How a dress becomes a sweater: DIY clothing upcycling

Or, how I got frustrated at fast fashion

and did something about it

So I'm some kind of vague transmasculine entity. In practice, this means sometimes I want to present more masculine, but it is HARD AS SHIT to find clothes that fit my body in a masculine way.

I'm also a sewist. What this means in practice is that I have a stash of fabric, as well as damaged pieces of clothing that I'll get around to fixing or altering "some day."

Well buckle up baby because that someday was LAST NIGHT.

I really wanted a masc sweater. Something warm for the chilly weather swooping in that could also disguise the boobs that persevere even in the harshest of binders. But would ya know it, finding a sweater that is masculine and not bank-breaking but also not a symptom of fast fashion is... uh... impossible. And the last thing I want to do is buy some piece of cheap garbage that'll last one winter at most. My desire to partake in sweater weather should not cost the Earth.

After toiling through websites and dozens of eco clothing brand lists (which are all in the US and go up to a size XL... mostly. I'm exaggerating but it's a problem) I gave in to my chaotic nature and scuttled off to my sewing room... where I unearthed this.

A burgundy sweater dress

For those not viewing images, it's a cable knit dress with buttons on the skirt and, importantly, a tear in the armhole. You can't see the tear, but it's there. And annoying. Cheap, expensive shit.

I started by cutting the skirt off, just above the waistband. Turn it upside down and behold! A body block with BUTTONS PRE-ATTACHED. I sewed up some shoulders (not arm holes yet) and had this:

Look ma no hands

As you can or can't see, it fit, save for the lack of uh... appendages present. Arms. I cut some arm holes next:

oh, now hands!

And then I stole the sleeves of the dress bodice and put them in those arm holes. I should mention again that I sew a lot, and this is a really forgiving and stretchy fabric, so there was almost no measuring done for this. Certainly no proper measuring.

Alas, sleeves happened!

Nice, eh? Except there's WAY too much room in the bodice. Especially the back, because I had Plans for the front. so I pinched together tIMG_0421-min.jpegIMG_0421-min.jpeghe back into a seam:

Look at the back in the mirror.

And cut off the excess (the seam was done and the sweater worn inside-out in the above pic). Here it is, excess removed and right side-out...

It's getting there!

(At this point you may notice that I put the sleeves on inside out. Oopsie. I fixed this by sewing the underarm seams again as a bullshit "French Seam".

Now I must apologise, because it's time for a "well now draw the rest of the fucking owl" moment of the tutorial. But really, there wasn't a lot to the steps up 'til now, and next I'm just going to add a cowl made out of some excess fabric I took from what was the bottom of the skirt.

It did take me half of the total sewing time just working out how to attach this cowl nicely, but I did it, and after adding the proper undergarments (a chest binder) I was left with this:

Ta-da! A cowl neck sweater.

I'm proud as shit. I recommend this course of action very much. Turn your dresses upside down and make a sweater. Fix your belongings until you don't want them anymore and then make a new belonging out of them. Unlearn capitalism. Attack and dethrone God.

This is Stylish Jaimie, signing off for now!

Email (normal): JaimieLBlack@outlook.com

Email (author stuff): author@rosalindwulf.com

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