Hey guys and welcome to a new thrift flip episode
basically in this series
I turn ugly thrifted clothing into
slightly less ugly thrifted clothing
through the magical power of my mediocre sewing skills
I get so many questions about how I find cool stuff at thrift stores and
While some of it is just me getting lucky
and finding like the perfectly fitting
Beautiful vintage dress or whatever.
A lot of the times it comes down to me making small
Alterations to clothes so that they fit me well
and they look a little bit more modern and
less like grandma and more grandma chic
you know
so without further ado
I think I have some exciting stuff to transform for you guys today
So let's just hop right in
to the video
So our first fashion victim is this fabulous
Oktoberfest Meets Woodstock dress
I got this from a local thrift store for
$15 and it reminds me of like
if me and Safiya Nygaard fashion styles
had a baby it has this crazy
Bat sleeve that I know Safiya loves
but it also has a little bit of gingham for my picnic-bitch heart
I honestly already think this dress is so cool,
but it is a little bit costumey for my everyday life
So I'm gonna make a couple small alterations today
to turn this into a little bit more of like a reformation inspired
Modern-day picnic bitch dress.
The first thing I'm gonna tackle are these crazy sleeves
Now, I think on another type of dress that was more subdued
these sleeves would actually be a really cool statement
But I feel like with all the patchwork on the dress
that already exists having the patchwork sleeves as well
Makes it a little bit too loud for my taste
farewell beautiful sleeves. I shall see you in another life
* Sad violin music plays :( *
After trimming off the bat sleeves
I hemmed my new shorter sleeves
by folding the fabric up about a quarter-inch
Pinning it down like so
and then stitching all the way around to secure my hem
All right. So here is how the sleeves came out.
Sleeves are like my greatest sewing fear
That and zippers
They're just so confusing to me.
So, you know, at least they came out an even-ish length,
you know, they're like eyebrows
They're not twins. They're
loosely related sisters
to cover up my ever mediocre sewing
I decided to add a puff sleeve detail with this thin piece of elastic
I stretched the elastic around my arm to a tightness
I was comfortable with then cut two equal pieces of that length
Next I pinned the elastic to the sleeve
Making sure that the halfway point on the elastic
matched up with the halfway point on the sleeve
So it would be gathered evenly all the way around
with the dress inside out
I'm sewing a straight line across each elastic
The key is to stretch out the elastic as you sew
make a couple stitches
Stretch out the elastic more so that once the elastic contracts back to its non stretched state
the sleeve fabric will look nice and gathered like so
to put the finishing touches on this dress
I am next going to address this
bodice boob panel situation
I think this crossover design is a really cool concept
But I'm not a huge fan of this
brown floral ribbon that they used.
It feels a little bit arts and craftsy to me
So I'm snipping off the old ribbon and
replacing it with this white frilly ribbon I got from Joanne's
I like that the plain white was simple enough
to not seem overwhelming,
especially with the gingham as the background
But the ruffles still gave it some dimension and texture
To attach the new ribbon
I sewed a simple straight stitch over each piece
Originally, I planned on keeping the gold buttons,
but at this point I felt like the design was still too busy
So I removed them and saved them in my button stash for another project
And here's the finished dress
its transformation from 20th century Oktoberfest
to 19th century milkmaid is at last complete,
jokes aside
As you might be able to tell by my excessive amount of twirling
I'm really happy with how it came out
and it makes me feel like a Disney character
By the way, Disney, I am still available for the role of Mushu
If you guys change your mind just
just putting that out there into the universe
My next thrift flip is inspired by
these cardigans that I've been seeing all over Instagram
I think they sell versions of them in urban outfitters
for like $69. Mm-hmm.
You're 21 Ashley get a hold of yourself
I've also seen them at fancy boutiques for like $200
and I just thought this checks all the boxes for me
It is vintage inspired. It's cropped.
It has detail. It has pearls it has buttons
Mmm so I headed to my local goodwill
and I picked up this red knitted Anne Taylor cardigan for $7
I've honestly seen so many cardigans in this style at thrift stores
So if this is a thrift flip that you guys want to recreate
I think it'll be pretty easy
so the first step in transforming this cardigan
from your mom's wardrobe into
Your hipster ass wardrobe is to crop it.
In order to crop something
I always start by trying on the piece and folding up the bottom
to kind of envision what the new crop silhouette will look like
Then once I have it in the perfect spot
I grab a safety pin and
mark right where I want the new hem to end
from there It's a simple 10 step process
first fold over the old hem up to the safety pin
then pin it in place
Then sew all the way around
Then trim off the excess
then fold down the new hem
Then realize it looks really awkward
then freak out and cut all of it off
then realize it looks even more awkward with a raw hem
Then realize you never should have tried to crop it to begin with
and finally do not forget this step
Accept defeat, and
Realize that this is what your sweater looks like now
and we're just gonna move on with the tutorial
and not talk about it anyways
Now it is time to swap out these plain buttons
for something more fancy
while I was filming my last video
I broke this beautiful pearl necklace that I thrifted and
Like all of the beads are just falling off of it now
luckily after taking its drivers exam this necklace
It did sign up to be an organ donor
So we are legally allowed to harvest its parts
to revitalize another piece of clothing
You are a true hero my son. On our cropped cardigan
I'm gonna be using some of no no no
I'm gonna be replacing
the kind of basic plastic-y buttons
with these little pearls that fell off my beautiful necklace
Replacing the buttons was as easy as me, freshman year of college
I simply snip off the old ones
and use some white thread to attach the pearls in their place
to add even more detail
I added some extra buttonholes in between each of the existing ones
and reinforced the edges with this loopy stitch
Loopy stitch is definitely the official name for this technique.
But basically we're securing the edge so it doesn't unravel
And my final step of course
was to attach the corresponding pearls
on the opposite side of the cardigan
And here is the finished product
the raw hem is admittedly a bit of an L
But if you just focus on the boobs up
I did a pretty okay job, which is coincidentally
Also what God said when he made me
just kidding
He honestly could have done a better job on the boobs upward, too,
like, giving me more mental stability and less acne
But I'm working with what I got
"You're doing great, honey, keep it up"
Thank you
Last up I have this light blue dress
that I picked up from the thrift store for $7
The reason I picked up this dress is I love this color
Right now I'm going through a big pastel phase. Pastel blue, pastel pink, pastel ...
I'm just naming pastel col... you guys know what pastel colors are
I also thought the ruffles on the sleeves and the neckline
were gorgeous and they added a nice kind of vintage
Girly touch to the dress.
When I was thinking of how to transform this
the first thing I wanted to tackle
Is this very strange fit
it has this nearly footlong ruched waistline,
especially because the dress is a bit big on me
It just isn't flattering at all
so
Like the nifty little lazy motherfucker that I am
Instead of trying to take in the sides of this dress
and minimize the waistline and take up the hem instead
I'm just gonna shimmy this dress upwards.
So the waistline becomes an empire
an empire boob line
The waistline is now on my boobs if that makes sense
It's like an empire waistline
ariana grande type
silhouette
At least that's what I'm telling myself in my head
that I look like ariana grande and not
an oversized toddler.
Really it's a fine line these days.
Of course in order to keep the dress held up around my boobs
I'm gonna have to tear out the top part of this dress
and readjust it to accommodate my new neckline
Now, I want to make this dress feel more modern
by making an open neckline rather than
I really close it up conservative one
and also I just find it to be really flattering
on my small boobs.
So I'm thinking for the neckline I'm gonna
Shimmy, this fabric into my armpits
and create essentially this square
trapezoidal
neckline, I think it's quite flattering because it leaves a lot of skin open
but it also maintains the original position of the sleeve and the shoulder seam
Which is always really important when I thrift flipping
because I have no idea
how the hell to sew sleeves back into their sleeve holes
So whatever alterations I make
I always make sure that the sleeves stay in their original position
So now I'm just gonna pin this neckline into place with some safety pins.
I'm using safety pin and not regular pins
because they don't stab you when you take off your dress
Hence the name safety pin
actually because they are safer than regular pins. Oh
subscribe for more incredibly useless facts
Hello and welcome to this sexy sexy close-up of my armpit
Basically, what I'm doing here is tucking and folding away any excess fabric
And securing it in place with a safety pin
Sorry, my voiceover is really vague for this part.
But I'm kind of just eyeballing it and improvising as I go
next I took off the dress and got to sewing
I opted for hand sewing rather than a machine because
there were so many layers to keep track of
I figured I could use the extra control
I essentially just stitch what I had already pinned in place
and then flipped the dress inside out and trimmed off
this clusterfuck of extra fabric
Miraculously after that very improvised sewing process
this dress came out super cute if I may say so myself
I always do feel like you're doing these voiceovers
because it's essentially just be jerking off myself and telling myself like
- Good job, Ashley - Thanks, Ashley, that's very kind of you
But, anyways, I'm really proud of this one.
I look ready to release some chart-topping singles and spend thousands of dollars on pony tail extensions
Alright, and that is everything that I have for you guys today
I hope this inspires you
even if you have bad thrift stores around you
to give it a shot like you can pick up a
A honestly really ugly piece of clothing
and with a few simple alterations
turn it into something really cool
Also, just one of the coolest feelings is
wearing something that you've actually designed
and sewed. It feels really special
So, I hope you guys give it a shot.
If not, I just hope you enjoyed watching me
fool around with the sewing machine
No, nope.
That would be a really painful fetish actually.
Let's not think any more about that
Thank you guys so much for watching
and I'll see you guys next week
Bye!