Thrift Flip ✨ DIY Lace-Up Cardigan and Mini Dress From Men's Clothes - Clothes Upcycle

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Recreateful channel. So I'm currently working on quite a large project and I need some instant gratification so that's why I thought I'm going to do a thrift flip. So these are the two items that I'm going to flip today and these are the ideas that I have for them. The first item that I'm going to flip is actually this jumper that I'm wearing right now. So let me show you how to turn a basic sort of shirt like that into this really cool cardigan. So the first couple of things I need to do to transform this top is to crop it at my desired length then cut right through the front middle and cut out the neckline bias tape here and then basically cut out every existing seam of the top to make it all separate and so that I can put my own seams in it. So now that we've taken the top apart this is a good opportunity to trace these basic sort of pattern pieces for future use but what I'm going to do next is I'm just going to basically pinch in two stripes of the front panel like that straight across and sew an overlock stitch all along it. So I think this is looking really good. So now I'm just going to continue with the sleeves and basically do the exact same thing. I'm going to fold them in half and sew along this edge four times with a zigzag stitch and after that I can start reassembling the top. Next I'm reattaching the back to the front along the shoulder seam but now that we have made this a little smaller this won't fully line up like you can see here so this is now much shorter and it's also smaller on the side so what I'm going to do is I'm going to attach that along the shoulder here and then cut this out. So now that the back and front pieces are joined at the shoulder seam it looks like this little vest sort of situation and what I'm going to do next is I'm going to insert the sleeves by spreading the bodice part open like that across the shoulder seam and then just insert the sleeve in here with the wrong sides touching and again sewing four rows of zigzag stitches across that entire thing. So now that the sleeve is reattached to the top I'm just folding the sleeve over and aligning the side seams and sewing four zigzag stitches around this edge here. I do have some excess fabric along the sides here so I'm just going to cut that out first as well and then sew all along this side. This is what the top looks like now I actually love it so much even as just like a cardigan I think it's well cute but obviously we are going to continue so the next steps now are going to be to hem the bottom and all the outside edges and so basically the neckline the front area and then all around the bottom area again four times um doing zigzag stitches all along this entire area and then we just have to create the loops and attach them feed some elastic through and this top is finished. So for the loops for the closure of the cardigan I'm going to take the surplus fabric that I cut off the top earlier and create 20 little rectangles and I think I'm going to do six centimeter by two and a half centimeter hoping that this is wide and long enough and then basically sew four times the zigzag stitch again and around the long edges of the rectangles and then attach them to the front. So it is the next day because I was losing patience and daylight yesterday however I did manage to finish all of the loops so all that is left to do now is to basically sew them into a loop by sewing along this edge here flipping them right sides out and so we're sewing them right sides together and then we've got one loop without any raw edges showing and then I just simply attach them to the front of my cardigan and I'm going to make sure to obviously kind of like distribute them equally and then once they are attached we only need to feed some elastic through and this flip is done. So now that the top is finished and I tried it on I actually realized I do want it to fit a little more snug so all I did is I quickly sewed a basting stitch along that area here and kind of making the sleeves a little tighter and the armpit as well and then the sides and all I'm going to do now is cutting along that seam I tried it on it fits well and then just zigzag again four times over those edges so that it just fits a little nicer and tighter so I should have done that earlier I haven't but this is how I rectify it. So now the top is done and I have to say I actually love it I think it looks very cool and it kind of makes me feel like a baddie when I'm everything but a baddie and so yeah I really love it so now let me show you how it looks on. Right so now on to the next flip which are these men's pyjama bottoms they are really nice and soft and I was first thinking to create a skort out of them but because I already did that on this channel I'm now thinking to create a mini dress from them instead so first of all I'm just going to take them apart and I'm going to just use my scissors for that instead of the seam ripper they are quite large on me so and that should be fine and then I'm just going to trace a dress I already own onto the fabric sew it all together create some straps and then we should be done so hopefully this is a quick one however I have thought that in the past about other projects that then turned out to not be so quick so I guess we'll see. Right so the pieces are pretty much all attached together now I just have one slight issue and that being that the back panel somehow turned out much smaller than the other pieces so now I'm thinking I might have to slit that in half and put some more fabric in between and I've also realized because I cut out the top pieces not with a stretch but sideways they are actually not stretchy enough to fit over my shoulders I don't think so I will probably have to insert a zipper now as well. Luckily I have enough zippers to choose from and I think I'm gonna go with this one it's an exposed one but that's gonna work fine. So the skirts are now attached to the tops and next I'm just gonna hem the bottoms and tops of the pieces I'm just gonna do that with a single fold and once that's all hemmed I'm going to insert the zipper first by sewing these two pieces and these pieces right sides together with a zipper foot and then basically just close off the side seams of the dress and then create straps and we're done. So the dress is nearly finished I have just tried it on and realized it's a little bit too big so what I did is the following I basically am taking it in along the front seams on both of them so I've just kind of like tried it on and pinned it to fit a little more snug around the top and waist on both sides. I opted for the middle seams rather than side seams because I already fitted the zipper and the only thing that's left to do next is to create and attach the straps which I'm not going to show you you've seen that loads of times on this and other channels and so yeah let's just skip to the final results. you