What I’ve learned in dating, I can apply to vintage purses. Even though it’s beautiful and in tact on the outside, watch out for rotting on the inside. When I picked up this wicker purse at a local Goodwill, it was love at first sight… until I turned the latch and saw the condition of the inner lining. After battling with my gag reflex, I swallowed my hesitations and made the purchase (for $3.49 a deteriorated lining was not a deal breaker). Luckily, I discovered that replacing a purse lining was much easier — not to mention more affordable — than couples counselling.

Step One: Resist hacking away at the lining the second you open the purse with scissors in hand. This step I almost skipped completely, and am sure I would have regretted that decision later in the process. By taking a second to examine the bag’s interior, I was able to see that the lining was attached to the wicker with multiple tacks. With further inspection, I saw that these tacks could all be easily removed, allowing the lining to be removed exactly as is, and for the tacks to be salvaged. Since my scrupulous nature has now been revealed, there is no more need to hide it.

Step Two: Once the lining was removed, I proceeded to ‘break it down’ (MC Hammer, eat your heart out). Separate the seams of the lining so that you have three sections of fabric, or however many parts your lining breaks down into. Pin these to your new fabric and cut around them, leaving an inch or two so you have some room to sew them together.

Step Three:Pin the new fabric together, right sides in. This part of the sewing process always seems like a brain teaser to me. But since it’s a lining, things are a little easier. You won’t be seeing the outside seams, so you want the inside to be the good sides of the fabric and free of waste.

Step Four: Once you’ve sewn all the seams, you can trim them down so there is less bulk. Now you’re ready to fasten the lining to the purse. I lucked out, and was able to use the thumbtacks that had originally been holding the lining in place. Depending on the bag though, you may be forced into some ‘creative thinking’. Might I suggest having a glue gun or needle and thread at hand?

After some last minute tucking and folding more suited to a drag show than my living room, I emerged successful; lining in purse, purse in hand. And now that I know the ease at which I can make a purse’s insides match the beauty of its outer shell, I will never again be discouraged by a pretty saddle bag with a sad interior — though I will proceed with caution at the sight of a pretty boy in saddle shoes.

- Casie Brown

Peter Pan collars are too charming. Maybe it’s because they remind me of my little girl clothes of the past, or even because they are named after a boy who can fly and is friends with fairies. Regardless, I have never been able to walk away with my credit card in tact once I spot one. With tuition and rent bills filling my mailbox, however, I have learned to put down the hanger, and leave the store Peter-Pan-less. My indulgent behaviour in check, I came up with a more practical approach to achieving this darling look. Borrowing tips and tricks from various do-it-yourself guides (and after a few interrogations of my fashion design friends), I came up with my own recipe for adding a little Peter to any garment. Professionals please keep in mind that this is a girl with little garment-making know-how, describing to like-minded folk, the simplest way (in her eyes) to achieve a DIY collar.

Materials: Fabric for collar, interfacing, thread, paper, pencil, fabric scissors, an iron

Step 1: Trace the Neckline of the garment that you wish to Peter-ize. For this I used just a regular blank piece of paper and pencil. I stuck the paper inside the dress and aligned it with the shoulder seams, then I traced away. This will give you the neckline on the front of the dress. Repeat with the back of the dress so that you have the shape of both the front and back. Once you have both front and back necklines, cut and paste them together so that you have an oval-like shape. You now have a starting place!

Step 2: Using your imaginary neckline for size, do a rough sketch of what you want the collar to look like, on another blank sheet of paper. For this part I drew a few different variations, cut each out, and tried them on the dress to see which size I liked best. There is nothing worse then getting to the end stretch and realizing you don’t like the size. Once you have a shape you like, in the words of Joey Gladstone, “Cut it out!”

Step 3: Now is the exciting part, or if you’re like me, the nerve-wracking part. Pin your pattern to the fabric and cut! Okay. Before you do this, take a deep breath and remember one crucial thing: leave a seam allowance (this means leave about an inch or inch and a half of fabric around both the outside and inside of your pattern, so you have a little something to work with). Before removing the paper pattern though, I like to just dot around the pattern itself onto the actual fabric, so that I have a perfect guideline of where I need to be sewing. Repeat this step on both your fabric that you chose for your collar, and the interfacing.

Step 4: So you should have two collar-like pieces in front of you. Pin these two pieces together, with the backside of each fabric facing outwards. This should be fairly simple to figure out with the fabric you chose, but might be a little tricky for the interfacing. The outward side of the interfacing should be a bit shiny. This shine is the glue that will fuse the two fabrics together and give you a stiff collar.

Step 5: Dust off your sewing machine, and sew ONLY the outside edge of your collar. After this is complete, you can trim down the outside seam allowance (be careful!) and then flip the fabric so that it is right side out. Press, press, press and let that glue do it’s job!

Step 6: Your collar should now look a little more like you had imagined. The final step is a tricky one, and I opted for a hand stitch after wrestling with my sewing machine. The outside of the collar should be finished, and you are left with just the inside oval, and the inch of seam allowance that you left of this edge. Because the neckline is curved, you’ll have a hard time trying to sew the collar to the garment as is. What you need to do is cut little slits (or tabs as I will call them) about a half inch apart into the seam allowance, so that your collar can curve with the neck.

Step 7: To make this next step easier, I pressed all of the little tabs that I had cut into the seam allowance to the underside of the collar. Now, it should be like you can just hook the collar on top of the neck of your garment. Pin the little tabs in place, on the inside of the garment, so that the outside part of the collar sits flat. Once pinned, sew along the inside of the garment, on top of your little tabs. I’m not sure this is the most aesthetically pleasing way to affix the collar, but it did the job for me (and I figured no one would be seeing the inside of the garment anyway). After it is secured, you can trim the tabs so they look a bit more presentable (on the rare occasion they do see the light of day).

Step 8: You can never press enough! Laying the garment flat, press the front and back of the collar, so that it sits nicely in place. Trim a few threads here and there, and you’ve got a collar that will bring Captain Hook out on the prowl.

- Casie Brown

For me, summertime has always been about projects. As the school year winds down, I begin to make lists in my head of all the ways I want to spend my time: I will read nothing but Jane Austen novels, I will photograph something every day, I will teach myself to sew. Sometimes I accomplish these things, and sometimes I don’t – but every year, I begin the summer with a hopeful bunch of plans and although I’ve never managed to complete them all, I’ve also never ignored my list completely. I may not do everything, but I always do something, and the break is a little more interesting because of it.

This summer, the project at the top of my list was tie-dye. I don’t know what possessed me. I’ve always been sort of indifferent to the aesthetic. I have owned exactly two pieces of tie-dyed clothing in my life: One was an oversized t-shirt I dyed at summer camp when I was seven, and the other was a pink and purple shirt I bought on sale on a family vacation last summer. I’ve neither loved nor hated either of these pieces of clothing. Sometimes a shirt is just a shirt. Multicoloured swirls and I had no real relationship - happy, sad or otherwise.

So how, on a Saturday evening in June, did I find myself crouched in my backyard, soaking a white t-shirt in a container of purple dye? I have no idea. But it happened, and it will probably happen again. I had so much fun.

The whole process was pretty basic. I took a cotton t-shirt, wrapped pieces of it in rubber bands, and then stuck it in a container full of RIT clothing dye. I ended up dyeing a few other things as well – the most exciting of those being a set of pillowcases, although I have yet to use them because I have a fear of waking up with my face all splotched with yellow and red and blue. I did my dyeing the cheap and easy way, but there are a lot of ways to get really serious about your hand dyeing, too. The best website I found while researching was this one which provides really detailed explanations of different dyes and fabrics and techniques (including one called Batik, which is a resist dyeing technique that uses wax).

I ended up with a pretty great shirt – and maybe by the end of the summer, I’ll have dyed a few more. But even though the clothing was kind of the point, the t-shirt feels like more of an added bonus to the whole tie-dye experience. I am happy to have a new shirt or two – but I am even happier to have had an evening sitting in the grass, my hands covered in dye, excitedly unwrapping freshly-coloured fabric and anticipating the results. With this project, I wasn’t in it for the clothing as much as I was for the sunshine and the laughter and the clothesline full of brightly coloured fabric strung up from the fence.

But, the clothes are cool, too.

- Hailey Siracky

On December 12th and 13th the City of Craft flagship event will take place in Toronto. Nestled in the Theatre Centre (1087 Queen Street West) there will be free crafty workshops, the works of local craftspeople and colossal installations, like the man made tornado with a 19 foot circumference (made by the Caribou Collective). Scanning over the vendor list WORN is very excited to get up close and personal with the forest-y creations of Bettula, Lines: by Davis‘ eternity scarves, Mynta’s bud necklaces and the bows  practically made for our adoration by PinPals.