Sewing, Repairing and Reducing Waste

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A place to share ideas, knowledge and creations with textiles. The focus is on reducing waste, whether that be sewing from the scraps left from other projects, using the end of rolls and remnants, or repairing and remaking finished pieces.

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Is there a way to improve badly cut clothes? (jlai.lu)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/sewingrepairing

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I buy most of my clothes second hand, the quality is much better for the price but when I look for something precise, too replace something wear out for example, rather than a new piece for my wardrobe, it take me a lot of time to find what I look for. Meanwhile, fast fashion brand sells lots of clothing that seems exactly what I need except that the quality is fast fashion quality :(

Is there any general advices you have to improve bad quality clothing?

Here is two specific examples that really disturb my shopping experience:

T-shirt that have not T, because the cloth piece under the arm has been removed. The t-shirt looks fine, folded or wear with your arms lying against your body but as soon a you raise them, in a T, or high to reach some high shelf, the whole t-shirt raises with them
Long sleeves than a just long enough to keep your arms lying against your body. If you go for a crazy move, like using your hand, you hand up with almost 3/4 sleeves.

What do you think? Is there anything that can be done to improve these type of badly cut clothes? What about all the others? With loose stitches, bad made buttons... You know what fast fashion looks like.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It sounds like both are examples of too much material being cut away. Either too little space in the shoulders, or just not enough sleeve material.

You could make either example into a tank top. Adding material in is pretty much always going to be really hard and result in a fundamentally different piece of clothing than you started with, rather than a typical alteration where you're removing material.

If they're a way you can remove material to get something you'd be happy with that's definitely the easiest route- like making them into tank tops. Or cutting and hemming the sleves so they're intentionally like half or 3/4 sleeves

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I really need to learn how to alter clothes. It seems more and more like a necessary skills given the state of the industry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I got started by learning basic hand sewing and mending stuff I thrifted- I feel like that's one of the easiest ways to dip your toes in and start getting comfortable with it and building skill :)

When you're hand sewing you place each stitch one at a time, so it's really easy to feel in control at every moment

Regardless, good luck my friend :) if you decide you wanna pick up a new skill I'm rooting for you!