To liven up this cotton $2 op shop dress, I eco-dyed it along with some silk which was then used to lengthen hemline and embellish neckline along with beads.

I’m making it my business this year to reinvent existing clothing to demonstrate how using creativity and effort enables us to dress in a different, more mindful, way.

My inspiration comes from seeing and reading what others are doing around the world, as documented by people such as Sass Brown in her books Eco Fashion and Refashioned.

Brown also has a website ecofashiontalk.com and today posted an article about creative challenges involved in upcycling post-consumer waste.

“There are obvious challenges when working with post-consumer garments, each one different in terms of style, size, colour, and fabric, requiring individual creative responses to individual creative challenges. The requirement of unique innovative material responses lends itself to artistic solutions, so it is no surprise that the area of upcycling used garments is dominated by small, independent designers.” See and read more here.

There is so much inspiration all around us when we take the time to look – and apply effort and imagination to change what we have using simple home-sewing and creative techniques.

This upcycle didn’t entirely go to plan because I envisaged two-tones could be achieved from the eco-dyeing process by cutting out heart-shaped bits of bark. The dress began a pastel-apricot shade and ended up soft burnt orange all over. Will try again another day, obviously need to add something to ‘fix’ the colour from the hearts. The dress itself was structurally sound, I just added a strip of silk cut with pinking shears to lengthen and created a heart-shaped insert to cover part of the plunging neckline (which may have been why it was in op shop in first place).