Work it Out!

I came across old t-shirts and decided to make them into workout tanks with inspiration by BuzzFeed's Summer T-Shirt DIYs. One of my future projects will definitely be the crochet back shirt (#25).

Original shirts (both from Threadless)

Dandy Lions

True Love Will Find You in The End

After some scissor, tying, and/or sewing action...

 

Best part of t-shirt recon? You don't need to really finish any of the seams! Unless you want to, of course.  

EDIT: Shirt in action (at the beach!)

<3 PJs

JoAnn's had flannel fabrics on sale and since I had a couple weeks off in April, I decided to make some matching PJ shorts for my little sister and myself. I've never made shorts before, so it was quite the adventure trying to make a pattern from an existing pair.

When I showed my brother, he got the crazy idea that we should all match so...with the remaining fabric [and then some] I made him a man-tank :)

Needless to say, we are FABulous

Bad planning?

The temperature fluctuates a lot here, so I planned on making a 3/4 sleeve tee. I was going to combine these two shirts to make a baseball tee...

...but after chopping off the sleeves of my shirt, I was lost. I quickly realized that the polka dot sleeves would need to be wider to make a baseball-styled sleeve.

So what to do with a sleeveless shirt like this?

Fold in the upper portions to make tubes and sew, of course! I also revisited the Sesame Street fabric [from my Asian New Year project] and cut out a strip to make the straps of the new tank. Thread those through the tubes and BAM!

New tank top for the now ridiculously hot weather...but not really. When I checked the weather this morning, it was high of 83 :] SCORE!

Except it was rather windy outside...

But luckily winds don't penetrate into the library. Yay for uninterrupted studying!

Side note: My microbiology professor states, "All great scientists have pictures of themselves staring intently at something."

Case in point: Joshua Lederburg & Edward Tatum

[If only I had real agar plates handy...]

Experimenting with Ruffles!

I've been seeing a lot more ruffly shirts these days and decided to create one of my own...and let me say that searching for "ruffle shirts" on Google is not a good idea. I was a bit overwhelmed. Luckily, I remembered that I found a ruffled shirt that I really liked recently while perusing Free People Clothing.

Nice and simple, right?

It would have been if I had a tank top handy. Unfortunately, I had to make my own. I used an existing camisole as a template and sewed up a quick tank top using the bottom of two white shirts.

I used the bottom of the shirt to make the straps by cutting on the dotted line.

I made the ruffles from cutting ~1 1/2" strips of fabric out of a cream shirt. I made the strips ruffly before placing them on the tank , pinned, and sewed! In the midst of sewing, I didn't look back at my original inspiration so it turned out a bit different.

Either way, I was pretty happy with the result, especially since I finished just in time to go to the Dali museum! The outside looks really cool...

...but the inside looks even better!

Spiral staircases are the best :]

Birdies go Tweet

Don't you just hate it when you buy a shirt and it shrinks in the wash? Yea, me too. I bought this shirt a few years back and after one wash, it was definitely not wearable.


The design was so cute I couldn't part with it, so to the back of the closet it went…until now. For this project, I really had to brainstorm. I was thinking of making a tank top by incorporating a brown shirt, but I had no idea what type of tank top I wanted. I was thinking of making a racerback tank, but realized that with such a tiny shirt, there wouldn't be enough fabric. I needed some advice. So, I went to my fashion-savvy friend Melinda and she pulled out a bunch of different tops she had until we found one that I could use as a template.

So…to the reconstruction!

This post will be a bit more extensive explaining what I did since I just cut and sewed with a semi-formed idea of how the end product would look. 

Hearts Galore! [Part 2]

So, what did I do with the pink heart-filled tank I found in my closet? Well, the shirt was much too short on me so I found another shirt in my closet [donated by my friend Patrick] and fused them!

But, you see that giant hole in the front of the shirt? AHHH-inducing, I know. I wrung my hands and then got over it. :]

I was originally going to make a ruffled tank but failed miserably on the ruffle because I didn't measure the top half of the shirt [It was kind of impossible as my measuring tape has gone missing over a month ago!! *-.-] I cut the grey shirt across under the arm holes and the pink one around the middle after sewing the edges of the grey in an A-line so it would fit to the top portion. Then I sewed them together with the gaping hole at the back of the shirt.



In place of the ruffle, I decided to make something else to put on the front of the tank. I cut out several hearts from the leftover parts of the shirt and layered!

To cover up the rip, I cut out more hearts! I made it just large enough to cover the hole, but not too excessive. As I was pinning it into place, my sister walked into the room and said, "Whoa! That's so cool! Are you making a pocket?" Hm...not my original intention but sounds like an awesome idea. Thanks, kid sister :]

I volunteered tonight at a local hospice and it was still decorated for Valentine's day! Perfect :]

Cue Scissors!

As I was perusing some DIY books at Barnes & Nobles, I came across a book called 99 ways to cut, sew, trim & tie your T-shirt into something special. I flipped through quickly and saw one that I clearly remembered seeing somewhere. So I ran to my laptop [a good 5 hours later when I got home] and checked me bookmarks. Lo and behold, I found it online! I thought it was cute, but the design flashed by too quickly so I only had a slight idea of how to implement it. I also thought it to be a bit too scandalous for me, but I knew I had a busy week and wouldn't have as much time to sew something like last week's kimono top. I checked the weather and saw that it would be a beautiful high of 75 and decided to whip out my scissors and an old T-shirt from my pile of scraps.



This was an old orchestra shirt of mine. I liked the design, but I hardly wore it so i deemed it suitable for my scissors. I folded it in half and traced what I would cut, making sure to cut straps while removing the entire image from the back.





Since the straps were super long, I trimmed them and used the excess to make rosettes from a tutorial I found a while back and then sewed them onto the front of the tank. It's been a while since I've hand sewn anything so it was the most time-consuming portion of making this tank top, but definitely well worth it.