Saturday, March 14, 2015

Refashioned Winter T

This was a pretty easy refashion of a boxy T-shirt to a cute & comfy turtle neck - here's how I did it.

Cutting:


  1. Take a larger than you boxy T, a tank top sized T, & a couple more of desired color or pattern - size irrelevant
  2. Lay out your boxy T (brown) flat on a cutting mat & cut the sides and arms straight off on both sides. Cut out the neckline just outside the neck facing stitching
  3. Cut off the bottom hem straight (or you can do front higher & back longer)
  4. Cut the bottom of your tank top off (brown speckled) - save it as the cowl neck piece
  5. Cut 6 4" x 15" strips of your sleeve pieces - 2 strips of each color (brown speckled, yellow, brown)
  6. Cut 2 4"x4" squares (the teal underarm gusset) - then cut them on the diagonal to make 4 triangles
  7. Cut a bunch of squares to line the bottom of the shirt - your discretion as to what size. Mine were all 4"x 4" squares

Sewing: 

  1. Sew your sleeves first by laying out  flat three of your 4"x15" pieces (long end to long end) with a 1/2" overlap - zigzag stitch those together. Do that twice (one for each arm)
  2. layout your boxy t-shirt (brown main body) completely flat so that the neck hole is positioned in the middle of a big rectangle. Center the top of your sleeve piece (speckle brown) to the center of your shoulder line (overlap 1/2") and zigzag stitch it straight. Do that on both sides
  3. Now sew the arm gusset triangles to the outside corners of the sleeve & body pieces
  4. Take your bottom border squares & stitch them all together in a strip - stitch that strip to the front & back bottoms of the boxy-t (brown)
  5. Fold your shirt back (right sides together) so that the front and back are facing each other - you are now going to sew the side seams. Sew all the way from the bottom of the shirt, around the arm gusset curve, and down the sleeve. I sewed from the TOP of my border to the sleeve because I wanted the border to be loose and then I curve cut the sides.
  6. Once you have that all together, grab the bottom of your tank top (speckled brown) and sew it into your neckline - you can choose to keep the tank top hem as the hem for the top of your neckline - or cut it off - it's a matter of preference.
How all the pieces look laid out flat (Steps 1-4 )

Folded over & ready to stitch the side seam (step 5)
Credit to Sherwood Forest Faire since I used their T-shirt!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I really like how you mixed the different fabrics. This looks so nice and cozy!

- Elizabeth, EOD
aka The Hungry Octopus

The Enchanted Forest said...

this is awesome! love love patchwork :) think i will have to do this myself! thanks for the inspiration! xx