Seven Easy Ways to Upcycle Your Old, Worn-Out Clothes
Vintage upcycled clothing can help you to develop your own unique fashion sense, lead a more sustainable lifestyle, and steer clear of the pitfalls of the fast fashion trend. Despite the accessibility and affordability of fast fashion clothing, its swift changes can take a toll on the environment. Every year, these textiles cause an enormous wastage of water, chemicals, and plastic packaging, and a lot of them end up in landfills. By knowing how to upcycle your clothes, you can use the clothes for a longer duration, save your money, and stop participating in the environmental damage.
What are upcycling clothes?
Upcycling clothes is finding creative ways to transform used clothes into reusable clothing or other products. You probably have clothes in your closet that you do not like and rarely wear. These can be put to versatile uses. Aside from reducing your carbon footprint, vintage upcycled clothes allow you to get in touch with your creative side
Seven easy ways to upcycle your old, worn-out clothes
The following suggestions may enable you to upcycle your old clothes in interesting ways:
1. Refashioning the vintage clothes
If you are good at sewing or are willing to learn to sew, you can give new life to old clothes. You can transform vintage upcycled clothing into trendy wear. You can cut and resize it to make it fit and look better, or you can create an entirely new outfit. You can cut the fabric and use it to sew new, stylish shirts, skirts, shorts, tops, hats, scarves, and more.
2. Embroidering the vintage clothes
You can spruce up vintage upcycled clothing with embroidery. There are many different ways of embroidering and you can pick the embroidery style that best suits the clothing you are upcycling. You can embroider flowers, plants, animals, people, objects, landscapes, words, and more. A beautiful piece of embroidery can completely enhance the look of the clothes. If you are not yet an accomplished embroider, you can avail yourself of various online instruction articles and videos.
3. Painting on the vintage clothes
As in the case of embroidery, painting a range of designs and images on vintage upcycled clothes can personalize and brighten up their look. The paint is also useful for hiding spots and stains that you have been unable to wash off. Ideally, you should paint with acrylic colors that are specially formulated for painting on clothes. It is best to use these colors on relatively thick cloth materials like canvas and denim since they set better on them and will last longer.
4. Creating an area rug from old jeans
If you have several pairs of old jeans that you no longer need, you can turn them into an area rug. First, you need to cut the jeans into squares, arrange squares of different colors in a pattern you like, and then sew these squares together. You can also cut the denim into thin strips, sew the strips together to create longer strips, and then braid these together. It will take time, patience, and lots of denim strips to make an area rug in this fashion, but you will have a great one eventually.
5. Making a grocery bag out of old t-shirts
Instead of buying grocery bags or using the one-use plastic ones, consider repurposing your old t-shirts. Lay the t-shirt flat and use a marker and a ruler to draw a straight line just under the sleeves. Sew shut the bottom of the t-shirt and hem the upper open part. Use the sleeves to make handles and sew them on.
6. Sewing a quilt from old flannel shirts
Flannel shirts can transform into a warm, comfy quilt. Cut them up into different-sized strips, squares, and rectangles. Arrange these shapes into an interesting pattern and get sewing.
7. Knotting plant pot holders from old t-shirts
To transform your old t-shirts into a plant pot holder, first cut off the sleeves and the bottom hem of the t-shirt. Then cut the shoulder seams and one side seam and lay the t-shirt flat. Starting from the bottom, cut it into strips of one-inch width. You can then braid and knot these strips to make plant pot holders.