Turning Old Curtains/Tablecloths Into Vintage Styles! || Recycle Retro Ep. 1

Edit (2021): I make my own clothes now 😅 I really got inspired into a whole hobby lol Me: (has never sewn anything in my life) Me: I need to make myself a skirt now, where's the curtains

Get out your iron and iron as you sew - the seams, darts, hems and facings. Your good work will become great work. You'll be surprised at the difference it will make.

You should do powerpuff girls but make it vintage

Once upon a time, when I was in high school many ages ago, I'd made a sleeveless lace up bodice for a medieval style peasant costume. (I loved renn faire) I loved the bodice so much that I'd sometimes wear it with my everyday clothing. I'd always get compliments and people asking me where I got it. Convos usually went something like this: Stranger: "That's an amazing vest! Where did you buy it?" Me: "Oh, thank you. I made it actually." S: "Wow! Really? What pattern did you use?" Me: "Uuumm, I didn't have a pattern. I traced my torso onto a paper grocery bag." S: "Wow! That's talent! Well, where did you buy the beautiful fabric then?" Me: "A thrift store actually. It's made out of brocade curtains and lined with a bedsheet." People were usually really surprised and impressed. But I was just a broke teenager figuring out how to make what I wanted on the cheap. And I'm by no means a sewing expert, I was just figuring stuff out on the fly. I always love when experiments worked out.

Reasons to not watch you tube videos till you fall asleep- 1. I dreamt about you doing a Robin Hood cosplay but make it vintage episode... Woke up and got real sad because it doesn't exist.

Out of the blue tablecloth, since its round already-just cut out a waist hole in the middle, add a zipper and waistband and done! Circle skirt!

"Oh, I love your Pinafore!" "Thanks, I saw it in a window."

Give a grrl a vintage dress, and she looks good for a day. Teach a grrl to sew, and she can recycle curtains FOREVER!! ✂️✂️ Well done!

The pink dress with red hair gives me serious Ariel vibes

It's so much fun when someone says "I love your dress", and I'm like, "Thanks, it used to be a table cloth..." lol. The looks on their faces is great. Plus I'm cheep, so bonus...

I’m not in need of vintage style dresses for my wardrobe, nor do I make clothes. I simply watch your videos because I love your personality.

I've been sewing for 45 years. First of all, NICE WORK! Good job on taking initiative. That's usually the hardest part. Next IRON EVERTHING, and IRON OFTEN. Ironing not only makes it look better it shows you where you'll have fabric issues. It also helps lock the stitches in place. When doing top stitching use a little longer stitch length, it makes it look a more professional, and you probably should put the zipper in definitely before the waistband and maybe even before you sew the sides seams together. Its just easier when you have to deal with all the extra fabric in the skirt. Hope that helps.😁

Curtains? Tablecloths? You make Scarlett O'Hara jealous 😎

This just makes me wanna go and sew myself a whole wardrobe 😂

Anyone else watching back old videos because they crave this feel good content more than once every other week? Rachel gets a much needed and deserved break between videos and I get to support her past content with views 😊 win win

I would like to send you a set of “Hook & Eye” that I found among my great grandmother’s sewing stuff. She was a seamstress in N.Y. During WWII. There’s a hole bag of them, and I do not mind parting with one set. I believe these were designed as a perfect solution to the pucker problem on the skirt. Also, I believe you’re the kind of person who would appreciate the history of them. Much love from Maine.

Hey Rachel here is a hack that I use when checking to see if table cloth, curtains or bed sheet is big enough to turn into clothing. I will unfold the fabric and fold it into half length wise and half width wise so that it is now in quarters. I will then take the longer fold edge and have that run vertical. I will hold it up to the center of my chest to see how much fabric will cover half of me and if it wraps around to my back that means there is more than enough to make a shirt of the fabric.

“Cozy time” is such a mood lol

Adventures of reusing material to make other things. (feel free to do them) (long post, sorry we do this a lot) My mom took old jeans that would get too small, seam ripped them out, and then trimmed and sewed them into jean blankets. We use them for picnics and watching fireworks or in the seats of the cars when we are dirty and don't want to rub mud on them. Machine wash and dry cus they're jeans. I stopped wearing retreat and camp shirts after I was no longer able to go (aged out, wish I could still go, was so much fun). I had at least 20+ and they had nostalgic value, but I didn't want to wear them as part of my wardrobe anymore and had them packed into one of my dresser drawers and taking up valuable space. My mom and I cut them out, as they had cute designs and titles of that year's theme, and quilted them together into a blanket. The quilt is now thrown over the guest bed and my aunts love it when they visit. I reuse a lot of my mother's old clothes. There is a red with yellow sunflower print skirt and blouse set that was hers that we tailored to fit me better (took in the waist a little, put on new buttons, lined it cus she had lost the slip skirt that was supposed to go under it and got rid of the god awful shoulder pads). A vintage puffy jean jacket that was my aunts (had to fix a hole to the outside in the pocket, made an embroidered patch of my initials and sewed it over and relined the pockets). Took a VERY 70s windbreaker that my mom had used when she went skydiving and turned it into a drawstring backpack (the thing is bright blue with bright yellow and red parachutes on it and had some pretty bad mouse holes in the sleeves from being in storage). I now use it for trips to amusement parks to hold my stuff cus it's so easily spotted with how wild the print is. Fixed up and took the hood off of my grandmother's old jacket, its a deep plum color with dark green and blue hot air balloons and looks super pretty but the hood just wasn't working, put some new buttons on too. Added pockets to a thick dark green woolen, full-length cloak my mom bought when she lived in Chicago to combat the wind. I wear it as a winter jacket and can say the number of awed looks I get walking anywhere public (10/10 I look very mysterious) can not be counted. School drama rented costumes for a musical (it was CATS, I've seen the movie trailer and I'm horrified, we did it so much better), they ended up being HUGE on everyone. We ended up custom making 30 spandex cat costumes (I still have mine) and 30 wigs and tails. Wigs were made from the feet of tights and unraveled, combed out chunks of the insane amount of yarn my mom had laying around the house (my grandmother had been a huge knitter and left us tons of yarn when she passed). Tails were similarly made but with the leg part of the tights. The company we rented costumes from loved the wigs so much they bought them from us, and our school won an award for best costumes. Repurposed these really thick light blue curtains that were too short to fit the giant windows in my house but just long enough to make my last prom dress, used some old grey sheets that were for a bed size we no longer had to line it. The theme was The Great Gatsby so I had a high low dramatic ruffles skirt and a plunging neck bodice. Got so many compliments and no one was the wiser that I was wearing curtains and a sheet to prom. Made a civil war dress out of a huge piece of floral printed fabric my mom found for cheap at a garage sale. Wore it for a halloween costume and even to middle school (History teacher LOVED it, Principal wasn't too thrilled about the hoopskirt, kinda hard to sit at a desk in one). My dad made really nice seat covers for my car out of the leather from a loveseat we were gonna take to the dump (one of the legs had broken clean off). Mom made a pet bed each for our dog and 2 cats out of some old stuffed animal plushies from my younger years that I was no longer attached to and was ready to donate or toss. Jessica (a very large black dog plush) now lives on as my black dog's bed that she sleeps in at night, she blends into it so well you can only spot her by the little pink tongue sticking out of her mouth. I have made at least 10 different, what I call, day/house dresses out of tablecloths. Dying is not nearly as hard as you think it is and you can even paint it on to make messy style watercolor flowers. Plus they're so light and airy that I stay cool in the hot summer and can float around the house like a fairy and not have to wear pants. There are so little seams (shoulder seam, neckline hem, side seam, bottom edge hem, done) and its like a 1 size fits all cus I patterned them to be big and billowy.

The first time I've put pockets into a dress, I literally felt I'm an epic witch