Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Hand Sewing in Japan

Something that the Japanese do that I find very odd is they throw their old clothes away. And by "old" I mean "practically brand new". There are a few thrift stores, but they are not common and they don't have the big trucks around that pick up old stuff and deliver it to the thrift store. I like to make new things from old things, "up-cycle" as it's called. Making dresses for my girls from old shirts and bags from old jeans.
I have had a fun time raiding the trash pile for bags of "old" clothes.
I have gotten 3 loads (4 bags total) of used clothes. It seems like there are quite a bit more clothes bags at my apartment. Due to that there are lots of internationals at our apartment and when they go back to their home country they have to throw away the clothes that they are not going to take with them. I will have to throw away the clothes that I don't end up using and clothes that don't fit the kids anymore, when we leave, unless I can find someone to take them. 


The first thing I wanted to make was a maxi dress out of some guys L shirts, but had a hard time getting the top(bust) part of the dress to work. The first shirt turned into a tank top for my husband. He likes it, its his night shirt. I got some fabric scissors and sewing tools at the 100 yen store, and the scissors are really decent for being 100 yen.

The second try on the dress top... that didn't work either. The shirt I was using as pattern was not the best, I should have used a different one. I really liked doing the sleeves. This shirt had long sleeves. I cut them off and put them next to the new sleeve holes and moved them up until they were the same size as the new sleeve hole. The sleeves are around the elbow. It doesn't fit my large bust (which is only going to get larger when breast feeding starts).

One of the more fun things I did was this crop-top-cover-up-add-sleeves-to-shirt-thing. Its made from 2 shirts. The brown collar is from a guys polo shirt and the stripped is from a lady's large shirt. I used both of the bottom halves of the shirts for a rag rug that didn't work out as I had hoped. I will have to take the rug apart and do it over again. The shirt thing is really comfy and will be nice for wearing things that are too low. I added a bit of lace around the bottom between the two layers of shirt. It wasn't quite long enough to cover my breasts without the added brown at the bottom.

My next project was a dress for my oldest daughter. Its made from a large lady's button up shirt. I made most of it by hand. I transitioned to sewing machine at this point.  I used one of her shirts as a pattern for the bodice. The bottom was just what was left over of  the original bottom of the shirt. I put 3 pleats on each side of the buttons instead of gathering or cutting the shirt part to fit. I don't like this dress very much, its not very girly, and looks very tom-boy-ish. It was fun to make and I was very excited that it fit her well and that she seems to like it.

No comments:

Post a Comment