hi i'm ashley and welcome to crafting the future a sustainable design workshop series in celebration
of the new tommy x timbaland collection this collection was designed with sustainable design
practices in mind including upcycling fabric scraps that otherwise would have gone to waste
and sourcing ethical fabrics so in this series we're going to be doing two different workshops
one focused on upcycling and one focused on natural dyes we're going to be making
our own diy clothes with techniques that you guys can use at home as well
first up we're going to be doing some upcycling with designer nicole
mclaughlin i'm excited to see what we make today so let's go in and meet her
hi my name is nicole mclaughlin and i am a designer who upcycles so i take existing and
vintage pieces and rework them into new pieces hey ashley how's it going good how are you
good thank you so much for having me over today's workshop is going to be super fun and we're going
to give you all the steps so you can repeat it at home so today i figured we'd turn these
vintage tommy hill quicker pieces into a really cute pair of shorts this is my personal process i
encourage you to have a lot of fun with it and if you want to try something out don't be scared all
right sounds like a plan let's get started then sounds good so the tools that you'll need to do
this are pins and clips scissors tailors chalk a lighter measuring tapes a bungee weights and
a hammer an exacto knife or a seam ripper thread grommets but most importantly you need a thrifted
or vintage jacket so i thrifted these pieces and i just thought they were so cool there's so much
on it to work with so a ton of branding some nice pocket details some contrast stitching here which
i think we could kind of play up like we gotta save the logo from the front at least for sure
so for step two we have to open up all the seams here just to give ourselves a bit more
space for when we're cutting our pattern and to do that i'm going to use my seam ripper
and basically you'll just pick up all the stitches that are already existing in there so at this
point you want to see all the material laid out see what you have and then you create the design
yes exactly is it okay if i just start over here honestly for this you could start anywhere so
we're just gonna take off the sleeves and then take out the sides of it so how did you get
started designing so i was actually working in the fashion industry it was really during that
time seeing the wasteful side of the industry i wanted to try to find interesting ways of taking
use things and secondhand things and try to give it another purpose it was just amazing
to see the transformation of the pieces i was using i think that's just what inspired me
and i definitely feel lucky that i get to do this that's my job it's crazy how much like the sleeve
i know it seems so small but then once you open it up like there's seriously a huge canvas here
at last our jacket is all dissected so what are we doing next and so now is more of like the fun
part of patchworking and just trying to figure out like the overall composition of what the
shorts are gonna look like where do you source all the materials that you use in your clothing
so i love going to thrift stores and then also a lot of the times my friends will like give me
their old stuff if they don't want it anymore oh that's the coolest because it like already has
life in it yes you know it has a story already and it's not taking away that story it's only like
adding and giving it more longevity i think we should try to keep in the spirit of tommy hilfiger
so i think by keeping in the logos and really just focusing on the red white and blue it'll
definitely feel like a tommy hilfiger piece even though it's reworked i have our pattern piece here
already cut out and so it's right and left where did you find this pattern or how would you make
your own start in your closet if you have an old pair of shorts that you want to take apart
and just kind of see what pattern pieces come from that or you can look online there's plenty of free
digital ones that you can download and be able to make this at home awesome what if like we did
the logos if it was vertical vertical like that could be kind of fun that could be cool let's see
now we're gonna pin it just to keep it in place if you start pinning and your material is moving
you can always put down some weights on it and if you don't have these at home you can use like
a textbook you can use your textbook use your phone you can use your sibling your pet your pet
well so now that we have everything laid down and we like our composition it's
time for step four which is to chalk it up and then cut out our pattern
you'll basically just go around the edge the chalk is good because you'll do it and then
you can erase it afterwards we will just follow those lines and cut it out and then we're gonna
take the scrap material from this and add it to our other legs look at that this looks
great and i think now we just have to repeat this step again for the left side of the leg
so when did you get into fashion i mean i know a lot of people really follow you for style
inspiration well i really got into fashion in high school and i wore like the weirdest stuff just
well it wasn't that weird but like it's weird for public high school in maryland right because like
anything is weird for public high school in maryland i think people wear like sweatpants
and stuff to high school and so like if someone dresses up they're like where are you going and
yeah i got into thrifting in college and now i find a lot of inspiration from vintage fashion
like you that's awesome and how is your thrifting experience in new york ben honestly thrifting in
new york is hard because every single person in new york is independent yeah exactly so yeah our
left leg is coming together this section is so sick i love like the texture plus
the buttons on that side i think it's time for step five which is to get on the sewing machine
the technique that you're doing right here we're not folding the garment inside out
and then stitching on the inside we're doing some visual stitching doing some top stitching exactly
so you've got a bit of a behemoth of a sewing machine but it's totally also okay to do this
on like a regular home sewing machine right yes for sure it can be kind of finicky and
you know sometimes it starts making sounds that you're like i don't know what that means
once you get over that like initial fear it's not too bad ashley do you want to try
to do some sewing yes i will try my best yeah jump on here i feel like sewing and
platform boots is like driving in platform beards you know still better than flip flops though
amazing so we finished our sewing crushed it we're now just going to do our final touches and
put in the grommets at the waistband so you can pull your bungee to cinch the waist so i'll just
mark out the little spot here and a little spot here and that's where we know that we're gonna
put our grommets so the grommet is this little metal thing and this is basically to make sure
our fabric doesn't fray around the hole right exactly and it just gives it a nice cleaner finish
and there's this little almost like a bed for it and that basically will lock it
into place this is a good like anger management strategy oh yeah
and we can just finish up our waistband which would be to just fold it over and stitch
amazing so the last step is to just feed our bungee through this basically you'll stick
it in through one of the grommets and feed it all the way around pull it out the other end
and you can always just burn off some of the edges here um just to make sure it won't fray
everyone loves this stuff and like they film it they're like let's get a shot of the fire
all right and then we're gonna put in our cord lock
nice
cinch it up and then you can tie it either together or i'll just
put little individual knots on the ends there she is we have shorts that we made
today we turned a tommy jacket into a pair of shorts we did that by really
disassembling all the parts of it cutting out our pattern pieces sewing it together and then
adding on some really nice final touches it looks so good how do you like it i mean i'm
so impressed with how the placement of all these different details came together we got our logos
we got our sideways logo on the back and this pocket is so cool this is like the real pocket
in the original jacket and then this might be my favorite like the back hanger loop of the jacket
we can use it so if you wanted to clip like your keys or something onto it you can do that too
upcycling is about giving something a second life so rare that you find something that is
truly one-of-a-kind or you make something that's truly one-of-a-kind you can look up tutorials on
how to pretty much upcycle anything and it was really cool because we were able to use
every element of the jacket thank you so much tommy for supporting me
and my upcycling journey i hope that you guys go check out some more upcycling videos
thank you guys so much for watching if you'd like to try this out yourself we left all of
the steps and materials that you need in the description down below and don't forget to
check out the new tommyx timberland collection all right i'll see you guys in the next workshop