Hermione's Passion Project

Life isn’t perfect

but your outfit can be!

Hey, it’s Hermione. I have always loved clothes and DIY’s but I never thought about doing sewing to make my own clothes because it seemed like a bit of a faff, I found a way to make my own clothes without always having to sew. This year my Passion Project goal is to make my own clothes that I can wear and a bag that I can use, but make them out of old or second hand clothes and different types of materials that I have found. Then I want to take photos of them and put them in a book or magazine.

Early on in Passion Project I did lots of research on how to easily upcycle clothing. I have looked mainly in sewing magazines and on Pinterest. One of the most common ways to upcycle bags that I saw was making by them out of coffee bean bags.

Here is an example

of a coffee bean bag

The most common way to upcycle jeans that I found was to make them into shorts by cutting old jeans at the length that shorts would usually be at. I looked at a some sewing magazines and I saw that at the moment embroidery is quite popular (I already have collected and used some iron on’s from Spotlight).

I phoned Jane Gilder who does sewing courses, near the beginning of the year. She got back to me and said that I can start the course on the last week of the Term 1 school holidays. It is now Term 3 and I have been going to sewing lessons since then once a week , I have made one bag which I got the material for off of a dress that I found in the second hand clothing store in Merivale.

This is the bag that I made

I recently started sewing a skirt which I found the material for in Spotlight at The Colombo. In the holidays I found an old denim jacket of my sisters, I took of the sleeves and put on some iron on sparkly icecreams and glasses.

This is the waistcoat I made

Next I want to finish off the jeans that I am making into shorts, all I need to do for that is finish off cutting off the exes leg part. After that I need to find a shirt to upcycle and start looking for some other things to upcycle.

Some new learning that I have made:

• How to use a sewing machine
• I also found out that when you are making something from scratch you need a LOT of fabric.
• You can make a massive difference to an item of clothing without much effort