Fave Friday

It has been a while. I have been clearing out my wardrobe, though, and since I now do this regularly I was faced with the prospect of throwing out clothes which I wanted to wear, but for some reason or other had not. Here then are...

Five Favourite Ways to make over clothes

1. Buy leggings
I know. They're wrong. I agree. But actually, following a tip from Rhiannon who I stayed with in Malaysia, I discovered that wearing them to just below the knee is very flattering on me, and I now have 3 dresses and 2 tunic tops I can wear again.

2. Change their colour
Long-term readers may remember the sad demise of a dress last summer which was my last attempt at dying an item of clothing; however I had a stripy dress which I found to be unflattering (by which I mean, nobody ever paid me a compliment when I wore it, which is unusual (conceited, much?) and I could only conlcude that the colour was wrong) so I put it through the wash with a very old box of machine dye at a lower than specified temperature, and it went from this



(which I think just looks grubby from a distance) to this



WIN.
On the technical side - it was a 60 degree box of Dylon Machine Dye and I ran it at 40 degrees because the dress is 98% viscose, 2% elastane. The web wisdom on this seemed to be it needed longer to react but my fancypants machine would not allow for this much user interference so I just crossed my fingers and went for it. It was fine. This wouldn't be a problem now because all Dylon Machine Dye is 40 degrees, I gather, but this box was from 2006 and I really didn't want to bin it.
I also ended up with a pink tie dyed towel thanks to my environmental conscience refusing to allow me to run the machine on an empty 95 degree cycle. It's pretty.

3. Find a tailor
I had a dress from our 2007 holiday which I wore constantly but which developed a mysterious rip (I think in Father Hand's dryer); and a Boden wrap dress/ebay bargain which I caught on a door latch and tore, and which was too long for me to feel happy in. So I found a tailor. She is returning these items to me next Tuesday, good as new, I hope.

4. Snip, snip, snip
I had a sports thermal top which I had never worn, thanks to my habit of skiing in April. One particularly cold day, I decided to snip down the high neckline in a last ditch attempt to make it wearable - and then found myself wishing I had a second, because it went under my summer dresses, all winter long.
Did the same with some sweat pants when I needed some long shorts for the gym. It really isn't as scary to wield the scissors as I thought it would be.

5. Invest in some new accessories
Or just try wearing the old ones a new way. I bought a pink elasticated waist belt last year which, when worn on the wait, makes me look like a sausage with a twist in the middle. Yesterday I came up with the idea to wear it high on my ribs and make an empire line shape. Looked great!


I have heard of a challenge one can do, which involves wearing everything in one's wardrobe without doing any washing. I am interested. I may be trying this; I have so many lovely things I never get round to putting on.