Two more gray shirts

These days, I am working on a really awesome refashion (at least, I hope it will turn out awesomely). However, I realized that to do it right, I sort of needed to teach myself draping and pattern-making. So it is taking a while.

In the meantime, I whipped up these two simpler refashions. For the first one, I used this tutorial from Adventures in Dressmaking to turn a long-sleeved t-shirt into a short-sleeved one with a cute ruffle. I think it turned out very well.

Here is a close-up of the asymmetrical ruffle.

For the second refashion, I took another gray item, this time a too-short dress with fun puffy sleeves, and turned it into another gray t-shirt. Yes, I seem to have an addiction to gray t-shirts. As a mom, I mostly wear jeans and a t-shirt, but at least I can have cute t’s! You can't tell from the picture, but this fabric has a slight sparkle to it.

For both of these refashions, I used a machine stitch that was new to me – the straight stretch stitch. I wanted to have some give in the neck holes and sleeves of both items. It worked like a charm for attaching the thick ruffle to the neck of the first shirt. However, for the thinner sleeves and hem, the top thread broke over and over again. I fooled around with the tension, to no avail. Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions?