Spruce up wardrobe with crafts

Associated Press

PAPER DOLL: At the Craft and Hobby Association Fashion show, a model walks the catwalk wearing a design made from handcrafted paper goods. Fashion crafting is becoming big business in the United States. The show took place in Anaheim, Calif.

Associated Press

Old jewelry pieces and buttons, a place mat, an old belt: The trinkets you find during your spring cleaning could be just what you need to spruce up your wardrobe.

Fashion crafting is an easy way to take clothing you already love and give it a new look. It’s good for the environment, good for your budget — and good for your favorite duds.

It’s also big business: Fashion crafting accounts for more than $180 billion in sales of apparel and accessories in the United States, according to the NPD Group, a leading global research firm.

At the Craft and Hobby Association convention, options ranged from simple to sublime: place mats folded in half and trimmed with felt became handbags, with an old belt used to make the strap.

Embellishments such as beads and paints were used to spruce up old jeans. There were dresses made of paper.

‘Creative couture’

Terri Ouellette, known to crafting fans as “Terri O,” explains that the benefits of fashion crafting — which she calls “Creative Couture,” include a measure of bragging rights: “When someone says “Hey! Where did you get that” you can say, “I made it.”

“I look at things when I go to the department store and I say, ‘Wow those jeans are $250. Wow, I hope they fit well’ because basically what you’re paying for are the beads and baubles and the lace. And then I like to look at that and go: You know what, I can do that myself.”

It’s also popular among young fans of “indie crafting,” and environmentalists who snap up earth-friendly materials like recycled felts and plastics, soy and corn-based biodegradable yarns, eco-friendly dyes and earth-friendly glitters derived from spices.

To Oullette, that’s not the only way crafters are “green.”

“We never throw anything away. You see a true crafter’s closet, you know that we were the original eco-friendly people!”

On the Net

For more information, visit www.onlinewithterrio.com or www.michaels.com/art/online/home.