If you like upcycling you can also check out this post where I refashion some skirts.
