Business in the front, party in the back.

I had this old knit shirt. The fit and length and all are good, and I've found this to be a good shirt to layer under jackets--it's neutral enough to match, but still a fun print.

But years of washing and wearing had made the back neckline get badly stretched out, so I could no longer wear this by itself. I blame the tags, since they kept flipping out and weighing it down. (Believe me, it looked a lot more gappy on me than it does on my "model".)

I played around with a couple of different (non-permanent) solutions, but the shoulder seams would have ended up in weird places. Until I came up with this:

I'll give you a quasi-tutorial while I'm at it.
First, I cut out those annoying tags.

Then I pinched out the back seam until it lay flat again. (About 2 1/2".)

I found something to use as a template to draw a circle with a disappearing ink fabric marker. (This is a box lid.)

The circle, with the dart still pinned. I don't have pictures of this part, but I unpinned the dart (which made the circle a little more of a U-shape) and cut along the line.

Then I folded the edge inside the shirt, about 3/8", and stitched the raw edge down. I chose to hand-sew it in order to minimize that ripple effect that knit fabrics tend to have.

To close up the top, I used a small button and a thread loop.

And here's what it looks like on me now, at least as good of a picture I could get shooting in my mirror at 11 pm!

All in all, a pretty simple refashion that took maybe an hour. (I spread it over 2 days, so not completely sure.)