Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The wardrobe refashioning begins

I'm taking the Wardrobe Refashion challenge. It's a commitment to not purchase new clothes, instead clothes should be handmade (by yourself or others) from scratch, or better yet, reworked from existing clothing. I thought the not buying anything new part would be easy, but I did have to put on mental blinders when I went into Target the other day. (Don't walk through the clothes section!!!)
My main hope is that the challenge would be additional motivation to sew/knit/refashion more frequently. And here is my first (tiny) completed project since I've been in the challenge. My loved one had the sensibility to improve his health and fitness last year and lost about 35 lbs. (It's amazing how motivated people can be when they see their lab values and tangible metrics showing the unhealthy path they are on... When given the choice of taking expensive drugs with side effects or changing lifestyle by increasing exercise and paying attention to what you eat -- what would you do? He changed his ways and feels better across the board: sleep, digestive, in addition to moving himself way out of the range of concern on those lab values.)
So I help downsize one of his old, much-loved t-shirts. Very simple, but made him happy.
Now onto one of the other projects on my infinite loop of my crafty "to do" list. I'm seriously consdering dropping pieces of paper into a brown bag for each project and pulling randomly. Or maybe you gentle readers can steer me in the right direction. Give me a color, theme, etc. and I guarantee I've got something brewing that I could work on that fits right in...

3 comments:

  1. I have a project for you...but I don't know if I can explain what I want you to do over the phone/internet.

    I want to adjust a jersey dress with huge triangle sleeves into something with short sleeves or is sleeveless... Lets talk.

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  2. That's totally cool. We just saw the documentary No Impact Man a couple weeks ago when we went to the film festival in Columbia. The wife didn't buy anything new for a year. They could buy stuff resale. I saw t-shirts I thought were cool in a store...they were used shirts that had been painted on or a little pattern fabric had been appliqued on a plain colored shirt. The best fitting jeans I ever got came from Salvation Army. Went back several times looking and ended up with a few more pairs...$2.50 each.

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  3. Yes - the refashioning challenge allows us to buy second hand. That's actually main idea - that you find and "refashion" existing clothes. People are so creative - it's awesome. That's the concept behind Sunset unbranding and upcycling, too.

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