Customize Your Clothes: A Head-to-Toe Guide to Reinventing Your Wardrobe

For crafters, designers, and any stylish individual who has ever wanted to recreate a runway look or simply put their own mark on their wardrobe, this book is the ultimate inspirational resource. Customize Your Clothes is a one-stop DIY guide that covers customizing all essential garments and accessories from head to toe, showing readers how to transform, deconstruct, and/or upcycle their wardrobe by bleaching, beading, stitching, distressing, spray-painting, and much, much more.

Customize Your Clothes breaks down designs for each fashion item, from dresses and skirts to T-shirts, shoes, and purses and profiles emerging talent as well as pioneering designers in the field. Hundreds of designs on fashion items are photographed in stunning detail to inspire the budding designer. Chapters on each process and technique give step-by-step advice on putting your designs on clothing and accessories, from screen-printing through embroidery, batik, fabric painting, and innovative techniques for stenciling. A back-of book resource section supplies a quick guide to the properties of different fabric types and the techniques and materials that can be used with them. All essential information for decking out your duds is packed into one stunning package.

Rain Blanken is a designer, seamstress, and writer who specializes in upcycling, recycling, and reinventing clothing. As host of About.com's Fashion site (diyfashion.about.com), Rain guides readers to discover their crafty side with DIY clothing, jewelry, and costume tutorials. Her daily blog addresses the growing handmade movement in America. Rain resides in Beavercreek, Ohio.