What to do with clothes lying in your closet

By Li Chuen 

Every time you open your closet, you see the same clothes hanging there for a few months and also for years. Worn out, out of fashion and brand new clothes fill your closet but you can never seem to find anything to wear or find it hard to throw them away thinking ‘I’ll wear it one day’. Sometimes, you don’t even know why you bought the particular clothes in the first place.

Fret not! There are many ways to solve the issues with your unworn or old clothes. Today, I will share with you some tips on creating something out of your clothes.  Who knows, you might be able to come up with a few new designs of your own!

1. T-Shirts

Love the funky design out your shirt but it is too old to be worn outside? Don’t throw it away just yet as you can make a pillow case out of it. A few simple steps will do the magic!

First, find a suitable t-shirt from your wardrobe that can fit the size of your pillow. An oversized t-shirt would be preferable. After that, turn the t-shirt inside out and leave an extra inch from your pillow measurement. Then, sew a straight line and cut off the remaining fabric. Finally, turn the t-shirt back out and put in the pillow. Now, you have a funky and cool t-shirt pillow case!

2. Jeans

You can create many things out of a pair of jeans as it is easy to alter such as transforming it into a three quarter pants or a pair of shorts. Give your jeans a new look by patching on embellishments or bleach the jeans to give it a washed out feel.  You can also make a denim bag out of your jeans.

Here is a link on many ways you can create something out of a pair of old jeans.

3. Dress

Killing two birds with one stone, cut the dress to half at the waist area and you would get a new top and a skirt. That gives you two new outfits! Besides that, you can also turn the dress into a jumper skirt with minor and fuss free alteration.

In general, it’s very easy for you to revamp and recreate your wardrobe with some basic sewing skills. What you can gain from this is that you can save lots of money buy spending less on clothes as altering your outfits will give a whole new look or design to it. Your friends will not notice it too!

There are many websites on the Internet that gives you simple tutorial on creating new things out of your old clothes. For starters, do visit Cut Out + Keep at www.cutoutandkeep.net for more step by step tutorials.

Next week: The pros and cons of branded goods.