I have a t‑shirt that has gone through a cou­ple of refash­ions, and to refash­ion it again I had to cut more off the col­lar, result­ing in a neck­line that was way too wide (it was a shirt that was big on me to start with). It was prac­ti­cal­ly falling off my shoul­ders and I could­n’t wear it :(

It was still a per­fect­ly good shirt so I was deter­mined to make it wearable. 

 

And after some exper­i­men­ta­tion, it trans­formed into a tank top :D total­ly wearable!

I should also men­tion that I gave it a bit of galaxy treat­ment before the refash­ion. (There are many galaxy shirt tuto­ri­als in the blo­gos­phere, but if you’re inter­est­ed in what I did, it was sort of a com­bi­na­tion of this and this.)

I thought I’d share the refash­ion process here, in case you, too, have a shirt with a too-wide col­lar, or if you have a t‑shirt that is ask­ing to be trans­formed into a tank top :D

In the lat­ter case, you can start by cut­ting around the col­lar of a t‑shirt to make a wider neck­line. On my shirt I have about 1.5 inch­es left between the neck­line and the shoul­der seam. You can cut the cuffs off the sleeves as well.

And now the t‑shirt is ready for trans­for­ma­tion! :D

1. First, I put on the t‑shirt. I then flip one sleeve up and inside out, so that the edge of the sleeve meets the top of my shoul­der. Fold the sleeve inside out all the way around, includ­ing under the arm. I had to kept pulling and adjust­ing here and there to make sure that the front of the shirt is not sagging. Repeat with the oth­er sleeve. 

 

2. Pin the sleeve to the shirt in the front and under­arm, as fol­lows… (the shirt is still on me at this point… my phone cam­era just did a weird thing with the white bal­ance which made my skin look all washed out)

 

3. Very care­ful­ly (to avoid being pricked by the pins) take off the shirt, and pin the sleeves on the back.

 

4. And now very care­ful­ly put the shirt back on again. Take the out­er edge of the now fold­ed sleeve and fold it in half, up to the shoul­der and all the way around. 

 

5. Then tuck any excess mate­r­i­al under, like so…

 

6. Pin the new­ly formed shoul­der strap through all the lay­ers. Repeat steps 4–6 with the oth­er sleeve.

 

7. Very care­ful­ly take off the shirt, and re-pin around the arm­holes to secure the folds made in step 4. 

 

Here you can adjust the folds to make them more neat, then pin them down. Try to place the pins so that they look sym­met­ri­cal on the shirt. I placed the pins in the under­arms, top of shoul­ders, mid-front, and mid-back.

 

8. Final­ly, with dou­bled thread, sew through all lay­ers for two inch­es or so where the pins are placed. I hid my stitch­es by sewing along old serged seams where pos­si­ble. I used black thread to match the shirt so you can’t see my stitch­es, but I drew a zigzag line to show you what I mean…

 

Ta-da! A new shirt! :D

 

Per­fect for soak­ing up the last bit of glo­ri­ous sum­mer before fall arrives :D

May your week­end be filled with awesomeness!