My first t-shirt refashion

So I’m volunteering at the Pasadena Strawberry Festival this weekend. I was one of the last bunch to get our volunteer shirts so this is what I got.



That’s a really really big XL if you are wondering.

So I felt the need to do a little alterations. You should know that sewing has never been my favorite “crafty” thing to do. I feel the same way about sewing as I do about manual transmission cars. I know enough to keep myself out of a ditch…but it’s not my preferred mode of crafting/driving.

So I checked out some refashioning blogs yesterday to kind of get some ideas and here is what I did.

First, I found a shirt that fits me well. I used this as my pattern.


Sorry for the bad pictures, I started this at about 10:30 last night, I know, crazy...and they were taken by my husband.
Then I just started cutting…(BTW, I did this on a practice shirt first...learned A LOT of what NOT to do  that way)


I cut the sleeves off just on the inside of the seam…and I cut about an inch outside the yellow shirt to leave a little room for the seams.

And I cut the sleeves like this…


I also had to cut the sleeves along the seam and resew them smaller.

Onto the sewing…



All I had was black and white and other various color threads, none that were red so I just used black. I used a zig zag stitch so it would still stretch a little (learned that from a blog).

Once I got the sides and arms sewn back on the shirt was still long enough to be a dress (although a really skanky one)…I didn’t want to cut the bottom and mess with the hem…I was trying to K.I.S.S. (remember that from school?!). So I used a basting stitch on the sides and then pulled them some so they would gather and then sewed back over the gathered section to hold it. It’s a little wonky on one side still but really, I’m probably never gonna wear this shirt again.

It was fun trying something new though, I’ve always wanted to refashion a shirt into something cooler. Here’s the finished product.