The Joys of Repurposing
By Megan Mahoney
No clothing leaves my house without my reviewing it for repurposing potential first. Ever since I was little, I have challenged myself by turning what other people see as undesirable into something new and fun. What began as rifling through the recycling to find an egg carton I could turn into a car, has become a passion for repurposing clothes by sewing. Repurposing is an amazing way to refresh your closet without contributing to the negative aspects of the fashion industry. Typically, my repurposing process involves several components. Initially, I gather clothes - either donations from friends and family or through thrifting. I look for pieces that have interesting textures, complicated details, colors I am into, and other things like that. I throw them into a designated corner of my room, so that I can turn to it in the future when searching for fabric or a base. After finding the pieces, I move in one of two directions: drawing inspiration from the clothes and thinking of something to turn it into, or beginning with an idea and finding clothes that I would be able to transform into my new vision. After being home for several months, I have spent hours at my sewing machine churning out new creations. Below are a few of the pieces that I made through repurposing. Hopefully, you can draw inspiration from them to recreate similar projects!
In an ode to middle school, I dug the notorious article of clothing which was critical to those few years: spandex which we wore under our shorts, to meet dress code. Although it was sad to cut up that memory, I decided to give them a new – and cuter - life. The athletic material with great stretch is similar to bikinis and sports bras, so I kept the elastic waistband, but turned them upside down to create a new shape. I used the scrap fabric that I cut off the back to make some (less than perfect) straps.
I felt I had to include this one because this shirt is probably one of the easiest ways you can repurpose basic T-shirts to make them more interesting. I made this shirt last summer after I thrifted some fun graphic tees. It is as simple as cutting two shirts down the center and then sewing the opposite halves together. There are infinite combinations of shirts and even where you cut the two (or more) parts.
After seeing this scrunched look everywhere, I decided to give it a try, and it was surprisingly simple. So far, I have included it on several shirts, a skirt, and a dress. For the shirt shown above, I took one of my dad’s old shirts, cut the neckline, bottom, and sleeves. I hemmed the shoulders and neck but decided to leave the bottom edge raw. Then all I added was adjustable scrunching to both sides – making the shirt far more interesting than how it started.
After finding an old off the shoulder shirt (pictured on the left) with a shirred top band, I decided to transform it into a skirt inspired by Love Shack Fancy’s ruffled miniskirts. Last summer I learned how to shirr on my sewing machine, but it’s quite complicated and I jumped at the opportunity to use some fabric which already had it. To make the skirt, I cut off the shirt’s sleeves, and sewed up the armpit area to create the skirt form. Then, to add the ruffle, I chopped up the sleeves, using every bit of fabric, and sewed that on. The bottom of the sleeves had the matching trim on it, so I resewed that back on to the ruffle layer, and there was just barely enough to go around. (Top pictured from Lovers and Friends)