Ethical OOTD.

OOTD is fashion blog talk for 'outfit of the day' in case you weren't sure!  

I picked up this lovely new dress in the Nomads sale.  It's lovely and soft and cool, perfect for swishing about in on hot days.  It's Fair trade too!  The dress is sold as a midi, but I'm 5 foot 1, so it's a maxi on me! 

It's still available on the Nomads website if you want to grab one for yourself, in this turquoise colour, and there's a terracotta version too.

Dress £24, Nomads.  Shoes 2nd hand Birkenstocks.

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My second hand, charity shopped wardrobe.

Most of my wardrobe is filled with second hand clothes, here are some of my recent charity shop outfits, 

I rediscovered this fabulous seventies crochet shawl in a box when we moved.  We lived in the same house until I was 27 and we had lovely lady neighbours on each side, Aunty Betsy and Aunty Rose (they both had husbands, Uncle John and Uncle Bill, who sadly died years ago).   Aunty Rose had a fabulous vegetable garden (she still does, she's still digging aged 90 odd!) and Aunty Betsy had a wonderful vintage wardrobe.  I'm lucky to have inherited some of her lovely things over the years, this is one of them.  Look at that fringe, it makes me feel giddy!  

This second hand cardigan has just the right amount of softness and I wear it loads.  

99p plus postage, Ebay.

This was from a tiny charity shop that has a pound rail, my favourite!  I love mustard at the moment and this top was originally from Next.  I'm going to chop that annoying elasticised waist off though!

£1, charity shop.

These lovely brown T-bar shoes looked like they hadn't been worn.  The brand is 'ecco', who make exactly the kind of granny shoes I favour for my wide, high-arched little feet.  

£3.99, charity shop.

Tell me about your favourite charity shop outfits?!  

And check out my charity shop finds on Instagram!

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My crochet stripey harmony shawl.

I love love love my new crochet shawl.  In my head I call it my crazy parrot wings shawl, because the colours and the pattern the variegated yarn made looks a bit like parrot feathers.

Made using - Yarnfair Stripes yarn in colourway 70304, 3 50g balls (exactly!) and a 4mm crochet hook.

Pattern - Harmony Shawl free crochet pattern by Bodhi Sasa on Ravelry.

Made while watching - Practical Magic, Sunday Kitchen, The Flash and Doctor Who.

Time Taken - 3 evenings, 1 morning. 

This is the best I can do for an action shot!  (usually I would take a mirror photo, but we don't have a mirror at the moment!)

Here it is with my mustard Harmony shawl.  My mustard manta-ray shawl and my crazy parrot wings shawl!  I love this pattern, I'm going to make more I'm sure!

What have you been making?

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Charity Shopping, My Second Hand Wardrobe #2.

Here are some more of my second hand dresses.

This is a H&M tunic/dress (I think it's a top, but I'm 5 foot 1, so it's a knee length dress for me!).  It has a wrap top, which I've sewed up because it was showing too much cleavage!  £3 plus postage, Ebay.

 

Flowery, Asda dress.  £2, charity shop.

 

These Birkenstocks have been my favourite summer shoes and cost between £40 and £60 new.  £15 including postage, Ebay.

Have you bought any lovely second hand clothes lately?

Charity Shopping, My Second Hand Wardrobe #1.

All my clothes, or nearly all my clothes, come from charity shops or ebay.  

I thought I'd show you some of the lovely things I've bought second hand recently.

 

This dress was originally from Debenhams, it's a little big, I didn't try it on because there was a big queue for the changing room, I might take it in using my sewing machine.  £2, charity shop.

This cotton Florence and Fred dress is lovely and cool for the summer.  £2 plus postage, Ebay.

I have lots more to come! 

Do you buy second hand clothes?

The Mending Pile.

I have a mending pile as high as the sky.  Things go in and rarely come out.  Or they come out to be worn, and holes ignored!

But as I am starting the year off in a tidy and organised manner I thought it might just be time to sort it out.

Jeans have been patched...

Armpit holes sewn up...

Lace sewn back on...

Straps reattached...busts taken in...

Blouses resized...(I bought this blouse second hand for £1.75, but it was a size 24, I knew I could easily take it in by just sewing down the sides, it's lovely now!)...

And pompom ears popped back into place.

I have 1 pair or jeans, 3 tops, a dress and a pair of gloves to wear.  It's almost like going shopping for a new outfit, but without spending any money!

Do you mend your clothes?  Or do you just plan to and never get round to it (like I usually do!)?

Tie Die Duuuuude...

This weekend it was lovely hot weather so I knew if I did some dying it would dry quickly.  I've had this turquoise canvas bag for ages...it came backpacking with me a couple of years ago where it got all sorts of yellow and brown and black stains on it.  It's the perfect size so I decided to dye it and bought some dylon machine dye in Antique Grey.  I popped it in the machine with my bag and then thought hang on, I could dye more stuff at the same time and had a quick raid of my bedroom.  I found 4 cotton hankies to dye, and a pair of knickers! Yep that's right, I now have tie dye pants!  They make me laugh...A Lot!

Before:

After:

The blue zips on the bag didn't dye, so I might replace them, or I might sew buttons all over the bag, which might distract attention from the bright blue zips! 

Here are my tie dyed hankies!  I'm sooooo pleased with them!  I used rubber bands to tie them, which worked really well.  I had a peek at them in the middle of the dying process and it didn't look like the tie dying had worked, so I was very happy and surprised to see it actually had!

To the right you can see my glorious tie dye underwear!  I'm not usually a fan of showing my undies off online but I'll make an exception this once!  I also dyed the NY t-shirt my mum brought me back from her holidays.  It was Very White which isn't wise for me, so I saved a little of the machine dye (I thought it would be too dark if I put it in the machine and I was right!) mixed it with salt in a bucket and hand dyed the t-shirt, which I will now be able to wear without fear of getting chocolate, mud or pen all over it (actually, I probably still will it just won't show up as much!)

Ethical Clothing Pledge...

While I was randomly clicking about on the web I came across Isis' blog and saw that she has created an Ethical Clothing Pledge, which you can read more about here

I pledge to only wear clothing that is one or more of the following:

1. Pre-loved

2. Handmade (preferably by me)

3. Reconstructed

4. Made with ethical / environmentally friendly materials

5. Made by a company with strong ethical policy & workers' rights

* Companies with environmentally friendly practices (such as cutting down on waste/energy/water) get brownie points

* If I get one little inkling of sweatshop labour, I'm outta there!

* Above all though, I think the most important thing is reducing the amount of things we use in the first place. Not purchasing ANOTHER piece of clothing just for the sake of it is the biggest statement we can make.

That's the pledge, up there! I'm very glad to find it, because it echoes a lot of what I think about clothing and buying clothing. If you read this bog you'll know that I keep my eye on what I buy, and I buy mostly 2nd hand clothes anyway. But recently I've found myself tempted by shiny beautiful new clothes and thoughts that when I get a job I'll buy new clothes, I think a pledge like this will remind me to 'stay strong' and avoid all such unnecessary purchases!

What do you think? Is anyone else part of the Ethical Clothing Pledge?

Clothes recycling week...Day 3...How to Make a Beard out of Tights...

Ok, well this is a little specific, but if you happen to need to make a beard for a costume party, or just for your own amusement, then this is the post for you!

I'm going to someones birthday party and the theme is 'circus' - I'm going as a bearded lady, I already have enough floaty, hippy type clothes and sparkly bits to look like I might belong in the big top, but I refuse to buy a fake fur type beard from a costume shop (fake fur is made from all sorts of nasty plasticy stuff!) so I had a look in my fabric mountain and found a lot of old (clean, I might add!) tights that were about the same colour as my hair and a piece of brown corduroy and set to work.

I cut the corduroy to a beard shape and size and attached some elastic to it, to go over my ears to hold it on. I then cut the toes and crotches (urgh! I think crotch is one of the most horrible words ever!) off the tights and cut each leg into two lengthways, then folded each piece in half and cut into them so they went kind of frilly, I then pinned and sewed them onto the beard shape. I made the moustache with some more tights wrapped round wire, so I can bend it into different shapes, and attached it to the top corners of the beard. I also made a plait from some of the left over bits of tights and some embroidery thread and bells I had and attached it to the bottom of the beard.
Back tomorrow with something more normal! honest!

Clothes recycling week...Day 2...Handmade Hankies, Drawstring Bags...

I knew if I said I would post something each day it would never happen - I'm far too disorganised for such a thing!

Yesterday I made some handkerchiefs out of some old PJ bottoms that I'd kept because I liked the pattern. It was really easy - I just cut them into squares and hemmed them on my sewing machine. I also made some little drawstring bags from this purple sparkly netting that was once the top layer of a skirt I had in my more teenage-gothic years! I'm going to use these to hold loose veggies together when I'm food shopping. Also really easy - I just cut it into 2 rectangles, sewed up the sides and threaded ribbon (from the charity shop) through what used to be the hem of the skirt to make the drawstring.

I'll try to get round to posting what I'm making today later! See you then :)

Clothes recycling week...Day 1...Dress to Skirt Upcycling...

To keep myself amused this week I'm going to tackle the mountain that is my fabric stash - lots of it is fabric and lots more of it is clothes that need altering or something mending on them to be wearable again.

Apparently 900, 000 tonnes of clothing is thrown away in the UK each year (thanks, myzerowaste!).

I've had a big clear out of my wardrobes (yes that's a plural on the wardrobes!) and have ebayed some stuff, charity shopped the rest, collected the un-giveawayable stuff (like tights and socks and extremely holey things) to think up uses for later (maybe stuffing for something? Fairy wings from the tights stretched over some wire??!) and kept some things that I really loved but needed to be turned into something more usable - these are the things I'm going to tackle this week!

This dress/tunic thing was in the sales when I still allowed myself into establishments where the word 'sale' is displayed (always deadly) It was down from £10 to £1 so I obviously had to have it, despite it being perhaps the most unflattering item in the history of the universe.


So I'm going to turn in into a skirt. Here's how I did it...

1. cut a little hole through one layer (the layer facing inwards towards your body when you're wearing it)of the material in the hem at top (luckily this dress already had a hem at the top I could use otherwise I would have had to make one first).

2. attach a piece of elastic to a safety pin, thread it into your hole and wriggle it all the way through the hem until it comes out of the hole again. (if you were being v. environmentally friendly you could make a drawstring, maybe out of the straps to tread that through in the same way - but I had the elastic so I may as well use it)

3. figure out how tight you need the elastic then pin the elastic together and sew it.

4. try the skirt on and see how it fits, if it doesn't unpick your elastic stitches and try again, if it does then sew up the hole you made for the elastic.

5. cut off the straps, you could do this first, but I was being cautious, if I didn't like it as a skirt it may have been remodelled into a top instead.

6.If you're me, then dew up the hole you accidentally made when cutting the straps off.
7. Wait for the summer, when a lovely thin cotton skirt will be lovely to wear! As you can see I did try to take a picture of myself wearing it, which is especially difficult if you're reluctant to take off any of your clothes or let go of the blanket you're also wearing cos it's soo cold! So there's a picture of it on it's own too!

See you tomorrow for something else made from something else!

Charity Shop Treasure...The Wedding (guest!)...

I had a wedding to go to this weekend and I decided in advance that I was NOT going to buy anything new for it, because how many wedding outfits get bought and then never worn again?!


I got this dress from a charity shop for £10 (it was second hand so not really new, but new to me - I don't count that as cheating!!). I wore a necklace that had belonged to my Nan and bracelets, rings, bag and shoes that I already owned from my pre-not-buying-anything days!
Success!
I wonder if it'll make it into my usual daily outfit choice of t-shirts, holey trousers (I'll get round to mending them one day!) and trainers though?

Fail!

I bought something new :(

Part of my whole less-consumption thing was that I wasn't going to buy any new clothes, cos I have about 3 wardrobes full (seriously! I have a problem!) and those that I did buy would be second hand or fair trade and organic....I had a farewell meal to go to with the people from my course and had 2 days to find something to wear, there was nothing in the charity shops so I went into town and bought a dress from H&M and some flip flops from Primark (argh!) and a necklace that I ended up not wearing - oh dear! I haven't been high-street shopping for months and it made me remember why I hate shopping - especially when it's so hot and busy.

Here is the demon new dress

At least it's not to dressy, so I can wear it all summer and to the festival I'm going to next week and I'll probably never get rid of it (I really do have a problem!), but I'm not buying anything else new-new ever! It made me feel sick!! And it cost £13!! Nothing I own costs £13! Deary me!