Waste not, want not

Recently, through talking to my friend Life by Liza, I have become very aware of the environment and how we can help by making small changes to our every day lives.

It occurred to me on a particularly busy day at work, that we live in such a ‘throw away’ world.  Everything is replaceable.  This is such a recent phenomenon and it’s not a good one.  What happened to having your favourite outfit that you would wear time and time again for special occasions? Or those favourite jeans that you patched when you got a hole in, because you would never find a pair that fitted just right?

A person’s clothes provide an insight into their personality, their journey in life.  I like the idea that garments themselves can inherit their wearer’s history and personality.  That patch on a jean knee holds the story of that picnic when you fell off your bike out with your friends in the summer, and the paint splatter on your checked shirt is a reminder of painting you new room.

With that, I want to buy less and give my clothes some history.  Maybe I’ll save some money, but that isn’t what this is about (though it will be nice!).  Eventually if we all did this, demand would be lower for clothes, changing the way we shop, and how brands manufacture.

So… onto my fist challenge… the customise.

During a recent run of work I was given a lovely navy blue puffer jacket, emblazoned with branding for the company.  Obviously this was great for that week, but after that, the jacket became useless.  However, I had different plans.  Surely I could just peel off the branding, I thought!  Wrong.  This was stuck fast, so I have to come up with a rather more creative plan.

Here are the before images of the jacket – (branding censored just incase!)

For this I needed:

1 pair navy corduroy trousers (second hand)
1 reel of navy cotton
1 reel brown cotton
Scissors
Tape measure
1 branded puffer jacket
Gumption!

Off I headed to the charity shop where low and behold, blue corduroy trousers were being sold for £4.50.  Bargain!  I have a constant supply of thread at home so I can’t be sure exactly how much I use but it doesn’t come to much.

 

After fiddling around and laying the trousers every which way on the jacket, I decided to use that gumption and just cut up the outside seam of each leg.  This gave me a lot more fabric to play with, then I started pinning.  The branding was conveniently all above the first puff, which gave me a level line all the way around to follow and aim for.

To my surprise it started to take shape rather quickly and I mustered some of that gumption again and started cutting!  Admittedly I did get a tad scissor happy and patching was needed under the arms, but no-one knows that isn’t a design feature!

Once I had a shape cut and pinned all together I ran up some seams using brown thread to add some detail and laid it back over the jacket. Now came the tricky part – sewing the corduroy cape like thing to the jacket.  Obviously in manufacture, they would sew this all together before adding lining and padding, however I didn’t have this luxury.  With some patience and careful invisible hand sewing I managed to attach the corduroy in time to wear meeting my boyfriends friends for the first time – it was a freezing day!

It turned out, one of these friends worked for the well known brand emblazoned under the corduroy on my jacket and loved that I found a use for it.  It started conversation about what I do for a job, that week in general, and how half the jacket had started its life with me in a charity shop.

My point is, that if I had bought a similar jacket in a shop; yes it would be brand new, and I wouldn’t have had to spend time covering logos; but, it would just be a puffer jacket, like every other puffer jacket.  This branded one would be wasted, as perhaps would the corduroy trousers. More importantly, in spending a bit of time, I recycled two garments and got myself a warm fashionable jacket for about £4.50!