Trash to Fash

After a long week of sweat, blood, and tears, Hannah and I were able to finish a dress last minute and enter it into the MU Trashion Show last night. And thanks to our beautiful model Amy, we pulled out second place in the show.

For those of you who don’t know what a Trashion Show is, it is a fashion show where instead of sewing fabric together to create a garment, you have to use trash or unconventional materials to produce a piece. Oh and let me tell you that it is a lot harder than what Project Runway makes it out to be. So what did we use in order to pull out this dress you might ask? Just my thumb, a few of our fingertips, and some materials that might be a little surprising to you.

Paper towels, streamers, and packing peanuts. The three main materials that made our beautiful two-piece ensemble.

Paper Towels

We knew that we obviously had to have some sort of foundation for the skirt so I mean why not paper towels? To get them the pink color we wanted we took a little Kool-Aid and dyed the paper towels a light pink. After they took forever drying we glued them to a belt made out of tin foil and the bell of the skirt was created. For the top, we took the left over pink paper towels and created a tube top that just wrapped around her chest.

Streamers

You might not realize we used streamers at first glance, but if you look closely at the skirt, all the pink, purple, and white flowers are made out of streamers left from my birthday decorations. Manipulated and twisted into flowers, we stapled and glued the flowers randomly to the skirt.

Packing Peanuts

See all those gold foam circles at the top of the skirt? Those are the packing peanuts. I know it sounds odd but we made it work. Cut in half, squished down and spray painted gold, the packing peanuts were then used on the skirt to give it a little more color and detail to our two-piece ensemble.

Now I don’t mean to brag too much but I do have to say that I am incredibly impressed with how Hannah and I were able to turn our trash into fash. Who would’ve thought that paper towels, streamers, packing peanuts and a little Kool-Aid and tin foil could have been combined to make a beautiful piece? I sure didn’t! Thank you to Hannah for doing it with me and Amy for being such a gorgeous model! I guess we’ll see what we can come up with next year!