SO! I was talk­ing about how I was going to trans­form one of Mike’s dis­card­ed shirts into some­thing I could wear — and I’m final­ly done!

I oper­at­ed on this t‑shirt.

A large men’s t‑shirt from Mark’s.

The but­ton pan­el in the front was a bit of an issue. But I had an idea.

I first sep­a­rat­ed the front and back of the shirt, then I cut off the sleeves and the bot­tom half of the front piece.

Then I drew two lines from the shoul­der to the cen­tre point at the bot­tom edge and cut!

The but­ton pan­el is com­plete­ly out of the pic­ture now.

Then I over­lapped the two top pieces a bit in the cen­tre and pinned them in place. To make sure that it’s width is wide enough for me I used an exist­ing shirt that fits me well as a guide. I then trimmed the sides of the bot­tom half to match the width of the top half. Then I sewed the two halves togeth­er on the machine, with right sides fac­ing each other.

With right sides fac­ing each oth­er, I pinned the sewn front piece onto the back piece of the t‑shirt and kind of cut around the shape… (hence the title of this post :P)

Then I sewed the shoul­der seams and side seams togeth­er on the machine.

Turned the refash­ioned shirt right side out… moment of truth — does it fit?! (Did I ever tell you that I nev­er check gauge when I cro­chet? Appar­ent­ly I don’t use the mea­sur­ing tape much nei­ther! :P)

AND it does!

It does fit, but I think it’s kind of miss­ing some­thing… I love raw edges on t‑shirt mate­ri­als because they don’t fray and they usu­al­ly roll nice­ly, espe­cial­ly after a wash. But I’m kind of under­whelmed by the raw edges on the neck­line. It just looked like I ran­dom­ly cut apart a t‑shirt and sewed it back togeth­er… which is exact­ly what I did, but I’d like to make it more pre­sentable, if possible…

Then I remem­bered a book I bought last year, Cro­chet Adorned by Lin­da Per­mann, and I have been want­i­ng to try mak­ing some­thing from that book for a while now (actu­al­ly, I tried mak­ing some­thing but it com­plete­ly flopped). It is a won­der­ful resource for cro­cheted trims and stuff… And I found a trim pat­tern that I thought would work well with this shirt, and so I made it with cot­ton thread, machine-washed the trim once in an effort to pre-shrink it (if it does shrink, I was­n’t sure… but I made the trim longer than what I need­ed for that pur­pose) and hand-stitched it onto the neckline…

… whip-stitch­ing while rolling the raw edge under…

And then there it is! A new edge!

And a new shirt! :)

The blue and the white trim togeth­er reminds me of those blue porce­lain plates.

I still have a cou­ple of old pieces of cloth­ing that I’m look­ing for ideas to refash­ion. Refash­ion­ing makes total sense to me because I find the con­struc­tion part ther­a­peu­tic and the process of com­ing up with new ideas excit­ing, where­as I find clothes-shop­ping at the mall or even at a sec­ond-hand shop stress­ful some­times. I do like to look at clothes and get inspi­ra­tions, but I find search­ing for a spe­cif­ic thing that I like frustrating…

Any­way, when I come up with ideas for more refash­ion­ing I’ll sure­ly write and post pic­tures! Thank you for vis­it­ing and I hope your week­end was lovely!