Dolman Style Tee Shirt

Made from knit sheets!

Isn’t that awesome?!

I found a queen sized knit set on clearance for $5 at Wal-Mart.  That’s a lot of fabric.  I couldn’t pass that up!  I still plan on making a maxi dress for me, and some pajama pants for my dudes.  Later, though.

Wanna make a Dolman Style tee for you?  It’s so easy and fun.

Start with the top band of the sheet.  If you do this, you’ll have that cute band at the bottom of the shirt, and you won’t need to hem it.  Perfect!

Measure out your pattern with a big tee shirt.  I used one of Hubby’s.

Make the sleeves longer and drape-y-er.  I know that’s not a word.  I don’t care.  See how I came down to a point with the sleeve I cut?  Don’t do that.  Just make it go out straight.  I ended up fixing that later.  Oh well.  Live and learn, right?

This is what I had.  I needed the band at the bottom to be more fitted, so I cut it in a few inches on both sides.

*note*  again, don’t do it quite this way.  Taper your edges so that you don’t have a boxy waistband.  I cut that part off later…when I saw that it didn’t work.  Here.  I’ll draw it out for you in Paint.

Man.  I just can’t get this right.  Cut as shown above, but since this picture is on an angle, you can’t see the angle in which I cutteth the sheet.  Taper your sides, people.

Now then.  See this nicely sewn edge on the sheet?  Cut as much as you need to finish off the neckline and sleeves.

How will you know how much you need?  Just cut your strips a bit smaller than the neckline and sleeves.  Pin it into place with the right sides together, and sew it into place.

Do this for the front and back. 

Fold it over and top stitch it into place.  This will give it that less-homemade look you’re going for.

See?!  Isn’t that lovely?!  Again, do this for the front AND the back necklines.

With the front and back of the shirt (right sides together) facing each other, sew the shoulder seams together on both sides.

Take some more of that beautifully sewn side seam from the sheet and finish off the sleeve the same way you did the neckline.

Once you’ve done that, sew the side seams of your shirt.

Steam press your seams like crazy, turn it right side out…

…and…

Viola!

You’re done!

I like that the bagginess of the shirt hides all of the “baby leftovers” in my midsection.  I think I’ll wear this style of shirt every.single.day!  :)

Play Skirt from T-shirt

I have this shirt that I really like the colors of, but I’ve never particularly loved the style of it. The neck was always too wide, or just didn’t fit right. So, it sat in a box for a bit, until I decided to chop it up and make something for my little rugrat.

First, I chopped off the bottom of the shirt to make the main part of the skirt. Now, I could have just thrown in an elastic, and I’d be done…but I know my daughter. She won’t wear leggings with a skirt unless it’s snowing, and even then it’s a fight. And she seems to think the entire world wants to see her underwear. So I used the top part of the skirt to make a panty-liner type thing.

I grabbed a pair of her panties and used them as a guide on the sleeves to cut them off.

See?

Then sewed the crotch area (everything I did with a shorter zig zag stitch, maybe a 2.5? and just made sure it was nice and secure)

I added a little triangle panel in the back to make sure it was big enough for her and comfortable.
Next part is a bit confusing, but of course if you forget about the panty insert you’re fine.

I sewed the panty part to the skirt part, gathering it up to make sure it fit well. Make sure you’re sewing it so the right parts are facing out, and the parts you want hidden (the seams) aren’t.

Grabbed some 1” wide elastic and cut it to the size of one of her other dozens of skirts

And sewed it super secure. A square with an X in the middle, double to triple stitched.

Then, I put the elastic in the skirt, with the main body of the skirt making a casing for the elastic. I pinned it all around the waist,

Then sewed it. It was a really quick project, with a little girl standing there the whole time nagging me to wear it as soon as I was done.

Then she wore it for 4 days straight until it got black from playing on the trampoline, then Mommy finally convinced her to wear a different skirt! What a crazy kid!

Pillowcase Style Ruffle Dress

…made from a tee shirt…

How about some sewing?  I {heart} sewing. 

And clothing refashion.

And chocolate.

How cute is this?

It was so fun to make.  I made it for my friend’s daughter, and I made it out of her daddy’s tee shirt.

Yeah.  My lighting was awful.  It was late at night when I made this.  Forgive me.  Anyway, cut the top of the shirt off like you see it in the picture,

Fold the top of it down and pin it into place.  Leave the raw edge on the outside.  Sew it close to the edge.  This is going to create a casing for the ribbon and straps.

Do the same thing to the other side. 

Remember this lovely roll of knit ribbing I got from my MIL, The Queen?  I’m using more of this fabulous stuff for this dress.  If you don’t have a roll of knit ribbing, just use several 1” strips of knit fabric.  You could even cut up a tee shirt in a circular pattern to get one very long strip of fabric.

Starting at the bottom, sew the knit strips to the shirt.

Keep going until you have this:

Now sew some ribbon to the waistband of the dress. 

Sew it along the top and bottom of the ribbon so that you have a casing for your elastic.  Leave a small opening somewhere so you can thread your elastic into the casing.

Oops.  I don’t have a picture of that.  Shame on me.  Just pretend this ribbon is elastic in the picture below, and that the casing below is the ribbon casing you just made, savvy?!

Now thread some ribbon through the casing you made at the top of the dress.  (refer to the above picture!  ;))  Thread the same piece of ribbon through the front and back casings.  Sew the ribbon ends together so that your dress has straps and now looks like this on top:

See that top casing and the scrunched up waistband?  That is what I was trying (and probably failing) to explain above.

Now take the top casings and bunch and scrunch them so that you have a gathered neckline.  Sew them into place.

Isn’t that a fun dress for Summer?  Oh, goodness, and it looks so cute on a toddler!

Isn’t that precious? 

I should show you who is really wearing that dress.  Hint:  it isn’t my friend’s little gal!

I shouldn’t show you.

Someone might turn me in.

Hubby might not be too happy.

Oh, but it’s so funny!  I have to share!

Ha ha ha!

Monkey does NOT like wearing girl clothes!  :)

It shimmers so

Sink me, The man’s lost his senses! Bare legs.

K, the other day, I found a package of t-shirts I’d got for Christmas to make my husband this shirt. There were still 2 in the package,you know the kind…Plain, white, t-shirt, in a package. Hanes-like, if you will. So I decided to do an experiment with it. I began by drawing lines down the middle, and doing a little math to figure out the size I wanted the stripes to be. They ended up being rows and columns about 3 1/8” apart. I drew them all on the shirt, front and back, and drawing lines from the corners to make a chevron style.

Note: I did all this while watching this version of Jane Eyre. Good times. Oh, I left about 3” open at the bottom with no lines on it. Then, I grabbed this roll of sequins that I had way back for my wedding…I made my own veil. So I thought the white on white would be mild, but fun, and I can gradually burst into the sequin/sparkly shirt idea. I sewed them all on to the lines I drew, carefully turning at the corners, and trying my hardest to keep straight lines.

Here’s all the sequins sewn on:

Wanna know a secret? I ran out of sequins on the back, for the last zag. Don’t tell anyone!!

Then, on the bottom, I unpicked the bottom hem, and sewed 6-7 rows of elastic on to shir it.

I sewed some elastic onto the sleeves to gather them up pretty.

I actually ended up sewing elastic from the sleeve hem all the way up to the collar, just because I liked the look. I also sewed it on the underarm seam to gather that up. Trying to make the shirt less manly. I could have made it into a tank top, but I wanted something I didn’t have to always layers with, if I didn’t want to.

Then, I unpicked the collar since I don’t want a man’s collar! I drew on lines to cut from another shirt that I liked the neckline off. I sewed pintucks in the back of the neckline to gather in the fabric, and elastic in the front to make it not so bunchy.

Then, I unpicked the seam covering from inside the shirt that went from one sleeve to the other. I used that as my collar. It was basically like bias tape. Pinned it on, and finished the collar.

While it was hanging on the mannequin I noticed the sequins weren’t all sitting nicely.

So I took it off and ironed them, trying to basically melt them down how I wanted. They didn’t melt, but they laid better.

Then, wash it to get all the marker and little threads off, and wear it on a date with your honey to see Avengers!

With a cardigan over top…probably my favorite look right now.

With a goofy face and no cardigan. Still not loving the collar, but I’ll mess with it later. What do you think?