Shimmy and More: Funky T-Shirt ReFashion

November 8, 2014

Born Natural T-Shirt Funky ReFashion

This is another refashion attempt, yes, attempt (as in no plan ahead of time).

I have a couple of natural hair T-shirts that I am refashioning into something a... little more. T-shirts with a little pizzazz was the plan. But of course when you don’t lay your plans out ahead of time...and when you don't you simply grab the scissors to start cutting and serging pieces back together. When you do this I find you are taking great risks. What risk of what you may ask, of coming out with something that looks NOTHING like the picture you had in your head when you started, sigh. But it is done.

This particular T-shirt is from a local young lady named Daphne Pollard and her hometown small based business is called ‘Born Natural’, you can find her on Facebook here. If you are not local you can find her T-shirts, sweatshirts, totes, tank tops and even cell phone cases here .

As I stated this one did not come out according to plan, I mean had there been a plan PRIOR to starting. But no worries, I plan to buy a red one (of course, being my favorite color and all) and start with a well laid out plan and hopefully come out with the picture I stared with in my head.

So here is the T-shirt as it came from Born Natural.

Isn't that the cutest?! So, I somewhat planned (in other words, as I was standing there staring at it about 3 minute before I started cutting) where to make my first cut although I had no idea where this was going after that initial cut.

That first snip is always the hardest and most nerve wrecking, but there I did it.

Then I cut off the sleeves.

Then I measured one side on the front rib neck to the middle and marked it, I repeated the same on the other side.

This was to mark how low in the FRONT only that I wanted to cut my T-shirt, to far down and you will be showing a lot my of your ahem, natural born beauty.

Cut the front neck off.

Then cut the back of the rib neck off. You may dip down an inch or so if you want it to fall lower on the neck. I did go down just a bit.

You will be left with something like this. (this tag was ironed on so there was not cutting it off completely)

My first thought was to use this zipper yardage I bought on our anniversary trip, but decided I didn’t like it for this project.

My second thought was to use bias binding the same color (you know, since I had some in the cabinet). Hated that idea.

I left that for now and moved on to open both sides (I’ll come back to the neck). I cut them open.

I wanted to do something with the waist area of my T-shirt so I held a ruler up to myself and measured (I don’t know where my tape measure just disappeared to) 2 or so inches under the middle section of my bra down to my navel.

I then folded that bottom piece in half (with the entire hem on the bottom), went up the number that I measured, drew a line, and then cut all four layers on that line. .

I ended up with this.

Then I cut a wave in the middle piece like this (still folded the same from the previous cut).

I then laid that piece upside down on the bottom of my T-shirt and cut my T-shirt to match.

And I got this.

This is how the T-shirt looked when it was open, you see the sides are split (previous step).

Now I sewed the middle wave part the matched wave part of the T-shirt.

Actually I serged them together, on the right side of the fabric (the pretty part they people will see). That’s my baby Ricardo, he’s such a good boy.

I ended up with this. Apparently I did not cut the wave deep enough to get the effect I was going for. But moving forward anyway.

I then serged the sleeves back on, again on the right side of the fabric (T-shirt).

I ended up with this.

I then took those leftover pieces from the bottom piece of the T-shirt and cut off the hem.

I then serged 2 pieces to each other, twice (reminder there were four layers that we cut because we had it folded in half).

Next I put each of those new pieces on each open side of the T-shirt.

And came out with this.

Then I remembered the pretty little remnant piece in my stash that had sparkles in it. Ohhhhhhhh what girl doesn’t like to sparkle a little? Okay, okay, a lot!

With the fabric folded in half and then folded in half again (out of the 4 sides of this now square piece of fabric you will have bottom with 4 open layers, one side on the fold with the opposite side also having 4 open layers and the top have 2 folded layers. Whew, it’s clear as mud now, right? LOL) I did the same you would do for a circle skirt. I always ended up making mine too big so I followed some wise advice if you are small go 3 inches down, medium 4 inches down and large 5 inches down and about ½ an inch down for each bigger size. Not sure that’s good advice because I still come out too small or too little. So from experience on myself I know to start at about 5 inch cut. So I put the tip of tape measure on the point of corner with fold and mark with chalk at 5 inches from one the folded edge all the way over the top side with the 2 fold edges. I then cut that out and then open the fabric and hold it against my waist just to be sure it will fit (believe it or not some fabrics are just different with this).

And of course that is some type of the flimsy fabric like chiffon so I had to refold it and go back to take off another inch.

Now I measured from there as long as I want the little peplum type bottom to be. In my case I wanted it as long as I could get it. Again I moved my tape measure all around the bottom of the first cut. Cut this piece out. As I was cutting I decided to just use as much of the fabric as I could since it was so cute and sparkly.

Tadaaaaa!

Here’s a close up of just how purrtttty it is.

I then slipped the top of my top right side out (pretty side out) into my little peplumey skirt bottom with right sides (pretty sides) of each touching and pinned.