The Loophole

  1. College Living: DIY Clothes

    Being a college student far away from home has its ups and downs. Take it from me — I live over 550 miles away from UPLB. It’s fun. You get to be your own boss. You can stay up/out as late as you want to, spend as much time on the computer as desired, and for some people, get as drunk as you want on any night you fancy. But it can also get ugly. You make life choices mostly on your own. You get to decide when you start working on your school work. You force to discipline yourself to sacrifice and skip out on some fun things for the sake of attaining that college degree you aspire so much. You get homesick and you sometimes crave for your mom’s home cooked goodies.

    One of the heaviest downsides though, is that you live within a college student’s budget. Sometimes, you spend hungry boring nights alone in your apartment fantasizing over food and clothes online. 

    For this entry, I will focus on the clothes and boredom problem. Spending a fortune on clothes seems like a must especially for most of us Iskos/Iskas. Since we don’t don a certain uniform everyday, we have to have at least two weeks worth of clothes for us to survive. We also have to have specific types of clothes in case of formal reports/presentations, parties, balls, and the like. After a few months, you get fed up of the things in your closet. And at times, when life picks on you very well, the laundry service you stick to may accidentally stain or stretch your clothes. So how do you deal with these clothes you can’t wear anymore? How can you make it wearable again? My answer is to Do It Yourself. More on the other side.

    The first shirt I have messed with was a product of extreme boredom, poverty, and the need for beach wear. I ran out of things to do and I ended up rearranging the clothes in my closet. That was the first time I segregated the clothes-I-don’t-wear-anymore from the ones I frequently wear. That night, after a couple of grunge inspiration, I ended up turning an old pair of jeans to shorts and a large shirt to a sleeveless bikini cover. Over the next months I ended up short-izing another pair of jeans and modifying a couple of shirts’ neck lines (so they won’t choke me all day). Needless to say, my DIYed clothes collection grew.

    Yes, it’s fun cutting, deconstructing, and re-shaping old clothes. But don’t limit yourself, you can go crazy with it. Recently I have found the plain white shirts I used for my PE classes over two years ago. I thought of reinventing them so I bought some some supplies and let my creativity flow. And well, here are the results:

    I tie-dyed a white shirt (with red, blue, and yellow dyes) and a purple shirt (with black dye):

    After having fun with them, I transformed a couple of printed white shirts into ombre shirts. Ombre shirts are better in warm colors, but hey, experimenting is fun, right? 

    For LB citizens:

    • Fabric dyes are available at Maces. Venus Fast Dyes are Php3 per sachet. They are heat treated dyes though. So you need to have a stove and pot, a rice cooker, or a water heater.
    • For tie dying, rubber bands are available at Star Commercial Center for Php20 per box of about a hundred bands.
    • If you want to buy plain colored shirts to play around with, Novo has 100-peso shirts. Many other stores around the area sell plain colored shirts for about the same price.

    Here are a couple of links useful for doing some arts and crafts on your boring nights:

    I am in NO WAY a fashion expert in any aspect of the term, but this activity sure beats staring in space on lone hungry nights. Gets you out of impulsive expenditure and also gets you out of trouble. A worthwhile form of recreation, as one might say. Plus, you don’t waste or get bored of your clothes. 

    Do you have any DIY stories/pictures to share? Let us know!

    -Robyn

    2
    1. princessinpink reblogged this from thisistheloophole
    2. thisistheloophole posted this