Four ways to upcycle items in your wardrobe, according to an expert
WORDS BY DEANA STEPANIAN
“Something so simple can make a huge impact!”
The nine-day extravaganza that is PayPal Melbourne Festival is quickly approaching. Outside of its world-class runways, the festival will also feature interactive experiences, workshops, seminars and live entertainment. As an official and returning media partner of PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival, which runs between March 3 and 11, we’re proud to continue spotlighting some of the talented designers and creatives involved.
When it comes to upcycling, there’s truly no right or wrong way to revamp your items. Hot glue gun or not (god, I miss grade six art class), there are dozens of creative and practical techniques you can apply to clothing and accessories.
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This year, multidisciplinary, craft-based designer, Kitiya Palaskas, will be hosting Re-Make, an upcycled fashion workshop championing circular fashion and celebrating the themes of reuse and recycle.
The hands-on garment customisation experience aims to share the various ways of altering items once considered outworn. “You’ll get the chance to upcycle a garment of your choice, giving it new life and diverting it from landfill,” Kitiya tells me. Below you’ll find some of Kitiya’s favourite ways to upcycle items in her wardrobe.
Patches and trims
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If you’re new to fashion upcycling, one of the [simplest] methods you can experiment with is to use patches or trims to add flair to an old garment. You can purchase embroidered patches everywhere – they never go out of style. Either iron them on or stitch them on with a needle and thread.
They’re great for decorating outerwear, but I also love them [on] denim, especially jeans and shorts. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even try creating your own patches from felt and using appliqué stitches like blanket stitches to attach them to your garments.
Adding trims and ribbons to your garments is another great way to transform simple pieces of clothing into statement pieces… I recommend stitching them onto the hems, necklines, collars or pockets of dresses, shirts and pants. For my wedding, I took a plain ’90s-style mini dress and stitched some lace floral trim around the hem and neckline to give it a retro, ’60s feel. Something so simple can make a huge impact!
Dyeing
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Now that you’ve mastered some simple upcycling techniques, I recommend giving dyeing a try. There are so many different dyeing techniques to try: natural dyeing, tie-dyeing, bleaching… you name it. It’s a great way to give new life to tired-looking garments, cover stains and also customise the colour of your clothing.
An easy place to start is by using simple garment dyes that you can buy from your local craft store and dyeing an entire garment one colour in a big tub or, even easier, in your washing machine. After looking for ages for the perfect pink boilersuit to wear to work, I ended up using this method to dye a white denim jumpsuit to [a] perfect pink shade.
Once you’ve tried that, you could move on to something a little more adventurous and try splash dyeing, which is a method where you take standard garment dyes, put them in squeezy bottles and literally splash or squirt the dye all over a light-coloured garment…[creating] a [splatter] effect.
Iron-on decals
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My favourite way to give old clothing a makeover is to create decorative iron-on decals using my Cricut Maker machine. I’m a huge fan of the classic chain-stitched Nudie Suits, so this is my take on that. After designing my decals in [Adobe] Illustrator, I send them through to be cut on my Cricut machine and then use a heat press to decorate my garments with them. I just LOVE the way they look and they’re totally washable too.
Shoe paint
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Upcycling doesn’t only have to apply to clothing – there are lots of ways to transform old accessories. One simple method for upcycling shoes is to use shoe paints. There’s special paint for leather and non-leather shoes that you can source pretty easily online. I love using this method on shoes I’ve thrifted that are an awesome style, but [are] a gross colour, or… a bit tarnished and old. After cleaning and prepping the shoes, it’s as simple as painting on a new design.
You can find out more about Kitiya’s PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival workshop here and explore the Festival’s full program here.
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