How To Restyle Vintage Clothing

In this video, I'm going to show you how to do vintage restyling. I'm going to go through a few tips, what you can do, in terms of when you buy vintage clothes. So, on this dress, originally, it was a full-length, floor-length dress with really long sleeves, and because there were actually some damages made to this dress, what I've done is I've gathered fabrics to cover the holes.

And to do this, simply working from the inside and making sure your sewing is not shown from the outside, and also at the same time, gathering the fabric and pulling it towards the hole of the damage. You can do it just so it balances out for the whole dress. I've kind of done some on the bottom and the back.

As you can see, you don't need to be a great sewer to do this, as long as you make sure that no seams and stitching is shown on the front. So, this is a great, quite a simple way of gathering, when you have something really big and floaty. And again, we've done the same on this dress, to create some shapes and gathers.

We've repeated using the same process of just gathering fabrics together and stitching it from the inside. For the next piece, sometimes, you choose a dress that's not necessarily the right length for you, so what we do is just a simple kind of cutting, measuring, to the right length that you desire. And what we do is if you don't have a sewing machine or overlocker, all you can do is, like, folding twice so your raw edge is tucked in and just a simple top stitch.

And for this dress, with the excess fabric I have, I've created a brooch. And you can make the brooch by gathering the fabrics together and giving it either a safety pin or a brooch fastening and then you have an extra bit of accessories, and you can use it on another piece of clothing. So, the next example I'd like to show you is you get a quite a lot of long skirts from vintage clothes and you don't necessarily have to wear it as a skirt.

So, in this example, what I've done is I've actually changed it into a dress. Simply by adding a strap, it can be a ribbon, elastic or the same fabric, and I've just taken that across and added the excess fabric from the hem to use as extra embellishment for the strap. The three main tips are choose the length that's going to suit your personal style, and second, gathering, pinning and creating shapes to cover, and finally, just be creative and choose something that suits your own personal style.

And that's how you do vintage restyling. .