Shirt Conversion

This week I think I went a little nutty in the craft room. I found a shirt online that I liked, but it's price was a bit steep and I wasn't sure where to go looking for it in a department store. Immediately my brain started contemplating how such a piece was put together, but as I didn't have a pattern for it, I saved its picture on my phone for another day and moved on to other things. A few days later I started thinking about the shirt again, so I decided to take a trip to my local thrift store to see if I could find anything close. Unfortunately, I found nothing even remotely like it. What I did find was a baby pink long sleeved shirt that was slightly baggy on me in a stretchy material that just begged to be modified. For $5, I left the store full of hope and headed home. What I turned it into was something else entirely.

I started by removing the sleeves and cutting them open at the seams, then sewing them together at the wrists. This would be in the back, and would wrap around my shoulders, then cross in the front and attach back at the side shirt seams under the arms. I ended up having just enough material to stretch to the seams. I ended up gathering the wide part of the sleeve material (what used to be the shoulder) and opening the side seam of the shirt at the under arm, then sewing it back together with the gathered shoulder material between the front and back layers of the shirt.

 

Then I added a thin elastic strip to the side seam of the shirt, giving it a small scrunch that helped the bulk of the shirt match the criss-cross crunch over the chest. After that, it was just a matter of hemming all the raw edges and making sure everything laid right. All in all it took me about 12 hours to figure out how to do, and 4 or 5 to actually put together. Not bad for a weekend project!

Next time I think I'll need more material to stretch across the chest, so that instead of meeting at the underarms, the material would meet back at its starting point at the center back. That way the criss-cross section would only pull on itself, rather than on the sides of the shirt, which would help it keep its shape and prevent the shirt from stretching forward. It wouldn't be that difficult to convert a tube top into something similar, or to make a tube top shape and use a long strip of fabric for the cross section. All in all, though, I'm pretty happy with it!!