Hi! Welcome, if you’re new here – My name is Annika and today I am doing a video which
I VERY excited about, a video that has been requested and waited upon for so long… I
am doing a collaboration with April from Coolirpa!
Now if you somehow don't yet know April, she is best known on youtube for her series “thrifted
transformations” in which she takes the most... interesting thrifted old clothes and
turns them into really fashionable cute things. She’s basically a wizard.
Anyway I’ve been following April’s channel since… before I even had my OWN channel
- she is one of the main people who has taught me and inspired me to sew, so I’m pretty
damn excited about the collaboration going on here today. Anyway, let's get on to the
collaboration!
Today's video is a joint challenge!
Both of us went thrifting and found each other 3 items at our local thrift stores, and then
we sent them all the way overseas. Apparently overseas is in that direction. The challenge
is to, using at LEAST ONE of items that the other one has sent each other, to turn it
into something wearable and... cute. And fashionable.. I guess.
SO, here’s the package that April sent me right here. And as you can see, I haven't
opened it yet so we're going to be discovering what's inside together.
*Eeee!*
I see denim, I see lace, I see gingham... [Gasps]
Okay, the first item is – Awwh! This cute denim skirt!
A little 2014, but this will definitely come in useful.
Okay the next item is – oooh. Guys, I love gingham. I especially love pale green – this
is awesome. I almost don’t wanna touch this dress at all, I don't wanna cut it up.
It has a really, really cute neckline, and this cute little applique thing here.
Okay the last thing, which has taken up the bulk of this bag, is… okay… April did
you send me a wedding dress?
Oh! Cool! It’s a petticoat! You know what, this might actually have been the petticoat
for a wedding dress.
So, let's go see how I can upcycle these!
So the first thing I wanted to do is to dismantle this gathered skirt and turn it into a pair
of high-waisted shorts, using my own shorts pattern. To make this pattern I copied a pair
of high-waisted shorts that I already owned and that fit me really well.
To copy these shorts, I folded the shorts in half at the front, traced around them onto
paper with about an inch seam allowance all around… folded them in half the other way,
and then traced around the back in the same way, then cut these pieces out.
This gave me a front and a back piece. You’ll notice that the back piece has a longer bit
here, which gives you more room for your butt.
I also made sure that the two top edges, added together, was my waist measurement, PLUS 5
inches, divided by 2, because I wanted to add 1-inch darts to the front and back pieces,
to give the shorts a better fit.
Each dart is one-inch wide and 4 inches deep, giving the shorts approximately a quarter-inch
to a half-inch seam allowance around both sides.
I also wanted the shorts to have pockets, so I made a pocket pattern by placing my hand
down on to the straight edge of the remainder of the butcher’s paper, angling my hand
down like this, and then tracing around my hand with about an inch extra all the way
around to give myself this pocket pattern.
Next, I dismantled the skirt. I pulled the waistband off and also unpicked the zipper,
which gave me this long rectangle of denim fabric, a separate zipper, and a waistband.
Then using the pattern pieces, I cut out 2 front pieces from the dismantled skirt, and
2 back pieces.
I also managed to use the remainder of the fabric to cut out 4 pocket pieces.
Next, I transferred the dart marks to each of the short pieces, and I made the dart by
folding the fabric in half along the straight line like this, putting some pins in to hold
it in place, and then sewing down this line. This is what the dart looks like. I repeated
this for all 4 short pieces.
Then, I attached the pockets, by placing them right-sides together like this with the straight
edges matching, 2 inches down from the top of the shorts.
Then I sewed them together like this. And I repeated the exact same thing on all
4 short pieces, for all 4 pocket pieces!
Then, I got one front piece and one back piece, placed them right-sides together like this
so the pockets and straight edges are matching up, put pins in them to hold them in place,
and then I sewed them together using a straight stitch like this. And, I repeated this for
the other front and back piece.
I finished off the raw edge by cutting it with some pinking shears to prevent fraying
– I would have used my overlocker but I’m still too scared of using it to go around
really curved edges like this.
So, this is what it looks like from the front, and there is my pocket in the side seam there!
Next, I placed each of these pieces right-sides together, so that the 2 front and the 2 back
pieces are matched up with each other.
Then I sewed the front seam together like this (and I did finish the raw edges of this
with an overlocker).
Next, I unfolded the whole thing, and before sewing up the back seam, I am going to overlock
the raw edges along both the top, and the bottom, but of course this step is optional
and it just makes the garment look nicer on the inside.
Now, back to the waistband I pulled off the skirt earlier, it was not a perfect, straight
rectangle – some areas of the waistband bulged out more than others. But because I’m
going to have a back zipper instead of a side zipper, like was on the skirt, I needed to
make the waistband the same width all the way along it.
To do this, I put it into my overlocker and using this metal plate on the side as a guide,
I kept this edge of the fabric flush with the metal plate’s edge, and I serged the
other side, to give me a waistband with even width that looks like this.
Next, I attached the waistband to the top edge of the shorts!
To do this, I placed it right-sides together, down on top of the waist-part of the shorts,
all the way along the top of the shorts. I put pins in it, and then sewed it on
like this.
Now, I accidentally sewed this part early before attaching the waistband – my bad
– but it’ll work out a lot better if you do this after sewing on the waistband, so
we’ll just pretend that this edge here is totally unsewn. So what I wanted to do next
is to sew up the back seam, but also insert a zipper at the top. So, matched up the back
pieces, right-sides together, making sure the waistband was also aligned, and then I
lined the old skirt’s zipper up with the top of the shorts like this. Then I sewed
a basting stitch from here – the top of the waistband - to here, where the stop of
the zipper is, and then a normal straight stitch from here to here.
I pressed the seam with the basting stitch open, and I lined the zipper’s teeth up
with the seam. And I pinned it on, on one side, making sure I was only pinning through
the back pieces and not the front of the shorts.
Then, I sewed the zipper on, like this, using a zipper foot to make life easier.
Then I cut through and removed the basting stitches, removing them from the shorts, and
now I have a nice looking, invisible zipper!
Finally, I turned the shorts back inside out and flipped them around so that the zip was
in the middle of the back, and I matched up the front and back crotch pieces, which I
sewed together like this. This creates two separate leg holes.
Lastly, I hemmed the leg holes by folding the edges up about ½ an inch to 1 inch, and
then sewing them down like this.
Now, onto the next piece! I wanted to turn this dress into a top, to go with the denim
shorts. First, I removed this crochet/flower thing
because I decided that… it was a little bit weird.
Then, I cut the dress off just below the zipper. I used a rotary cutter, and I made sure the
front and back were laying flat, and then I cut straight across.
Then, I tried the new top on, and I folded the bottom edge up inside the top to the length
that I wanted the top to be. I made a temporary hem with pins.
On the back of the top, the zipper was forced to fold over, so I needed to make it shorter
so the hem would lay flat.
To make the zipper shorter, I unstitched it to above the new temporary hem, cut the zipper
shorter, and then I sewed in a new zipper stop by using a zigzag stitch across the end
of the zipper like this.
Then, I sewed the bottom of the top back up by matching up the creases where the zipper
was sewn in, placing it right-sides together like this, and sewing a straight stitch down
here.
Then, I hemmed the bottom of the top by sewing around the front, and the back, like this,
and cutting off the excess fabric from the seam.
Lastly, I still had quite a few denim scraps left from the skirt, and from this I pulled
out these two long pieces. I made the two pieces the same width, using the same serger
trick that I did for the short’s waistband, and then I attached them together, and made
a long tube out of them! This is going to be used as a headband.
And THIS is the final transformation….
[Music plays]
Okay, just saying but how cute did this outfit turn out?! I am so happy with it. It's going
to be the best thing to wear for summer here in Australia. Oh, and as for the rest of the
materials that I was sent, I want to turn the remainder of the gingham dress into a
skirt, in a similar way as I did in my dress-to-skirt tutorial, AND as for the white skirt, it’s
going to be relegated to the style pile for now until I figure out what to do with it.
If you have any suggestions of what it could be turned into, leave them in the comments
below!
So, as I mentioned in the beginning of the video, I also picked three items from my own
local thrift stores and sent three items off to April so she could transform them into
something new. Go and check out what I sent her! I think she was a bit easier on me than
I was on her, I think her items are a little bit more challenging - but, she's the master
of this! So go and check out what she did! And also, you know that you wanna subscribe
to us both. So, go and do that.
OH also, I have some super super SUPER exciting news, in a week from now, the 25th of November,
I’m going to be launching my merchandise store with one of my favourite companies,
DFTBA! There will be sewing-machine stickers, posters, and in the new year, there will also
be patches for you to stick all over your clothes. And the stickers and posters are
all made in America and the patches are made by a WRAP-certified company. I won’t say
much about the products yet - there's been a sneak-peek on my instagram of one of them
- except that they’re going to be pretty… "punderful". Anyway, I’ll keep you all up
to date on when it launches, but it will be another way to support what I do and also
to get yourself - or some people in your life that who love sewing and puns - some cool
stuff at the same time.
Thank you so much for watching, thank you so much to April for coming up with this awesome
challenge and collaboration, and I’ll see you all next time! Bye!
Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon for making these videos possible. To become
my Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria!