Baseball T Makeover

I love baseball T's. I dunno about you, I think they're super comfy and really cute. I have a few myself, but my favorite is this gigantic one I wear when I'm loafing around my house. I get a little embarrassed when I wear it around my neighborhood though, so i decided to give it a little makeover.

I gave up on a sexy pose, little teapot it is.

First step, tighten it up. I turned it inside out and put it back on, and pinned all down the side and underneath the arms so that it was the size I was looking for. Word to the wise? Err on the side of a little larger, the first round I did was way too tight and I had to take out my stitches and do them over. A little wiggle room is always a good thing.

Pinning my armpits was awkward to say the least.

I then traced a line down the side where the pins were, and saw that for the body the pins were 2.5 inches in from the edge. I mirrored this on the other side of the shirt.

 

 Pencil washes off fabric. Best quilting tip evar.

I replaced the safety pins with actual pins, the safety pins just make it easier to pin the shirt while wearing it so they don't fall out when I'm taking it off.

 Little pins coming in handy.

I drew a line down where the safety pins were on the sleeves, and measured the new width compared to the original width. At the armpit the seam had been taken in 4 inches, and at the cuff the seam was taken in 2 inches. I matched this on the other sleeve and replaced those safety pins with regular ones.
I made a nice simple straight stitch all down the side and sleeves of the shirt, but BEFORE cutting the excess fabric off I tried it back on to check the size.
Like I said, the first time was too tight, glad I hadn't cut first and asked questions later. I resewed the lines and tried it back on again. Fit well, but the sleeves at the cuffs were too tight, I fixed this by hemming the cuffs a bit. Finally cut off the excess fabric.

Tried to think of a project for the leftover scraps, project 

ended up being "Fill up the trashcan".

Tried it back on, perfect fit! But we're not done, I want to add a little detailing too.

Such good lighting in my room.

I decided to fabric paint a little retro number on the front to give it a little more pizzazz. 7's my lucky number, so I went with that. I found a cool font I liked online, traced it onto a thick stock piece of paper and cut it out using my Xacto knife.

Finally found a use for all those Golf magazines sent to our house.

I then taped the heck out of the back of the number, to keep the paper nice and flush with the fabric while I was painting. Nothing worse then going through all this trouble only to have a little smudge do to sloppy paper-taping.

By thick stock paper I mean the cover to my sketchpad.

I used a light blue fabric paint, and when the paper was nice and tight with the fabric painted in dabbing motions along the cutouts. It's best to keep your paintbrush at a 90 degree angle with the fabric so no bristles accidentally slip under the paper.

Someone told me these 7's look like sassy raindrops.

Let it dry a bit to prevent smudges, and take the paper off. I then took a tooth pick and filled in little tiny holes I saw and to neaten up the edges of the numbers. You could probably also use a really tiny paintbrush or something else, but I'm poor and a toothpick is what I have :)

Little smudge at the top of 7 number 1, but what can you do?

Voila! Once the shirt is dry, wear it around town and tell people you're a softball superstar from the 70's.

Skulking in the background. He's lucky I didn't make him model the shirt.

Badonkadonk

So... I enjoy being a grown up, paying my own bills and getting to come home as late as I want. Unfortunately one of the things that isn't as fun is that you actually age as you get older... Lame. So certain parts of my anatomy have... changed... shall we say? Recently, the circumference of my hips. I'm digging this new big girl body, but my pants and dresses are not. So, one of my favorite dresses will no longer do as a dress, but must be rebuilt better, faster, stronger! Today? We turn it into a shirt! BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!

Is it the rapture?

I want to make it long enough so that it's not a belly shirt, but it's a little tough. The buttoned middle part ends a little too high for my taste, so I had to hem just below it.
This is how the buttoned pieces of fabric are held together.

Hard to see, but Waldo's in here somewhere...

Hard to see, but the flap of fabric is just tucked under itself. So I started tearing out the seams around it to see what shape the fabric was in underneath it.

Just tore it out with my teeth.

There wasn't much fabric to work with, but it's enough as long as you're careful with your sewing.

Pretty gnarly when you start tearing clothes apart.

I cut the extra fabric of the skirt off with an extra few inches to work with.

Wish I could think of something useful for this extra fabric besides "turban".

Aaaand cut right down the middle from the center opening.

I couldn't hem the sides of the opening straight down, there just wasn't enough extra fabric to work with. So I tucked them under and created a little V part.

Kinda looks like an angry, crazy face huh? With jacked up eyebrows?

With an area this small it's much easier to hand sew what you need. So I stitched as close to the edge as possible to match the sewing on the rest of the shirt/dress.

 This is where all my quilting finesse comes in handy.

 Looks messy from the back but better from the front.

So profesh. No dress-bot could do better.

Added a couple of reinforcing stitches to the back so it wouldn't flap open all the time. But I just stitched the heavier pieces of fabric together, so nothing shows from the front.

Not as nice.

 

Much more nice.

Okay you can see one stitch from the front, on the left hand side. But no one's going to be inspecting the hem of my shirt. :)

For the love of God don't drop one of these pins on the floor. You'll never see it again.

Pin the bottom hem of the shirt, using as little fabric as possible so it's still nice and long in the waist.

Had to search the house for an hour to find this iron.

Ironed the hemline before sewing so it stays nice and even while it's going through the machine. I sewed a 1/2 inch hem all along the bottom, sewing back on my stitches at the very start and end of the line to reinforce them.

Like my blinds? Don't act like you're not impressed.

And voila! Now I just have to go on safari.