New Uses For Old Shoulder Pads - With Disintegrating Fillings, remove, replace, or re-use post 543

 I have several blouses and jackets with shoulder pads. They were the fashion years ago. They went away in the next decades, although they stayed in vintage items, and they periodically return. The latest reports from April 2025 say shoulder pads are making a comeback, creating the big, broad-shouldered powerful look.

Meanwhile, what about old-time shoulder pads? Some of them have a new life. But, unfortunately, and unexpectedly, others have reached the end of their useful life.

I considered removing the pads from old jackets. Some are attached by a single linking thread, sometimes plaited to make it stronger. Others are sewn in firmly with a line of central stitching, making them harder to remove. I have tried removing those which were easy to extract, by cutting off the linking thread, or by removing the sponge filling.

Once I tried snipping the thread. Easy. I gaily cut off one pad. I smugly tried on the jacket.

 Disaster! Horror! The shoulder was now too wide. Not only did the top of the sleeve bulge oddly, the bust was all wrong.

Instead of removing the second shoulder pad, I safety-pinned the first one back on. I now had added respect for the work of the designer. She, or he, had not just added shoulder pads as a last minute addition.  But carefully planned the whole shape and appearance of the jacket, right from the start. Every piece of the pattern had to be different from any regular template previously used by a designer, or factory, for creating different garments by simply changing the colour or fabric's pattern.

Two simple lessons can be learned from my experience. Firstly, before removing a shoulder pad, check its size, whether it adds width as well as height. Secondly, if you are adding shoulder pads, you need to fit the size of the garment. If starting to design a garment with large pads, you might need to cut the fabric pieces with wider shoulders and matching arm holes and the full width front of a top or two front pieces of a zipped, open front, or buttoned blouse, shirt, dress or jacket. 

 In two or three cases the job has been done for me. The filling has disintegrated!

This happened years ago to one of my jackets. I got mysterious grit, like sand. It was from the shoulder pads. The soft sponge had turned hard, brittle. The insides turned lumpy and were disintegrating. The sand came out through the tiny holes in the net covering. 

I spent ages trying to remove the sand. I rubbed the net pads in between my fingers. It took ages. After the job was done, I forgot about it.

Recently, disintegration of fillings happened again with a Dorothy Perkins blouse. Mysterious pale brown stain. Looked like coffee. I washed it. Success. The stain came out.

I hung the blouse over a rack in the bath to dry. But when I went to remove the white blouse, and hang it up, I saw another stain! It couldn't be chocolate or coffee. It was something sweet spilled by me, it was evil, an unwanted invader, from outside.

Monsters In My Mind

Mysterious. Malevolent. What was it? Something which comes out at night. Insects? Unlike Singapore, Greece, America, we don't have cockroaches or geckos much in London, not in my house. London has foxes, rats and mice. Foxes are too big to get in. Rats. Mice? Excreting! Bird poo? Not inside the house. Should I wear gloves to hand-wash?

Whatever it was, the stain had to go. So I started washing the entire blouse again. This time I turned it inside out to remove the stain from the other side of the fabric and made a discovery. The shoulder pads had turned lumpy, with empty corners. I squeezed the coffee coloured sponge. Through a hold in one corner, out came tiny, dark lumps. It took ages to make it all flatten and push out and wash away.

I now have the blouse pristine. White. Without shoulder pads. 

Luckily for me, in this era, the old time shoulders were not cut wide, merely raised by the pads.

I could cut out the net shoulder pad holders. Re-fill them to sew back into this blouse. Keep them and use them in another blouse. 

Find another use for them. What? They are not very strong.

A Full Removed Shoulder Pad

1 Cut into pillows for a pet or dolls' house.

2 Sell on ebay or facebook marketplace. 

3 Give away free on your street's WhatsApp group.

4 Attach to coathangers. Sew or staple the shoulder pad to cover the ends of wooden hangers. Stops loose woollen tops and net dresses pulling out of shape. 

5 Make pixie ears on a jacket's hood.

6 Seat belt cover

7 Suitcase handle cover

8 Handbag handle cover

9 L-shape shoulder bag for barbie doll

10 Slippers for doll

11 Fronts (tops) for soft slippers

12 Knee protectors sewn inside or outside trousers (USA pants) for the elderly or toddlers

13 Add to the sides of a baseball cap to make a deerstalker (Sherlock Holmes style hat)

14 Pair of table napkin rings

15 Red ones cut to heart shape for Valentine's day

16 Green ones cut to long diamond with small stalk as mini xmas trees to hang on a larger xmas tree at Xmas

17 Pin cushion and needle cushion

18 Spectacles case

An Empty Net Shoulder Pad

1 A tiny pocket for holding just one spare tissue. 

2 Pad holder for panties, when travelling, or at home.

3 Hair net for grand-daughter's Barbie doll.

4 Bag for herbs in casseroles.

To Replace Or Create Shoulder Pads

Use an old bra to make shoulder pads and the straps for epaulettes.

Useful Websites

Buying shoulder pads

Amazon

Selling shoulder pads

ebay

etsy

Facebook market place

Whatsapp

Next door

Re-using shoulder pads