Yesterday and today i went to have a look at some thrift stores and found some quite nice stuff on both days, cheap even. I like thrift stores. Everything they sell is unique and usually really cheap. You never know what you're going to find and also it's always better for the environment to buying and selling something used and not always getting everything new.

For a while now I've been wanting to make a skirt out of ties, but finally I took the initiative and bought some to start with. I don't have my sewing machine here in my summer appartment, but neither do I have all the required ties yet. I bought 11 so far. They were really cheap. I got them all for just 4,40€ combined. I chose the ties according to my color scheme which is something in the dark reds, grays, black and white.

So this project might take a while since i will need maybe 20-30 more ties to make a full ankle length skirt. I opened the seams of these ties and laid them down next to each other to see how big a dress am I going to get from how many ties. It looks pretty promising for now. Also I'm not going to throw away all the little tags and labels from the ties, since I might use those as belt loops. I'm saving the buckram (in the back of the picture of the opened ties, tukikangas) from inside the ties, since I may need it in some other sewing, for example in the waistbands of skirts and trousers.

Here are my materials:

 

Another thing that I made a few days back was a new shrug or sleeves or Sleevie by nickname. It started from me needing a pair of short excersise pants so I cut the legs off some elastic black long excersise pants. So I was left with the legs and was in desperate need of some new sleeves. I've been using my old sleeves for about a year now almost non stop, and they are starting to look like they've been eaten by a family of moths. So now I just needed to figure out something for the back part. I had started an interesting project from black elastic fabric strips and it was supposed to become a top, but i realised it would suit this purpose much better, so now it's my back part. It has kind of a woven or braided pattern in the back. I think my Sleevie turned out quite nice. I just put a strand of lace inside both of the folds that used to be in thebottom of the leg of the pants so i get a little variety on how to wear the sleeves again.

 

One more thing I wanted to tell about was some of my other thrift store finds. I bough a see through lace top which I can wear on top of some other top (like in the picture). That cost me 3€ and will be perfectly wearable once I get rid of the ugly gray strips of fake velvet in the front (which looks like some sort of reflector tbh). Another great find was a tux belt. I really like corsets and waist belts and when i saw a black satin tux belt i just couldn't resist buying it. It requires a little tightening since I'm not a huge guy, but otherwise it's just fine. And it cost only 0,5€.

Here's my top and the tux belt:

 

Kirppislöytöjä - Kirpputori - Smokkivyö - Kravattihame - Solmio - Hihatin