Upcycling baby clothes

 I have always been a fan of recycling - giving new life to old things and finding new uses for what would otherwise end up in landfill. This goes back to childhood. I remember very vividly my dad bringing home old Bills of Quantities - lengthy documents printed single-sided with the blank reverse side perfect for all of my sketching practice and other drawing projects. In the 1960s and 70s, repairing things was very much part of life, whether mending clothing or other items. At my (very upmarket) high school, we had a toy workshop, where we collected and mended broken toys which were then given to the charities we supported. In my teenage years, my brother and his friends would buy up old sports cars and spend every spare hour coaxing them back to life, including some quite sophisticated repainting.

This attitude seems to have very deep roots going back to probably prehistoric times, and not just bred from scarcity or poverty. I remember reading in a Jane Austen novel, how the "society ladies" would take out their hats before the beginning of the season and refurbish them in the latest fashion with new ribbons, lace and feathers. There is something immensely satisfying from this activity, especially if the original item is well crafted from good materials, making all the additional effort worthwhile.

Upcycling, however, takes this practice to a new level. Here we are taking something that no longer has any value at all, and elevating it to a new level. My sister and I embarked on just such a project when I was staying with her last month. It all started out very modestly. My niece had fallen in love with a little outfit which she wanted to replicate for the baby she is expecting in September, using William Morris fabrics that I had sourced for her.

The first step was to draft off the pattern from the outfit she had bought - fortunately quite a simple design, but requiring a bit of imagination to work out the sequence of construction. Before starting on the special fabrics, we wanted to do a test run, a prototype using old fabric. My sister always keeps old clothes, either to recycle to refugees if they are in wearable condition, or to use in her stained glass studio if they are only fit for rags, so we had quite a large bag to choose from. 

Two shirts gave us the perfect combination of strength and softness, a denim and a pure wool Pringle, both of which had seen much wear, but had still retained the integrity of the fabric except for a few places where the fabric had ripped or torn. We decided to use the denim for the outside and the wool for the lining of the jacket. Even the elastic for the pants was recycled!

Cutting out the pieces was a bit of a challenge, working around the pieces of the old garments, but still being sure to work with the weave of the fabrics. For the jacket, we were running out of denim, so we removed the pockets on the left and right front, which resulted in two darker patches on the jacket of our new outfit.

Machine sewing complete

We were so excited with the finished outfit, that we decided to play around with it a bit. My sister had taught herself Sashiko, the art of Japanese repair embroidery, which she had very successfully used to patch and mend one of her own pairs of jeans. As the lining fabric had a subtle check weave, I could work from the inside of the jacket to keep my stitching even. I used embroidery thread left over from another upcycling project I had just completed.

Sashiko stitching to make a feature of the change in colour resulting from the old pockets

As a finishing touch, we unstitched the Pringle label from the original shirt and stitched it to the back of the new jacket. Altogether, it was a very satisfying project, starting as a prototype from discarded garments to test the pattern, and ending up as something quite special.