Weekend Review: DIY Thrift Flip

 

DIY Thrift Flip / April Yang
Beverly, MA: Quarry Books, c2024.
152 p.

Another fashion choice with a DIY aesthetic for today's review! I found this via my library and was intrigued by it. April Yang is a popular upcyling Youtuber and IG sewing celeb known as Coolirpa. She shares ways to upcycle/refashion things you might find at the thrift store, and has 2.2 million followers interested in this on Youtube. So it makes sense that she's now putting out a book as well. 

This book is full of ideas on how to remake thrift store finds, but I didn't find all of them equally successful. Of course, Coolirpa is young and quite thin, so she can get a new outfit from something purchased secondhand, fairly easily. 

The book is organized well and is aimed at beginners, not longtime sewists. There's an intro all about her and why she got into thrift flips, then three sections: Getting Started, Shopping & Altering Basics, and then a few Thrift Flip Projects as examples and inspo. 

This delivers on what it promises. Getting Started really is an overview of both the basic supplies and basic skills you'll need to get started in upcycling. She goes over things assuming that the reader knows next to nothing - so explains basic stitches, terminology and even fabric types (even as basic as woven vs. knit). This would be really helpful to someone totally new to sewing in this context. 

The next section goes over her top tips for shopping secondhand whether in traditional thrift shops or other venues, or even online, and how to tell what can and can't be fixed. She goes over the best way to seam rip, to add sleeves or pockets and basic tailoring. She also talks about using sewing patterns to help you alter or reuse clothing, as well as tracing off a pattern from existing clothing. It's quite comprehensive but again accessible to someone new to this craft. 

And in the final section there are a number of projects by a number of different sewists of other sizes and shapes as well as her own projects. From embroidering on to sweaters with bulky yarn to cutting slits in a knit dress for decorative purposes to upcycling a pair of leggings into a short/sport bra workout set, there are varied ideas. She shows how to cover unwanted logos, or add embellishments to make a dress look totally different, or make a loose cardigan style jacket out of an oversized t-shirt. She uses pillow shams and curtains to make quick tops, or even a corset style top. I thought the variety of examples was a good feature, showing different styles of remakes on different people. 

While this book isn't exactly for me, I did like the approach and the casual tone of it. It's not intimidating, but also not so simple that the projects look cheap or unfinished. She gives a lot of info but it's all useful and at the beginner/adventurous beginner level. I think if someone was new to upcycling this would be a great starting place.