Hello! Welcome to Make Thrift Buy, the show where you send in clothes you’ve found on
the internet and I do my best to recreate them!
Today’s challenge was suggested by “ewmadison!”, who wanted me to try and recreate this lace-up
crop top – where the lace-up bit actually seems to be shoelaces. This crop top can be
found on the website Rom-we -- Rom-way? As I’ve mentioned before, I avoid these kinds
of super-fast-fashion websites because there’s just no independent information about how
or where these clothes are made and with the clothes being that cheap, it’s pretty safe
to assume the person or people who made the clothes weren't getting paid much at all.
So, it’s a very good candidate for something that we can make for ourselves. So, let’s begin!
So the first thing that I need is a cropped t-shirt. Here is one that I prepared earlier.
I’m not going to go through the entire process of making a shirt from scratch, because I’ve
covered that in a number of videos already. Watch THIS video if you want to learn how
to make a t-shirt for yourself, or this one if you want to make a crop-top out of a t-shirt
you already own! Of course you don't have to make one from scratch, you can use any
cropped t-shirt you already own or find at the thrift shop.
The second thing that I need is eyelets! I recently got myself this new pack of eyelets
with an eyelet plier – because, I haven’t had such an amazing success with eyelet tools
like the ones I used in this episode of Make Thrift Buy.
This is the first time I’ve ever used one of these eyelet pliers, so fingers crossed it works!
Next, I try on my top and I draw, using pencil, two lines where I want the lace-up part to
go. Each line is about 4 inches away from my bellybutton, but obviously this will vary
from person to person, which is why it’s a good idea to make these marks while your
top is on your own body!
The next thing that I’m going to do – oh, and there’s the pencil lines, they’re
just really faint! – is to cut up those pencil lines with a pair of fabric scissors.
Now, because this t-shirt is made out of jersey fabric, which is a knit fabric, it doesn’t
fray, so we don’t have to worry about sewing anything here.
If you have used a top that already own, then it’s a good idea to then go over the ends
of the hem with a small zig zag stitch, to stop the hem unravelling.
However, if you ARE making your crop top from scratch, do this bit before you hem the bottom
of the t-shirt, and then hem before adding the eyelets.
Next, I’m going to draw equally-spaced dots onto the t-shirt with my pencil, about half
an inch away from the slits. Each dot will be one inch apart.
So, they look like this. Now I’m going to get a pair of small, sharp
scissors – I’m using embroidery scissors – and I poke a small hole through each of these dots.
Now, your own eyelet kit might work slightly
differently so read the instructions on your own kit, but what I do next is to push an
eyelet through this small hole, with the flat, rounded side facing up. The eyelet pushes
through pretty easily, with the fabric snug around the eyelet, because the fabric is stretchy.
You don’t want to cut your hole too big here! Make sure that the fabric is snug around the eyelet.
Then, I clamp the eyelet plier down onto the eyelet, and –
well that was easy! The eyelet
is now in the fabric! Awesome! I definitely recommend getting one of these if you're going
to be using eyelets in craft projects more than once.
I repeated this process for all the other small holes, until I had done all 12. And
then, I decided that the laces would look better if I had one more set of holes, so
I simply cut up the slit another inch and I added 4 more in the same way as the others.
And now…. I’m going to need some shoelaces. Hmm. Well, I didn’t have any new shoelaces
on hand so…. I went and "borrowed" some from my partner’s running shoes. And don’t
worry. I ordered some more – he’ll never even notice that they were gone.
Then, I pretty much just laced up the shoelaces through the eyelets exactly like how you’d
lace up a shoe! So, I went through the top two eyelets first,
then underneath and up through the opposite eyelet, and I continued that through all the
eyelets and then tied it off in a bow at the end.
And just a side note, I was worried that the underside of these eyelets would stab me when
I was wearing the top – because they’re not totally flat once installed, they have
these slightly spiky edges – but adding in the shoelaces totally prevents any contact
of the eyelets with skin, so that was absolutely okay.
So, now the real question is – how did I go?
[electronic dance music plays]
I ended up making two versions of this top – one that’s tight-fitting and one that’s
loose-fitting. I actually really like how both turned out, but they both definitely
give a different kind of look. I think the loose-fitting one is the one that's more appropriate
to wear to a family dinner, for instance. But I still really like both of them. Whichever
one you end up making sort of depends on what kind of look you are going for!
So my conclusion is: MAKE! If you want to make this an easier project, or you're new
to DIY-ing your own clothes, then you don’t even have to make your own t-shirt from scratch,
you can just use one that you've found at the thrift store, or one that you already
own! OH and by the way, if you haven’t noticed
it already – I have a brand new youtube banner!! The banner is by an amazing young
artist called Serena, whose work you can find at these other places! And I have to go through
the small details in this banner, because there's a lot of things that you probably
won’t notice if you just have a glance at the header on my channel.
So, cartoon me is wearing 4 different make thrift buy items – there's my heart cutout
top from episode #28, my lace suspender shorts from episode #21, my ombre socks from episode
#34 and my light up shoes from episode #25. And then, wielding a giant sewing needle,
I’m fighting a giant clothes monster, which is like my Style Pile come to life! The monster
is made up of all different pieces of clothing, and sewing pins, and it has a zipper for its
mouth, and its uvula – uvula?? – that dangly bit at the back of your throat - is
a clothing tag!
Plus we’re also like, fighting in space, so, it’s kinda the best thing ever. Thank
you so much Serena and definietly go and check out her other artwork!
Anyway, thank you for watching and I’ll see you all in my next video. Bye!
Thank you so much to all of my Patrons for helping to make this video possible. To support
me on Patreon, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria.