Spring Cleaning + Conscious Living: How to Up-cycle Your Pre-Loved Sarongs

Spring is a wonderful time for new beginnings where flowers bloom and nature comes to life again. You can apply the same type of healing for your day to day life by clearing out your closet. We all know that we're guilty of owning more than we ever need and so comes Spring time, it's only natural and necessary for us to get rid of stuff that we no longer use and de-clutter. The state of our wardrobe and home reflect the states of mind and so here's a question: how does your closet look like right now?

As you're packing up unwanted clothing, don't throw out your sarongs just yet! Did you know that there are plenty of ways to up-cycle and reuse your sarongs? Be kind to Mother Nature by learning how to recycle your sarongs and we're here to help you out with this wonderful path of sustainable and mindful living. Need ideas? Here are 5 easy ways to up-cycle your old sarongs:

1) DIY Interior: Pillow Covers or Curtains

Source: Michelle de Baugy via Pinterest

Source: The 36th Avenue via Pinterest

Whether you enjoy sewing or otherwise, there are several ways to make use of your ripped or torn sarongs. You can resize them to fit your cushions or pillows to create a whole new mood at home. You can also cut them into strips and use them as new curtains. These are great home interior ideas for your special events or themed parties too!

2) Patchwork Project: Make a Blanket or Funky Kimono or Dress

Learn how to get this patchwork done here

Source: Wings Hawaii via Pinterest

Source: The Grau House via Pinterest

Make a colorful blanket or quilt by patching up a bunch of random designs from your old sarongs. More than a therapeutic project, you get to explore your sense of creativity using recycled fabrics and make sure you get to do your part to reduce wastage from your fashion collection.

3) New Fashion Accessory: Colorful Headbands or Sash Belt

Learn how to make this here

Learn how to make your very own belt here

Get this cute look by making your own colorful headbands! All you need to have are some scissors to cut up your old sarongs and a dash of creativity to resemble them into a new fashion accessory. You can either sew or braid the pieces of fabric together and use them for your hair piece to match with your outfits or simply turn them into a cool belt that no one else in town is ever going to own so you'll definitely stand out.

4) Rags for Cleanliness: Floor Mat or Table Cloth or Windows Wiper

If you're too lazy to get any sewing or patchwork project done, here's an alternative idea: You can turn your overused sarongs into rags that you can clean your house with. Whether you want to wipe your tables or keep your feet clean or dust up an old garage. Old sarong fabrics are great for this purpose before you decide to throw them away, think again!

5) Sew it Up: Recyclable Bags or Fabric Covered Books or Ironing Board Cover

Source

Sharpen your skills with your sewing machine by creating these cool items. From a brand new cover for your ironing board to shopping bags so you can avoid using plastic bags to a cute fabric covered book that make great gifts - you can experiment with practical ways to reuse your old sarongs. 

What are your thoughts on up-cycling your old sarongs? If you plan to try out any of these ideas, we'd love to hear your feedback. The gentler we can all be on Mother Earth, the better chance we have for our future generation to live in a better world that we'll leave behind. Every step to a sustainable path begins with awareness in our decisions. Our love for sarongs goes beyond creating new designs to bring you happiness, we also consider the many different ways to prolong the life span of our sarongs.

Spooky Sarong Tricks for a Killer Halloween

Planning a do-it-yourself kind of Halloween? Look no further. With just a couple of sarongs, you get to be the coolest kid on the block. If you want to be different for this holiday season in the most affordable and easiest way possible, you are in for a treat. From costumes to decor ideas, here are sarong tricks and spooky ways you need to know for Halloween:

1) Get Your Capes On

The easiest costume to pull off with any colored sarong. You can use capes and cloaks for so many different types of scary costumes such as a witch, vampire, dead superhero, fairy, zombie, magician, elf and so much more.

2) My Sarong Brings all Ghosts to the Yard

Want to have the spookiest yard in the neighborhood? Flowy and drapey, there's no better way to create ghost and spirit like formations than with white sarongs. Be it indoor or outdoor, you can turn scary characters to live with a dash of imagination. For an even cooler effect, put some fairy lights into the fillings so your characters can shine boo-tifully at night.

3) Light it Up

When night falls, create an eerie effect with dimmed lighting. Using a white or yellow light bulb, you can cover any light source with a white, red, green or any suitable sarong color to set a dark and haunting kind of mood.

4) That Creepy Table

Be it black, orange or dark purple - throw a solid color sarong over any table to create a Halloween themed dining area for your friends and family. Use cool party props to accessorize and give your table setting an edge.

5) Animal Spirit

From Caveman, Tarzan to Cat Woman and whatever your mind imagines, bring out your wild and feisty persona by dressing up with animal print costumes.

6) Horrific Photo Booths

Capture the moments by setting up a photo booth for your Halloween parties. Using sarong colors like red, black or white as a back drop together with any scary props, your friends and family get to have fun and take awesome photos dressed in their costumes.

What do you think? If you have any more sarong tricks and want to share your ideas, we would love to hear from you!

Have a Spooktacular Hallooween, folks!

- 1 World Family

*All photos are sourced from Pinterest

Burning Man Costume Ideas

When it comes to one of the most unique and talked about art festival in the USA, people from all across the world travel to Black Rock City in Nevada for a once in a life time experience. If there's anything that inspires us in life is the freedom to experiment and imagine. Knowing that sarongs are being used as a fashion essential for creative festival costumes gets us excited! We all know that people have been using sarongs for centuries and we're really loving the trendiness and imagination of these modern times exhibited during Burning Man.

From fantasy characters to native warriors to pure nudity, a sarong has been used to style and protect festival goers from over exposure of sun and plus when people are camping out and dancing all day and night in the desert, sarongs are great to help keep the dust away from the eyes and hair. Some use them as a carrier to store their belongings as they dance till the sun comes up. Then when their feet gets tired, they lay their sarongs on the ground to rest and cuddle with their loved ones, listening to the sound of music echoing from a distance as the day light shines on their skin.

"A city in the desert. A culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers"

We were browsing a bunch of images from past festivals and couldn't help but admire how beautiful festival outfits can be. If you're going or planning to head to this amazing festival anytime soon, get yourself some sarongs and let your creativity do the work. Not only are they an affordable alternative than say renting costumes, but you get to have a little DIY project which can be therapeutic. Besides, Burning Man is all about art friendliness! Here are our favorite looks to inspire your next festival costume using your sarongs:

1) Use short sarongs as a neck or mouth cover for those windy days at the desert

2) Who would have thought head scarves could make a cool costume complete? 

3) Be it man or woman, the good ol' hip cover up style works with any man sarong or sheer sarong matched with bikinis and stack up a bunch of accessories.

4) Flowy, soft and silky sarongs to get in the mood for those twirling dance moves and breezy days

5) Layer up any sequined or colorful sarongs to make your favorite fantasy characters come to live

6) Guys, if you're lazy to think and want to whip up an easy costume in seconds, you'll find sarongs to be your best bet.

7) From bohemian tents to a sailing ship, sarongs give plenty of fabric for the imagination to run wild. How about bold animal prints for a quick and easy costume?

8) Go white with any rayon or sheer material to create a vintage or fairy or gypsy vibe. Whatever your heart desires, you can never go wrong with a white sarong!

Thank you to all Burners who have inspired us with your mind blowing festival outfits, we're looking forward to see what's in line this year! You can find out more about this magical festival here.

*Photos via Pinterest

How to Make a Sarong? A DIY Sarong Guide!

So maybe you've bought way too many sarongs and for once, you'd like to get creative and try to make your own sarong. Maybe you're on holiday and want to get busy with an art project? Maybe you think that you can produce the best sarongs in the whole wide world and you'd like to try it out and see what happens?

Whatever your reasons may be - we are your sarong guru and so let us guide you through the right steps. Here’s a quick and easy do-it-yourself (DIY) instructions on how to make your very own fringe-less sarong at home!

Step 1:

Touch, feel and imagine.

The key in having a good sarong is to know your fabric. Get to your nearest fabric shop, talk to the sales person and survey your options. It’s important to buy a piece of cloth in the color, design and fabric material that you would like as your first DIY handmade sarong. Choose a lightweight fabric like rayon or chiffon for those summer days or cotton for those winter days. Find out what are our thoughts on the best material for sarong.

Tip: Always try and wrap your future sarong around your body, be it as a skirt, dress or turban – it’s important to get a feel on how it would like when you wear it on. So wrap up with your chosen fabric to help with your decision.

Step 2:

Get the right tools.

You will need:

• Scissors
• Pins / Needles
• Thread (preferably same color as your choice of fabric)
• Measurement tape
• Sewing machine
• Mirror
• Chalk / Crayon / Marker (optional)
• Iron (optional)

Step 3 

Measure up!

After you've selected your favorite fabric and design, it’s time to get the right size and so get your dimensions right!

A standard sarong size should be in the form of 66 (width) x 44 (height) inches (168 cm x 112 cm).  Or if you plan to make a half sarong or a scarf, you can try the dimensions of 71 (width) x 24 (height) inches (180 x 60 cm). And if you’re making a plus size sarong, the measurements that we would like to suggest would be 96 (width) x 44 (height) inches (244 cm x 112 cm).

BUT WAIT! That doesn't mean that you’re going to buy your fabric cloth in that exact size.  Depending on how big of a hem you want to sew, add up those measurements with a ¼ inch (6 millimeters) on each side. (And if you’re a bad seamstress we’d suggest at least 1 inch extra on each side, lol)

Step 4

Experiment & Pin it!

So you've bought your fabric, and got your tools ready. Now in front of the mirror, wrap your fabric around your body to make a final check if the measurements are right. You can use the fabric and imagine that you’re using it as a beach cover up and test it out just to get a better idea.

Use a scissors and cut out any extra fabric that goes beyond your preferred measurement. Once you've toyed around with the fabric and you’re convinced and confident - use a ruler and crayon then draw the outlines. Use as many pins as you need and pin down the edges to make sure that you've got the symmetry right and remember to give it about 1/4 inch (6 millimeters) space for the first fold.

Well, if you're a professional seamstress or have good experience with a sewing machine, you can probably sew and fold at the same time, without marking an outline or using pins.

Step 5

Hem and sew!

For the second fold, pin the edges again with another ¼ inch (6 millimeters) towards the back side of the fabric. The best way to determine the back side of the fabric would be to check which side of the print stands out the best in terms of color and design. If they’re both the same quality then just pick any side. Tip: Use an iron to flatten out the edges and make sure that the fold stays (if you do it this way, you might not even need pins!). 

Next, with a sewing machine, you can carefully sew the edges and making sure that you sew on the inner fold at the back side. Begin with the corners of one end and then sew downward to the other end.

Take your time when sewing the edges to make sure that you can keep to a straight thread line and maintain the quality of workmanship.

To check if you're sewing correctly, look at this example and notice that the thread is sewed on the lower end of the fold.

Be gentle when sewing the 4 corners! The key is to make sure that your sarong remains in a proper rectangular shape with sharp corners. Here's an example of how your ideal sarong corners should look like.

*Cool tip: You can turn your sarong into a lungi, did you know that? To turn your sarong into a lungi, make sure that you use the plus size sarong measurement for that added comfort. Keeping the width free, sew both edges together to seal it up and turn it a tube shape like skirt! Works as a great alternative for men sarongs

Step 6

Mission accomplished, beach time!

Love this sarong? Check out the half sarong version of it!

Once you've finished sewing all the edges, your very own self made sarong is ready to be used. Try it out in front of a mirror and try new ideas on how to tie your sarong. Enjoy your new sarong!

Too much work and can’t be bothered?

If these DIY steps stressed you out or you just don't have the time and rather head out to the beach and chill out, you can always have an easier way to get your sarong. Just browse through our collection and for as low as $7.99, you can have a new sarong shipped right to your doorstep – hassle free! No machines, no thread, no pins or headache. :P We'll package it nicely and even throw in our brand new hang tag which comes with a free brief instruction on how to tie a sarong. Sounds like a great deal, don't you think? :) :)

**Note: All images are originally taken by us here at 1 World Sarongs during our research field trips as we continue to source and produce the best quality sarongs for our customers :).