March 10, 2015

A t-shirt refashion maybe

I picked up this t-shirt on clearance at Wal-mart. The embroidery caught my attention and at only $5 it was worth taking a chance. The style is meant to be loose, so the t-shirt itself is boxy. There is a drawstring casing at the high hip level to cinch it in. I did get compliments when wearing this, but it was not comfortable. The fit was just too sloppy for my tastes.

So I pulled out my TNT t-shirt pattern that I made a few years ago. My initial thought was to just cut down the shirt to match the fit of my pattern. Essentially using the t-shirt as a fabric rather than a shirt.

There are a few problems that stopped me. First is the casing. I debated on cutting out the casing and just having a band on the bottom hem but I was concerned the seam would be in a weird place. The next problem was the sleeve. There really isn't enough fabric to recut the sleeve.

Looking now at the picture, I wonder if I should take in the sides and call it good? What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:42 AM

    If you don't want to transform it to a sleeveless shell, I'd just do the sides. Unless - once the sides are trimmed, can you use that fabric to patch in the underarm of the sleeve? Or the top of the sleeve as a design element? OTOH, it looks like the whole sleeve cap needs to change too much for that to work though,

    Another option would be to see if they have another tshirt and use it for material only, but that sort of defeats being thrifty, doesn't it?

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  2. Anonymous6:48 AM

    I forgot to add - based on recent experience with w-mart clothing, I might not use a whole lot of energy and time on re-working it. The fabric seems to pill and the seams pucker and twist the more it's worn and laundered. Still, it's nice to have things fit comfortably before they do get tatty.

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  3. Thanks for your comments! I have considered just donating it as is because someone will love it. It was a $5 clearance item so I won't be able to find another. The embroidery is what made me want to rework it.

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  4. I would probably recut the shoulder area just to bring the shoulder line up and narrow the upper bust so it's not so sloppy, but only if the existing sleeves fit adequately. I've don't this quite a lot over the last several years, since clearance/thrifted has been all my budget could handle and it's hard to pass up a cute top even when it's a couple sizes too big. I really do treat them as fabric that's been partially constructed. Nearly all sleeves on budget knit top are designed horribly now, so I just get the biggest size I can find and try to salvage the fit best I can.

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