basically in this series

I turn ugly thrifted clothing into

slightly less ugly thrifted clothing

through the magical power of my mediocre sewing skills

I get so many questions about how I find cool stuff at thrift stores and

While some of it is just me getting lucky

and finding like the perfectly fitting

Beautiful vintage dress or whatever.

A lot of the times it comes down to me making small

Alterations to clothes so that they fit me well

and they look a little bit more modern and

less like grandma and more grandma chic

you know

so without further ado

I think I have some exciting stuff to transform for you guys today

So let's just hop right in

to the video

So our first fashion victim is this fabulous

Oktoberfest Meets Woodstock dress

I got this from a local thrift store for

$15 and it reminds me of like

if me and Safiya Nygaard fashion styles

had a baby it has this crazy

Bat sleeve that I know Safiya loves

but it also has a little bit of gingham for my picnic-bitch heart

I honestly already think this dress is so cool,

but it is a little bit costumey for my everyday life

So I'm gonna make a couple small alterations today

to turn this into a little bit more of like a reformation inspired

Modern-day picnic bitch dress.

The first thing I'm gonna tackle are these crazy sleeves

Now, I think on another type of dress that was more subdued

these sleeves would actually be a really cool statement

But I feel like with all the patchwork on the dress

that already exists having the patchwork sleeves as well

Makes it a little bit too loud for my taste

farewell beautiful sleeves. I shall see you in another life

* Sad violin music plays :( *

After trimming off the bat sleeves

I hemmed my new shorter sleeves

by folding the fabric up about a quarter-inch

Pinning it down like so

and then stitching all the way around to secure my hem

All right. So here is how the sleeves came out.

Sleeves are like my greatest sewing fear

That and zippers

They're just so confusing to me.

So, you know, at least they came out an even-ish length,

you know, they're like eyebrows

They're not twins. They're

loosely related sisters

to cover up my ever mediocre sewing

I decided to add a puff sleeve detail with this thin piece of elastic

I stretched the elastic around my arm to a tightness

I was comfortable with then cut two equal pieces of that length

Next I pinned the elastic to the sleeve

Making sure that the halfway point on the elastic

matched up with the halfway point on the sleeve

So it would be gathered evenly all the way around

with the dress inside out

I'm sewing a straight line across each elastic

The key is to stretch out the elastic as you sew

make a couple stitches

Stretch out the elastic more so that once the elastic contracts back to its non stretched state

the sleeve fabric will look nice and gathered like so

to put the finishing touches on this dress

I am next going to address this

bodice boob panel situation

I think this crossover design is a really cool concept

But I'm not a huge fan of this

brown floral ribbon that they used.

It feels a little bit arts and craftsy to me

So I'm snipping off the old ribbon and

replacing it with this white frilly ribbon I got from Joanne's

I like that the plain white was simple enough

to not seem overwhelming,

especially with the gingham as the background

But the ruffles still gave it some dimension and texture

To attach the new ribbon

I sewed a simple straight stitch over each piece

Originally, I planned on keeping the gold buttons,

but at this point I felt like the design was still too busy

So I removed them and saved them in my button stash for another project

And here's the finished dress

its transformation from 20th century Oktoberfest

to 19th century milkmaid is at last complete,

jokes aside

As you might be able to tell by my excessive amount of twirling

I'm really happy with how it came out

and it makes me feel like a Disney character

By the way, Disney, I am still available for the role of Mushu

If you guys change your mind just

just putting that out there into the universe

My next thrift flip is inspired by

these cardigans that I've been seeing all over Instagram

I think they sell versions of them in urban outfitters

for like $69. Mm-hmm.

You're 21 Ashley get a hold of yourself

I've also seen them at fancy boutiques for like $200

and I just thought this checks all the boxes for me

It is vintage inspired. It's cropped.

It has detail. It has pearls it has buttons

Mmm so I headed to my local goodwill

and I picked up this red knitted Anne Taylor cardigan for $7

I've honestly seen so many cardigans in this style at thrift stores

So if this is a thrift flip that you guys want to recreate

I think it'll be pretty easy

so the first step in transforming this cardigan

from your mom's wardrobe into

Your hipster ass wardrobe is to crop it.

In order to crop something

I always start by trying on the piece and folding up the bottom

to kind of envision what the new crop silhouette will look like

Then once I have it in the perfect spot

I grab a safety pin and

mark right where I want the new hem to end

from there It's a simple 10 step process

first fold over the old hem up to the safety pin

then pin it in place

Then sew all the way around

Then trim off the excess

then fold down the new hem

Then realize it looks really awkward

then freak out and cut all of it off

then realize it looks even more awkward with a raw hem

Then realize you never should have tried to crop it to begin with

and finally do not forget this step

Accept defeat, and

Realize that this is what your sweater looks like now

and we're just gonna move on with the tutorial

and not talk about it anyways

Now it is time to swap out these plain buttons

for something more fancy

while I was filming my last video

I broke this beautiful pearl necklace that I thrifted and

Like all of the beads are just falling off of it now

luckily after taking its drivers exam this necklace

It did sign up to be an organ donor

So we are legally allowed to harvest its parts

to revitalize another piece of clothing

You are a true hero my son. On our cropped cardigan

I'm gonna be using some of no no no

I'm gonna be replacing

the kind of basic plastic-y buttons

with these little pearls that fell off my beautiful necklace

Replacing the buttons was as easy as me, freshman year of college

I simply snip off the old ones

and use some white thread to attach the pearls in their place

to add even more detail

I added some extra buttonholes in between each of the existing ones

and reinforced the edges with this loopy stitch

Loopy stitch is definitely the official name for this technique.

But basically we're securing the edge so it doesn't unravel

And my final step of course

was to attach the corresponding pearls

on the opposite side of the cardigan

And here is the finished product

the raw hem is admittedly a bit of an L

But if you just focus on the boobs up

I did a pretty okay job, which is coincidentally

Also what God said when he made me

just kidding

He honestly could have done a better job on the boobs upward, too,

like, giving me more mental stability and less acne

But I'm working with what I got

"You're doing great, honey, keep it up"

Thank you

Last up I have this light blue dress

that I picked up from the thrift store for $7

The reason I picked up this dress is I love this color

Right now I'm going through a big pastel phase. Pastel blue, pastel pink, pastel ...

I'm just naming pastel col... you guys know what pastel colors are

I also thought the ruffles on the sleeves and the neckline

were gorgeous and they added a nice kind of vintage

Girly touch to the dress.

When I was thinking of how to transform this

the first thing I wanted to tackle

Is this very strange fit

it has this nearly footlong ruched waistline,

especially because the dress is a bit big on me

It just isn't flattering at all

so

Like the nifty little lazy motherfucker that I am

Instead of trying to take in the sides of this dress

and minimize the waistline and take up the hem instead

I'm just gonna shimmy this dress upwards.

So the waistline becomes an empire

an empire boob line

The waistline is now on my boobs if that makes sense

It's like an empire waistline

ariana grande type

silhouette

At least that's what I'm telling myself in my head

that I look like ariana grande and not

an oversized toddler.

Really it's a fine line these days.

Of course in order to keep the dress held up around my boobs

I'm gonna have to tear out the top part of this dress

and readjust it to accommodate my new neckline

Now, I want to make this dress feel more modern

by making an open neckline rather than

I really close it up conservative one

and also I just find it to be really flattering

on my small boobs.

So I'm thinking for the neckline I'm gonna

Shimmy, this fabric into my armpits

and create essentially this square

trapezoidal

neckline, I think it's quite flattering because it leaves a lot of skin open

but it also maintains the original position of the sleeve and the shoulder seam

Which is always really important when I thrift flipping

because I have no idea

how the hell to sew sleeves back into their sleeve holes

So whatever alterations I make

I always make sure that the sleeves stay in their original position

So now I'm just gonna pin this neckline into place with some safety pins.

I'm using safety pin and not regular pins

because they don't stab you when you take off your dress

Hence the name safety pin

actually because they are safer than regular pins. Oh

subscribe for more incredibly useless facts

Hello and welcome to this sexy sexy close-up of my armpit

Basically, what I'm doing here is tucking and folding away any excess fabric

And securing it in place with a safety pin

Sorry, my voiceover is really vague for this part.

But I'm kind of just eyeballing it and improvising as I go

next I took off the dress and got to sewing

I opted for hand sewing rather than a machine because

there were so many layers to keep track of

I figured I could use the extra control

I essentially just stitch what I had already pinned in place

and then flipped the dress inside out and trimmed off

this clusterfuck of extra fabric

Miraculously after that very improvised sewing process

this dress came out super cute if I may say so myself

I always do feel like you're doing these voiceovers

because it's essentially just be jerking off myself and telling myself like

- Good job, Ashley - Thanks, Ashley, that's very kind of you

But, anyways, I'm really proud of this one.

I look ready to release some chart-topping singles and spend thousands of dollars on pony tail extensions