T-shirt skirt

I'm sure t-shirt skirts have been done a million times in a million ways, but I'll show you what I did.

I started with 3 t-shirts that I have had for 10+ years, but stopped wearing awhile ago.

I loved and still love the "crinkle tie-dye" pattern on the shirts, but didn't see much point in wearing large animal faces from trips I took in 8th grade.... I always thought I would do something with the fabric (before I had even heard the term refashion) so I saved them.

I decided to do a basic 6 panel skirt
I had hoped to make it a circle skirt, but there wasn't enough fabric to make the skirt long enough. (this is why the triangles don't lay flat nicely)

I used the inside face of each shirt and the existing bottom hem, so the hem of the skirt is the inside of a regular t-shirt hem, but it looks fine I think.
I found after I sewed the panels together that there was not enough elasticity in the existing t-shirt material (and I measured poorly) so the skirt was way to wide. I added a strip of fabric for a draw string and made the "string" out of some stretched scraps from the t-shirts (like t-shirt yarn).

Its hard to tell from the photos, but its just slightly longer than knee length.
It has a nice twirl to it.

Since its t-shirt material, its super comfortable. Of my refashions so far, this one will probably get the most use.

Hurricane Irene Dress

We started seeing rain from hurricane Irene Friday around noon. By Friday at 5pm I was home with water and batteries, and bored.... so I decided to sew. There was a good chance of losing power, but I figured I would sew until the power went out if it did. Project? A new dress from an old dress.

Here's what I started with:

Functional, but boring...
I have had this dress since high school I think. I was really into this style of sun dress at the time, but now I'm bored with it.


I used a store bought dress that I liked the fit of as a template. See the bar of shaped hotel soap in the upper right? thats my "marking pen." It works on any dark fabric, washes out (cause its soap!) and best of all, was free!

Instead of reshaping the original bodice, I kept the bottom of the dress and cut off the neck line and arm holes.

I gave the new dress a V-neck with a gather.

A couple lessons learned:
1: It is hard to hem a curve (arm holes and back of neck)
2: It is hard to hem a V (I added the gather as a way to camoflauge mistakes at the bottom of the V, but I think its a technique I will reuse...)
I'm still learning, and I'm starting to understand the use of bias tape...

We never actually lost power, and so I sewed until 2 am when I finished the dress. Therefore the project was started and finished during the hurricane. :)

This morning, the rain was gone, and by noon the sun was out. I went to survey the damage in my hurricane dress.

The wind shredded the tarp we use to keep the rain/snow/sun off our bikes.

I also found some down tree branches.

Overall my area suffered little damage. Lots of people around town lost power, but we had very little flooding. Other areas got a lot more damage than us.

-Erin
SewingScientist

Introduction, Two Shirts and a Skirt

Hi Everyone!

I love seeing all the creative ideas the posters have for giving new life to old cloths, and I'm excited to contribute a few of my own. As a brief introduction, my name is Erin and I am a PhD student in microbiology. I started refashioning last fall for the economic benefits (as I tell people, "I don't have a new cloths budget, but I do have an old cloths and thread budget.") Now I think this is a hobby I'll hold onto even after I graduate and have a little more spending money. When I am not sewing, I am usually in the lab playing with cells or viruses.

I am posting 2 refashions in my introductory post. The first one is a skirt and shirt combo I got from my younger sister.



The outfit fit fine, but the long skirt and flaring sleeves weren't really my style, and it was much too fancy for me to wear just about anywhere. (My husband also said it looked like a bathrobe....)

I knew I wanted to take in the sleeves and shorten the skirt. The fabric was a nice soft velour, and to decide how I wanted the new sleeves to fit, I found a shirt of a similar material with a fit I liked and overlayed the 2 to get an idea of what I wanted.


I ended up making the sleeves a little wider than the purple shirt, but it gave me a starting point.

This was one of my first refashions, and I was terrified to make the first cut in the fabric.... So I pinned up the sleeve and skirt with safety pins, and tried it on to make sure it was what I wanted. Here it is post pinning, pre snip in all its lumpy glory...



Finally I snipped and sewed and got the final product. I'm pretty happy with the outcome, and it's *much* more my style.


The second refashion was another shirt from the same sister. She and I used to be a similar size, but since she had a kid, not so much... So I get her hand me ups (I'm the oldest), but we have very different styles.

The second shirt started out as a 3/4 sleeve number with frills at the end of the sleeve. I love the bodice, but I don't wear 3/4 sleeve often, and the frill was a bit much for me.


I picked apart the seams at the shoulder and at the end of the sleeve, and used the frill from the end of the sleeve to make a new cap sleeve:



I *love* the way it turned out and I wore it today for my birthday dinner (mmmm seafood)!

Thanks for reading!

Erin
SewingScientist