Upcycled Shirt

There was a pile of uniform samples at work that we could take- so I did.  I took a plain grey shirt ( size too big) and a long sleeve white jersey top ( size slightly too small).

I mulled over what to do with them, besides arranging them in various positions on my floor.  Then decided that the only logical move was to cut them up and sew them together.  So I cut the top off the shirt, and unpicked the sleeves as the shoulders sat in the wrong place so I needed to take them up.  And attached to the body section of the white top.

Customising a T-shirt- XL work shirt to cute everyday Tee

When I started working at my job we had temporary t-shirts before we got proper shirts, they were all XL and bright teal* and said ASK ME on the back in big letters.  Now we have shirts the tees are unneeded but unwearable at present and needed significant adjustment.

I cut the section off the back which said ASK ME, and also the section on the front which said the name of my work, then sewed the top back on to the remaining body.  I took in the side seams quite a lot because it was far too big.

Then I removed the sleeves and sewed them back on further up the arm (as the shoulder sat half way down my arm before).  I basted the top of the sleeves and pulled it tight so it scrunched up, then I sewed over this scrunch with the sewing machine. 

Then I cut a white square from the section from the back and a teal heart from some left over teal and sewed that to my sleeve. 

*It's bluey-green.

How to print onto a t-shirt...

Well I'm still in the experimental stage but I've been wanting to look into printing onto fabric (like a t-shirt), and also I've been preoccupied with dinosaurs because they're awesome.  I found a picture of a stegosaurus on the interwebs, where everything lives, and copied it out onto paper (yes this process started reassuring in the familiar world of the interwebs but turned terrifyingly to the dark ages of paper and pen but stay calm and enjoy the detour into the caveman world).


Then I bought some craft foam and copied the drawing onto it, and cut out the stegosaurus shape.  This became by stamper- it's not great without a wood block to hold onto especially since it's a fairly large stamp making a little fiddly and messy.  But then, there hasn't really been a craft project of mine that hasn't made a mess...

I placed a piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt to separate the to layers so the paint didn't bleed through (although it really wasn't runny enough to do that anyway) and made sure the fabric lay nice and flat.  I made a few dots on the t-shirt to indicate where I wanted the stegosauruses to go, this helped make sure they would fit.  Then I painted a thin layer of paint onto the foam stamp, placed it onto my t-shirt, and pressed down firmly concentrating on the edges.  From my tests I knew it would result in a fairly sketchy imprint that I would the have to paint over the top of it so that's I did. 

Talk Nerdy To Me T-Shirt

Another geeky one, yay!  I'm not the first person to use 'Talk Nerdy To Me', and I darn well hope I'm not the last.  But I did my own little design on the bottom, also I sewed the wording onto mine, instead of buying a lazyboy pre-made one. 

I typed the wording out in my favourite font (courier new- which looks very typewriter-ish so I thought it was apt) and printed it out.  I pinned it to the t-shirt and sewed over the typing in white.  It looked really good, then I pulled the paper away, and it looked less good!  But I sewed over it and was pleased with the result.

My little design along the bottom looks like asterixes (or is it asterixi?) but then you turn the t-shirt over and it's Pacman!  And the little asterxis are the little things Pacman eats.  I was thinking of doing Ms Pacman (as Marge Simpson said 'Ms Pacman struck a blow for feminism') but I couldn't be bothered to get the red thread and her lipstick and eyelashes freak me out anyway.

T-Shirt Customising Again

Bought another T-shirt to customise, this time in a delightful dark red colour (the same colour as one of my long sleeve tops that I basically live in).  I was planning to iron on some transfers my sister bought me ages ago and embroider over the top to create a totally awesome design.  Anyway, to cut a long story short the transfers didn't transfer and I have a bright pink burn mark on my carpet (doh), and I had bits of carpet stuck to the top corner of my t-shirt...

My solution was to use the bits of t-shirt I had cut off, the neck was too tight so I cut around it and the sleeves a little to long so I cut them shorter, to make a flower for the top of the t-shirt. Not sure I'm happy with it totally, but tbh it's so frigging rainy I ain't gonna be wearing a t-shirt anytime soon.

Before

After

Customised T-shirt to Tank

I only have two outfits for the gym and in weeks where I have several days off in a row I have to rush to laundry if I want to gym each day.  I found a couple of t-shirts that I had received for free for an event at last year's International Women's Day and I decided to experiment with customising the t-shirts into tanks for the gym.

Before

After

First I removed the sleeves, collar, bottom edge using a seam ripper but I then trimmed some more off with some scissors anyway to make it nice and loose around the neck and sleeves.  I also trimmed the bottom so that all the edges matched. 

But I decided to jazz the tank up and bit and I've had an idea for a while about lacing up a top with a shoe lace (I actually bought some dark orange cord- 2m for 80p).  So I cut away from the sides of the T-shirt (first I flattened it, and folded it over so everything would be even and match up).  Then I used the seam ripper to cut small holes along the new cut edge.  And lace the cord through. 

I'm pretty pleased with the effect, but it would have worked out better if I'd used a slightly bigger T-shirt (this one says L in it, but that's some kind of tiny alien large I presume), I think I'll try it again to make a tank for summer.