I had this shirt in my head for a long, long time. I found the original shirt on eBay for $10, it was giant-sized, but otherwise in fairly good shape. A year or so ago, I checked out the book, Tease, from our library and made a mental note of the cool button down t-shirt project. I didn’t pay as much attention to the instructions, unfortunately.
I thought this shirt would look neat with the button down collar concept so I went for it…but admittedly, I was cringing as I cut through the middle of this shirt. I persevered though, and finally got it right…kind of.
The sleeves were supposed to be more puffy, almost like, you know, Victorian-ish, but eh, that didn’t work out so much. It’s a sweet concept though, and I stole it from a post on Craftster (dot org). Basically, cut off the sleeves at the seams, then trace a shirt that you already have that fits you nicely around the boobage area onto your project shirt, so you have a nice, new armhole shape. Cut this out. Try on the project shirt and figure out how tight it should be, pin, and cut.
Now, take the sleeves you just cut off and cut the underarm seam. Now you will have a curve-ish line and a straight line on the sleeve. Gather from end to end on the curve-y line. Double the sleeve over and press in the center, so you will have a “marker” line when you re-attach the sleeve to the shirt. Nice. Now, open up the shirt on one side of the armhole, and pin the sleeve by matching up the pressed center line to the shoulder seam of the shirt. Then, pin at each end to the shirt and gather to fit the armhole. Now you can sew the sleeve back to the shirt. Repeat on other side.
Open up the hemline of the sleeve (I used my handy dandy chopstick) and insert 1/4″ elastic into this by attaching a safety pin and running it through. It’s OK to have leftover elastic hanging out each end of the sleeve. No biggie.
Now, pin the entire side seam of shirt, all the way to the hemline of the sleeve. Sew the entire length together. Now you can cut off those pesky elastic ends. This is a “raglan” style shirt now, since there is one seam for the side that joins up to the sleeve seam. Sweet.
I winged the next part, and it wasn’t pretty. I cut off the front panel of one of John’s hideous button-up oxford type shirts, that for whatever reason we’ve held onto for dear life for 10+ years and was currently being stored in the basement. I folded my t-shirt in the center and ironed, then cut a line down the middle of the shirt and basically sewed the front button panel/collar around the shirt. I would recommend leaving the neckband on the t-shirt when doing this. I cut mine off, and then had to sew extra fabric to the silly button band/collar thing to make up for the wider neckline, which quite frankly, sucked.
That’s pretty much it. And you know what I really like? I like that the ends of the button panel thing hang lower than the shirt. That’s actually my favorite aspect of this shirt. It would be even cooler if one side was longer than the other. Maybe next time.
Tags: reconstruction, t-shirt, upcycled
