Tank Top from Button-Up Shirt

I've inherited a ton of my husband's old button-up shirts, and I've wanted to do something with them.  There are a million projects I have in mind, and I finally got around to trying one.  I found this tutorial on Pinterest, and it was very straight forward with the instructions!

Here's the shirt I started out with.

The first thing to do is cut off the sleeves.

Then cut straight across the armpits.

I sliced the sleeves open and laid them flat.  

Then I cut a 3" or 4" band that was about 15" or 20" across, from each sleeve.

I folded one side up a 1/4" and ironed it flat.  Repeat for the second band.  

Then, I zigzag stitched the hem.

Sew the two bands together, right side to right side.

Moving onto the body.  The first thing I did was sew up the front of the buttons, ensuring that it will lay flat and not peek when I'm wearing it.  I used brown thread.



Next, I pinned the bodice to the band, starting with lining up the seams.  For the front, I tucked in about an inch to an inch and a half into a pleat on the side.  For the back, I had the material meet in the middle, and made a large pleat (probably five inches or so).





Sew it together.






For the sleeves, I took the remaining part of the shirt's actual sleeves and trimmed them roughly into rectangles.





I folded both sides up twice and ironed.



I used the same zigzag stitch to hem the sides.



I put the shirt on and fitted the sleeves in place with pins.  (Having someone help you makes this much easier.)



I (poorly) zigzagged the sleeve in place.




And there you have it!




And just for fun.




~Buttons

Ruffle Shirt

I saw this tutorial on Pineterst and wanted to give it a try.  I'm getting better at making skirts, so I wanted to increase my understanding of how to put shirts together.

Materials:

About 1 yard main fabric

About 1/2 yard contrasting fabric (optional)

First, the directions in the tutorial are spot on.  The way they are set up gives you nice, clean finished seams.  I was really impressed at how wonderful this turned out.  And it was relatively easy.  There were times when I had to read the directions a few times in a row to grasp the concept of what was being said; but that's typical with sewing instructions.

I started with these two fabrics: a mint green knit that I got for $1 a yard at Walmart, and a green and blue paisley cotton that Pockets gave me ages ago.

I cut out all my necessary rectangles:

Four 5 in x 20 inch rectangles in the CONTRAST fabric for the straps (left and right) and the shirt's top band (front and back)

Two 6 in x 12 inch rectangles in the CONTRAST for the pockets (I actually used 5 in x 12 in and it worked just fine)

Two 3 in x 22 inch rectangles in the MAIN fabric for the arm ruffles

Finally, I made a pattern for the shirt's body, a trapezoid 26" on the top and 29" on the bottom.

For the sleeves, you're supposed to add a ruffle.  I tried to do this, but since my knit was too delicate, I couldn't get the ruffle to work.  I really had a hard time sewing the knit fabric in general.  It was too stretchy and thin, so would get sucked into the bottom of my machine.  Several times I had to alter my design to add in a stabilizer to help.  Luckily, the knit looks just fine not-ruffled, so I just left it as it was.

For the body, again, I couldn't sew the knits together.  I had to add a thin strip of the contrast fabric underneath to prevent the knit from being pulled in.

As it's on the inside, I didn't worry about it--it won't show at all once the piece is done.

The directions call for making the pleats before you attach the body to the bands at the top.  Since I have a fuller bust, I wanted to wait to make the pleats, giving me an easier way to make sure the measurements were right.  The original had three pleats on either side, I could only squeeze in two.  

So I pinned the side hems of the body to the side hems of the band.  Then I marked the middle of the front and worked out to the right side, folding the pleats and pinning them.  Then I went back to the middle front and did the left side.  Next, I found the middle back and did the same thing.

The pockets were easy to do following the original instructions.  I sewed my about an inch and a half from the side seam on either side of the front.  They look very cute!

One thing I added that was of my own design was a ruffled edge at the bottom.  I took two left over pieces of contrast fabric that were 5 inches by about 40 inches each.  I sewed the short edges together, right side to right side.  Then using the longest stitch, I did a seam 1/2 inch from the top.  Pull on the thread, and this gathers the fabric.  Move the ruffles further away from the edges until the length equals the length of the body.   This was one of the most time consuming parts of the project, but since I couldn't sew the knits together for a nice bottom hem, I figured this would look the nicest.

And here's the finished product!

As I said, this was pretty easy as far as difficulty goes.  I did it in two days--probably about six hours of work.  Though it's not the most complimentary style for my bust, I love how it flows and has a lot of extra fabric!  It's very comfy.

DIY Ravenclaw Uniform

Or, how to make a long sleeved shirt into a sleeveless shirt.

Or, how to make a shirt smaller.

I had many reasons for altering this shirt, as the various titles of the thread suggest.  For the Phoenix Comicon this week, Pockets and I are dressing up in various costumes.  Pockets already had a Hufflepuff outfit from Halloween last year, so I had to come up with making a Ravenclaw one for myself.

First I ordered a Ravenclaw iron on patch from Amazon.  I was very happy to find one in bronze and blue (which is the book canon) rather than the silver and blue (which is the movie canon).  I wanted to be book canon.

With that in mind, I had to find a tie.  Any online are from the movie, so that wouldn't work.  I had to look the old fashioned way and buy one at a department store.  I searched online and found one that looked good at JC Penneys.  I went to the store--with my patch--and it looked pretty good together.  I got it on clearance, $15!

Now I just needed a white button up shirt and a gray cardigan.  Urged by my husband to save some money, I went to Goodwill to see what they had.  First off, I was impressed that everything was grouped by color; that made looking so much easier!  I found a white shirt for $5, but it was an XL--way too big.  I got it anyway.  And I found dark gray (almost charcoal) cardigan for $10.  Lucky!

So, for the shirt, it's ginormous!

And it's really hot here, so I figured it might be best to cut down on the materials I'd be wearing.  So I decided to make it sleeveless.

I cut off the sleeves, right below the seam.  This shirt is a very fancy material and it cut beautifully and has no need for heming the cut.

Next, I put it on inside out and pinned how much I needed to take in the sides.  It's about a inch and a half on either side.

There was still too much fabric in my chest area, so I decided to try a dart.  I've never done darts before and it looked easy enough.  I put the shirt on inside out again, and pinned how much fabric I wanted to take away.

It turned out decent.  Not the best ever, but definitely an improvement!

Now, for my cardigan, all I had to do was iron on my patch!

And here's the whole outfit!

This will be our outfits for Friday.  I'm so excited!


~Buttons

Tutorial: Turn an ugly shirt into a cover-up

I needed a white cover-up for work today, and don't have any on hand that would have worked with my outfit.  But, I do have a plethora of old and forgotten shirts hanging out in my closet.  I found an ugly white one and transformed it into something that would work.

Materials:
An ugly shirt
Sewing machine
Thread
Scissors


So, this is what I started out with:


(Actually, it's not that ugly of a shirt.  I just really didn't like the buttons, and the fancy fabric behind the buttons.)

Cut from the top of the shirt to the bottom on either side of the buttons.  If your shirt doesn't have anything decorative on the front, just cut one line right down the middle.


(That background fabric is nice on its own, just not on this shirt.)

After removing the middle, your shirt should look like this:



Take one side and fold the rough hem in 1/4 to 1/2 inch.  Iron it flat.



Fold that hem under and iron again. This will give you a nice, clean edge.



Sew the hem.  I used a decorative stitch that looks like leaves just for the hell of it.  You can also use just a plain old straight stitch.



Repeat the folding, ironing, and sewing on the other side.  And you're done!



Not the prettiest thing, but it kept me warm at work today.  And it took me all of about 20 minutes.  Super easy project!  I might add a decorative button around the middle to hold it closed if I needed.  But, maybe not.  We'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

~Buttons

Tutorial: How to make a shirt larger

I work at an elementary school in a classroom for Autistic children.  It's called a SPICE class (Social, Pragmatics, Independence, Communication, and Emotional Regulation).  For Autism Awareness Month--which is April--we bought custom shirts with the line, "Keep Calm and SPICE On."



Very cute.  However, once we got our shirts, the sizes were much smaller than we thought.  I got a large, and I usually take an adult medium.  And it was still too small!

So, after looking through so many tutorials on Pinterest, I decided to try this one.  Essentially, what you do, is add two rectangle pieces of fabric under the arm and straight down to the waist.

So, what I did was find a complimenting fabric (which was lucky, because we only got the shirts yesterday, and I didn't want to run out and buy more).  I chose a blue flower to match with the blue on the shirt.



I cut two 3inch long rectangles.  I cut the length as long as the shirt is from the bottom lip of the arm sleeve, to the very bottom hem of the waist.  I actually cut it too small and had to sew on just another inch at the bottom. What a pain!

With the shirt inside out, you cut along the seam on both sides, going all the way through the arm sleeve.  If you cut both sides at once, it would cut the shirt completely in half.  That scared me, so I only did one side at a time.  With the seam cut, pin your rectangle fabric to the shirt fabric (right side to right side).  Sew a straight seam.



Repeat on the other side to finish one half of the shirt.  Then, cut the shirt on the opposite side, from the sleeve to the waist.  Sew in the other rectangle of fabric.



And here's what it looks like!



I am a dummy and didn't realize I didn't have black thread (who doesn't have black thread?!?).  So, I had to use blue.  Because of this, I had to go over the black seam of the waist and the sleeves just to get it to match.  It added a bit of decorative flair, so I didn't mind.



You can also see here that I folded the remain of the rectangle and hemmed it like the rest of the shirt.



This is a close up of the sleeve.  I didn't have enough fabric to hem the sleeve in the same way as the waist.  I didn't mind since it was the underside of the arm and no one would notice.


And here's the "decorative" stitch up close.

And the final product:



It fit much, much better!  And everyone at work just loved how it looked!

Overall, this was a very easy project.  It took me about 45-60 minutes (and some of that was just doing the decorative stitching which wouldn't have been necessary if I'd been more prepared).  I wish I had a better contrast fabric, but for pulling it off in less than 12 hours, I'm pleased with the outcome!


~Buttons